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Log Updates:


07.19.2005
07.20.2005
07.21.2005
07.22.2005
07.23.2005
07.24.2005
07.27.2005
07.28.2005
07.29.2005
07.30.2005
07.31.2005
08.03.2005
08.07.2005
08.10.2005
08.19.2005

 

 

 


08.02.2005 - New Stuff
There's lots of new stuff!  There's now a main picture page, which can be found here.

So there's lots of new pictures, and scores of log entries to accompany them.  As I'm writing this I still haven't found a way to upload my stuff, since my idea of burning my files to a CD so I could upload them on the computer at school during my internet time was thwarted by the school computer's refusal to allow me to connect to my website via FTP...  So if anyone sees any of this that means I found some way to finally make things work, but as my internet time tends to be very limited don't be surprised if there are lots of broken links.

So I gave this page a bit of a makeover, which I think turned out ugly but at least easier to see, so let me know what you think.  I also, after accidentally making one of the picture pages India style, decided the old format looked so much nicer, so I've switched all the picture pages to the black, grey, and white format (the colored pages were festive, but rather unattractive).  One more thing: to economize time, I'm only uploading thumbnail and middle-sized pictures, so if you crave extreme detail (although I did adjust the picture generator properties so the thumbnails and middle-sized pictures look much nicer now) you'll have to wait until I get a connection that gives me time to upload all the giant pictures.  Movies will probably also not be uploaded, but they will come before full-sized pictures if I get time.


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Tuesday,
July 19th

07.19.2005

Pictures

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Here I go!  I'm finally embarking on my Europe trip, and I'm super excited.  After staying up late getting everything packed, I missed my first wake up call (missed or ignored... I remember my mom telling me a few things in the morning but thinking "Well, she didn't tell me to get up, so I guess I can go back to sleep."  She claims otherwise.), but I still got to the airport with plenty of time to make my flight.  Europe awaits.

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Thursday,
July 21st

07.21.2005

Pictures

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Well I'm now in Ireland, where it is perpetually cold and wet, but I still love it.  Just now my internet access looks pretty iffy, so I'm not sure how often updates will be coming.  Hopefully that situation will improve soon.

Galway is really nice.  Yesterday I had some time to walk around the city and get something to eat.  I'm hoping to go to City Hall today and get a map so I can figure out what things are.  The streets here are not well labeled and addresses do not include numbers, so it seems to me that it's pretty difficult to get around no matter what.

My hotel is about a 25 minute walk from the center of the city.  It took  me a little longer last night, since I was going off a map I found on the back of a gift shop's brochure I got at the hotel, which was neither to scale nor very conducive to getting downtown.  There's a nice body of water that I think eventually leads to the ocean across the street and down a little bit.  The street my hotel is on goes along its north side, and along its west side there's a nice long road with houses on the non-watery side and on the other side above the water there is a row of nice little gardens.  I'm not sure if they belong to the houses across the road and are some sort of yard-extensions of if they are  independent.

Today getting into town should be a little easier.  I saw an Internet Cafe yesterday that so far seems to be my best shot at getting any of this online for others to see (I'm at the hotel at the moment, getting everything ready so all I'll have to do will be upload), so hopefully that won't cost too much.  Last night I ended up spending about €17 on food (although that included tip, so it wasn't all on food), which is hopefully a little higher than what will be customary for me.

Well, that's all for now.  Look at some pictures and send me some e-mail if you have some time. (Although I have no idea how often I'll be checking it) 

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Later...
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Getting into town today took less time, as I had a better idea of where I was going.  I also had a map that the hotel gave me, which gave me a little more direction, but again, streets here are poorly labeled, so drawing a correspondence between what the map showed and the world around me at times was difficult.

I discovered that yesterday I had just barely gotten into downtown Galway.  If I had gone a even a block farther, I would have gotten to the shop-lined streets full of shoppers and street performers.  My initial destination was a tourist office I had seen on my map, and on the other side of the map I noticed a cathedral across town that I thought would be cool to see, so I had a plan of sorts.  I got to the tourist office, which had various overpriced items and a few brochures, none of which were terribly useful.  There was a map outside that had a nice layout of the city, though, so that gave me some more direction.

I continued walking through the city and found more interesting shops and streets.  On what seemed like the edge of downtown there's a series of rivers and canals, some of which run right up to the buildings, giving a sort of Venetian feel. There were several bridges across these waterways, one of which led right to the cathedral, so I was able to go right across to it.

The cathedral was awesome.  It was rather dark and all stone, which I liked a lot.  I spent some time looking around and took a few pictures, and just as I was about to leave a priest came out to say Mass, so I stayed for that.  After Mass I decided to try going a little farther on the streets leading away from downtown, and in doing so I unwittingly stumbled across the National University of Ireland, where I need to be tomorrow to catch the bus to Cararroe.  I was hoping I'd be able to walk, but it looks like that'll be a little far to lug all my suitcases.

As I started making my way back through downtown, the streets and restaurants were getting more crowded.  I didn't have any cash on me at this point, so I had to find a place that would let me use a card, which I did without too much difficulty.  I had a yummy meal of Irish lamb stew with carrots, cabbage, cheesecake, and tea while listening to the street performers play didgeridoos outside the restaurant, which was unexpected to say the least. 

After dinner, I walked through the city a bit more, looked in a few shops, and then was quite ready to be back at the hotel, so the 20 minute walk ahead of me was not entirely welcome.  Back in my hotel there appears to be an elderly French people convention, which thoroughly crowded the lobby and hallways.  I managed to get to my room, though, as I am eager to rest up ready for the big day tomorrow.

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Friday,
July 22st

 07.22.2005

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Today was the day for the bus ride to Cararroe to begin the Irish program.  I checked out of my hotel without incident (whew) around 1:30 and waited in the lobby for my taxi to take me to NUI Galway at 2 so I could get there in time for the bus, which was to leave at 2:30.  Everything went smoothly, and after about an hour and a half on the bus we arrived in An Cheathru Rua, known more popularly to English speakers (although not many of them, I suppose) as Cararroe.

We were dropped off at NUI's Cararroe branch, Acadamh, where we entered to register while our luggage was unloaded.  After finishing registration we went to the kitchen, where they told us they had tea, coffee, and biscuits (they meant cookies) for us.  There are about 30 students total involved in the program to be distributed through all the four levels of instruction, so classes won't be very big.  We began to notice that several of us had the same color folders containing our schedules and maps, and that the colors corresponded to the houses we were going to.  In all, there were 6 people going to the house I was staying at: My roommate, Kevin, from New York; Jessica, from Texas, and Catherine, from England, who share a room; and Sarah, from Boston, and Eiichi, from Japan, each of whom have individual rooms.

We are staying at the house of a woman named Peig (Peg), who lives in Cararroe, about a 20 minute walk from town.  She's a very nice lady and has a very homey and rustic little place (although not that little, as there are about 5 or 6 bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room, and several bathrooms, but it's rather compact).  She gave us a very good dinner soon after we arrived, with chicken, ham, coleslaw, carrots, potatoes, and soda bread.

After dinner we watched a little survivor with Irish subtitles while we waited for everyone to get ready to go pubbin.  The town isn't very big, so there's one pub, An Chistin ("The Kitchen") where pretty much everybody goes.  It takes about 20 minutes to walk there, but it's a pretty nice walk along water most of the way, if you aren't frightened by the cars that go zooming by, as there isn't really a shoulder and there's no room next to the road a lot of the way, and the road is usually just wide enough for two cars to get by.  The pub wasn't very crowded when we got there, since it was only like 8:00, but more people from our program started showing up as time went on.  It was cool to see all the Irish people actually speaking Irish to each other.  The man behind the bar even greeted us in Irish, although we didn't "have any Irish" (as the locals say) to say back, so we just responded in English.  They had some music scheduled to play at 10:30 so we waited around to see what that was, but it turned out to be some country band, so we didn't hang around too much longer.  Two people from our house had already gone back, and a little after 11:00 I headed back with Kevin and Jessica, with Sarah staying behind.  We were a little concerned about being able to identify the house, but on our first guess we turned out to be right.

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Saturday,
July 23rd

07.23.2005

Pictures

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Today was the day for class to officially begin, so we were all pretty excited.  We had arranged to have breakfast at 7:45, since the bus was coming to pick us up at 8:30, so Kevin and I decided to get up around 7. 

Irish breakfasts consist of meat, meat, and more meat.  We had sausage, ham, bacon, and weird little things that looked sort of like sausage slices but were probably something we wouldn't have eaten had we known what they actually were (one was sort of meat colored, the other was black... they tasted fine, though).  We ate, took the bus to school, and waited for everyone else to be brought (it's a mini bus, so it just picks up and drops off one house at a time, and we're first on the bus stops this week).  Around 9:30 they had us go to a rooms for placement, which was basically where the woman organizing everything talked about what would happen and then asked us to classify ourselves based on whether we understood pretty much everything, got a basic gist, understood a few words, or basically nothing.  I already knew I was starting in the ultimate beginners' course, but I was regardless reassured in understanding absolutely nothing of what she said.

After that she introduced the teachers and had all the people in the very beginners' course go  off with the teacher to a room in another building, where all the classes are held.  We went there, got situated, and then started with basic greetings, asking and telling names, and asking and saying how we were feeling.  From there we moved on to numbers 1-10, members of the family, and random objects in our environment.  Everything was taught in a communicative approach to language learning, which takes as its fundamental principle that grammar is at the heart of all the world's problems, so you don't go anywhere near it.  In place of teaching grammar, where you are shown systematically how things work and so you can create with the language, you are basically given a bunch of sentences and phrases to memorize, and you just keep memorizing sentences and phrases, learning each as if it were its own mysterious irregularity (when, in fact, most are extremely regular and would be quite easy to learn, use, and develop if any rules were given, but we are left to magically discover the rules for ourselves AFTER learning the language).  The idea is that you continue this process until you reach the level of a native speaker, although the chances of that happening seem rather slim with such an approach.

Anyway, I don't particularly care for the communicative approach.  I'm a grammar man myself, but this was only the first day, and they just want to teach us some things to say, but when you just have to memorize something and know that this is the sentence to use to say "I'm doing well, thank you, how are you?" without understanding what the words actually mean or how to use any of the individual components it leaves you feeling rather swamped and helpless.  Hopefully the level of grammar instruction will increase as time goes on.

So it was interesting, and we did learn how to say some things.  The real difficulty (which, I might add, could be helped by a systematic and rule-governed presentation) is that the Irish spelling system is slightly insane.  Yes, I understand that as an English speaker I have little right to make that claim, but it is.  The word feoil, for example, is pronounced like "fyole," plodaithe (crowded) is pronounced plo-dee, or a haon (one), pronounced uh-hee-uhn.  That last word is slightly irregular, and generally the spelling system works a little better than that, or so I'm told, but I am definitely uneasy with it at best (Syllable stress is at least generally constant: it's almost always on the first syllable, and there's a very finite list of exceptions where it's on the second syllable).  I feel so accomplished if I can just pronounce something correctly, but then I remember "Oh yeah, I have to figure out what it means in English," which is a whole other can of worms.

In the evening some of us went exploring, but we didn't get to the beach we were looking for.  We did get to the water on one road, but it was just a few houses near the edge of the water.  There was some nice scenery though, so there are some pictures.

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Sunday,
July 24th

 07.24.2005

Pictures

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Today we had our first trip, which was first to the house of the Irish writer Padraic Pearse, who moved to the area to learn Irish and is famous for having the same name as me (that's actually not a very uncommon name here, but with a "c" at the end is a slightly older style; they usually use a "g" nowadays).  The house was interesting and had a big lake out front.  I discovered a path down to the water, so there are some pictures of that.  We also went to a hotel that had a tribute cabin to "The Quiet Man" outside, a gift shop, a bar, and a restaurant.  There wasn't much to do there, but I did get a good Irish mythology book and a pack of Guinness fudge at the gift shop.  The Guinness fudge wasn't even good--it had that sort of weird waxy texture and didn't taste like chocolate (or Guinness).  I later noticed that the actual Guinness content was something like 0.4%, which apparently is enough to warrant a black bag with the Guinness logo slapped across the top.  The book is good though, so I'm very happy with it (AND it was on sale).
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Wednesday,
July 27th

07.27.2005

Pictures

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I have now completed the mid-week hump of my first week of class, and I'm getting more settled into the routine.  Here's what my day looks like:

7:30am Wake up, take shower
7:55am Get to breakfast
8:30am Minibus picks us up, takes us to Acadamh in town.  Since we're the first to be picked up, we usually have some tea in the kitchen and study while we wait for everyone else to arrive.
9:30am Class begins
11:00am First break, usually spent having tea and biscuits in the kitchen
11:30am Class resumes
1:00pm Lunch and break time, in which I have my allotted half-hour of internet time, and during which I also have to remember make my daily AMT withdrawal to pay for my tuition and housing (I have a daily limit on my account that I had arranged to be fixed, but if you don't remember how my bank works you can just check the India log around the day where I was checking out of my hotel)
2:00pm Class resumes
2:55pm Afternoon break
3:05pm Class resumes
4:00pm Class is finished.  At this time we generally have the option of going to the study room or taking part in some sort of cultural presentation, such as regarding singing, poetry or literature
5:00pm Bus takes us home
5:30pm Dinner
6:30pm Bus picks us up to take us to Acadamh on the evenings when they have lectures, which concern things like dancing, song, politics, or literature in Ireland.
7:30pm Lecture/activity begins
9:00pm Evening things ends and we go to the pub for a bit, returning home at varying times (he he...)

So that's what my life is like nowadays.  Nothing particularly exciting happened today, so there are just a few pictures of the sunset.

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Thursday,
July 28th

07.28.2005

Pictures

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I went in to Galway tonight with some people to see some plays that had finished their run, but are now being continued since Galway is currently having its big racing week (horses).  I guess racing week is pretty big, because when I was there last week, everyone I talked to told me that it was a shame I wouldn't be in town while the races were going on.

There were five of us who went, and since one girl had a car, she offered to drive everyone, which was very nice since it meant we didn't have to be restricted by bus schedules.  We left Cararroe around 6, getting into Galway around 7:00.  We parked near NUI, which was very strange, since I had just been there exactly one week before, and had no idea I would be back any time soon.  It was very convenient, though, because I knew my way around the area well.

They did two plays, which were interesting and rather strange.  They were both from the first half of the 20th century, when there was a movement to form a specifically Irish form of theater.  The first was about a woman who had a older husband who was dying, and she was faced with what to do after her husband's death.  The second was far more bizarre, and was about a town that took in a man who had confessed to killing his father because the townspeople were messed up and fascinated by violence.  There are just a few pictures of my return to Galway.

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Friday,
July 29th

07.29.2005

Pictures

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I found out today that my sister had her baby, which is awesome news!  I am now the proud uncle to another baby nephew.

Today Cararroe held a parade to begin some boating festival.  They have the boat races every year, but they've never done a parade before, so it was something of a special occasion.  They started at a pier outside town and took the procession right down the main street.  The pier is on the opposite side of town from us, and it would have taken us about an hour to reach it from the house, so we just walked into town to meet the parade when it got there.

It turned out that we had perfect timing, because the parade was getting into town just as we were.  There were bagpipers and people with giant puppet things.  Several people were carrying a giant/monster they had constructed.  I was told that the priest had blessed it at the pier with holy water from a bottle of whisky and they were bringing it into town to set it on fire, and the heavy scent of gasoline in the air seemed to confirm the story.  Sure enough, they wasted little time in standing it up in the parking lot by the school at lit the thing up.  It was blazing in seconds, and didn't go out for awhile.  The bagpipers started up again and marched away, after which everyone wandered back home (or to the pubs).  In all it was a fun experience, and something about seeing actual Irish bagpipers was really cool.

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Saturday,
July 30th

07.30.2005

Pictures

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We had bus trip #2 today, which took us first to a little area with a shop and a restaurant (for a bathroom break), then to a little town with a fjord, then to Kylemore Abbey, and finally to Clifden before returning more.  The first two stops weren't anything too special, but it was nice to be able to get out and walk around a little.  At the fjord place I got a "Not for Girls" candy bar, which was interesting.  There's a picture of it in there somewhere.

Killmore Abbey was cool.  The main building is an old castle that a guy built for his wife in the 19th century but it now home to Belgian nuns and a school they run.  Only about 5 rooms were open to us, but they had some cool stuff in them.  There was also a little votive area, which upon close inspection I noticed was actually a panel of little lights with buttons in front of each of them to make them like up for an unspecified amount of time.  I did one, and when I pressed the button a flickery light came on that was quite reminiscent of candlelight, but I remain skeptical of button-operated candles.  I don't see why conventional candles are so much trouble (plus they're a lot less tacky).

After the Abbey we ate lunch in the bus and went to Clifden, which is a bigger town than Cararroe, but not nearly as big as Galway.  It was just nice to be in a town where things could actually be purchased (For things like clothes, books, or DEFINITELY electronics, Cararroe-ians plan a trip to Galway), although they were still so expensive I contented myself with tea at a very strange sit-down-and-be-served coffee shop we went to.  They had a book store, which I was eager to see, since I was hoping to get some sort of Italian book for my time in Italy.  I found a phrase book and dictionary, but since it's not like I'm actually going to try to learn Italian before I get there, I decided I'll just speak Spanish in Italy and hope they understand me (Hopefully I'll understand them...).

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Sunday,
July 31st

07.31.2005

Pictures

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Today a trip to Crough Padraic was planned, where there's a shrine to Mary.  I had been planning to go, but I decided I didn't really want to go with the whole group of people, and I had some stuff I had been wanting to do.  I had my day planned to go hunting for the beach that we didn't find last week when we tried.  I went to Mass last night and got up with everyone else this morning to have breakfast, after which we set out around 7:30.  The road I had to take was just before town, so I walked in with everyone else from my house and parted ways as they went off to the bus.

I shortly saw the road we should have taken last time, from which you can pretty much immediately see water (we walked on the other road for about 30 minutes longer before seeing anything).  The road winds on for a bit before actually getting near the water, and it stops just above the beach.  There was a big cemetery (who remembers chemistry?).  The really old graves were very worn so it was hard to tell just when they were from, but they dated at least back to the mid-19th century, and there were many from up to the end of the 1900s, but it didn't look like there was much room for anything more recent than that unless there was an area I wasn't seeing.  I forgot to continue my search for the oldest grave after I got to the church, which I'm told is from the 16th century.  It's tiny, has no roof, and it totally overgrown with plant life. 

After taking lots of pictures and jumping around on rocks, trying to see how far from the beach I could get (I fell in once and messed up my hand on a rock), I sat down on some of the giant rocks that made up the majority of the beach to do some studying and reading, which were also things I had told myself I would get done today.  The woman of the house (or "Bean an tí," as we call her) had made a bag lunch for me along with those going to Crough Padraic, so I worked and read (mostly read) until I ate at about 11:30.  After that I putzed around for a little longer before deciding to go home via the shoreline.  Our house is near the water, so I figured I'd be able to find it pretty easily (if I could identify it from an angle I never saw it from, that is...).  There was a little marina I had forgotten about that we always pass on the road, so when I eventually got there I just took the road (there wasn't much shoreline just past that area).  I noticed a little dog following me that I thought I'd seen outside a house by the marina.  Just when I was thinking I might have to take him back he stopped following me, but as I continued walking I suddenly heard the yelps of the little dog, which had run across the street and been hit by a car.  The dog hopped around for a minute and wasn't really visibly damaged, and I went back to the house I thought I'd seen him by and told a woman there who said it was her dog that a car had hit him.  Two people had stopped who I think also lived at the house, so I told them I had told the woman there about it and, not really thinking there was anything else I should do, continued on my way.

So I had a (mentally) relaxing day with a bit of excitement.  We have an oral examination on Thursday, so I want to make sure I'm well prepared.  I didn't really get as much studying done as I'd like, but maybe I'll get some more done before tomorrow (if I can finish getting all this website stuff taken care of, that is). 

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Wednesday,
August 3rd

08.03.2005

Pictures

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Today we had our trip to the Aran Islands.  Everybody actually only got to go to one (of the three), which we chose ahead of time.  I chose Inis Oírr ("Innish Eer," blame the Irish spelling system) as did everyone else in my class, since it came highly recommended by our teacher.

Our ferry ride, which made me extremely grateful I don't get motion sickness, was considerably longer than I expected it to be.  I was thinking we'd get to the islands after about 20 minutes, but it ended up taking a little over an hour to get to Inis Meáin ("Innish Myahn"), where the ferry made its first stop and let off everyone going there.  Getting to Inis Oírr took another 15 minutes or so.

As soon as we got to the island we went to a pub where they had arranged soup, sandwiches, and tea for us for lunch.  After that we went back down toward the shore, where we met our guide, who showed us around the town.  We ended our tour seeing the castle, which was very small, but still pretty cool.  One side was sort of crumbled away, making an excellent area for climbing, but I didn't get a chance to try it out.  We had an hour after that to wander around as we pleased, and there were a few of us who wanted to go see a shipwreck from the 50s over on the other side of the island.  The ship was very surprising, first because it was really far up on the beach, and secondly because it was the entire rusted out metal ship (except for a big hole in the side).  There was some beach there too, which was very nice aside from a group of about 300 kids that wandered up just as we did.

We walked back to the main beach with enough time to make the ferry (but not enough time for me to get back to the castle).  The ride back was even worse than the ride there.  It was far windier, making for an extremely rocky ride, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.  If I get a chance I want to go back and climb that castle.

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Wednesday,
August 10th

08.10.2005

Pictures

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We had our big Galway trip today, which everyone was very excited for since most people seemed to be itching to spend some money.  I managed to drop a fair amount myself, but since some of it was gifts I can't communicate the exact details of what I got, but lets just say I managed to spend upwards of €100...  whoops.

We left for Galway (which, by the way, is spelled "Gallimh" in Irish and is pronounced "gahl-yeh") from school this morning on a bus.  We stopped by Spiddal first, which has some nice shops but they're all together in one area away from the middle of town that seems so sterile and touristy, but the shops all feature nice, authentic, Irish-made stuff, most of which is made in the shops themselves.  That, along with Ireland in general just being expensive, resulted in my first big spending-spree.

After spending an hour in Spiddal, which was just the right amount of time to see everything without being rushed but also without having tons of extra time spent waiting for the bus to leave, we continued on to Galway.  My first mission upon arrival was to find an electronics store where I could buy a microphone, since I forgot to bring one from home and I want one to record Irish speakers and do nerdy Linguistics stuff... Anyway, Michael (who was accompanying me on my search) and I started out going with Jeff, who was headed for an internet café and knew of a Sony store on the way.  They only had really expensive microphones, but they directed us to another electronics store that was sort of far away but actually near the hotel where I stayed when I first arrived in Galway, so I was at least familiar with the route we would have to take.  We had to hurry since we had arranged to meet up with people and had a long walk ahead of us, but we made it with time to spare.  I found a microphone that seemed to suit my needs (the main one being that it was cheap) and also remembered that I had wanted to buy some CD-Rs, which were available in a 25 pack for €15 or a 50 pack for €15.  While I didn't really want the extra CDs to carry around, I couldn't bring myself to only take the 25 pack and had to take all 50.

After we got back and met up with the others (after slight confusion since we had arranged to meet at the end of Shop Street which actually ends earlier than it seems to, but it was all right) we stopped at a Fish and Chips place that was quite good and then looked in some more stores where I spent more money.  I wanted to find some shoes since mine are sort of old and I don't want to kill my feet while traversing Europe, but I didn't have the patience to sit and look long enough to find anything I liked.  Ireland is definitely not the best place to buy anything since it is one of the more expensive countries in Europe, but I'd rather start out my journey with my feet taken care of.  My current thinking is that I'll fly from here to Madrid after this program ends (next Friday, which seems inconceivably strange) and store my luggage in a locker at the airport, assuming one can do such things.  I'll take what I need in my backpack and set off with my Eurail pass (that I need to work on getting) to go to France, Italy, Russia, or wherever.  I'm going to start planning out my travel itinerary and looking at flights to see how I should go about things.

I did end up finding an Italian phrase and grammar book for €3, which was too good of a deal to pass up.  I will probably have overwritten all the Spanish in my head with Italian by the time I get to Toledo, but at least I will be well equipped in Italy.  I also got some little locks for my backpack zippers, just to deter any potential pick-pockets.  In the end I managed to make it back to the bus after one last-minute errand, at which point we were all thoroughly exhausted and very excited to get to sit and sleep in the bus on the ride home.  We had one of our Irish dancing classes last night, which was super fun and in which we learned Kerry and Connemara sets.  We were told there was another lesson tonight for a different set of students that we could attend if we wanted, but I don't want to spend any more time on my feet and am currently skiving back at home.  We have our half-way party tomorrow night (for unapparent reasons) and then our end-or-term party next week, so there will be plenty of occasion for dancing then.

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Friday,
August 19th

08.19.2005

(Yesterday's)
Pictures

(Today's)
Pictures

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So today we headed back to Galway for the last time.  The term is finally over, which seems so weird and a little sad, but I'm also very eager to begin exploring Europe.
Last night we had our end of term party, which was at the big hotel in town.  We had dinner, followed by dancing with talent show events mixed in between the numbers, as performed by faculty, staff, and students of the program.  Some of the highlights were Hilarai's (who did all our dance classes) step dancing and lots of sean nos singing, although the latter doesn't always translate into video so well.  It was a good time, and afterwards a few of us went to the beach for a late-night hoot nanny that featured the best music I've heard during my entire time in Ireland, courtesy of Colm, a guy in the program, and two Irish guys he knows.
Today was the time for all the final goodbyes and all that as we left the house this morning.  After the bus arrived in Galway I walked with some people who were going to the train station, as it's pretty near my hostel, said goodbye to them, and then headed here.  Now I suppose my Europe time has really begun, as my program in Cararroe has officially finished, so this is the last for this page.  Slán anois!