Exploring the North, Part 1

Dear readers,

Though our days checkered with lethargy and euphoria have been no means ceased, we were fortunate enough to have a short break from them last week. A friend of a friend named Emma offered to show us around the north of Ireland for a couple of days, and we hastily accepted. (And actually our days here have been a bit better by the way).

Emma was so generous to us the whole time, and even came all the way to our house to pick us up. We left for Belfast, which is about two hours north of our house. It was evident immediately that Emma was a great person to show us around. Not only is she a really cool person that's great to talk to in general, but she knows everything. She was very unbiased in her explanations, and could talk at length about any subject we had questions on or were curious about, and imparted information to us about a number of things that we wouldn't even have thought to ask about in the first place.

For example: the mountains in Ireland. She had indicated a mountain that to Liesl and I registered only as an average hill in California. She explained that all of the mountains in Ireland are small and flat because during the last ice age the country was under a mile of ice. It shaved the tops off of the mountains and there are only a couple of pointed mountains in the country, which incidentally were covered in fog when we were in viewing distance of them.

I was very curious about the "border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (the latter is where we are living). I put border in quotation marks because of the thing I was curious about, which is that there is no border really. Emma told us about how it used to be patrolled and how cars passing through were searched, but that eventually stopped. Now you can cross from one country to another without even noticing. I was trying to pay attention but I didn't even notice the border. The biggest thing to notice is that street markings change slightly, and signs regarding money use the pound sign rather than that of the euro. Also there are sometimes signs that say "drive on the left." This is odd in that it's unnecessary, since you drive on the left in both countries. The story behind this is that at the time when the roads were to be built, Ireland didn't have the money for it, so for whatever reason Germany decided to build the roads for them. In Germany people drive on the right side of the road, so when they built roads on which people needed to drive on the opposite side, it seemed natural to them to give everyone some warning. I guess they didn't realize that driving on the left is normal for everyone on this island. Or maybe it was just clarification for foreigners. At any rate, it's funny to see these signs. It's also so weird to cross an open border, particularly after living in a country that has very strict borders and after having so much trouble passing the English border, getting detained and all.

We crossed the border many times during our three day trip, and at one point I found myself in a convenience store at a petrol station, about to pay for something with pounds. I took out my money and hesitated for a moment. Was this the right currency? What country were we actually in right now? I began to ask the guy at the counter, "Wait, are we in the North or the South--?" and broke off, frowning with confusion. The problem is that "the north" isn't all Northern Ireland, because the north west is part of the Republic. Not only was it kind of embarrassing not to know what country I was in, but it was  also incredibly strange. (It turned out I was in the Republic at this point, though there were many other times when was unsure of what country I was in as well).

When we arrived in Belfast we had lunch at the Crown, which is one of the oldest pubs in Ireland, dating sometime in the 1800s. Unfortunately for me (and Liesl somewhat), Ireland barely has any conception of veganism, or even vegetarianism really, so I've been eating a lot of chips (french fries) at restaurants. (Most of the grocery stores we've been to don't have any tofu or even know what it is for that matter).

Emma had booked a Black Cab Tour for us, and we met the driver outside of a hotel. He had a very strong Belfast accent, which was pretty difficult to understand. He talked so quickly too. The tour showed us of some highly interesting parts of the city. He explained that the city was segregated into Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, separated by a wall called "The Peace Wall." You could cross from one side of the wall to the other during the day, but at night the gates were sealed. Though the two waring parties go by the names of two religions, the conflict, the cab driver said, was not so much religious as political. "You might be an atheist," he said, "but you're either a Protestant Atheist or a Catholic Atheist."

Now I don't know how informed you all are on this subject I'm about to illuminate, but I'll explain it from my perspective. Living in the United States, I am often completely uniformed of the goings on in other countries, and honestly in my own country too. Part of this is due to my not becoming self-informed, part is because I didn't learn much about modern politics at school, and part is because the US tends to filter out all news that doesn't concern our country or provide an opportunity for us to make money. The point is that I've learned a lot more not only about the politics in the countries we've been in, but about US politics as well.

This particular issue is more one of sociopolitical nature. Perhaps you have heard about the conflict in Northern Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics. What I knew of it was that it was something of a religious quarrel that sometimes became violent and resulted in car bombings and the like. Not to downplay the terribleness of that, but bomb threats are not uncommon in California, so I never thought that this dispute was anything out of the ordinary. I would guess that the US has more religious fanatics than any other country actually. Basically, to me Ireland's religious discrepancies always sounded like an underlying conflict in a society that no doubt had other things to focus on. I was drastically uninformed.

I'll recount a brief history of the political conflict. Forgive me for any inaccuracies or omissions, I'm doing my best at remembering what Emma told us, but I haven't retained all of the information. So here's the story: At some point not so very long ago, England, which was Protestant, began to infiltrate Ireland, which was Catholic, by encouraging many of it's citizens to move to Ireland. Those people then married and reproduced with Irish people, and so the two cultures became integrated on this small island. Then England tried to take over Ireland, and after some fighting eventually the countries came to an agreement that the UK could have part of the north. Hence Northern Ireland--comprised of six counties in the north east--became a separate country, owned by the UK, and the Republic of Ireland--the larger of the two countries--remained independent. The Protestants were loyal to the Crown, and the Catholics' allegiance was with the Republic of Ireland. So the Catholics who still lived in Northern Ireland wanted the country to be independent of the UK, and the Protestants wanted the opposite. Religion really barely enters into the picture at all. The number of people that actually attend church has dropped quite a bit in recent years, Emma said. So, as our host John told us when he was first showing us the property we live on, religion is really just an excuse for the dissent: the conflict is political.

The conflict--which they call "the troubles"-- isn't so much a tiff as a civil war. The city of Belfast is literally segregated into Catholic and Protestant sections, divided by a "Peace Wall," which is similar to the Berlin wall. In our cab tour we drove through Belfast into the Protestant neighbor called the Shankill. The area was comprised of rather rundown two-story houses. Many of the last houses at the end of each street had colorful political murals on them. They depicted people that were killed by the Catholics, historical scenes and legends. Though murals have been being painted on these buildings for many years, they paint over them pretty frequently, so these are all fairly new. The war between the groups is something like a war between gangs, or the mafia. People who live in segregated neighbors are all very aware of what happens, like who kills who when violence does occur. But people keep their mouths shut. Most of the intense violence has subsided now, but people were routinely killed in the past. Here are a few of them that we saw:

Do you know the U2 song Sunday, Bloody Sunday? That song is about the troubles.

This is a photo collage of the motto of the Protestants: "Nothing about us without us is for us."

The point of the gun in this one follows you while you walk past it. It's like the Mona Lisa!

This is a painting of a well-known legend. Two boats were approaching Ireland, filled with vikings who were racing to claim the land. One guy from the boat that was losing the race was determined to win, so as they were nearing the land, he cut off his hand and threw it onto the shore, so that he would win the race even though the other ship got there first.

Many of the murals, such as this one, said things like, "murdered by the Catholics," though usually they used the name of a particular group of Catholics.

We got to go right up to the Peace Wall. The Protestant side was decorated with multicolored, mostly illegible graffiti. People had written things on it, messages of peace, encouragement, and exasperation. Here are some that stuck out to me:

Our guide handed us a blue marker and said that we could write something if we'd like to. We were both unsure of what to say, but eventually we ended up writing these things respectively:

We went to the Catholic side of the wall too. The buildings there were made of red bricks. We stopped across the street from a line of political murals, each depicting a different political figure or political scene of some sort. Many of these have to do with foreign or international politics:

This one is really cool.

One of the saddest things about the troubles to me is that there is really no end in sight. If a Protestant and a Catholic are married, whatever neighborhood they live in dictates their political status. The schools here are segregated too. There's no separation of church and state, so schools are either Catholic or Protestant for the most part. The education isn't really religious, and the biggest differences in teaching between Protestant and Catholic schools is that the history lessons are slightly slanted to their side of their political sway, and Catholic schools teach Gaelic (which they call Irish actually) and focus on Irish culture, while Protestant schools do not. However, students wear uniforms here, and those uniforms are different colored depending on which school a kid attends. So a child's political allegiance is determined for them, and school uniforms are the grounds for cultural discrimination even at an early age. There are a few schools that aren't segregated though, so there is some hope.

Emma told us that people in Northern Ireland think that they can tell whether someone is Protestant or Catholic just by looking at them--and often they can. She said that there are many different subtle ways to distinguish one person from another, names for one. People with blonde hair and blue eyes are are assumed to be Protestant and those with brown hair and darker colored eyes are thought to be Catholic. People named William or Susan would probably be Protestant, since those are British names, someone named Seamus or Maud is most likely Catholic, because those are Irish names. Apparently accents are different between the two cultures as well, which is insane because these people are often practically living in each others' backyards, save for the wall. Some of the suppositions of culture become rather silly though, like the belief that Catholics' eyes are closer together because of inbreeding.

It becomes second nature for people to try and figure out the allegiance of the other person. When you go into a supermarket, Emma said, you can tell whether the owner is Protestant or Catholic depending on what periodical they have. I may have gotten these newspapers wrong, but I believe that if they have The Irish Independent, they're Catholic, and if they have The Irish Times they're Protestant.

The troubles are such a part of daily life for everyone in Northern Ireland that they've become the norm. For Liesl and I this whole situation was foreign and absolutely bizarre. We have no equivalent of this in San Diego. While there are places that have troubles of their own regarding ethnicity or religion or some other issue, we don't have an entire country that has one all-consuming conflict that's part of everyday life for everyone, that's blended into the very pattern of life.

This was just part of the first day of our trip, but we learned so much about these two countries that I'm going to leave this post where it's at and write one or two more posts in the next few of days to recap our other exploits.

Until then,

Stephanie

Manic Depression

In case you want to listen to some Jimi Hendrix while you read...

So you may have noticed that it's been a while since my last post. There is a very reasonable and easily explained reason for this: we haven't been doing anything. Really. Well, no, not really. But we haven't been doing much, so it hasn't seemed necessary to update the blog until recently. And, as I've procrastinated on doing so for the past few days, I find it difficult to determine where I should begin.

Before I begin, I'd like to apologize for the color of the font on my previous posts. I didn't realize until just now how difficult it is to read, having mostly been looking at the black words on a white background that I'm typing presently. I'll try to sort it out when posting this entry.

The days here tend to blur together, so perhaps I'll just write about things as they occur to me. But, to keep with the sentiment of the title, I'll talk a bit about Liesl and my emotional state while being here. I believe that I can honestly say that I understand manic depression now--or bipolar disorder as I believe it is now referred to.

The irony of our situation is incredible: we're in one of the most beautiful places in the world, probably, and yet we confine ourselves to staying indoors. The weather is rainy, which I love, or sunny, which Liesl loves, and yet we make excuses not to leave our house. We know that going outside--even just for a short walk--makes us feels one hundred times better...and yet we couldn't drag ourselves off the couch or out of our chairs to get a breath of fresh air. It would take an immense effort to even get dressed some days. There were days when we simply didn't get dressed, and didn't so much as open our front door all day. These days we would sit in the kitchen or the living room, watching movies, using the internet, eating...wasting away. Sinking into the blackness of depression, unable to surface. The possibilities of things outside with which to entertain ourselves seemed unappealing and inconvenient. The idea that we would be here for two and a half months, and that we'd only been here for a couple of weeks seemed like a death sentence for our optimism. This property, while gorgeous, is also foreboding, lonely, and sad. We don't see other people really, save occasionally our neighbor and our hosts. We haven't even met our next door neighbor, the only person in the area that's close to our age. And so, without anyone to draw us out of our moodiness, we would remain captives of our gloom until we mustered up the will power to force ourselves outside.

Then the world would flip.

We would breath the fresh air, see trees and grass of the greenest green, gaze at the beautiful lake, walk in the enchanting forest, bike to town, go for a run, take a walk...and life would seem to have endless possibilities. We would laugh and chat, and promise ourselves and each other that we must, no matter what, at least go outside every day. It was worth the push of getting ourselves outside to feel like this, a thousand times lighter and happier.

Here are some great pictures that Liesl took:

But we would still relapse, not go outside at all, or at least not until the late afternoon, after we'd already had a thoroughly depressing day in our large, empty house. Part of the reason that it feels so empty here is the lack of "homey" things, pictures or posters on the walls, cases of books, knick-knacks and the like. It's just blank.

But this cycle of inside depression and outside mania has thankfully, come to an end for the most part. We've gotten used to making ourselves go outside now, and it's not only become easier to leave the house, but actually appealing.

I've been running. Last week I ended up running for 50 minutes, probably something like 4 1/2 miles I'd guess. Since then I've been going for jogs more frequently, generally every other day. I'll go for twenty minutes, thirty minutes...it's great. I'm getting way more comfortable with running. I used to have quite a love/hate relationships with running, half the time loving the feeling of accomplishing something, of the wind rushing past, the remainder of the time resigning myself to the fact that running is way too challenging, that I'm just not a runner, and that I should quit because it's way too hard.  But I'm in a good climate for jogging here--it's cold, but not freezing, and even if it's sunny it's definitely not too hot to exercise. So running has become much more natural for me, and much for enjoyable. Though, unfortunately it's dark now, so I won't be jogging tonight. It's a bit creepy around here and night, and it just generally makes me uneasy being out alone in the dark here. Normally I like the dark, I used to mostly walk at night, but not here...

Just a side note:

The roads here are very frightening, particularly for walker and joggers. There are no sidewalks--these are country roads we're talking about--and people seem to drive incredibly fast around here. (This is a song from Liesl's much-loved Camp Stevens playlist. She listens to that playlist constantly. And if she's not listening to it she's singing it. I now pretty much know all of those songs by heart).The streets have two lanes, if you're lucky, and are very narrow. Often the road is only one lane, albeit a slightly larger one, and cars have to pull off at turnouts for big trucks headed in the opposite direction to pass. I nearly had a heart attack yesterday as I was jogging when car passed so close to me that I could feel the slipstream of wind from it right against my arm. I think the car almost touched me actually, and I couldn't hear it much in advance because I was listening to music. It freaked me out. The worst is when two cars are coming, one from each direction, because no one seems much interested in slowing down, so what happens is that the car on my side tries to pass me while the other car is coming the other direction, inhibiting the first car from using the other lane to pass. They do slow down and wait for the car that going the opposite direction, but it's still a bit nerve wracking.

Riding in a car is a little scary here too. They just drive a lot faster on windy roads that we do. At many a bend in the road it seems that the car might just go careening right off into the plants. The cars here pretty much all have manual transmissions, which makes for a more bumpy ride that the average Californian is used to. Personally, I've never even driven a stick-shift. It seems really difficult and inconvenient. Riding in cars here reminds me that I used to get carsick pretty frequently. I haven't much in the past few years, but I do feel a little queasy driving here though.  Liesl gets more carsick here than I do though, so she rides in the front when we drive to town with our neighbor to go grocery shopping.

Another hazard of running is the bugs. There are a lot of bugs here, mostly mosquitoes and I think some sort of gnats or something. I'll be jogging along and suddenly I'll be engulfed in a cloud of flying bugs. I'll sort of cough and blow air out of my nose to stop them from going into my mouth or nose, and wave my arms. Normally doing all this--while still jogging forward--will take care of the bugs. Nope, not here. I'll put my arms back down and be smacked in the face again by multiple tiny flying bodies. They're just everywhere. Getting out of one swarm of them takes a while, so I just cover my face for a bit and look up tentatively to check that the air is clear before jogging normally again.

We've dropped our workout routine. I'm going to get back into conditioning in addition to jogging soon though. I think Liesl is over it though.

While I'm running, Liesl goes outside to her special place, which she just revealed to me is this rotting wooden swing set next to clump of trees. She takes her backpack and goes to her place for an hour or so where she makes bracelets and listens to camp music.  She's become quite adept at bracelet making; she made a really pretty one for me recently, and she just finished one involving animal-shaped beads that's really cool.

In other Liesl-related news, she hasn't had a cigarette in three weeks! Go Liesl!

In somewhat more somber news, her thumb is not only still numb, but it's actually gotten worse.

I've been reading Sherlock Holmes a lot lately. Such great stories, really. I've read nearly all of them, and I'm quite sad that I'm almost finished. I just finished The Plague last week, which was excellent.

Liesl is in the middle of The Tao of Physics. When I asked her if she was reading it in her special place she laughed, "Ha, NO." Her interests generally lie in activities other than reading.

We've been going grocery shopping about once a week. The most important thing on our shopping list: peanut butter. We now buy two large jars of it at a time. I for one just love peanut butter in general. I'll eat it on toast, or really on anything, or just right out of the jar. While Liesl normally doesn't care for peanut butter much, she is a great lover of Thai peanut sauce, as am I. I showed her how to make it, or a variation of it. It's just peanut butter and soy sauce, but it's amazing, and we've been eating it on everything. We went through two jars of peanut butter in less than a week.

I made pancakes recently, and, as we don't have any maple syrup, we ate them with chocolate spread and peanut butter and jelly respectively. These are my pancakes:

Yes, we've reached that point: in lieu of our lives being fairly indistinguishable from those of a retired couple, we've sunk to that level of inactivity from which an unprofessional food blog will likely ensue.

Today we went kayaking, for the second time. It was wonderful, and--needless to say--beautiful. Up until today I was rather let down by how un-Octobery it feels here, but the color of the leaves today did not disappoint (I took the top one, and obviously the one of Liesl; she took the other two):

Fortunately, it's impossible for our house to get extremely messy, because we don't have the sort of useless shit around that normally clutters homes. But we are by no means inhibited from making a mess (we're sort of ashamed of this, but we literally spent three days procrastinating on taking out the trash and recycling. We actually stared putting our recycling on the floor since the trashcan was too full. And all we need to do to get rid of the recycling  it is to walk down the stairs, outside, and into another room; the trash goes into a bin only fifteen feet outside of that room). Our kitchen is often a mess, but we've generally gotten a lot better about keeping things clear and in order.

Update: Liesl and myself have been going a bit stir-crazy to say the least. So it came as a happy event when we were invited to a post-wedding party for our hosts daughter and her new husband. There must have been, I don't know, forty or so people at the gathering, which took place in the Big House. It seemed rather fitting for it be there; it's exactly the sort of house in which one feels that large parties should be held.

Liesl and I walked in through the laundry room door, which leads to the large industrial kitchen. Robin was in there with some relatives, preparing some delicious looking for for the guests. We passed through and entered the dining room, and boy did we stick out like a sore thumb. We were both wearing jeans, and a jacket or sweater, and looked disgracefully casual. The other guests were wearing suits or dresses. We consulted each other for a moment about whether we should go back to our house and change. We did. We re-entered the building, looking much more formal, though we certainly didn't have any really fancy clothes to change into.

We stood around awkwardly for a bit, not really knowing anyone all that well, if at all. We had some stilted conversations with a few people, but gradually socializing became easier. We had a couple of memorable conversations that went something like this:

Party guest: "Hello. Are you family, or friends?"

Liesl and/or I: "Neither. We aren't related to anyone here, or each other. We're living in the Bailie's flat over there. We don't really know anyone here, including the bride and groom. We just met them once a couple of days ago. They seem nice though."

Guest: "So, uh, what are you doing here?"

Another memorable moment was watching the slideshow. There was one for the bride and one for the groom. The bride's was the one of particular interest to us. As we sat watching the pictures of her childhood, we each individually realized that many of the photos of her were taken where she grew up. In other words, in our house. Awkward! I made a mental note to mention this funny observation to Liesl, but a couple of minutes later she whispered to me, "Steph...that's our house!"

The party was really fun though. It was just so nice to get out and actually see other humans. Liesl made the astute observation that we hadn't seen children in such a long time. It was funny to see little kids in fancy outfits running around the Big House. Everyone seemed so alive, quite a contrast to the often zombie-like state we lived in at our house.

One thing I've learned here, something that I kind of already knew, but had never fully realized, is that not having any obligations is not as ideal as it may seem. I have to admit that it's actually nice to have some obligations (no, I am NOT in any way wishing to go back to high school). But having some sort of work to do, some kind of project to work on...having something is better than having nothing. Theoretically, many people might wish for two and a half months of free time, but realistically, most people probably wouldn't want it. At least not if you're so far from other people, so far from the city. I guess it would be a vaguely different story if you were in a very populated area, near a lot of friends and a lot of things to do.

To remedy this sort of black hole in our lives, we've begun planning some trips. We're going to Belfast at the end of November to see Rancid. This is significant not only because they're one of the best bands ever, but because they were quite a factor in the genesis of our trip. We were driving to Anaheim to see them when the idea of our trip really formed. We're also hoping to go to Dublin and couch surf sometime in the next couple of weeks. In addition to these two trips, we hope to take some day trips to some places that are relatively close to where we are (though not within biking distance).

We've been watching so many movies. We're watching Braveheart at the moment. I'd really like to go to Scotland at some point if we can afford it.

Update: Braveheart was actually filmed, or at least some of it was filmed in Ireland, very near to where we are. Our neighbor told us that they used a castle nearby. One side of the castle was supposed to be in Scotland, and the other side was supposed to be in England. Pretty funny that they felt the need to do that with both England and Scotland right across the water.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Odds and Ends

Hello,

Life in Ireland has been pretty good, and very different from our first month in England. There we were moving every day, losing things weekly, carrying our backpacks around the city every other day, and having some kind of meltdown over transportation at least once a week.

Here, we wake up, make breakfast, lunch, whatever meal we're awake for, in our kitchen, and (usually) get dressed at some point with clothes from our closets, not from our backpacks. We can sit around. There's no "agenda" or "schedule," and there's only a slight routine. It's bizarre, after 19 years of hearing those words so many times that they've become repulsive, and even frightening.

Now the issue isn't so much dealing with problems or complications as much as forcing ourselves to actually do something. We've been working out, which is great. We do conditioning and we've gone jogging and ridden the bikes that our hosts are lending us. The only really important time-sensitive thing that we're doing right now is trying to get our India visas sorted out. It's been really difficult and frustrating, this place has a distinct lack of resources such as fax machines, printers and good internet connection. But we're on track now. We've also gotten our absentee ballot situation sorted out, so we should be able to vote in the upcoming election.

So just some random things:

1. Liesl hasn't had a cigarette in 13 days. Woo, go Liesl! She almost caved on the second day. Someone offered her one and she began slowly reaching for it, but I slapped her hand back (yay, go Stephanie). It was funny though, the guy that was offering it to her was really drunk, and I think he thought that I was under the impression that he was trying to poison Liesl, or give her some really hardcore drug or something, haha, because he was like, "No, it's okay!" I said that Liesl was quitting. He looked at me blankly. I repeated that she was quitting smoking. He definitely had no conception of the phenomenon of discontinuing the use of cigarettes. That's a shame, really.

2. In case you're wondering--and I know for sure that many people have wondered this--Liesl and I are not a couple. We're just two friends travelling together, that's it. We certainly aren't at all offended by people thinking that we're a couple--it's actually been quit amusing at times--but for the purpose of accuracy, we are not together.

We're had the pleasure of being the subjects of many funny situations of dubiousness about our relationship. This has mostly happened with some of the people that have hosted us. Our friends in Bristol told Liesl and I that we could sleep in the single bed, and that our other friend could sleep on the couch. Liesl, knowing that there was an extra bed upstairs, suggested that she or I sleep up there. Our friends looked at her with much confusion. You don't want to sleep in the bed with Stephanie? She said that she didn't mind, but since there was another bed someone might as well sleep in it so we're all more comfortable. It didn't matter to her who slept in which place, but we'd might as well utilize the space. They were so confused to find out--later, I think--that we aren't a couple.

Another host, upon showing us to our room, said that we could both sleep in the nicer bed in there, or if we wanted to sleep in separate beds there was another bed in that room, or did we even want to sleep in the same room...? It was really funny how awkward everyone has been about this. I didn't realize why they were being so strange about it until they left the room and Liesl pointed out that they clearly thought we were dating. It was pretty obvious that that was where the confusion came from, I just didn't realize because we really hadn't been acting like a couple at all. We didn't always sit together, or really have any physical contact, much less any public display of affection. We counted, and at least five different people/groups of people thought that we were a couple during our time in England. A senile Scottish man on the tube who was talking to himself said to us, "You look like a couple of lesbians!"

3. Maybe, if you're like me and aren't fond of spiders, you've asked yourself before, seriously, is there anywhere in the world where there aren't spiders? If so, I'm going there. Perhaps you thought, no, surely there are spiders everywhere that's inhabitable for humans. Well, you were wrong. There are next to no spiders in England. I realized this while staying at someone's house and noticing a daddy long legs in the corner of the ceiling. It was the first spider I'd seen on our trip. I think I saw one more of the same kind of spider in someone else's house, but that was it. Oh, and while we were on our hike we encountered a blackberry bush that was full of spiders, but that was out in nature, in the countryside, not even in a town, so it doesn't really count. But anyway, two spiders, that's it? I'd pretty much call that a spider-free country. It was great not to find huge wolf spiders on every tree.

Unfortunately, however, there are spiders in Ireland. And big ones. I've seen a couple of large black ones, many daddy long legs, and two giant, terrifying ones. Liesl got the first one and put it outside. It was quite huge, really. But the second one was the fucking biggest spider I've ever seen that wasn't a tarantula. It was enormous and horrifying. Liesl said that it was my turn to catch it since she'd gotten the last one, and I reluctantly got a glass and stood on the couch above it. I got off the couch--pretty ridiculous. After I'd stood there for a few minutes, chatting about how scary it was and making only very lame not-even-attempts at capturing it, Liesl said she would get it. But if she did, I'd have to do dishes for her the next day. (We each do all of the dishes every other day). Fine. As long as I didn't have to go near that spider. It was honestly so big that we were sure that it would either be fast enough to evade capture or that it would get it's legs chopped off by the cup. Liesl hesitated for a while during which we discussed the sheer ridiculousness of arachnophobia  and how what we were really afraid of was it crawling on us, it had nothing to do with getting bitten. She finally put the cup over and we successfully relocated it to outside (though it did begin rapidly scuttling in the direction of our front door).

4. A few days ago, I decided to bake some cookies. I used to bake pretty frequently in San Diego, and I'd been feeling severely deprived of this usual pastime. So I made some chocolate chip cookies for myself, and some without chocolate chips for Liesl. I turned on the oven to preheat it, but ten minutes later it wasn't warm in the slightest. I fooled around with it for a bit, trying to get it to work, but I couldn't. I was bummed out because I really wanted some cookies, so I pondered other ways of cooking them. Hmm, maybe in a frying pan. Why not? I tried it, and it worked! Only they looked more like pancakes than cookies. Yeah, pancake cookies! (Patent pending). Liesl astutely observed that pancakes and cookies aren't really that different anyway. Check it out:

5. We've been taking almost nightly trips next door into the Big House for some food that's in the freezer in the laundry room in there. The first time we undertook this mission into the creepy mansion, I was kind of creeped out. I'd intentionally left the door open (I didn't want to get locked in there!), but this was obviously a mistake since a cat followed us into the house and ran off. We didn't know what to do, but supposed we'd just leave it there till morning, though that didn't sound like a good idea. Liesl went in and picked it up and carried it outside, which I greatly appreciated. The second time we went in I felt better, but Liesl was creeped out. But since then it's become a lot less frightening and more normal. We even went further inside it last night, and it was totally no big deal once we turned the lights on. Also, just a note about the house: it does not have any creepy old family portraits. What sort of mansion doesn't have cobwebby paintings of deceased family members in formal attire all over the walls? Our hosts are not part of the family that owned the house for a century and half, but I still feel like portraits of the former owners should be around...

6. Liesl and I went kayaking on the lake. It was awesome. Liesl met the love of her life, an adorable little dog named Baxter that was whining at us from the far bank of the lake. She played fetch with him while we walked in the forest. He belongs to somebody that takes care of the lake I think.

7. We watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the other night. They call it "phliosopher's" instead of "sorcerer's" here. They actually recorded two versions of the scenes in which they say philosopher's stone so that they could have a US and a UK version. Watching the movie reminded me of an awesome thing I watched on youtube i high school, per recommendation of some friends. It's called A Very Potter Musical, and it's awesome. You should definitely watch it if you like Harrpy Potter, especially if you like the books. It's so funny. And there's a sequel.

Update: 8. Liesl's thumb is still numb. It's been almost four weeks.

Well, that's it.

Stephanie

Ireland

Hey there,

So here we are, in Ireland. Yay, we didn't get detained! Imagine if that had happened again, ugh. Anyway, now we have somewhere to actually live for two and a half months. We've unpacked our things, gone grocery shopping and settled in. We've finally done laundry, something that we really needed to do long before this time. This is our sixth day here. It's really quite unbelievable that we're really here and that this is actually the way we're going to be living for nearly three months.

Let me explain how we came to be here, and what we're going to do while we're here.

Because of our detainment we were unable to go to Scotland and volunteer at a youth center as planned. We had no idea throughout much of September where we would be during October, November, and half of December, which only added stress to our unstable plans that often deteriorated altogether. But Mark has many connections--throughout the world--and he found us some options of places to go. We considered multiple different countries--France, Switzerland, and Hungary were some potential options--but eventually we ended up settling on Ireland.

The place we're staying is quite surreal. What we heard before coming is that we would have our own apartment--which we were so stoked about--and that we would be living in a building that is a retreat center (where groups are sometimes hosted in dorms), out in the countryside in Ireland. Upon our arrival we discovered that we don't so much have an apartment as our own house. Seriously, it's huge, at least in comparison to a normal apartment. It's on the second story of a long building (which actually isn't the retreat center or "Big House," it's just next to it). The flat, as our hosts call it, is basically a good sized kitchen and living room and then an incredibly long hallway which has four bedrooms and a bathroom off of it, only on the left side. The rooms are really big and there are tons of beds in them. Our hosts--who live down the street--used to live here with their children. We basically get to live here for free. Mark is kindly paying the small monthly contribution for heating. We're going to help out John and Robin with anything that we can, mostly cleaning up after groups, but we essentially don't have anything particular to do here since they're only expecting a couple of groups during our stay.

So here we are, in our own house, right next to a gigantic empty house, with a couple of neighbors across the courtyard, four miles from the closest village, and about an hour from Dublin. Here's the real question: what are we going to do with ourselves for the next two and a half months?

I'd like to be clear that in this next part I am not at all intending to undermine our gratitude for or our delight in being here, I'm just illuminating the facts. We are basically in the middle of nowhere in a creepy old stone building right next door to a probably haunted mansion. Our house is one of those that has creaky floorboards and mysterious things at the end of the hall. Liesl discovered the latter while retrieving a chair from that room. What she saw in the corner of the room were three steps leading down to a purple curtain that was clearly covering something other than a window. It was nighttime on Monday, our first night here, and she beckoned me to come look behind the mysterious curtain with her. I anxiously led the way down the long hallway to the room at the very end. I had my headlamp in my hand, ready to explore some eerie dark space. We were both a bit nervous--this place is kind of empty and sort of freaky. We entered the room--and I paused as the mysterious scene washed over me--and honestly made me feel a little uneasy--then reached out and pulled aside the curtain. It revealed a door. A locked door with a golden key in an old fashioned keyhole. Liesl and I looked at each other: oh shit.

She told me to open it, and I shook my head and backed away. Ha, yeah right. I've seen too many horror movies to fall for something like this. We agreed to open the door in the morning, attempting to ignore it while we slept in our separate rooms toward the front of our house.

When we were both awake--2 p.m., when Liesl finally woke up--we went and checked out the door. Before I could move forward to turn the key that I'd be waiting to turn since I'd woken up at 10 a.m., Liesl grasped the handle and turned the key. Anticlimactically, the door didn't budge. She shook and turned the key and the knob, but it still didn't open. So we moved on with our lives.

We first toured the property that day. It's huge--60 some acres. We made our way to the expansive greener than green lawns, and over to an orchard of apple trees. There was a little vegetable garden in which giant slugs had eaten through the remaining plants. We saw a cottage-like house with roses out front, and realized that it was our neighbors house. We knocked on the door and introduced ourselves. Jill is very nice, and she's an acupuncturist. She gave us an impromptu tour of the property.

We got to go inside the big house, which is truly exquisite. It's a mansion, a now decrepit yet no doubt once extravagant building. Jill left us to our own devices and we self-toured the eerie building. It's huge, with multiple staircases, and rooms with rooms coming off of rooms. It's all connected somehow. The exits are labelled because you could honestly get sort of lost in there. I was gaping in awe as we walked on ancient wooden stairs, passing old pianos, soaking up the view: the intricate white molding along the ceiling, the pastel walls, the cobwebs that must have been growing for years and years...I've always wanted to explore an ancient mansion, preferable one that's creepy and somewhat in shambles. We even encountered  a room that was totally in ruins. It had a huge hole in the back, that went down I didn't know how far. Later when John gave us a tour, he said that it was the basement. It actually has a basement! That side was blocked, but we went down into it through a different entrance. It was awesome and creepy.

The rooms had tons of bunks, just like our house has, presumably where guests sleep, or where they once slept. John gave us a tour the next day and imparted loads of fascinating information to us about the house, the property, and his childhood growing up in the orphanage here. He said that they now only have groups stay on the first floor and second floors, though there are three floors. Liesl and I were thrilled to find a small staircase that was roped off to warn people not to enter the room that it led to. Naturally this immediately became one of the hot spots on our exploring the property list. We haven't been up there yet, but we'll certainly check it out soon.

The mansion is silent and austere. It's classic inside though.  It's Georgian in style, and was built around 1748. 1748. That's older than any building on the west coast probably, other than maybe a mission or a Native American dwelling. The outside of the back of the house reminds me of a factory from the industrial revolution. The rest of the buildings here were build toward the end of the 1700s or the early 1800s.  The Big House has a beautiful stained glass window with initials on it, which we wondered about. John said they're the initials of a family that owned the property for a long time.

This is what I've gathered about the history of this place:

The building was originally commissioned and occupied by a guy from I don't know where that wanted to get away from his family. He didn't live here for long. The next occupants were multiple generations of a family whose name I don't remember. They're the ones with the stained glass initials. They lived here until 1954 when it became an orphanage, and a good one based on what John told us about his experience. It was also a Christian secondary school (the equivalent of high school pretty much), that kids who weren't from the orphanage also attended. I think it was sort of boarding school style. The kids lived either in rooms on the second floor of the school or in some of the numerous rooms in the Big House. The orphanage seemed very unique because they had what sounds like quite a good system. From what I gather, the children were split up into groups and given "parents" who worked and lived at the orphanage and whom would be the equivalent of each of those children's parents for multiple years. In, I believe, the '70s or possibly the '80s, the orphanage and the school closed and the building turned into a retreat center like it is now.

John took us on a walk around the property. There are farmers that rent some of the land and have cows and sheep. At one point we followed a trail and entered into a forest. A real forest! I've rarely--if ever--really been in what I would consider a true forest before, in other words one that's actually green and alive and fairly dense. But this was just that, and it even started raining gently onto us through the thin canopy of the leaves. This part of our walk was definitely the highlight of my Tuesday.

There's also a gorgeous (albeit man made) lake, which Liesl and I plan to canoe on soon. There's a natural lake somewhere nearby too. Additionally there's a large stream along the road--large by my no doubt low standards of vastness of rivers, seeing as we really don't have any in San Diego.

In short, the property is absolutely stunning. I found it difficult to decide whether it was more beautiful than the west coast of England which we saw on our hike. I consulted with Liesl and we both decided that, while this place is incredible, the coast was probably a bit more amazing. It was probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. This is what Ireland looks like:

We've thought of many things to do while we're here. It's kind of frightening to have so much free time, but it's also sort of exhilarating. This is that time that nearly everyone wishes for in which all the things they've been wanting to do but haven't had the time for can be done. We can read, write, play board games, relax, cook, explore, ride bikes, canoe, work out and more. We've devised a workout schedule, and hopefully we'll be jogging a lot and utilizing this giant outdoorsy property. They have a soccer field and a basketball court. We went into town the other day and bought some oil painting supplies, so we can paint as well. I for one have been trying to get around to executing some painting ideas for the better part of a year, and have only done a few of them.

Also, feel free to comment if you have anything you'd like to say!

Well, that's all for now,

Stephanie