3 weeks to go

It seems like just yesterday I had 4 months in a foreign city in front of me. And now I only have three more weeks here. I really wonder how much I have changed, and how much of it will effect my choices in the future. Unlike many people, I can say that I have lived in a different country, and I would challenge anyone who gave me a hard time about the fact that English is spoken here, to live in Ireland. I love it here so much but I'm starting to get those familiar pangs for home. They felt the same when I first got here. Of course I have had ups and downs of home sickness, but this is different, it is the feeling of being so close to home but still so far away.

I have 2 more weeks of classes, and then a showcase to show what we have worked on this semester, and then I am off to the states again. The showcase prep is going well, but in different ways for my 4 different classes. I feel pretty comfortable about all but one. For one of them all we have is a frame and no real idea what we will be doing in the middle. That doesn't give us much time to work of the specificity she keeps harping on lately. But all the others are great. I have developed a love for Irish drama that I bet will continue for a while. I really feel like I'm going to be able to do a good job on the other showcase pieces. I get to play an irish reported in a cell in Beirut with two other guys, one British and one American. It is a really great piece. I play a really quirking character written by Samuel Beckett in my voice showcase which includes flashing and farting, which are the makings of a great time. I hope I can get someone to record/take pictures of it for me. We will have to see.

Belfast and North Antrim coast

Last weekend I made another trip up to the north with a bunch of people who are on my program here. This trip was fun, but their were 9 of us, and if you don't know already, it is hard to make sure everyone is happy with so many people with you. But we did alright and we all shared one big hostel room, which was fun. I stayed up a little too late the night before, because someone from UPS (Greta) who I didn't know very well, came to Dublin, and I took her and her friends out on the town the night before I left. It was cool, that while I am meeting and making new friends in this foreign place, I still managed to make a new friend from UPS.

This whole trip was a little touristy for me, but it worked out really well with how many people were there and how we could best get around. The first day we spent in Belfast, and took a black cab tour of the city. We then went in search of the Ulster museum but little did we know it was closed. Then the rain started coming down, and by the time we got back to the hostel, people didn't really want to go out again. We got some groceries in bulk and make a big pot of spaghetti and bad of chips (fries) for dinner. We ended up making way to much, but it was good fun anyway. We then went up to the room and played some games before going to sleep. The next day we got on a tour bus which took us up the Antrim coast which is the coast of the Irish Island closest to Scotland. The coolest parts were the Giant's Causeway and Derry/Londonderry.

The Giant's Causeway is a geographical formation, where there are a bunch of octagonal shaped rocks that jut out into the ocean. There are big cliffs and small areas you can walk on, and the green the surrounds the area is beautiful. The wind was pretty bad there and I nearly got blown over a couple times. Our tour guide told us about the giant Fiann McCool who is a big part of Celtic myth and how he created the giants causeway.

Derry/Londonderry is one of the few towns in Northern Ireland that have a Catholic majority. The two sided protestant and catholic are separated by a river so there is no peace wall in Derry. Catholics call the city Derry and the Protestants call it Londonderry. There were murals there as well, and the tour guide was great. He told us a story about how an IRA member had blown up the city hall twice, and after the piece talks he ran for a position in government there and got it and when we was being given the position he said, "Last time I was here I brought down the house."

On the ride back into Dublin i watched perhaps the worst movie ever made. With John Candy called Delirium or something like that. Never watch it if you are ever tempted.

Class trip to london

So, the second part of my midterm break was spent on a class trip to London. We left fairly early in the morning, and the flight was uneventful. We landed and took the tube to our hostel, near Russel square. The hostel was hilarious, it was such a joke. It looked more like an arcade on the inside than a hostel. The outside looked normal, but on the inside there it was the iron grate look, and primary blues and reds. It was ridiculous. It was a big hostel, and there was a bar in there. And there were a whole bunch of employees who worked as bouncers for the hostel.

London is a big city, and it is also known for theatre. The biggest thing we did while we were there was see plays. All of the plays we saw were pretty good, but I of course liked some more than others. We saw Creditors, The Walworth Farce, Now or Later, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Table Manners. I really enjoyed all of the plays. I also got shown parts of London which I haden't seen, in my 12 hours in London when I came to pick up Matt for our Travels. We took a tour of the Globe, saw some great markets, and even saw Josh Hartnett with tons of people around him taking pictures.

While I was there I got to visit some of the people from the University of Puget Sound who were there. I met up with a couple of then several times, and one night I wen't to one of their houses (Aly and Megan's) and had some pasta and went to a pub afterwards. I also got to see the Imperial War Museum, which was cool with tons of exipits on every major war, and it was from the British side too. All in all the trip was a success and a great experience.

Going home was intersting, because in Dublin, there is very little security but at Heathrow, there is a whole lot. There was face recognition software and everything. I got back to Dublin though, with no trouble. I've come away from the trip being very happy with my decision to study in Dublin. I like it better here, London is too big, and you can't see the city for the buildings. Dublin is great and with a friendly and fun culture.

Dublin and Galway

Ok, so I realize that I can't keep everything straight, but I am going to do my best at some writing this chronologically. So, Dublin is pretty big if you don't know, it is the biggest city in on the Irish Island with Belfast being second, Cork third, Derry/Londonderry fourth, and Galway as the fifth largest. I can't remember if I've used this analogy before, but Ireland is like a Teddy bear reaching for America. Northern Ireland is the head. I've met a couple Irish people here, not including the Irish students at the Gaiety because for some reason we/I don't hang out with them that often. Gemna is a pharmacist from Galway which is in the armpit of the teddy bear, Nora is from Wexford "in the bum" as she said, and Jason is from county Antrim at the very top of the head. Anyway, Dublin is in the back and Dublin isn't just a city, it is a county too, so it is pretty big geographically as well, so one weekend I did a little bit of traveling around. I went to two seaside towns which are in different directions, Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun leary) and Howth. Both of these places were pretty cute. Dun Laoghaire isn't that touristy, but it has a big Pier that was fun to walk out on and the area is pretty nice, the weird thing is that I ran into the director of the Gaiety School of Acting there Patrick Sutton. Howth was a little more exciting but is still just that kinda sweet little seaside town. There was an open air food market that I looked around and apparently the best fish and chips around are in Howth, but I wasn't completely convinced. Howth was really hard to get around, we picked up a little tourist map that was not drawn to scale, we walked around quite a bit trying to find Howth castle, and we only found it right before we left, but it was still nice to get out of the city for a little bit. I took both of these trips using the Dublin Area Rapid Transport (D.A.R.T.) system which is really easy to use and helpful.

Midterm was a couple weeks ago, so we got a week off of school. I was signed up to go to London for the second half but I didn't know what to do with the rest of the week. I decided to go to Galway. Like I said earlier, Galway is on the other side of the country, which means a 3 hour train ride. I couldn't get anyone to go with me on this trip so I went by myself, which lends a very different feel to any traveling you do. I suddenly get more introspective and think about how this place fits into my life and all that stuff, which is really corny but not necessarily bad.

I left Dublin pretty late, I wasn't in too much of a hurry. When I got into Galway I booked into my hostel and then went exploring a bit. Galway wasn't that exciting for me. I walked around. It was really windy and cold so I was all bundled up. I went to another place that was supposed to be the best fish and chips place in Ireland, McDonagh's. It was better but really I don't know what the best fish and chips in Ireland would taste like. I then went to a couple pubs looking for Irish music and I found it. Galway is probably the best place in Ireland to go for traditional Irish music. I stopped into one pub with a Gaelic name that I can't remember or pronounce, and there was a life traditional music session going on. There were a couple fiddle players, a man with a hand drum, an accordion type instrument, and a clarinet type instrument. They sounded great and they were having a good time.

I then went to another pub up the road that advertised Irish music, and this one was very different, there was a small stage with two men with guitars there. These guys were great musicians, they took requests and played all kinds of songs. They even played some Johnny Cash. A pretty girl requested the song Galway girl, which is a very famous Irish song, and the guys relented saying that they usually saved it for the end of their set but that they would do it just once. That night was pretty fun, and I slept well that night.

I woke up fairly late the next day, around ten or so, and set out to visit the Cliffs of Moher which are fairly close, but as it turns out for some reason there are only two buses a day that take you there and one doesn't even get you there before dark. So, I was a little disappointed at that, but I decided I'd go to the Aran Islands that day instead and the next day I would go to the Cliffs of Moher since I was going to be there for two days. So I had missed the first ferry to the Islands but I was all set to take the second one, but when I arrived it turns out that the ferry was cancelled due to windy weather. That was just great, I couldn't do the two things I had gone there to do, and Galway was already boring me, and disappointing me with its lack of transportation, so I went to the bus station and got a ticket for Limerick.

The bus ride to Limerick was nice and about two and a half hours long. I saw the countryside and everything. It was very nice. Limerick however was not that great. I walked around and saw some stuff, that didn't impress me much. There is a Castle but it isn't that great. I did however get the best kebab of my life there, which was delicious. I stayed in Limerick about 3 hours and then caught the next bus back to Galway. I took it easy that night. I went to the hostel and read for a while and then went to sleep early to be ready for the next day.

I got up early and bought a ticket to the Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, and this ferry wasn't cancelled. The ride was rough and I don't do that great on boats, but I was fine when we got there. I rented a bike and went on my way. Last year I was in a play called The Cripple of Inishmaan, which takes place on one of the Aran Islands and it was great to see the place we were trying to portray. The islands are Gaeltacht, which means predominantly Irish speaking, which was kind of fun to hear spoken conversationally. I biked all over the island and saw beautiful cliffs and a few ruins. It only started raining when I was going up a hill to see the the light house before heading back to the ferry, that was also the same time that I realized the lowest gear on my bike was broken. But all in all it was great and it was so beautiful.

I got back into Galway later than we were supposed to, and I ended up missing the last train to Dublin, which mean I had to take a bus, which wasn't too bad and it was even relaxing. But it was almost 5 hours long. I finished the book I was reading and I had a relaxing trip into Dublin and back to my place. Alls well that ends well. I had a day off and then I was headed for London.

Quick Succession and Belfast

Ok, so I realize it has been a month since I have updated my blog. I've of course had a lot of things to do, especially writing. Lets start somewhere close to where I left off. Some professors came and visited us here, and that was cool. I met Geoff Proehl and had a drink with him, and he got his fish and chips as well. Um jump ahead a little bit and I can talk about my trip to Belfast with Matt Jackson and then write several short posts to catch up.

First things first, I of course forgot my camera. So I took some pictures with Matt's which i still need to get from him. I took a bus up from Dublin and it took about 3 hours which isn't too bad. The first thing I noticed, is that there is no official border. There are no checkpoints or even a sign that says welcome to Northern Ireland. There are just more little farms that blend into Northern Irish farms without much change. Got off the bus and the first think I needed to do was get some cash, because Northern Ireland is on the Pound sterling while Ireland is on the Euro.

If you don't already know, the politics of Northern Ireland are/have been pretty messed up. I haven't done much research, but the way I understand Northern Ireland today is that it is still a part of the UK just like Wales and Scotland which means it has its own local government but it also is under the power of the Queen/British Parliament in England, there are seats in the British Parliament for people from NI (Northern Ireland) as well as for Scotland and Wales. It took NI longer than these other places to receive local representation. Until the 80's and 90's NI was ruled completely by the powers in London. There is a very convoluted history of Northern Ireland and Britain if you don't know. So anyway NI is on the pound, but the banks there print their own money, the same as in Scotland and Wales.

To give a very brief history of NI I will spend one paragraph on it. The republic of Ireland gained there independence from the thrown shortly after the Easter Uprising of 1916, Britain however gave up all put 6 counties in the North. They called this Ulster, even though the Ulster Provence includes 9 counties. There was a little bit of fighting over it, but not much because in the 1800's and earlier there was a system of called plantation where people who were loyal to the throne could get land in the north for free. This land was often taken away from the native Irish. These people who were loyal to the throne were mostly protestants because that was the national religion of Britain. The Irish there however were mostly Catholics. So there is where the trouble is. In NI we have the Protestants who are loyal to Britain and the Catholics who are loyal to the Republic of Ireland and in the 60's violence really started to erupt and the three letter groups started killing each other, the IRA (Catholic) and the UVF (Protestant) and many other shoot offs of these groups. That was the beginning of the "troubles" which is the term used (especially by the Irish) to refer to the 30 years of violent conflict between the two sides. The first ceasefire was in 1994 I believe and from then on there have been continuous peace talks and more cease fires. Both sides are said to be inactive and to have destroyed their guns, but just a couple weeks ago the police made the biggest arms bust since the beginning of the conflict and the guns were the UVF's. Please ask me about the conflict sometime because entire books have been written about it and it is hard to fit it into here, and I would love to talk your ear off about it.

So as you may know/should know, Matt and I are writing a play about NI and the troubles. I met Matt and we checked into our hostel and then we went for a walk, we walked up the Shankill (Protestant street) and the crossed over to the catholic side through a gate in the peace wall and then walked down the Falls road (Catholic street). We walked around quite a lot and as it was getting dark we ran across a large group of kids around the age of 10 and we talked to them for a while. We talked a lot about pop culture and the Disney channel, and I can see that the conflict doesn't involve them. It was their parents who had to live through the violence, they just know the aftermath, there hasn't been a riot on their street. Some interesting things though are that they apparently can't have block parties because the protestant side could get scared they they will start rioting and violence could break out again. Matt asked one of the kids what was on the other side of the wall. A young guy who is a bit of a class clown said something along the lines of "Protestants, we don't like them!" and as soon as he said that, one of the older girls in the group pointed at him and said "That's sectarianism." and the young man kinda kicked the ground a mumbled. It seems that there isn't any real hatred or dislike, but it is like it is almost expected of them to not like the other side.

We said goodbye to them and we were gonna head back over to the other side of the peace wall, but we learned that they close the gates through the peace wall at night, so we had to make the 45 minute trek around the peace wall which mean going down into the city center. We had no problems, but it was a really long walk. That night we wanted to go to a pub on the Shankill aka a protestant pub. We were walking up the street scoping it out and looking for a good place when these guys standing outside a pub started talking to us. They recognized us as American and were interested, they brought us in and bought us drinks the whole night. We talked to all these men and it was really interesting. They really truly want to remain a part of the UK. One man told me that if the Catholics had power then they would push the rule of the pope onto them, he spoke of religious freedom and he thought that the Catholics didn't want that. We kept talking and we realized that many of these people were and/or are still members of protestant paramilitaries. One man hinted to Matt that the UVF was still stockpiling arms in case the IRA decides to end the cease fire. There was even some real hate toward catholics. One man was talking to me and asked if we have a lot of guns in America. I said that we do, and it was because a lot of people go hunting. The man said "Around here we hung Fenians." If you don't know "Fenian" is a bad word for a Catholic and/or Irishman. A man also said "You aren't a Catholic are you?" At the end of the night, they played the national anthem of Great Britain and then the bar closed so we went home for the night.

The next day we took it fairly easy, we took a black cab tour around Belfast and we asked the cabbie so many questions. A big part of the tour were the murals around Belfast. Both sides have a lot of murals, and for a lot of different reasons. On the protestant side there are a lot of historical mural celebrating great victories and memorials for dead protestants. On the Catholic side there are murals about civil rights mostly, and some that compare the catholic struggle in NI to the struggle for black civil rights in America. And some murals celebrate people, such as the hunger strikers 10 of which died in their attempt to receive POW status. The murals are incredible and really interesting to see.

We walked around some other parts of Belfast for the rest of the day and and found a delicious market. I really want to live somewhere with a good food market. I bought a can opener because i found a cheap one. That night we went to a pub on the catholic side, and we heard some traditional Irish songs played by a guy on a guitar as well as some songs about the hunger strikers and revolution songs. Drinks were more expensive on the catholic side and we didn't have anyone buying us drinks. Matt got some older woman's address. We talked to one man and he told us about how normal the violence and getting a gun pointed at your head can be.

We then walked into the city center but all the bars were closing, but we could see how completely different the city center is. It seems removed from the conflict, there aren't any flags or anything that would suggest one side or the other. That night some drunk British girls tried to get into bed with the lights off and they were being ridiculous and couldn't seem to do it so Matt lent them his key chain light so they could manage.

The next day Matt flew out early, and since he woke me up when he left I caught an early bus back to Dublin. That is basically my trip to Belfast, it was really fun and I am planning on going back.

Catch up and Differences

Hey, It is getting late on a Thursday night but that is okay, because I only have one class tomorrow, even though it is at 8:45am (my earliest class). After my voice class, I have the rest of the day, and the weekend to myself. Tomorrow is Culture night in Dublin, so tons of museums and different things around Dublin will be free to do. I still need to go through the brochure and pick out exactly what I want to do.

My flat mates and I just got a new room mate. His name is Aitor and he is studying at the European Business School here in Dublin and he is from Spain. One of my room mates and I took Spanish is school so it has been kindof fun helping eachother to speak and learn new words. I was The Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde the other night and it was incredibly funny and enjoyable to watch. One of the Actresses was sick though so there was someone reading her part which meant she had a script on stage, but it didn't take away from the show.

On Monday a bunch of American Professors are coming in to check out the Theatre Performance program through IES and the Gaiety. One of the people coming will be Geoff Proehl, one of my teachers at The University of Puget Sound. We have already arrange to get coffee with Claire (the other girl from UPS) and I after we do a presentation for the professors. In all of my classes, we have been working on this short new script to create short performances to show the professors when they come. I hope we impress them, and I am fairly sure we will, at least in some ways.

The other day I set out for an hour long jog, and then got lost. It took me 2 hours to find my way back.

Ok, and I wanted to take a minute to talk about some differences between America and Ireland. Here it goes: The pedestrian signals at streets suck here and no one pays attention to them, and if you did it would make a 3o minute walk into a 45 minute walk. All signs are written in both English and Gaelic. Unlike in American, streets are not set up on a grid pattern which means the curve all over the place, and street names can sometimes last for only a block before they change. For example, the street that the IES Study Abroad center is on, is Lower Rathmines, but the street starts out as South St. James and changes to Camden and several other names before it gets to Rathmines. Streets can be called Upper, Middle, and Lower as well. The more northern part of Rathmines is Upper Rathmines and then there is Lower Rathmines. They also don't care if they put Lower or Upper before or after the name of the street. Therefore Upper Rathmines and Rathmines Upper are the same road. Irish people, always underestimate how long it takes you to get from one place to another, five minutes is a common time. If you didn't know it already, different counties have different accents. My Acting teacher is from the County Kerry and sometimes replaces "T"s with "D"s. So in stead of "mother or other" he will say "mudder or udder." He also likes to say "ye" instead of "you" but I have yet to talk to someone else with an accent like him. Irish still call euros "quid" sometimes even though they are no longer on the Irish Pound. A female third wheel is called a "gooseberry" or "Margerie". A slut is called a "slapper." Soccer is still called soccer here because they have a sport called Gaelic Football, which is a cross between soccer and rugby.

I can't think of anymore, but I will write more as I think of them. :)

Music Festival

Tonight I went to a music festival called Hard Working Class Heroes in the Temple Bar district of Dublin. The bands were all Irish and there were several venues with different acts throughout the night. My friend Peter and I saw The Holy Roman Army first which was a lowfi mello electronica stuff that wasn't that great, but all the other bands were good. I would suggest looking up Hybrasil, Bats, Halves, The Minutes, and Fight Like Apes. Fight Like Apes was crazy and they ended up totaling the stage at the end of their set, which I've only heard about but never seen until now.

My first week at the Gaiety is over and some of the stress of it has worn off, but I was pretty nervous at first. Classes seem good so far and once we get past some of the basics I'm sure it will pick up. All my teachers are Irish, and the ones teaching my acting classes are Gaiety instructors. We will integrate with Irish students in October, but until then it is just us.