Where have you been??

I'm alive! Many of you have called me in the last few days expressing your concern for my general well-being, so thank you very much for that. The hostel in the Aran Islands was supposed to have wifi and when I arrived the guy said it was "broken" and he would "fix it tomorrow" liar.

I'll try to keep this entry short, but we have like four days of catching up to do, so bear with me...maybe grab yourself a little snack before you start reading or something...

Last Day in Galway:
When I went to make myself lunch I discovered that the groceries that I had bought myself had been taken from the hostel guest food storage area and I was very very sad.

I attended a big ceili dance that night and an American couple got up and started mock Irish dancing. I wanted to get up and shout "NO! You're being offensive!" but instead I hung my head in shame.

At dinner I felt like being a local so I conducted all of my interactions with an Irish accent. No one seemed to notice.

The Journey to the Aran Islands:
The Aran islands are three tiny islands (Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer) off the West coast of Ireland, the total population spread out over the three islands is about one thousand people. I've been some pretty remote places on this trip, but this is certainly wins the middle-of-nowhere contest. I'm not a very outdoorsy person and I certainly prefer big cities, so the Aran islands were a bit of a psychological challenge for me. I had some close encounters with farm animals, and basically survived the worst storm ever...but read on...To get to the Aran Islands one must ride a bus for about an hour then a ferry for about 45 minutes. The ferry ride was extremely rough and luckily the journey ended before anything gross or embarrassing happened. When I got off the ferry on Inishmore I realized why the ride had been so choppy...it was basically hurricane conditions outside. It was so windy I could feel my eyelashes flying back against my eyelids and when I opened my mouth I could feel my cheeks flapping around. In addition to that it was raining so hard that when I walked outside for about ten feet I got completely drenched and it took my pants three days to dry out from all the rain they absorbed. This was the day of the summer solstice—everyone loves irony, eh? Apparently they previous day on the island had been sunny and beautiful. Even the locals said this kind of treacherous weather was unusual. I look really pretty with that wind-blown hair look, no?

The hostel was pretty nice and one of the other girls staying my room was a nice British girl who was actually also traveling doing research as well—she’s getting her masters in anthropology and was doing her dissertation on Aran knitting traditions.

Anyways. About the only thing I did on that first day was go out for dinner. There are only two dinner options in the town of Kilronan, a skeezy American themed restaurant and bar aptly titled "the American Bar" and a swanky fancy tourist restaurant. I chose the American Bar for budgeting purposes. When I entered apparently stood out from the local crowd because just about everyone looked up. Three very old men (certainly old enough to be my grandfather) sitting at the bar immediately turned around and began making generally flattering, but in the circumstances, very much unwelcome comments about my appearance. Ew. When I sat down I noticed that there was nothing vegetarian on the menu so I just got up and left, still managing to awkwardly draw lots and lots of attention to myself. I went to the swanky restaurant and it was delicious.

Day Two on Inishmore:
On the second day the weather wasn't quite as deadly as it was on the first day, but there was no electricity on the whole island. The only place that had power, and thus the only business that was open, was the tiny grocery store that had a big noisy generator. I didn’t do much all day… Finally around 6pm the electricity came back and the weather cleared up a little bit. Since I hadn’t done anything all day I decided to go seek out some traditional music that night for research purposes. I went to one of the area’s three pubs (when there are only 3 pubs you know you’re in a really remote place) which said they would have music at 10pm. I arrived at 10 but there was no music happening, then I realized that it was because the all-important soccer game had not ended yet. When it was over (Spain won) the music started, but it turned out to be just some local guy singing Simon and Garfunkel/ The Eagles/ R.E.M. type covers, so it wasn’t really what I was looking for. I would have left, but all of the sudden I found myself in the middle of a swarm of locals who wanted to talk to me. The Aran locals are all very friendly, but talking to them is a little unsettling—they all speak to each other in Gaelic so they would say something to me in English then suddenly turn to each other say something in Gaelic and start laughing…oh dear. That evening turned out to be the first, and presumably the only, time in my life the parish priest bought me a drink.

Day Three on Inishmore:
On the third day I used my mind powers to summon the sun out from behind the clouds. I ended up creating a perfect day! No wind, no rain, just beautiful sunny 75 degree conditions. I rented a bicycle and biked all over island. First I stopped by the island’s seal colony…SEALS!! (photo to the left) Seals make noises like Chewbacca. I continued biking up through the lovely countryside past lots of thatched cottages and farm animals and stone walls and such and maybe an hour or two later I arrived at Dun Aonghasa (no idea how that is pronounced), an early Celtic fort from about 1100 BC. When you get there after the long bike ride you then have to hike up a big hill for about 20 minutes but when you make it to the top it is spectacular, amazing, breath-taking, and more. It’s a good place for a fort because, in addition to the remote location, in one direction you can see out over the whole island (beautiful on a clear day), and in the other direction there are huge cliffs that drop straight into the ocean. Very much like the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. You can walk right up to the edge of the cliff so it’s a little frightening since all that separates you from the ocean is several hundred feet of jagged rocks. It’s all very mind-blowing and I can hardly describe it. A nice couple from California took my picture (I look a little disheveled from the bike ride and hike).

After the fort, I cycled on around the rest of the island past more farms, 9^th century church ruins, beaches, and lots more indescribable scenery. In total I was on the bike for about five hours, so by the end I was a little tired and very sunburned. (Sunburned in Ireland…I know!!) I got back and cooked myself a delicious dinner…yes, cooked.

Leaving the Island:
The ferry ride away from the island was not nearly as treacherous as the one that took me there, and I spotted another seal in the harbor as we were leaving. After that I rode three different buses to get to Tralee. In total it was about 8 hours of constant traveling…blahhhh…

Small anecdote: As I was standing waiting for one of the buses to come an old man was standing next to me and he pointed to a man with a big grizzly beard walking by and said (in a heavy Irish accent) “That man there has a fine whisker.” Best quote by an old Irish guy so far? I think so.

When I arrived in Tralee I was so excited to see that my hotel is SUPER nice! It’s like…an actual hotel…with my own room and my own bathroom and a big bed that’s not a bunk-bed, and towels and a tv (I watched a Gaelic tv channel for a long time), and they have no internet…sigh…

Tralee is a very cute town and I’ll have lots to say, but this post is very long already, so until tomorrow, I leave you! But first, an Aran Islands joke:

Why did the Irish chickens cross the road?

To go to the pub! (duh.)