Christmastime

Dear Universe,

I don't mean to be unpleasant, but I would like to demand a refund on three countries, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England. (And probably Wales, too, for that matter.) There is simply to snow, none at all. Despite Liesl and my desires for a white Christmas, or at least a white day sometime while we're in this part of the world, the closest we've come is to actual snow is frost and a mildly frozen lake. It snowed in some places in the USA, which you may have noticed is considerably closer to the equator than here. I find this very unfair, and I would like a refund in one way or another please. Thank you.

Yours in sincere disappointment,

Stephanie

Hello Readers,

Happy Boxing Day!

...and Happy Christmas.

Boxing Day is one among many of the UK and Ireland's bank holidays, which means that lots of places are closed. Because of the union between church and state, everything is closed on Christmas, and Christmas Eve, and New Years for that matter. And I mean everything; the tube is closed, the buses stop running...you can't even get a flight within the country.

The last of our days in Ireland passed pleasantly enough, with the pinnacle of excitement being the day we spent hours outside playing with the ice that covered the top of the lake. Ah, the sheer joy holding breaking the glass-like surface the lake and pulling up a sheet of ice. The urge to lick the clear blocks of ice was irresistible--and resist it we didn't. I know it was gross lake water, but it just looked so clean frozen! And it tasted just fine. We tried so hard to stand on it, but it just wasn't quite thick enough, though it did get up to about two inches thick in some places. And just as it seemed that the lake might actually freeze enough to walk on--it would need to be at least three inches thick--it thawed. It was so cool though! We seriously spent hours playing with ice. We would break some off and throw it onto the lake. There were also little frozen puddles that were fun to step on.

One day we kayaked on the frozen lake, and that was awesome too. We had to thrust the paddles through the ice, cracking it, to move forwards. The shattered blocks of ice made clinking, musical sounds as we rowed through them. It was a little winter wonderland.

We had a Curry Night with our neighbors the night before we left, which was fun. The following morning, the 19th,  our hosts kindly drove us to the airport where we boarded a plane to London. I had very neatly written out all of the information that we might need to show to the officers at immigration--phone numbers, addresses, etc. We were sure that they would be suspicious of our reentering the country, what with our detainment and all.

When we got off the plane in London, we approached the desk for people with non-European passports, and produced our passports for the guy at the desk. He asked for our boarding passes, which we then produced, but he had no interest at all in looking at our passports. We were sure that we would have to go to some other place where we would need to show our passports, but strangely--amazingly--we didn't have to. An officer with a dog came up to us and asked where we had come from, Madrid? No, Ireland. She said okay and let us go on our way. That was it. No immigration, no waiting, no questioning, nothing. It was because we were coming from Ireland, which is so close we were later told. But when we got to Ireland from England in October we had to go through immigration, so we're not really sure why we didn't need to when doing the opposite. But hey, no complaints there! Well actually, just one: we were slightly put out at not being able to prove our newly-found organization and overall competence as travelers to immigration. Oh well.

Unfortunately, the Gatwick airport--though allegedly in London--is actually about thirty miles outside of London. We had to take an almost two hour bus ride--which, ridiculously, was longer than our flight--to get into central London, where we were staying with our friends Elena and Zoe in Harrow.

It is a testament to the absurd weight of our backpacks that, even now, nearly four months into our trip, I still crumble, physically and emotionally under the weight of my pack. And my sitting around phase in Ireland ending a long time ago. I was running and conditioning almost everyday, and I ran about six miles or so a couple of times, so this has nothing to do with my being in horrible shape or something. These backpacks are really and truly absolutely horrible. The best thing about them is that they inspire in us a sort of amusement at their ridiculousness, a humor that comes when you've passed the point of frustration and anger.

We've both decided that once we get back to the US we're going to sell our backpacks and maybe get some smaller ones. Personally I've grown to hate REI with their overrated, overpriced, mediocre-quality outdoor supplies. I guess it's mostly because of our stupid backpacks, but honestly, why on earth would anyone need a backpack that big? It's ridiculous. They should have suggested smaller ones for us, they should have known that no backpacker however experienced needs a pack that gigantic. Though we're not going to sell them right away--we're going to be sure to keep them around for long enough that anyone who questioned our decision to quit the Coast to Coast, and anyone that thinks I complain about the backpacks too much, can have a go at carrying one for a while. Fully packed, of course, as heavy as they have been for us.

Luckily though, we're giving some of our extra, unneeded stuff to the Oestreichers, whom we are currently living with in London, to take back to the States for us, so hopefully they'll be significantly lighter when we leave for India on the 3rd.

On the note of heavy things, Liesl and I went grocery shopping for all of us the day before the Oestreichers arrived. It was Christmas Eve, and the store was jam-packed The grocery store was only maybe half a mile away, but we ended up filling five bags with lots of heavy food and having to walk back carrying it. It sounds like not that big of a deal, but plastic really cuts off your circulation; it wasn't so much the weight, just the awkwardness of carrying grocery bags, though it was exacerbated by the weight. Also we'd just had to carry our packs around the day before. No rest for the weary I guess.

Once we'd set the groceries down at home--wherever we are currently living immediately becomes our new home--we went to Whole Foods. It is so, so fantastic to be in a vegetarian-friendly country again, after the cluelessness of Ireland. And Whole Foods is a wonderful, beautiful place. I must have applied for a job there (in San Diego) ten times by now. This one was small--not as small as most of the tiny health food stores here though--but it was still so nice to be in there. It smelled herbal, and had tons of wonderful healthy food. We walked around it for a while, taking in the loveliness, and then bought some things to make vegan cheesecake for Christmas dinner. This was seriously one of the best events of my week, and not at all because my week was boring; it wasn't boring at all.

It was nice to see our friends in Harrow again. They have this Christmas party on the tube every year, where a bunch of their friends get together and decorate a train car, and just generally spread Christmas cheer on the underground. We went to the party on Saturday, and it was really cool. It's was awesome seeing the usual normalnes of the subway turned upside-down by young people singing Christmas songs--different ones than we have in the US; Liesl and I weren't very familiar with them--and giving candy to fellow tube riders. The ride was really long, from one end of the northern line to the other and back again, and for some reason I've been getting a little motion sick on the tube lately, but it was a lot of fun.

London is a great place to be during Christmastime. While I feel that there could be more decorations around, there are quite a few, and people just generally seem very into Christmas here. It's proper to say "Merry Christmas" in shops here, I noted; in the USA "Happy Holidays" would be politically correct, though it's pretty clear that America is a heavily Christian country, and that it really doesn't respect any non-Christian holidays, such as, say, Hanukkah, which as far as I know is the only other major December holiday that one could be referring to when saying "Happy Holidays."

The house that we're staying at is in a beautiful part of London called Clapham. Clapham is the embodiment of classic modern London to me: the huge grassy, tree filled common, neat, row houses made of red bricks and wood painted white, elegant little shops lining the busy streets...it's just lovely, London, Clapham, England...I love it. I breathe a sigh of happiness every time I look out my fourth floor window at the perfect balance of buildings and nature coexisting in this city.

Yeah, the houses are four stories. That's quite a few stairs to climb! Our house is wonderful though, I like it a lot. We're basically borrowing someone's house while they're out of town.

I awoke at the unreasonable hour of 7 a.m. on Christmas, to the lovely sounds of rain falling on the house, and thunder rumbling. A Christmas storm. Well, if a white Christmas is out of the question, one can at least hope for a stormy Christmas. It's was very windy, and it lightninged (?) once. Liesl's family arrived around 9 a.m., once I'd fallen back asleep, and I went to let them in since Liesl--in her excitement to see them--accidentally closed the door, which locked, with the keys inside.

We had a present opening session by the Christmas tree, which was very nice. I got a bunch of nice stuff, including two books, which made me very happy, as I haven't really had a book to read in a while.We made Christmas dinner too, which was delicious. Christmas is just so wonderful, there's really no reason not to like it. Obviously the religious element has no appeal for me, but come on, a holiday where you get to give and receive a bunch of gifts? That's so awesome! Also, it just has such an absolutely wonderful mood, the Christmas season. It's full of joy, lights, decorations, food, good-smelling pine trees...what's not to love?


It's great seeing the Oestreichers, though it's kind of odd for Liesl and I being with people other than just each other, and seeing people in London that we only ever see in San Diego. But we're very excited to get to hang out with them for the next week, we're going to do a lot of fun things, including going to Wales tomorrow. The original purpose of that trip was to retrieve Liesl's guitar, but we're making a trip out of it, and we're borrowing someone's house that's right by the sea...it should be lovely.

I went for a run in the park today in the rain. My first run in London! Ah, I just love it here...I didn't mind a bit that the sounds of the city drowned out the sound of my music, it was just so good to be back in civilization, and in my favorite city.

Cheers!

Stephanie

Belfast

You never know when a certain day is going to be of particular significance in your life. September the 7th, 2011, was such a day for Liesl, and possibly more potently for yours truly.

It was the first day of our senior year of high school. We were driving in my mom's car, myself at the wheel and Liesl in the passenger seat, on the way to a Rancid concert in Anaheim. I'd seen them twice already, but this would be Liesl's first time.

While, technically speaking, Liesl and I knew each other fairly well, having gone to school together for five years at this point, we weren't particularly close friends. We were friendly, had a mutual interest in punk music, and I had a driver's license and car to use.

I remember specifically that we were driving through that long stretch of coast that is Camp Pendleton: ocean on the left, chaparral on the right. We hadn't yet come to that funny structure that looks like a giant golf ball when we entered into a conversation about plans for next year.

This was quickly becoming a depressing subject for me, having little to no aspirations in my life other than getting the hell out of that hell-hole under the innocuous name of high school. When Liesl asked what I was planning on doing next year, my heart sank, and I replied dejectedly that I had no idea. I may have mentioned some feeble hopes of having a job, and getting my own place, more for the sake of something to say than because of any real convictions I had about this. I knew that I was absolutely not going to college, but I didn't know what I was going to do.

I asked what her plans were, she began talking about how she was going to apply to some colleges that she was interested in, but that she really wanted to take a gap year before going to school. But she said that in order for her to get deferred enrollment, she would need to be doing something that a university would think was a good use of her time, like doing volunteer work, rather than just sitting around for a year.

She said that she wanted to travel abroad and volunteer. It would probably be way better to go with another person though, she said, rather than travelling alone. I asked about her best friend and our fellow classmate Emily, and Liesl said that Emily couldn't abandon dance for that long, and even if she wanted to do that, as her friend, Liesl wouldn't let her throw all of her hard work away.

On sudden inspiration it seemed, Liesl said that maybe we could go together, since she wanted a travel partner and I didn't have any plans. That sounded good to me, and I accepted right away; it sounded a lot better than freaking out about potentially having a dead-end life, plus travelling would be fun, and Liesl and I got on well.

So there you have it. That was the inception of our trip. What followed was a totally sick Rancid concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim, which was, funnily enough, basically part of Disneyland. It was in Downtown Disney I think, outside the park. Odd place for a punk show, eh?.

Fast forward one year, two months, twenty-one days and 5,157 miles to Mandela Hall, Belfast, on the 28th of November, 2012, where our trip came full circle.

Liesl had spiked my hair with some expert backcombing and three rounds of hair spray for the show. Little did I realize that not only would I not be washing the hair spray out of my hair for four more days, but that I would actually be adding more every day up until that point. (We had again forgotten to brings towels on this small trip, just like in Dublin).

This was our first experience seeing an American band--a band from California, actually--in a foreign country. It was a great show, and one of the two vocalist/guitarists, Tim Armstrong, had an awesome beard that immediately reminded Liesl and I of Mark's beard. (We think that we may be developing a sort of telepathy).

It was odd, I thought to myself, hearing the crowd singing along to songs--such as one of my personal favorites, Journey to the End of the East Bay--with lyrics paying homage to places that most of them had probably never been before. I've been to the San Francisco Bay area recently, so I had some firsthand conception of what the East Bay was like. It was sort of a backwards experience, actually, because I'm used to listening to songs by British bands that mention places I've never been. Well, actually I've been to London now, which is a common reference.

Liesl was really excited because she found two hats during a show. However, neither of us can really wear hats...

...So we didn't keep them.

We spent most of our time in the city walking around and shopping. Belfast is nice city, and like Dublin, it was decorated for Christmas. We'd written down a list of things to do in the city but it was left at home, and somehow we just sort of edged away from doing the prescribed tourist things. I guess after travelling for a while you just kind of get tired of the famous this, and the renowned that. We just wanted to be in a city, with people, and lots of Christmas decorations and walk around. So that's what we did.

We did see Queens University though--the concert venue was an extension of it I think--and it was lovely. It looked sort of similar to Parliament in London. We also took a quick spin through the Ulster museum, seeing an Egyptian mummy that still had hair.

Look, it's Liesl next to a mural of the characters of The Big Lebowski!:

I got some CDs, and both of us got Christmas sweaters, thought we were severely disappointed to find that ugly/tacky/overly-Christmasy sweaters, ties, and boxers are not a thing here. It was appalling, really, coming from a place where thrift stores put up large signs to advertise their ugly Christmas sweaters. But we both found more subtle Christmas sweaters that we liked:

Our plans for staying with someone in Belfast for free had fallen through not far from the last minute, so we ended up staying in a hostel. Again. Our hostel, Paddy's Palace, had very mixed reviews when we checked it out online, but it was cheap, and we're both on a tight budget, so we stayed there. It was definitely sketchy. One of the two front doors had a strange, tape covered handle in the middle of it on the back side, and all of the bathrooms had broken doors, locks, or toilets. It was also just about as cold in the common areas as it was outside, and it was freezing outside. When we left, we asked for some tape to close a box of rice that we'd bought, and they couldn't find tape, so they put a couple of bandaids on it. That should give you a feel for the place. But the beds were comfortable, and it was in a decent location.

The bus rides to get from Athboy to Belfast and back were very long. I noticed, looking out the window of the bus to Dublin, where we would get a connection to Belfast, that this country has an astounding number of low, grey stone walls. Really, they're everywhere. I think they generally divide fields. These definitely contribute to the ancient vibe this country gives off. Maybe some of these walls are modern, but I tend to associate them with, say, Medieval times, or earlier.

I had my three year vegan anniversary during this short trip to Northern Ireland, and we'd tried to go to a vegan restaurant but it didn't exist. It was the only vegetarian restaurant in Belfast too, so that was a fail. Ireland is beautiful, but I have to say, I'm very excited to go back to England where vegetarians are not alien beings. We're hoping that Christmas ties and Christmas boxers might be more common there as well.

The night after we got back from our trip, we found out that there was a sort of riot in Belfast, at city hall. The Union Flag--the flag of the whole United Kingdom--used to be hanging from the building 365 days a year. But a new measure was just passed that limited the number of days that this flag could be flown to only fifteen days per year. The Loyalists--those loyal to the Crown, also known as Protestants--were enraged by this decision, and forced entry into city hall. A few people were hurt, and there was some property damage. We saw a short news report of this, and it looked really intense. Both of us sort of wished that we were there for this; it's just such a novel thing to us, being in a country where these sort of riots aren't uncommon. I don't think that stuff really happens in the Republic though, just in the North.

So here we are, back at home in our flat. It rained last night, and all day yesterday. Something that Liesl and I have noticed is that people in this part of the world are constantly complaining about the weather, and emphasizing how much it rains. It honestly hasn't rained that much during our trip. Sure, more than it ever does in Southern California, but still not that much. It's usually just a drizzle, too. It actually rained for real yesterday. It even hailed a bit. It was evening, and Liesl looked up at the pitch black sky through our skylight--we have three; I guess they compensate for our other windows being near the floor--and said, "It's hailing!" There was a slight pause, then we both jumped up, grabbed our coats, hurriedly stepped into our shoes and dashed outside. It was so great, I love weather.

When we were in Belfast, we looked for Advent Calendars, but none of them had vegan chocolate. So I came up with an idea for an unconventional Advent Calendar. We wrote down one activity to do each day for the rest of our stay in Ireland, and we cut them into strips and put them in a mug. We draw one everyday, and execute whatever activity it says to do. We have: played hide and seek in the forest, had a picnic, hung out in the Big House, and procrastinated and doing gymnastics, since it was too wet outside. This is a great way to make December more fun. It's perfect, because you can tailor it to your life. Here, we don't have as many Christmas-related activities that we can do--sadly, both of the pianos in the Big House are broken, so we can't even have a Christmas song jam-a-thon, though we do listen to Christmas music pretty much everyday. However, we have a great facility to use, so most of our things are outdoorsy. Today Liesl and I will be: climbing a tree. Sweet.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Thanksgiving

Greetings,

Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances sometimes arise, and I was not able to blog about Thanksgiving as soon as I'd planned too, so I'm doing it now, a little after the fact.

Liesl and I had already invited John and Robin, our hosts and distant neighbors, and Jill and Martin, our across-the-courtyard neighbors, to Thanksgiving a while before we'd gone to Dublin. When we returned, we went shopping for ingredients, found the recipes that we needed, and cleaned and rearranged our house. We spent a few hours cooking on Thanksgiving, and it was actually kind of stressful, though I think this was exacerbated by the fact that our lives here are so strangely free of the stresses of everyday life. But, for the most part, everything worked out in the end.

I think that Thanksgiving is great. A holiday based on gratitude and food? Um, yes. Now I know that if we look at it historically we see a union between the settlers and the immigrants that seems laughably pathetic in lieu of the fact that the colonists soon proceeded to massacre Native Americans after this. I'm a little fuzzy on American history--I was bored to death by it during school, for the most part--but I do know for sure that at some point after Thanksgiving, the relationship between the settlers and the natives was distinctly less than harmonious. But anyway, it's still nice to have a holiday about thankfulness.

Everything we made was vegan, except one dish that was just vegetarian. We could see that our neighbors were a bit apprehensive about eating a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, but they sportingly tried our paradoxically unusual and traditional food. We had pumpkin pie, apple pie, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, etc.

It was interesting celebrating an American holiday in another country with people that are not Americans. Well, actually Robin is orginially from the US, and she's had Thanksgiving here before, but she wasn't planning on doing it this year.

This is all of us except for John, who is taking the picture.

The meal was very delicious and our guests seemed to enjoy it too. But possibly the highlight of Thanksgiving for Liesl and I was the social aspect. Our neighbors are very nice, and it was so thoroughly enjoyable just to converse with other human beings. Martin told us of some very interesting and bizarre pagan celebrations that take place in various small towns in England, most of which seemed to be of unknown origin and which included dressing up in strange attire and spending most of the day dancing.

We primarily ate Thanksgiving leftovers for the next few days.

One morning, shortly after Thanksgiving, I awoke and went out into our living room and glanced out the window. Everything was covered in white. Amazed, I looked more closely to see that it was actually frost and not snow. However, this was still very exciting for me, so I quickly went outside to check it out.

Everything was coated in frost. The grass crunched under my shoes, and I left distinct green tracks across the lawns.

 On a sudden inspiration, I trudged over to the side of the lake to find that the body of water was in fact, somewhat frozen. Sheets of ice covered it, making it look white in the places where it was thickest. I'm not sure if the whole thing had ice on it or not, but sadly, it definitely would have held the weight of a person.

There are two swans that live in the lake. Have I mentioned that before?

Per my recommendation, Liesl went out to look at the frost when she woke up as well. She found some puddles that were frozen, where you could break off a chunk of ice and throw it onto a larger frozen puddle and watch it shatter spectacularly.

From this point on--and actually long before this for me--we have wanted it to snow here, and the lake to freeze properly, with a burning passion. Unfortunately, it normally doesn't snow here or in England until January, so in all likeliness we will miss out on the snow. Which makes me very, very upset. I hope that England has snow in April.

This brings us to an important point, an announcement really, which is that Liesl will be returning to the US in April, and I will be continuing on to England for the months of April and May. My friend Melody may join me in May. The reasons for Liesl's early departure are mostly financial, though she is also excited to go back to San Diego and see her friends and family sooner than May. India is the part of this trip that she is most excited about, so she'll be leaving right after our stay in India. I'm actually kind of excited to have a short solo trip, I think it'll be fun.

Also, thanks to Mark, Liesl not only has her flight back to the US booked, but we both have a flight to London for December 19th and our India visas! It's going to be so exciting spending Christmas in London.

This is what many of the trees in Ireland look like without leaves.

Liesl thinks they look like lungs; they do, they look like the bronchioles. A very fitting metaphor for a tree, really, a lung. They do look animate, the trees. I think they look as though they were thrashing around like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter, but got frozen into place.

Up next: our recent trip to Belfast.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Dublin!

Hello readers,

Let's talk about Dublin.

Unfortunately, though I remembered my camera, I forgot to bring the camera battery with me to Dublin, so, alas, there are no pictures. I thought that I'd put the battery back in the camera after charging it, but upon returning home I found that it was on the kitchen table in the charger.

We were driven to Athboy to get the bus to Dublin. It arrived on time and we got on, bought our tickets and took our seats without any complications. Amazing!

The bus ride was only about an hour and a half, and it was a very pleasant ride. We were in the very front on the upper floor, so we had a huge windshield in front of us through which to view the countryside as the bus swayed and bumped along the little roads. At one point we got stuck behind a tractor going about five miles and hour for a few minutes. This is a normal experience here I think.

There are tons of round-abouts in this country. Coming from San Diego, round-abouts call to my mind: a) the tiny, circular, flower-filled medians in Leucadia, and b) a very long and annoying section of the drivers handbook that I found incredibly boring and irrelevant. Here, round-abouts are far from decorative; they actually help the flow of traffic. I've seen them used mostly in the intersections of multiple highways. The driver exits the highway, eases into the flow of traffic in the round-about, and without even needing to stop or slow very much, is off on their way on another highway. It's brilliant. There are also some sections of road near highway entrances where you'll see multiple cars randomly parked. Yep, parked right on the side of a busy road. Emma had pointed this out to us and said that it was like a non-official park and ride. People would pick a spot and leave their cars their in order to carpool, and eventually the city would notice and make an actually car park (parking lot) for them.

Our first view of Dublin seemed nice, mainly because it was a city. We got off the bus and found our hostel without complications either, first getting some Thai curry at this little noodle bar we found. The weather was cool and it was sprinkling lightly. The hostel was large and nice, with many floors and long hallways. It was fairly inexpensive too. The dining room was in what was formerly a Catholic church. It even had a broken confession booth and stained glass windows, though the scene of travelers on the big window was probably something more religious previously. Though confession is intriguing to me, it's mostly in a humorous way. I mean what, you get to talk about your problems, say a few "Hail Marys" and you're good to go, sin free?

We took our things up to our dorm which we shared with several other people. After making a list of things to do in the city, we headed off to Temple Bar, an area of the city, to walk around. We noticed--you couldn't miss it really--this huge, tapering pointed metal object sticking out of the ground. It looked like a giant, shining needle coming out of the pavement, and it gave me the impression that all of the people in the city were each the size of a grain of sand. It was a cool art piece I guess, and it was a helpful landmark as well, right in the middle of the main street by a large shopping area. We never found out anything about it while in the city, but we tried to guess how tall it was, maybe 300 feet? It turns out that it is called the Spire of Dublin and that it is 398 feet tall. I just glanced at it's history, and it's mostly just an interesting architectural piece I think.

Temple bar was a really nice area, taking its name from the Temple family and a bar, which is a walkway along a river. It had cobblestone streets, which one eventually notices are good for neither walking nor driving on, and are really purely for decoration. Many of the buildings had webbed lighting of yellow or red, which reminded us forcibly that Christmastime was drawing near. We went to an adorable little coffee shop with mismatched hanging lights, and talked about Christmas and a number of other things that stemmed from that topic.

We went and got some food after that. Then we went to a pub. It was so crowded you could hardly make your way inside, and there was a duo on a small stage by the door playing Irish music, much to appreciation of the crowd. The people in the pub were of all different ages, which was interesting. There were some older ladies dancing to the music in one corner. and people not too much older than ourselves mixed in with the middle-aged folks. The interior of the pub looked just like every other pub we'd been to in England, dimly lit, dark walled, and generally having a quality reminiscent of an antique piece of furniture. Liesl got a pint of Guinness. She doesn't like beer, but she decided that she had to at least try a Guinness in Ireland, its place of origin. She drank it, but wasn't a huge fan, and still doesn't really like beer. We didn't see a single person in that pub that was drinking anything other than beer.

We hung out outside in the town square sort of area, and watched other people. There were some young people out, and it was incredible just to be in the same vicinity as other people, particularly some who were close to our own age. This particular area was really cool because cars generally weren't allowed down there, save police cars, so you could walk freely through the streets, without having to look one way for cars, then remember that they drive on the other side of the road here, then forget which side that actually is and whether it's the way you'd looked already, and frantically turn your head back and forth trying to cross the street without getting hit. This happened a lot during the earlier parts of our trip.Some of the crosswalks actually have "look left," or "look right" painted on the road, though unfortunately I didn't notice this when I needed it. Both of us are actually pretty used to cars driving on the left now, and the steering wheel being on the right side of the car. The walk signals in Dublin take forever to change, and people generally take the liberty of crossing the street at their leisure rather than when the signal has changed. A few times I saw and heard a car honk at a pedestrian that was over-exercising their right of way privilege by crossing right in front of approaching traffic.

We were watching an American TV show at home recently that showed some cars on a road, and it was actually strange to see cars driving on the right side. We're assimilating! There are some words that we're really used to like "crisps," which are chips, and "chips," which are french fries. But there are other words that still seem really odd, such as "trousers" being pants, and "pants" being underwear. Also, they say "toilets" instead of "bathroom" or "restroom," here and in England. I just can't get used to that one. It seems awkward and childish asking someone where the toilets are. It makes me feel as if I sound like someone that doesn't have a very strong grasp of English. Also, the letter "z" is pronounced "zed." Weird, huh? Though I suppose in the case of most of these things the US is the strange one, because naturally these other countries existed long before us.

 We liked Dublin pretty much right away. Liesl had gotten a map at the front desk, and soon was able to guide us through the city without needing to consult it. I just relied on her for directions, so unfortunately I am not as familiar with getting around Dublin as she is. But we never really got lost. It was so weird. Almost everything about our trip to Dublin went smoothly.

It was a nice city, with lots of people walking around, and it was happily devoid of the air of extreme stress that is the atmosphere of some large cities. The residential buildings, and some of the shops, were two story buildings made of red brick. There were many old, grey, stone churches on street corners. A few of the buildings were large, and Roman looking, white, with large pillars. Houses out in the countryside of Ireland are more often than not, surprising un-cute. They tend to be very plain, similar in structure to the typical, modern San Diego home, with dark-colored, sloping roofs. But I don't think that houses in California are ugly, yet somehow the houses here are. It's something about the walls I think. They're bright, pastel colored, yellow, or orange maybe, and are covered with either stucco or something like plaster. No matter what they're made of though, they come off looking very "wannabe" cute: severely smooth-walled, with meticulously placed windows and doors and nothing to add any life to them, save the occasional garden. They're a lot like the houses in Edward Scissor Hands, though less attractive and not in that kind of neighborhood layout.

We did a number of fun things in Dublin, which included eating some good food. I had my first burrito in two and a half months. It was good, but  sadly, definitely not up to the San Diego standard. We also went to a vegetarian restaurant, and a milkshake place with vegan milkshakes, which was very exciting. Additionally, we went to the Thai place twice a day more of less. Probably more.

We went to a photography exhibit which was really cool, and a science museum which wasn't that cool. Even Liesl didn't really like it, and she's the science one. It's great though, nearly all museums here and in England are free. We also went to see Dublin castle, which isn't your typical castle. It was clearly a mixture of many different architecture styles, and had a jagged wall near the top, a large tower, and a church-like part. It's difficult to describe how exactly this clashed, but I think it was something about the variation of austerity among the parts of the structure, some Medieval and severe and others maybe more Renaissance-style and elegant. At the left side the castle seemed to become a flat and colorful, not dissimilar to Irish houses. "Legoland" we heard a tour guide call it as he went on explaining the different architecture styles present in the building, confirming my thinking.

We spent a lot of our time just walking around. There's a river that goes through the city, which is cool. I'm becoming accustomed to seeing rivers now. We went to a few book stores, which always make me happy, and one record store where we purchased some CDs, that we didn't have any way to listen to. We then went in search of a walkman, and eventually found one in a tiny thrift shop. It was actually the owner's I think, but he sold it to Liesl anyway, and she is very excited to have such an awesome, vintage music-playing device.

The city was getting dressed up for Christmas. There were lights saying things in Irish above the main shopping roads, and Christmas displays in the clothing store windows. We went into a department store and it was so Christmas-y inside. The whole time we were there we felt the joy of the Christmas season, and we got so excited for Christmas, which we'll be spending in London with Liesl's family.

Liesl met two girls in our hostel that were from California and we went to a pub with them on Sunday night. I don't drink, so I went up to the counter and ordered a cranberry juice. The bartender looked at me dubiously, like maybe he hadn't heard me right. "Just cranberry juice? You don't want anything else?" I shook my head and said no, that's it. He shrugged genially, though like I was obviously an oddball, and gave me my juice.

There was a reggae/ska band playing that were really good, and we watched them for a while. Liesl got into a long conversation at the bar with a guy from New York.

We noticed when crossing the large intersection by the Spire that there were a lot of political protest sort of things going on. I think a couple of them were just cultural/religious festivities, but there was also a big deal going on with the war over abortion. We passed some guy with a megaphone talking loudly about killing babies. I hadn't really realized that other countries made as big of a deal over abortion as the US does. I guess it's obvious, I guess I just thought that the extremists with signs depicting bloody dead babies fit in very well with the general extremism in the States.

We passed an area on a different street where the was a sort of convention going on in favor of legalizing abortion. We hadn't known whether or not it was legal here. It's not. There was  a situation in which a woman died because she was not allowed to get an abortion here when she was having a miscarriage, and not allowed to leave the country to get one elsewhere. We talked briefly with a lady there that explained this to us, and said that the reason that country gives for making abortion illegal is that Ireland is a Catholic country. It's interesting, because the same argument about abortion goes on in California, and in other states I'm sure, but I think religion is one thing that the state can't use to argue, since we have a "separation" of church and state.

Many times throughout our trip in Dublin one of us would turn to the other and say that we didn't want to go back home, we just wanted to stay in Dublin. It was just so wonderful to get out. But eventually the trip did end, and we boarded the bus back to Athboy. We had some things to look forward to though: Thanksgiving, followed by a trip to Belfast. And being back here actually isn't bad, particularly knowing that we'll be going on a trip soon.

I'm sure that I've forgotten some interesting and important things in this post. I really should start taking notes when we go on trips to avoid this situation.

Next up: Thanksgiving!

Cheers,

Stephanie

Halloween

Happy belated Halloween!

As, I confess, our life here has been rather uneventful of late, I'm going to dip back into the not-so-distant past of that thrilling October holiday.

On the night before Halloween, Liesl and I carved a pumpkin which we had purchased at the grocery store in Athboy a few days previously. We discussed designs, and soon settled on scary. Liesl drew the design, and we both carved it out:

I had decided that, since canned pumpkin is apparently difficult to come by here, we would use our jack-o-lantern to make the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I also decided to make something for Halloween with the chunks of pumpkin that we'd carved out.

I awoke on Halloween, and was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I noticed a vague beeping sound. I figured it was something outside, a car alarm or something of the sort. But then I heard Liesl calling me loudly: "Steph! Steph!" I opened the bathroom door to the blaring sound of an alarm going off. It was clearly coming from inside our house. I'd noted before then that all of our fire alarms were hanging by wires, and so I had assumed that they didn't work. And honestly, a fire seems pretty improbably in such a wet, green place, with mostly stone buildings.

We went over to where the alarm seemed to be sounding from--outside my room--and I put my large headphones on, got a chair, and stood on it, trying to locate an off switch on the red plastic alarm. There didn't seem to be any way to turn it off; this one wasn't hanging from the ceiling, it was attached, but unscrewing it didn't do anything. We gave up and went outside to go down the street to our hosts' house, only to be greeted again by the deafening sound of an alarm. Apparently it wasn't just in our house, it was outside too. Liesl rode the bike and I walked briskly down the street. John had already heard about the alarm--there was a group of kids staying in the Big House--and I passed him in his van going down the road to deal with it.

We went into their house to get some movies, and we also acquired some tea lights from Robin, for our jack-o-lantern.

I could no longer hear the alarm when I was walking back home, though I had previously heard it all the way down the road at our hosts' house. Upon returning home we found out that some kid at the Big House had set off the alarm by spraying deodorant near it. Lovely. It was somewhat intentional--a "let's see if this sets off the alarm!" sort of situation, I can imagine.

I made pumpkin pancakes, which were delicious. (We have recently gotten into the seemingly unbreakable habit of eating pancakes pretty much every morning). We watched Sleepy Hallow (the one with Johnny Depp), and then made some sandwiches for a picnic which would take place at our next destination for the day.

This location was discovered by yours truly while I was going for a run the day before we left on our trip to the north. I had turned right out of our driveway and continued along that road for maybe twenty-five minutes when I came upon a sign denoting the town of Kilskyre. I was pleasantly surprised, having been unaware that there was a town this close, never having seen  an advance sign for it.

I jogged into the town, stopping at the side of the road at a grave with a large headstone bearing a somber inscription, and at a sign saying that Kilskyre had an ancient ruin of a monastery. Cool, I'd actually found a potentially interesting place close to our home.

I continued running and what appeared on my field of vision next made my jaw drop into an open-mouthed smile. It was a tiny, grassy hill, off on the left behind some small buildings, and it was covered in gravestones. It was the graveyard of my dreams, so to speak, since I definitely don't dream of the day when I end up in a cemetery myself. But since very early on in the conception of this trip I had imagined and longed to see old graveyards in England (merely because that was the country that we planned on visiting that held the most appeal for me). I've always had a sort of thing for graveyards--out of personal interest or intrigue in the interest that others have in death, I'm not sure--but all of the ones that I'd been to in the US were relatively new, and not exactly what I was looking for. I'd been to an interesting cemetery in Guatemala, but the intrigue there lay in the fact that it was so aesthetically different from graveyards I'd seen, for it was not particularly old as far as I knew.

There was a large, austere and old-looking church up the road, right across the street from the cemetery. This church had its own graveyard. I walked into the churchyard and came upon a pointed wooden door bearing a plaque which commemorated the death of a young man that had fallen off of the church spire. I looked up, and sure enough, there was a huge spire, the tip of which was probably fifty feet above me. I walked around the churchyard cemetery--which was disappointingly new--then went up to the door of the old church.

It had been built in--gosh, now I forget--I think the 18th, or possibly the 19th century. The door I had approached, which seemed like the main door, was the slightest bit open, just resting against the door frame. I argued with myself for a minute about whether or not to go in--churches tend to be kind of creepy for me in general, being a devout atheist myself. But I often find European churches to be of extreme beauty, from a purely architectural and historical standpoint. But this was kind of a creepy town, it was silent, and there was almost nobody around. I also wasn't keen on going in and having to talk to anyone inside.

I had almost decided to leave, come back another time with Liesl and then go in, when I decided not to wimp out and to just go in. I opened the door, and walked into the entryway chamber, then pulled open to door to the main room. It was silent and eerie inside, and my eyes immediately took in two things: one, the tray of lit candles in the far corner near the altar, and two, the multiple manikins of Jesus and other religious figures. These made me start as I at first took them to be real people. I walked in a couple of steps and looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone in the room, but I thought it odd to leave lit candles in an unattended room with the front door open. Ten seconds was long enough, so I left.

I crossed the street with the intention of visiting the other graveyard. It looked like I would have to cross through someone's backyard to get there, and I was not about to do this without asking first. Conveniently, a man and a child were in the front yard of the house. I inquired haltingly, unsure of how to phrase my question, whether or not the graveyard was open to the public. I thought it could have been a family cemetery or something, I don't know. He said yes, he had two goats in there but they were friendly and I could go in.

I walked down a short drive to a gate, which I opened and closed behind me. I stood in a green field with two cows in it. I crossed the field and went up to the cemetery, which was surrounded by a short, stone wall. There was a sign right outside of it, which talked about some sort of research that was being done in the graveyard. It wasn't explained very well, but I gathered that the monastery was build around the 6th century by Saint Skyre, the female patron saint of the town I believe. The sign said that people had been buried at this sight since early Christian times. Whoa.

I opened the gate and was greeted by two white goats. They were cute, and friendly and didn't seem to mind my wandering around. I looked at the gravestones: the few that were legible were from the 1800s; most of them were so weathered that they didn't seem to have anything written on them at all. Many were leaning forward or sideways, and some were sinking into the earth.

The ruins of the monastery were covered with snakelike roots of large trees. Liesl, I knew, would love this. I'd already made up my mind to bring her here for Halloween.

And so I did. We walked into the town, and had a picnic on a bench in the churchyard, where Liesl soon discovered that I was by no means exaggerating when I'd told her that I was inept at peeling oranges without getting juice all over my hands.

We walked around the church cemetery and I showed her the plaque. We went inside the church. It really wasn't fair, because for some reason it was way less creepy this time, possibly because of the absence of lit candles. We hung out in there for a minute and then left to go to the other cemetery.

Liesl greatly enjoyed it, as I'd thought she would, particularly the root-covered stone ruins. We spent some time walking around the graveyard, which this time played host not only to the two goats--who enjoyed chewing on Liesl's belt--but to a flock of sheep. The sheep were cute, but they ran away every time we went near them.

We started back home soon to avoid walking the unlit streets in the dark. The time change happened a week earlier here than it did in California, and while we've realized that in only gets dark a little bit earlier here, it makes a bigger impression here than in San Diego. We're so removed from everything, from everyone, that the darkness is very imposing and unpleasant at such an early hour as 5:30 p.m.

Liesl lit a tea light and placed it in the jack-o-lantern, and we watched a somewhat scary movie called The Others. It was pretty good actually, and Liesl was less scared than she thought she'd be, not having been the horror movie fan that I am, though she now seems to enjoy them more. After that we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which of course is an amazing movie, and not only because it is applicable to both Halloween and Christmas. We ate some sweets and chocolate cake that I'd made too. And that was our Halloween.

Since then we have been up and down as usual.

I've been running a lot--I ran for an hour last week, my record--and Liesl started running again too. I was so sick of running on the road that I tried running around the property, which isn't that large in terms of where one can run, but it was so much nicer. So now we run through the forest everyday, which is easily my favorite place on this property and my favorite forest ever.

We've spent a lot of our time here watching things on Netflix, way too much time really. But I've found that we're both most happy when we are either very engaged in our surroundings here or when we are distracted from them. The "in-betweenness"or just hanging around in our house is terribly unpleasant. More than once I've felt myself on the brink of going totally insane. I finished a book I was reading in a particularly bad bout of early morning sleeplessness. I've painted a bit, and Liesl has spent hours making friendship bracelets. We had a lovely picnic on the lake in our canoes recently. The alarm went off randomly in our house again a few days ago, a different sounding alarm this time. It didn't last long. John said that our next door neighbor would check it out.

We have a very mysterious next door neighbor. What's mysterious is that we've lived here for a month and a half and we've never seen him. We've seen his car, we think, but that's it. I kind of forget he lives here mostly, if he really does live here.

Much of our time and thought lately has been focused on our trip to Dublin. We've spent so much time trying to find a couch surfing host to stay with, to no avail. We finally decided to just stay in a hostel and go for a shorter time. So here we are, finally in Dublin. More on this in the next post.

Interesting fact about Ireland: there's a population crisis here, but not the kind that most of the rest of the world is facing. There are too few people here. It's insane, it really is, with so many other places being so obviously overpopulated. But people have been leaving Ireland, Emma told us, ever since the potato famine. There are so many Irish immigrants in the US; it's rare to talk to someone that doesn't have some Irish heritage. I do. Liesl actually doesn't think she does though, funnily enough.

We went shopping one day in Navan, a larger nearby town, and we had a couple of hours so we walked around a bit. Both of us realized how happy it made us to be out in public, with other humans, that we decided to take more day trips to the local towns. We went to Trim on Friday, which was nice. It has quite a magnificent castle, and a river, both of which always bring joy to my heart. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera that day, so the pictures will have to wait until next time we visit Trim. Speaking of forgetting the camera, I forgot the battery somehow when we left for Dublin. So you will just have to imagine everything in my next post.

The weather here took a turn for the cold, we noticed as soon as we got back from the north. But it's been up and down since then. It's been raining some, which I love; I love running in the rain. It's also been sunny too; unfortunately San Diego weather seemed to have clung to us everywhere we've been on this trip. But it's often cool and gray here, which suits me. It's funny; Liesl and I are happiest on opposite days. I like it gray and dark and she likes it blue and bright.

Up next: Dublin!

Cheers,

Stephanie

Exploring the North, Part 3

This is the last part, I promise.

So back to two weeks ago, we woke up at Emma's parents house around 9:30 a.m. to begin day two of our adventure. We were going to go see some old churches and graveyards that day, as well as the west coast of the northern part of the Republic of Ireland.

We drove a lot that day and got to see a quite a different part of the Irish countryside than what we're used to. It was brown. We were surprised. I'd long since decided that the entire country was very green. But I was wrong. Emma commented on how beautiful this part of Ireland was. I liked it in a certain way, but Liesl and I agreed that it wasn't as nice as the green parts for us because it looked sort of similar to San Diego nature.

Sometime during our trip I had a surprising realization about this country. I was formerly under the impression that we were living way out in the countryside--"rural Ireland," I would say to people that asked about where we were living. And while, yes, we are living in the middle of nowhere and my statement was more redundant than I had known. You see, Ireland is rural. That's just what the majority of this country is like. It's a small, (mostly) green island that consists primarily of nature, dotted here and there with small towns, and every once in a while with a large city. So my point is that "rural Ireland" is somewhat of a repetitious statement since if you're living in Ireland, chances are that if you don't live in one of the few big cities like Dublin or Belfast, you live in a rural area.

What was most interesting about this part of the country was that most of what we were driving past was peat bogs. Peat is a natural fuel made from decomposing vegetation that gets packed together over thousands of years. Emma stopped the car and we got out and stood on some of the peat, which was the ground there. It was so squishy, my foot kind of sunk when I stepped on it, like it was a giant sponge.

Peat needs to be harvesting and dried to in order to be burned. There was an issue in the past of too many large corporations harvesting it on a big scale, so now it can only be harvested manually so that it doesn't run out. It takes years and years for nature to manufacture it, and if the rate of harvest exceeds the rate of production...well, it would be comparable to the oil situation, though gasoline is used more frequently, by more people and for more purposes than peat I can imagine.

I'd like to make a quick note to American readers, which is probably most of you: gas is not very expensive in the US. It's really not. Not compared to Europe. They measure it differently here, but when you convert it, it's probably about three times as expensive as gas in California. So, next time you think about complaining, think again. (They also call in petrol, just a fun fact). Another thing is the economy. Now I'm no expert on economics, but I understand that US economy is not in good shape, nor is the global economy really, everyone is struggling. However, living in California I got the impression that the US was really just doing horribly, even in comparison with other countries. This is incorrect. While there are countries with better economies than the US, there are many countries--developed countries--that are worse off than the US. Like Ireland for example. We've learned that the economy here is in very bad shape at the moment. Just ask Liesl.

When we got to the airport in Dublin where we first arrived in this country, we got in the immigration line and Liesl went up to the window first. The guy that questioned her seemed of a rather ill disposition, and was quick to note that she did not have very much money for someone that was going to live here for two and a half months. He then proceeded to lecture her about how bad the state of the economy here was. (Unfortunately I couldn't hear most of this, she just told me about it). I joined her at the counter shortly after that, and eventually the guy seemed satisfied that out intentions were not suspicious. He then did a complete 180 of personality and was friendly and even laughed about how he accidentally stamped Liesl's passport giving her more than a year to stay in the country. I guess an immigration officer's job description includes putting on a false and ascetic personality until you're clear.

But back to our travels.

We saw this graveyard/ruin of a monastery or church...

This really cool old church that's made of marble and quartz...

...And this sweet graveyard/church ruin that was on the coast:

During the course of these three days we talked about many things, Liesl, Emma and I, and much of our discourse was on culture, and differences between cultures. Emma had lived in the US and was brought up in Ireland, so she had a big picture view of the two cultures. We talked about the differences in the demeanor of our cultures. Something that Liesl and I had noticed about the people in this country is that, while they are incredibly kind, they are very reserved. There's a sort of seriousness about people here that is not present in Southern Californians. Irish culture, Emma said, is very focused on death and sadness. Conversation here generally consists of talk of woes and the struggles of life. When a person dies here it's a very big deal, and the post-death procedures are important.

We got onto the topic of politics, and Emma noted how different politics is between the two countries. I asked if she thought that the government here was good. She said no, no one thinks that their own government is good. American politics though, she said, was so much more emotional than those of Ireland. Keeping with the reservation of the culture I suppose, politicians are diplomatic and the people are not over-enthusiastic about politics. In the US, Emma observed, people get so emotional about politics, people shout and cry...there's none of that here.

I only fully understood what she meant when Liesl and I watched the first part of the Presidential Debate. I am ashamed to say that I don't think I had ever seen a presidential debate--or really any political debate--until this. I was astounded at the severe lack of restraint that the candidates exhibited, bluntly attacking the other with little to no pretense of diplomacy. I hadn't realized that our politicians were so forthcoming. And when Obama won the election, and Liesl and I watched his acceptance speech while eating apple pancakes I fully realized the intensity of emotion about American politics. The  shouts of joy were no doubt deafening in person, and were enthusiastic enough to warrant lengthy pauses in the speech.

On the other hand, there is a certain facet of this culture that demonstrates far less reservation that that of our own: radio. Radio is not censored here, and it can get pretty intense, Emma said. She said that most profanities here are not uncommon in everyday speech; they just don't make as big of a deal about cussing as we do. Pretty much any swear word can be said on the radio, and particularly with politics it can get fairly obscene. It's even more laughable to me now that our radio stations frequently bleep out words like "sex" and "ass."

That night we went to Emma's aunt's house for dinner. Her aunt was super nice, just a totally wonderful person. She didn't know that we were coming or that we were vegan and vegetarian until the day before, but she cooked us this huge, delicious meal and let us hang out at her house for a few hours.

We spent a lot of time at her house sitting in the living room by a peat-fueled fire and talking to Emma about a number of things including the large and interesting topics of visas and jobs. It was a really nice evening. We returned to Emma's house afterwards.

The next day we were going to go see this ancient island monastery, but boats weren't going there anymore because it was the off season. Our backup plan was to go see these caves, but they were only open on certain days that did not include Thursdays. So we ended up going to a ceramic factory, and it was actually really cool.

If you live in Ireland, the UK or the US you've probably, at some point in your life, encountered some pottery from Belleek. We went on a tour of their factory. It was really cool. The ceramics are done mostly by hand (they do use molds), and they're quite intricate and beautiful. A lot of them are woven which is cool.

Before the tour we were looking around in the gift shop. I was fantasizing about one day owning some of these pricey, delicate pieces when I came upon a collection of them with fragile clovers painted on them. Clovers?! I was shocked into disbelief. I hadn't seen a single clover the whole time we'd been here! (At this point, that was about three weeks). I'd had a dream as a child to find a four leaf clover in Ireland. I spent much of my youth searching for one whenever I was in a patch of shamrocks, but I never found one. I was certain that they'd be everywhere in Ireland, but I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and I was sure that I hadn't seen one since arriving. I hastened over to Emma and asked her if there were shamrocks here. Not really, she said, and they call them clovers. I thought that shamrock was the proper term. She said that there are some here, but there are probably more of them in the US. I've no idea how they became such an iconic symbol of Ireland, but it's definitely a scam. I'm still pretty disappointed about this actually.

We were to get our bus home out of a small island called Enniskillen. It doesn't seem like an island because the channel of water around it is very small, but it is an island nonetheless. Enniskillin has an old castle on the water, and we went on a self-guided tour through the museum. It was pretty interesting, there were a lot of battles there.

We had some food and then went to the bus station where we said goodbye and thank you to Emma, who not only showed us some amazing sights but paid for almost all of the expenses of our trip. We got on the bus, then two and a half hours and one transfer later we were picked up in Kells by John. We went home and that concluded our mini trip to the north.

I know that I've missed some no doubt very interesting and important things about our small trip, but it's been weeks since then so I've forgotten some things. Plus, I am not able to, nor is it my goal to relay every single little detail of our trip, the small one or the larger one that is still in process. But I'm sure that right after I finish this I'll think of some important things that I should have added. Ah well, such is life.

Stay tuned for: Halloween, and our lives since then.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Exploring the North, Part 2

Hello,

Following our excursion to Belfast, we headed to the north coast, to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. We descended multiple sets of steps to get out to the soft, green cliffs that the bridge spans, passing many an out of breath tourist coming back from the sight. The bridge came into view when we reached to the top of a steep set of steps with a guard. Each of us climbed down the stairs and stepped onto the bridge. What we'd been told of the bridge was that it swayed in the wind in a lot and that it was really cool. That's pretty much all we knew about it.

The bridge was significantly smaller than I'd imagined, and newer. I crossed it, looking down into the vibrantly turquoise water. It looked like the Caribbean. Emma told us that they rebuilt the bridge every year for safety. Oh. I guess I'd assumed that, like most of the sights in Ireland, a large part of its worth was that it was old. Also, the bridge didn't sway, but that's just because it wasn't very windy I think. It was a cool bridge, in an absolutely stunningly beautiful area, and I enjoyed our trip there, but I was a bit confused as to why this bridge was such a big tourist attraction. I found out that it's because there has been a bridge spanning those cliffs for centuries. That really makes perfect sense, because surely a bridge that old would not be one that you would want to walk across unless you're pretty reckless or you have a sincere death wish.

It was really nice standing up on this bridge above the blue water with the green cliffs all around.

We were on a tight schedule to get to our next destination before dark, so we didn't spend much time at the other side of the bridge. We crossed back and ascended the hundreds of steps back to the parking lot. The hills were so green and so soft looking that I couldn't help but run my hands over the hair-like grass that covered them. This urge to touch the things we were seeing became routine for us during this adventure, and we normally acted upon it. But for some reason, whether it was a building or plant, touching these things was never quite as satisfying as it seemed like it should have been.

It was getting late as we arrived at the parking lot of the Giant's Causeway, so we took a short bus trip down to it instead of walking in order to maximize the daylight in which we could see this awesome sight. And it really was awesome, in every sense of the word. It was also a little bizarre. In case you're unfamiliar with it, the Causeway is a natural phenomenon in the form of a mass hexagonal blackish-gray stone pillars protruding vertically from the ground up to a height of maybe twenty feet, and tapering down from there and descending into the ocean. It's truly spectacular. Most of them have six sides, though some have only five. Though they're not absolutely symmetrical, many of them are pretty close.

Now if there was ever a sight that should be touched, it's this one. We immediately began walking and climbing on the strange, geometric columns. Right away I climbed to the top of the tallest ones and stood looking down at the sea and at these odd formations. Emma told us that they were created by a volcano; they're volcanic rock, to which their blackness of color can be attributed. But a volcano, in Ireland? It seemed slightly absurd.

I should mention now that this is the most geographically, botanically and zoologically mellow country that I've ever heard of. They literally do not have any poisonous plants or animals here. (They don't even have mosquitoes; those bugs that I mentioned turned out to be these things called midges that don't bite or sting, which is why I haven't gotten a single mosquito bite living here despite my having run through what I had formerly assumed were droves of them). When we were in the forest taking of tour of the property with John, Liesl asked if there were any poisonous plants that we should be aware of. He said no, they don't have poison oak or anything like that here. There aren't even any poisonous spiders (though there are giant ones), and the most dangerous plant we've encountered is stinging nettle: no big deal at all. They don't really have dangerous wild animals either. I believe a deer or a badger would be the most frightening large creature that you might encounter. Also, as I've mentioned, the mountains here are like Californian hills. (Although, they do have some sharp cliffs here, so my original statement isn't entirely accurate in terms of geography).

So as you can see, the concept of a volcano in this country is somewhat silly. But they don't have volcanoes anymore, the one in question erupted some 50 to 60 million years ago. Or at least that's when the Causeway was formed. We were too late to go to the visitor center, so we didn't really learn about the science or legend behind it the Causeway, but we think that the shape of the columns has something to do with pressure, and the way that the lava dried. And honestly, I often don't care about knowing exactly why nature is the way that it is. I'd be somewhat interested to learn about this particular phenomenon, but I don't feel like I missed out by not hearing about it at the time. I could look up everything about it right now and relay it to you, but I'd rather talk about my personal experience of it. And my experience was of standing at the highest point of a unique natural rock formation on a Tuesday afternoon, feeling the wind on my face and reveling in the thrill of being at such a wonderful, unique place.

I went down to where some of the pillars disappeared into the ocean, and stood a bit too close to the waves. My feet went for a short swim when a wave came in and washed over my shoes. The Giant's Causeway actually goes on under the sea all the way over to Scotland I believe, though I'm not certain whether or not it actually comes up onto the land there. Legend has it that it was created by a giant--hence the name--that wanted to get across to Scotland to see his lover. I haven't really been able to find any information on the Scottish Causeway, so I think that it at least isn't as prominent there as it is on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland.

Liesl and I took great pleasure in exploring the Causeway. It was both of our favorite parts of our short trip. The rocks didn't cover as much land as a I thought they did, but it was still endlessly delightful to walk on them.

We walked up the hill to the car and set off for Dunluce castle, a ruin. It was on the darker side of dusk when we arrived, and picture taking didn't really work out very well. It was also incredibly cold and windy. But we walked down below the castle--it was after hours so we couldn't go "inside"--and saw a little tunnel down to to the ocean, which was cool. Emma said that there was a  legend that a man was once lured to his death by a mermaid at the end of this tunnel. Irish history, she told us while we were driving at some point on the trip, is a combination of fact and fiction. The line between the legends and the historical events is blurred, so they're sort of all one now. I'd asked her about the legend of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, if it was real, or if there were any snakes in Ireland now or ever. She said that there are no wild snakes in Ireland now, and that she wasn't sure whether there were at one point or not. It seems kind of unlikely actually, when you think about it. It's too cold here for snakes to survive I'm sure. St. Patrick's Day, Emma said in response to my other inquiry, is celebrated only in the Republic of Ireland, but, she conceded, is definitely a far more popular holiday in Chicago.

The castle is a ruin now, but a castle was first build on the cliff in the 13th century. I believe Dunluce was built on the ruin of that castle some centuries afterward. Emma said that that often happened with buildings, like churches and castles. When one was crumbling another would be build on top of it. It's a pretty sweet location for a castle, set into a cliff overlooking the sea. Emma told us another story about it. The ballroom was the room closest to the ocean, and once, the family that lived there invited their rivals over for a ball. While they were in the ballroom, the waves came up and oh so conveniently washed all of the rivals into the sea. The family that owned the castle was totally fine (I got the impression that they didn't get wet at all actually). I guess that's just how life was in Medieval/Renaissance Ireland.

We went to dinner after the castle, and then to Emma's parents' house where we stayed the night. It was really nice being in a house that wasn't our house.

Today--more than a week since this trip by the way--Liesl and I are finishing up the important process of voting. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to encourage you all to please, please go out and vote on Tuesday. This is a really important election, not just because of the Presidential part. They are a lot of important propositions too, and  for other positions too. If you don't know who/what to vote for, just read up on it online. That's what we've been doing. It's actually really fun. And did anyone catch the Presidential debate? Hilarious, right?

Stephanie