Sept 21st – Oct 1st

Goodness! I’m so sorry – its been 10 days since I last posted. No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. No, nothing terrible has happened to prevent me from posting. I’m just rather busy – school has started and I have a ton going on!

I’ll begin by telling you of the two ‘special events’ that weren’t part of my day-to-day schedule.

Friday the 25th of Setember was ‘Culture Night’ in Cork City. Several different tours were scheduled, and I went on two of them with some of my friends. The first one was a ‘Food City’ tour – for those of you know me, this was a perfect activity. When I first heard about it, I assumed that it was going to be a tour of different restaurants and things like that. Boy was I wrong. Instead, it was a history of food in Ireland – going all the way back to the 12th century. I was one of two vegetarians on the trip. and boy was it hard for us. This was just a little bit of what the culinary history of Cork included:

• Lard
• Salted Pork
• Bacon
• Sausages
• Ham
• Cruibín (Pig’s Foot)
• Tripe
• Tongue
• Beef
• Black Pudding

We got the dirty details of every single one. Dis. Gust. O. If I hadn’t been a vegetarian before that night, I definitely would have become one after that. Oh boy. Anyway, we learned all about the food in the Cork valley. The tour began in the City Hall building and wound around, through the English Market, and over to Cornmarket Street. Unfortunately, my friends and I had to leave a little bit early in order to get to our second tour.

In the English Market

We returned to city hall, and climbed into a van for our ‘Culture Cab’. Basically, we were driven around the city and asked questions about ‘cultural things’ – music, art, and film. The guides were fantastic – loads of fun. The bad thing? The questions were mostly directed to people of a generation before us – we knew very few of the answers. I, however, managed to correctly answer all the ones about opera and ‘classical’ music. Go me. I had a lovely time with my friends, even if we failed miserably. Gotta love it.

The second ‘fun’ thing was Saturday. I woke up and was planning on working on my papers for most of the day, but when I went out to the kitchen, my friends were leaving for Kinsale. I had already been, but I tagged along anyway. It was sort of an … interesting experience for me. The people I went with were are very different from me – they like to drink, party, and go out clubbing several nights a week. They would rather talk about what they did last night whilst drinking than… well, anything else. The girls were bubbly (not in the me sort of way… in the ‘Laguna Beach’ sort of way), and the guys were rather bawdy and lewd. I made the most of it though – Kinsale is a lovely place, so walking around another day was lovely. We returned to Charles Fort, and instead of going inside like I did the last time, I walked around the exterior. It was nice – I climed down to the water’s edge, and just sat for a while.

On the way to Charles Fort

We had lunch at a little fish place – I had a ‘warm fish salad’. It was okay, but it gave me a terrible stomachache afterwards. I don’t know what it was… everyone else felt fine, so maybe I’m just strange.

When we got back to Cork, I was pretty tired, but I had to do some work for my classes (I’m getting there!). I did go to sleep fairly early, and pretended to work on my essays and read some papers all day long. Boring, I know.

Monday was Yom Kippur, but I had to go to all three of my classes. The lecturers made it very clear that I had to be there Monday, or I would be lost for the rest of the semester. I went to a morning prayer service, went to UCC for my classes, came back to apartment, and went back to services. The shul here is the most orthodox shul I’ve ever been – it was a very different experience than what I’m accustomed to. I felt very seperate from the whole ordeal. When I got back home at 8:30 or so, I made my self a nice, large dinner to make up for the fasting.

On to the classes: I am taking the 4 I mentioned -

• Intro to Geology
• Geophysics and Plate Tectonics
• Optics, Mineralogy, and Crystallography
• Geohazards

along with a Renaissance Vocal Ensemble. In addition, I’ve officially joined the Choral Society and the Geological Society, but I think I’m going to have to drop Choral. Somehow, I became an officer (the Public Relations officer to be specific) in the Geological Society. Combined with all of my classes, my ensemble, and my vocal music from back home, and I might just have a little much on my plate. Back home, I wouldn’t mind, but I want as much free time as I can get over here to travel.

Classes…. Everything I’ve experienced is so unlike everything that I am used to at Macalester. At Mac, my professors know my name, know me. They will get coffee with me, and invite me to concerts with them. My classes – even the ‘big ones’ – have a sort of intimate feel, where discussion is encouraged, and the professors treat us as competent, intelligent adults. If we are given papers or handouts, we are expected to read them ourselves, and if we don’t, its our fault.

Here, I am a number (no really – my student email address is a number). I may make an impression due to my status as the lone American in the department, but other than that, I am a no-one. The lecture classes are true lecture classes – no room for questions that push the topic into higher intellectual grounds. My professors do recognize me as I usually sit near the front. In two of my classes, I know everythnig that has been said already, so they’ve talked to me about some other topics outside of class. Other than that… Especially in my Intro course, the students are hooligans. Straight out of secondary school. Its a bit better in my other classes, but I still feel a bit out of place. I have found a few people ‘more like me’ that I like, but they are few and far between. I hope as the semester progresses, I meet some more of them!

Okay… I have to go take a shower and get to class! This weekend is the Cork Beamish Folk Festival – I’m excited!

Emma

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