Well it has been a pretty crazy week; still trying to convert my sleep schedule to Ireland time. It’s been hard because I am usually up late talking to you all at home or out experiencing Ireland with the Irish! The rain has finally come- and hasn’t left. It is in the forties though so at least it isn’t really cold on top of the rain. But boy am I glad I have rain boots!
On Monday I went to my first Introduction to Irish Music class. The “lecturer” (not professor) seems really cool. She went through a bunch of instruments and played reels for us to see the difference between styles of music. For one of our final essays we have to go to a “session” and write about it. A session is where a group of people meet up in a pub, and get together to play music together. She suggested a pub down in the city called Spailpin Fanach that has UCC students play traditional Irish music on Monday nights. We ventured down that night and after a few turns we found it. The pub was exactly what you would expect an Irish pub to look like; with the old stone walls and wooden tables. The second we walked in we could hear the music and had to walk through and follow the noise to find the students. There were probably more than twenty kids sitting at this long table all playing along with each other. There were fiddlers, flute players, accordions, and a few guitars. It was great music and a nice place to just hang out. We will definitely be going back this week!
This week has been full of Physics- my oh-so-favorite subject (not). We have problem sets due every week which I have been worried about as I have no idea where to even start. But I had physics tutorial on Wednesday night, which made me feel much better about the class. A teacher’s assistant does the problems with different numbers and basically goes through the whole thing. It was awesome. I wish we had this sort of thing at QU, but with a class of thirty kids- we just go straight to the professor with questions and don’t need tutorials. I am still getting used to the huge lecture classes being one of a hundred plus. On Friday I had my first of four Physics lab, which was also taught by grad students (?). The three hours were absolutely miserable. All the students in the lab were from QU so it was nice that everyone was on the same page. It was difficult because we were all starting the lab knowing nothing about how it works over here. So they had to go over lab reports, protocols, pretty much everything. Plus they used some crazy old machines for the lab that we had never seen before. Needless to say I am not looking forward to the next lab in two weeks! To end my physics full week- we saw our lecturer on the bus! He gave us a few good tips about the city and helped us find the bus station.
On Saturday a group of us took a bus to Midleton (about a half hour away from the bus station) and went to the Jameson Distillery of Irish Whiskey. The old distillery was founded in 1867 but stopped production in 1975. They went through the history of Irish whiskey, how it is made, a tour of the restored distillery and at the end gave us a complimentary drink. I tried the whiskey straight up, but ended up making a mixed drink! It was nice to get out of Cork and due to the rainy weather- was a good day to go.
I am starting to make travel plans. So much to do! I believe a group of us are going to Dublin this coming weekend, so I need to start looking at hostels. It is about a 5 hour bus ride (only 17 euros roundtrip!). We also booked flights to London in February for only 21 euros round trip! Lots of planning to do yet it seems as if we don’t have enough weekends! Keep an eye on my flicker photos; I will add a few up as soon as possible!!
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