I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane

Unfortunately I have not been able to keep up with this blog as much as I would like to and now I am leaving for London and Paris and I will not be able to have contact with anyone until next Friday. But I will come back and blog about my experiences there and of course our family bonding in Portmagee, my feeling of disconnect in Dublin, and possible an experince in an Ireland doctors office. Wish me well on my travels and I will blog as soon as I can.

So now we have been here going on three weeks and yet it seems like a lifetime. One thing I forgot to mention about Sunday (September 13th)is that we walked into Spiddal to go to mass. Our mass was all in Gaelic and it was hard to follow yet you would catch those moments that you would know what to do or more so what to say. Communion was a free for all and not uniform enough like we were used to. Also in true Irish fashion a funeral procession followed regular mass just as if it was everyday life and it is. Death for the Irish is just how it is.

Class started two weeks ago and let me just say that classes are long but now after having two weeks of classes under our belts it is not so bad as long as you have a cup of coffee and a digestive from time to time. JP opened up the pub Thursday night and we had our first family bonding dance party which was hilarious and so much fun.Our first excursion set of that weekend for the town of Clifden in the region of Connemara. Our first stop was Mamean, a mountain in the region of Connemara. We all climbed it at our own pace and went to different levels. Once on your own you would feel completely alone yet if you talked at the slightest shout the person on the next mountain over could hear you. So really you were not alone. We stopped off in the town of Leenane for lunch and then we went on to Clifden where we say the Nobel Prizing winning Seamus Heaney read poetry in a church. Afterwards was just suppose to be a comfortable night in the pub drinking tea and coffee while we listened to traditional music played by a world know accordion player but then we ran into some guys from Derry and got to talking with them. All in all it was a great night spent in two pubs talking and laughing and dancing. Saturday (September 19) was Connemara national Park where we climbed yet another trail on a mountain and saw some amazing views of the bay. Aughnanure Castle was our last stop. There was not much left of the castle but what we saw, what we heard and what we imagined made it a more enjoyable experience.

Sunday was our day trip into Galway where we went to mass at the Cathedral. Mass was amazing the music was just better I had not realized that I missed singing so much until the congregation joined in in song. We found a mecca in Tesco which has become our new place of groceries.Next was another week of classes followed by a night of Celebrating on Thursday September 24th for Arthur's Day in the pubs of Galway where pints were broken on every street and in every pub and we toasted Arthur at 17:59 for 250 years of Guiness. This was an ok night except for the guy who spilt half his Guiness down my back. Excursion two was to the town of Westport where we saw Ballintubber Abbey on the way a beautiful church and cemetary that has lasted through years of destruction and fightig. Next was the Foxford woolen Mills where we saw how their products are made and I indulged my self inthe purchase of a 100% Irish Lambswool scarf. Next was the house of Tom Hennigan where we were regaled with the tales of his life as a peasant in this small cottage where he lived with his family until the 1970s and we ended there with a healthy portion of tea and scones. That night we stayed in Westport and had a hostel/house all to our selves. Shannon Megan adn I went to an art exhibt and recieved a free glass of wine, way better than the 4 euro stff, and took the chance to make a print in the studio.

Now for Saturday... The climbing of Croagh Patrick is someting to be told of and experienced. It is over 700 meters to the top along with steap inclines and moving rocks under our feet. I was on my own most of the time and I would have preferred it that way it was much more rewarding reaching the top knowing I had pushed myself to do this. This is usually a pilgramage climb that is to be done bare foo, ehich three of the guys on this trip did, adn it was spirtiual. I recited the Our Father all the way up adn all the way down, along with a group of us reciting it at the top of the mountain with a few fellow climbers. It was probably the most self rewarding thing I have yet to do in my life because I did not even think that I would be able to do it let alone finish it. Going down was more scary than going up because of the incline and the moving rocks, I fell four times but only the last time left a mark as the other time I just feel in mud or dirt. I will never forget this experience and I dont think I will climb it again... but you never know. After Croagh Patrick, to let us rest, we went to the Westport Horse fair and saw the town life.

Sunday was pretty relaxed except for the regional championships of Gaelic Football where Spiddal won! It really helped fix the void that I have with not beinga ble to watch the Johnnies play football. The game is almost basketball, soccer and touch football all roled into one with hitting, pushing, kicking the ball, bouncing the ball and then finally putting the ball in the goal or through the goal posts. It was complete worth the 10 euros and it was jsut great to see the common passion we all have for orgainized sports.

Some Irish Slang!

Here are slang words that I will add to over the semester!

Takeaway=Takeout
match=game
pitch=field
soccer=soccer
football=gaelic football
pub=bar
sweets=candy
biscuits=cookies
ham=bacon
to ask someone for a ride=sex
to ask someone for a lift=a car ride
crack=fun
chips=french fries
crisps=chips
hackney=cab
yankee doodle dandy=american

Home

So we are finally here after months of waiting.

2 days and 8 hours earlier (ignoring time change)...

At eleven in the morning Nicole, Jessi and I set out on our journey to Ireland from Minnesota. As we landed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin we were surprise to see a larger airport for a not so popular city. As we arrived at our gate we saw that there was a plane hijacking in Mexico... that was not something we really wanted to see when we had much farther to go. The woman at the counter announced that our flight would be delayed until 4:45 so once we landed in New York we had less than two hours left to get our luggage and switch airports from La Guardia to JFK. We grabbed a cab and, just like in the movies, I said, "JFK as fast as you can please" and he did get us to Terminal 3 but we went to the side that was closed after knocking on the windows and running around someone finally told us to go to the other side we took all our baggage and booked it to the check in station. The first woman we went to of course was closed but of course she could not tell us that until we were done telling our whole story. The second woman we went to told us in a well thanks sort of way that we were very late to check our bags since we were there at 9:05 pm and our bags were to be sent off by 9. She offered no help to us and our stomachs sank while we headed to the ticketing line to book a plane for the next flight. All of a sudden another woman no an angel asked me what we needed, I quickly explained what was going on she immediately got on the phone, grabbed five tickets for our luggage she filled them out as we took the old ones off while she grabbed a cart we loaded on the luggage and then ran to security where they reassured us we would get on the plane so we should slow down, catch our breath and walk to the gate but we could not breath until all three of us were seated on the plane. After hours of waiting, with the weight of jet leg on our shoulders, in the Shannon Airport for others to arrive we set out on our grand journey.

So now a few days later we are here and settling in. We are still adjusting to smaller portions of food, who new feeding five people is so expensive, and a new environment. Thursday night we headed into Spiddal, which is a 30 minute walk, we of course ended up at the first pub we saw, Hughes, and that was where I had my first pint of Guinness in Ireland! On Friday a trip was made into Salthill and Galway to explore. Along with the beautiful ocean we found many interesting things to see and come back to along with stores to fill our every need. As well as a sighting of our first nude bather! I of course got sunburned because of the unusual weather Ireland had this weekend.

Saturday was the trip to the Aran Islands where we were to seek out Dun Aengus which Jessi, Kathleen and I did not find but we did explore old lighthouse ruins in which we frolicked as if they were an ancient playground. Saturday night was one I will never forget, after an unsuccessful trip into Spiddal a few of us partook in an Irish Wedding reception in which we were welcomed warmly.

Sunday was a trip to W.B. Yeats' house where we met our Literature professor It was too short of a trip and I could have spent days there writing poetry. We also saw the Coole park just as equally enchanting. On our way back to the cottages we stopped for a much needed Aldi run only to find out we could only use cash. But under hectic circumstances we rose above to figure everything out.

My first few days of class are still not finished but my History class was very intriguing while I found my Theology class as more of a forum to bounce ideas and questions off of our professor. Our seminar class was today and we will definitely be learning a lot but it will be worth it. Tomorrow is my literature class which should be great. An impromptu adventure into Spiddal was rewarding and also devastating as I dropped my camera and now it does not work! On Friday we get to hear Seamus Heaney read! So in preparation for this we are of course reading his poetry which is so rich and satisfying yet sort of lost and spooky. To do this reading we had a lovely poetry reading in cottage 6 and I ended to night with a glass of wine a piece of chocolate and a movie with a few of my fellow travelers. All and all a great start to the trip of a lifetime.

Redemption

Who grants this thing called redemption? This is a question that has come up through the viewing of the film Boy A. This film is about a Man in England that is released into society after spending most of his life in jail for murdering a girl with his friend when they were young boys. Of course no one knows who he his and after time he gains friends, a girlfriend and a job. But his truth is let out and of course society goes after him with pitch forks and torches and he kills himself. So redemption... obviously this character gained more redemption in death than in life but why can't people gain redemption in life to. Society is plagued with criticism... we can't stop. Yet people can be redeemed and forgiven if given the chance. Society is a person quick to criticise, quick to forgive and sometimes too quick to forgive and we let our guard down. I myself thought these two boys murdered another boy and when I found out it was a girl I was more appalled than when I thought it was a boy. This just goes to show that opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt because no opinion is immune to biases. We all have stereotypes and preconceived notions of how we think people are when really we need to listen. Redemption can be granted but only with the act of remorse.



So for my life this past Friday I went to Uptown to sit wit my friend Elyse while she got her tattoo. Then on Saturday my dad, my brother and I went to the Basilica Block Party and I saw two great Minnesota bands Tapes n' Tapes and The Hold Steady, who unfortunately now live in Brooklyn. It was great to see them and feel the beat of the bands inside my chest. The greatest statement the whole night came from the frontman of The Hold Steady right before they left the stage... He said ... We are Franz Nicolay, Bobby Drake, Tad Kubler, Galen Polivika and Craig Finn and with the Father, The Son, the Holy Ghost and all of you we are the Hold Steady. It was so gratifying, I am glad I did not waste more time watching the Counting Crows than I did.

Waiting For What?

I am done waiting... waiting for a job, waiting for something new, waiting for something to happen. I was going to wait until I arrived in Ireland for my semester abroad to continue this blog but I am done waiting. My summer has been fun and boring. All things were looking up at the start of this summer because I had a full time job at North Clinic but that ended quickly when I was laid off on my birthday two weeks after I came back. I never thought not having a job over the summer would be hard but it is, it plays with your mood and especially with your bank balance. Ireland looms over my head along with all of the expenses I will have there and this makes you always think about every cent spent... this can make you resentful and frustrated.

Over all though I have still been able to do some things fun such as swimming, the Rock the Garden Concert, Twins games, movies, gardening, the Walker Art Center where I saw Tomas Saraceno's exhibit Lighter Than Air and the exhibit The Quick and the Dead where a portrait of a man with piercing eyes stared back at me as if he was staring into my soul and the farmer's market in Minneapolis and I have the Basilica Block Party coming up this weekend. After all of this, after the random jobs for friends, some volunteering, constant vision therapy sessions twice a week and the almost two months of trying to find a job and receiving nibbles instead of bites I am done waiting. So I will start now and finish out my summer with some fulfillment through this blog. I want to switch gears and focus this blog on what I am doing including music, Twins Games, get togethers, concerts, books, and a little theory. So to get my feet wet here is a topic I have been muling over the past couple of weeks.

How have we come to treat mental health problems? Through my viewing of the movies Lars and the Real Girl and The Chumscrubber I hope to discuss how we treat instead of heal our loved ones with mental issues. Mental problems should be nursed with compassion and not stares of disgust and distance. America has this obsession of being fake. We will do anything to be a little less than ourselves whether it is through booze, drugs, fashion, makeup or plastic surgery. The worst part is that we don't only do it to others we, maybe even more so than others, put this pressure on ourselves. We need to let ourselves and each other be while an effort is put forth towards compassion and understanding. This is what is taught in Lars and the Real Girl.

Do not be fooled by the description of the movie where it says Lars falls n love with a sex doll that was made to his specifications because the movie Lars and the Real Girl is so much more than that. In fact when I watched this movie I could not help but think that someone with plastic surgery is more fake than Bianca. This movie teaches how a community came together to understand Lars and his relationship with Bianca. In fact through out the movie Bianca becomes more human than plastic to the community at the same time she becomes more plastic to Lars because he realizes the difference between her and the people around him, that they care for him and respond to him and she cannot. This movie is awkward but it will make you see how mental illnesses are just the same as wounds in that they need to be healed and resolved not just treated.

The Chumscrubber deals more with the pressure put on us by peers, parents and ourselves. It deals with how parents can be uncommunicative with their children. This main character Dean gets perscription drugs from his father to take instead of talking about Dean's friend Troy who he found hanging from the ceiling. Dean in the end gives up the pills because he know s he does not need them and the film ends with a telling statement from the film's narrator The Chumscrubber, a comic hero who walks around with his severed head in his hands. The Chumscrubber states, "...so I will do what I have to in this world of freaks and subhuman creatures and this time I will not be ignored. I am the Chumscrubber." The Chumscrubber chooses to be himself as I choose to let go of the job search and try to cultivate an enriched and fulfilling blog.

Space and Time in The Holder of the World.

For our final blog I have decided to discuss one of the main points of the novel The Holder of the World. The main point I want to focus on is that of space and time within the context of how theorists like Juffer would approach this question. Mukherjee has the main character of the novel Beigh Masters focus on the story of the Salem Bibi (Hannah Easton). This creates many different time periods and spaces for the book to discuss and look such as Massachusetts, England and India while also switching between Hannah's time period and Beigh's. The novel is framed by Beigh's time period while in the middle the two are interwoven and it is not until the very end that these time periods enter each other with Beigh taking Venn's time retrieval machine to Hannah's time and she goes into the body of Bhagmati.

On page 255 when Hannah is speaking to her lover Raja she says that she wants him to leave and go with her back to where she is from. Raja mistakes England for Hannah's home and she replies no America but then he replies, "America, England. Fort St. George, Pondicherry."..."Same." I took this to mean that the boundaries of spaces are blended. Spaces can affect one another just as in the novel the English are in India. It is almost as if he is saying the spaces are all the same. Juffer may look at this as if these space are binaries (Mass. v.s. India) that are blended in this same since that through the intertwining of Hannah's and Beigh's stories these binaries are deconstructed.

On the final page Beigh gives the reader a final thought on time through what she thinks Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the Scarlet Letter on. She says, "Preach! Write! Act! He wrote against the fading of the light, the dying of the old program, the distant memory of a shameful, heroic time. Time, O Time! Time to tincture the lurid colors, time for the local understudies to learn their lines, time only to touch and briefly bring alive the first letter of an alphabet of hope and of horror stretching out, and back to the uttermost shores." Just as these stories are interwoven so is time. The old can become new again and the new can become old (maybe this is why the Keats poems starts off each section). History can repeat itself and when we look back times are not that different from our own it is just that they are set in a different space.

Thanks for a great semester, have a great summer and read my blog next semester for tales from Ireland!!!!!