Only ten more days??!

It's July already! I have to leave in ten days! I'm not yet ready!

Yesterday I spent like three euros on internet cafes then I returned to my room to discover I had free wifi. oops. Unfortunately, the wireless signal isn't really strong enough for me to upload any pictures otherwise I would be dazzling you all with my genius photography skills right now.

After some careful consideration and some phone calls and emails I concluded that I would skip ahead one day in my itinerary. That is, I will leave Limerick for Dublin one day earlier than scheduled. I figure I've already done all that I wanted to do in Limerick and there is a lot of unexplored territory in Dublin, so...onward! Or perhaps I was just getting tired of writing Limericks...

Whilst in the Aran Islands, I spoke to a local who expressed this opinion to me:
"I love America! I went to New York City once--everything is so convenient there!"
to which I responded..."yes...if you grow up on a tiny, remote island I would imagine New York would seem like a very convenient place..."
I do have to agree with him in a lot of respects though. I've kind of been keeping score on Ireland vs. USA as I've been going along this trip. It's a pretty close call in a lot of cases, but Ireland loses a lot of points in terms of convenience...especially in terms of laundry machines. I just paid a very unreasonable amount of money to use the laundry facilities here and the machines barely fit one pair of pants inside...that is to say, they are very small.

To be fair though, here are a few places where Ireland gains a lot of points:
-Most nice restaurants give you a piece of chocolate with your bill at the end of your meal. 10 points.
-You never have to tip anyone for services (taxi, restaurant, etc) and if you try to tip them they get really confused and give you your money back. 8 points.
-Limerick has both a Catherine Street (wrong spelling, right idea) and a Davis Street. 8 points.
-If you want to cross the street jay-walking is strongly encouraged on any street even if there are cars coming. If you step in front of oncoming traffic, the drivers politely stop and wave you across. 5 points.
-Regardless of where you are, you always have access to free tea. 5 points.
-Cute accents. 5 points.

It's my last day in Limerick today
Tomorrow I'll be on my way
I know you'll all miss
my little poems like this
But I'm sick of them, so I say "Hooray!!"

(Subject)

I kind of miss that tv that I had in Tralee. In addition to the Murder, She Wrote reruns I was also exposed to a lot of other gems of Irish media. I saw tv shows in Gaelic, some weird commercial featuring really scary puppets with Italian accents, and the finest game show ever called Who Dares Sings? (is that correct grammar?) It's a British show in which members of the studio audience are selected at random to come on stage and sing karaoke. Depending on how well they do they can win money. It's wonderful.

Without the luxury of television I had to return last night to old-fashioned entertainment and read. Actually, I just finished the book I was reading and it was really really good. Poor Lazarus by Maurice Leitch. I got it from the "Irish Literature" section of a very cool used bookstore in Galway. It was about a Canadian filmmaker who goes to Ireland for a few months on a journey of personal and cultural discovery, etc...sound appropriate? Before that I read The Welsh Girl which I got in the Bestseller section of a very overpriced chain bookstore. It sucked. Don't read it.

My quest for a new book led me into another bookstore today and I wandered into the children's section. It was there that I saw a big display of Where's Waldo? books...I got very nostalgic so I picked one up and was paging through it. It was only then that I realized something was horribly wrong. In Ireland, everyone's favorite bespectacled master of disguise is named not Waldo, but Wally. Where's Wally? What??! Waldo! Waldo is his name! I was quite disturbed.

On another note, It's kind of nice to come back to a city where I already know my way around. I'm a Limerick pro by now. School is out now, so I haven't seen any school girls in heinous Limerick uniforms this time around. When I was here before Munster (western Ireland) had just won an important rugby match and so every business in the city was flying their red Munster Rugby flags. I expected they would be gone by now, but a month later they are still in every window...even like fancy lady's hair salons and prestigious banks and law offices...I guess they love their rugby in Limerick. That might explain the large bronze rugby player statue in the center of the city...

I have been to Limerick city before
They support Munster Rugby in every store
It's a good little place
and I can't even face
that I only have a few days more!

Another Limerick limerick

I'm back in Limerick now
On the drive I saw many-a-cow
I haven't much to say
'Cause I was on the bus all day
And this poem's all time will allow

shuffle 1, shuffle 2, hop back 2,3,4

More dance conferencing today...

I stayed for three lectures in the morning and two lecture/demonstrations in the afternoon. The morning lectures had less to do with my research but were still interesting. Actually, one of the morning lectures was to do with gender studies in the Irish dance competition scene, so it was interesting to hear what she had to say. The first lecture/demonstration was about New England style folk dancing and we actually had to do some of the dances. That was a little weird. The second demonstration was really cool though. It was taught by a man who is probably in his 70s and has been teaching Irish dance in county Kerry for years and years. He was teaching a few steps from his teacher who, from what I can gather, was a prominent "dance master" at the turn of the century. So he was dancing and teaching some really historic choreography. It was weird to try to dance beause it's such an old style. The best part was that I got a video of him doing one of these rare old dances and I feel like I'm in possession of a valuable antique now.

Boring blog I guess...I've done a lot today, but not much of it was really blog-worthy material. I could tell you all the things I've learned about the origins of the jig and about Irish social dancing trends in the 1940s, but somehow I feel you wouldn't be that interested in reading it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the last bit of the conference in the morning then hopping on the bus to Limerick after that so perhaps I won't have time to write a blog, but no need to panic, I'll come up with something really witty and interesting to say for the next day.

To be noted:
Irish tv is wonderful if only for the fact that they still show re-runs of Murder, She Wrote.

tra la la TRALEE

Last night I saw my second show at Siamsa Tire. In answer to Mom's question, they do about four shows per season, some old, some new, which is why I had already seen San Am Fado. In any case, the show I saw last night was called Tearmann (rhymes with German). This one was about the great famine, that is to say, it's not quite as lively as a show as San Am Fado is. It was still a very good show, albeit a bit of a downer. It will be an interesting comparison for research purposes because the choreography in Tearmann is a lot more contemporary.

I was sitting next to a woman from Ohio who took intermission as an opportunity to tell me her life story. She also told me that I didn't look old enough to be in college and I have been panicking ever since.

Yesterday I also walked out to the Tralee Institute of Technology which is where the Dance Research Forum would be taking place. Turns out, it's not really walking distance...but I only found this out after I had walked all the way there for an hour in the rain...at least I found it.

I took a taxi there this morning for the conference. It might be the ugliest college campus I have ever seen and it's all under construction so it's impossible to tell which building is which. I was wandering around trying to figure which ugly building to go into when I ran into another lost American lady. We commiserated for a moment and then she goes "Oh, I should introduce myself, I'm Darah." to which I responded "OH MY GOD YOU'RE DARAH CARR!!! I've read all about your company!" I'm a bit of a dork at times. Darah Carr is the director of a very cool dance company in New York City. I have never seen one of the shows, but I have reason to assume it's a very cool company.

Soon we found our way into the conference and sure enough everyone there was someone cool. The name alphabetically above my own on the registration sheet was Dr. John Cullinane who is the author of Aspects of the History of Irish Dance among other things and whose work I have cited many times. The room was basically a walking, breathing version of my bibliography for this research project. Needless to say I was a little intimidated, first because I was really star-struck, second because I was probably one of the only people there without a PHD, and third because of the newly acquired knowledge that I don't even look old enough to be in college. I sat down for the first lecture of the day and the man in front of me looked really familiar then it struck me that he was the lead dancer from the show I had seen the previous night. omg.

I stayed around for about three quarters of the lectures today and they were all really really informative. I think I could basically write my research paper based on notes I took today so that's a big plus. At the second coffee break of the day I had calmed down enough to actually talk to some of the people there. I introduced myself to a woman named Maire Clerkin. I couldn't figure out where I recognized that name from then it occurred to me that she has been one of my judges at dance competitions many times. She lives in Los Angeles, and she knows my dance teacher from Portland really well, and her lecture was basically the same topic that I'm researching, so we had a lot to chat about. After that I met another woman who's a professor at the University of Georgia who knows my ballet teacher from Oxy, so I kept having small-world moments all day.

I accidentally drank some coffee (it looks just like tea) so I have been speaking and walking at about twice my normal speed, so I made the walk back to town after the conference and it was no problem at all...it also wasn't raining, so that was nice. Also, I typed this whole entry really really fast.

Ta an craic is fearr san Eirinn!

Tralee, as I said before, is a very cute little town. It’s only about 20,000 people, but after places like Inishmore and Dungiven, it feels like a booming metropolis. I came here to see some shows at Siamsa Tire (pronounced Sheem-sa Tee-ra translates to “country entertainment”) which is the National Folk Theater of Ireland. As luck would have it one of my research contacts invited me to attend a Dance Research Forum in Tralee and it just happened to be taking place during the week when I had planned on being here! The research conference starts up tomorrow, I saw the first show at Siamsa Tire last night, and I’ll see another one tonight. I also got really lucky in that my hotel is literally next door to the Siamsa Tire theater—I didn’t even plan that!

The first show I saw was called San Am Fado (pronounced Shan ahm fa-DOH translates to “the long ago”). It is actually the same show that I saw at Siamsa Tire when I came to Ireland a few years ago with the fam. I remembered really liking it, but last night reaffirmed that it is one of the most perfect pieces of theater I’ve ever seen. It’s not really a play, there’s no script or dialogue, or even that much of a story; the actors just act out scenes of country life and it’s all punctuated by moments of Irish dancing and really beautiful Gaelic choral singing. It’s a little hard to describe…it’s like an Irish dance ballet… Anyways, call me cheesy, but it totally gave me goose bumps. Tonight I’m seeing a different show by the same company, so I don’t know what it’s going to be like but I expect it will also be wonderful.

There is nowhere for me to eat in Tralee. Everything is either really expensive or meat dishes only. I had Chinese food last night. Actually, I’ve eaten SO MUCH Chinese food on this trip (a lot of Indian food too). The only place I have been so far that did not have a Chinese restaurant was Inishmore. Dungiven had two, Birr had three, and in Belfast I found one street that had literally four in a row and one across the street. At Chinese restaurants in Ireland you have to pay for your rice which is usually more like Uncle Ben’s than Long Grain Jasmine rice. Also, French fries are always offered as a side dish. Also, no fortune cookies.

Here is the best building in Tralee.

I thought I’d share a few more pictures from the Aran Islands too:

Here’s the big hill you have to climb to get to the Dun Aonghasa fort

Here’s some of Teampall Bhreacain, an 8^th century church.

At one point when I was riding my bike around I stopped next to a farm wall to look at my map and readjust. I had seen that there were some horses in the field and when I looked up from the map I found them looking right back at me. They had seen me and run over to greet me. Apparently they really wanted to have their picture taken.

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.)