Hello all! Welcome to my blog where I hope to keep you updated on my travels in and around Galway, Ireland, as well as the rest of Europe. I’ll try to give you a brief update of many of the things, which I have done in Galway. I'll start with a few examples of funny cultural stories involving the clubs I'm involved in.
Me and two friends attempted to join the basketball club and on the first night of practice, we unfortunately realized that their club team is their varsity team. We were playing against 6-4 to 6-6 lanky europeans who were too thin to play gaelic football, rugby, or hurling (typical irish sports, and too uncoordinated for soccer. During practice, we ran a suicide, did pushups, situps, and also had to drills! We practiced 1 on 1 post defense, and contesting shots. Clearly after two weeks of not doing any sort of exercise, we were burnt out along with the other Americans who showed up! At the end of practice, we were told by the 6-8 intimidating coach, "guys, good practice today. We have a Galway cup game tomorrow. For all the Americans, we thank you for coming to training today but we ask that none of you come back tomorrow because I'm going to stick with the team we've got so far." We were laughing after hearing the news! Basically, I went to the gym hoping to play some basketball for fun but ended up suffering through a tryout, which was extremely tiring since I hadn't really exercised in a month and had been drinking almost every night before that point.
I joined the kayaking club and we had our first training session, which was a lot of fun. However it got colder while we were out there and towards the end. We all got out of the water and were told to get in our kayak on top of the fence of a bridge 20 feet above the water. I saw one of the professionals get pushed off and his full body went underwater before he got up. Then I had to go, and i was a little nervous especially when he told me I was going in backwards. I actually wanted to go because I was freezing by just standing outside the kayak in the thirty degree weather. It was quite the rush i got from the freefall but it certainly was cold going under the water. The next practice we had, we kayaked down the deceptively fast river corrib that was a test of some of the newly learned skills. Even though the river was moving extremely fast, we were told to constantly paddle to keep control of the kayak because if you lost a little control, the water could take you anywhere including one of the couple bridges we had to steer through. I'm reallly excited to continue to kayak because I can't do anything like that at Marquette.
I'm also doing the frisbee club, which has been a lot of fun. We have training(practice) twice a week for an hour and then we basically have to go to the pubs for a few pints after practice. The culture here hasn't been too hard to adjsut to but I couldn't see myself doing this my whole life primarily because i don't think i can afford it. Many americans are overwhelmed by the sheer fact that its common to be drinking every night of the week. In fact, at the pubs, mon. through thursday, the pubs and clubs are busiest because the students all go out every one of those nights. However, many of them go home on weekends so the nightlife dies a little bit but is still a lot of fun. I realized after a few weeks that I simply can't afford to go out every night! By playing frisbee, I'll get the opportunity to travel cheaply all over Ireland when we have tournaments. This weekend, I'll be at Limerick staying at one of our teammates houses there. You can't beat cheap traveling so I am going to try and take advantage of every weekend opportunity I can.
I'm also in the mountaineering club, which takes day trips almost every sunday to different mountains in Ireland. Last week, I hiked up a 2000 ft maamturk valley in Connemara National Park. I bought some cheap hiking boots, windpants, and was all ready to go. However, the winds were absolutely vicious with gusts aroudn 100 mph. When our group needed a break, we basically just leaned against the wind to hold us up. I will have pictures up soon from my adventure there. Another club that I participate in is the badminton club, just another excuse to do something that isn't offered at Marquette, and its a lot of fun. It's also a reason for me not to go out every night and spend lots of euro. However, they charge 2 euro every time you want to go into the rec center here, which is outrageous in my opinion. I'm not going to pay 200 euro for a semester pass, so I've been doing my best to sneak in during rush hour to play badminton, basketball, and the occasional work out. I won't bee too active in many of these clubs, but its something to do if i have some free time, which is more than I thought I'd have.
I haven't dedicated myself to schoolwork like i usually do in the states. Its really nice having only one exam in just about every classes and thats it. I have a few presentations and projects that I have to do but other than that, there is not much required of you at all. Many of the local Irish students don't attend class so lectures are about half full on a good day. Every class is a giant lecture so the teacher's don't provide as much individual help. Basically, going to class is pointless here because every teacher puts the material they go through in class on blackboard(MU's version of D2L). Therefore, the classes essentially rely on you using many textbooks to learn the material. Most of my classes have multiple teachers throughout the semester so you can't really ever get comfortable in the class. I need to self-teach myself the material and i will probably wait until the last minute because all i really need for these courses to transfer over is a 40 percent. However, I will definitely achieve greater than that(for you mom)! The classes I am taking are managerial accounting 3 (class way above where i should be, so its kind of diffficult to understand everything), management of organizational behavior, intro to supply chain management, Climate change (a class just for fun), and a Irish culture class, which has very interesting. Its basically a class explaining the irish culture renaissance through literature, arts, dancing, and sports. I have been attending most of my classes unless they interfere with traveling. However, they usually don't because I have one class on Thursday and 0 on Fridays. That might change when visitors bombard the Niland house.
Speaking of the Niland house, (where i live) it leaves a bit to be desired. However, I can't complain too much because of its prestigious location in comparison to some of the Americans I have met here who live 30 minutes from the city center. it sits one block east of the city center where all the shops, bars, and restaurants of Galway are located. Our apartment has a few housekeeping issues but I’m not too worried about it. Everyone takes their turn cleaning up and no one complains in the apartment. Our showers are horrible because the water is very weak and it’s always cold! We have to turn on the hot water turbo boost and wait ten minutes for it charge up and then we get 5 minutes of hot water maybe. The first days, our landlord Oliver left the heat off, so it was freezing in my bedroom, especially since the window in the room is impossible to fully close. Also, our internet is an ethernet cord that is connected to all thirty apartments in the house, so it is incredibly slow, and often fails to work when I need most(i.e trying to book our hostels for Scotland the night before we left took about 4 hours when it only needed to take about 30 minutes) Some of our appliances are really nice and a few others could use an upgrade. The washing machine is also a dryer, but it takes 3 days to wash any clothes, which is good for me, because then I’ll feel better about wearing the same jeans 5 days in a row. The stove and oven are very old and you can’t see the temperature that you are trying to set the stove to. I unfortunately burned my first pizza in the oven probably because I wasn’t paying enough attention. I haven’t cooked a whole lot other than ramen. Most of my meals involve fruit(grapefruit, orange, clementine, or apple) and a sandwich(pb+j or hot ham n cheese) because we have gone out to eat a few times and money is going down the drain with so much time spent at the pubs. I've also been fortunate to have an awesome roommate Alex volunteer to cook for my other roommate and I, provided we help out a little on supplies and dishes. I have nothing but praise for his cooking so far, especially the beef stew served on Sundays, fajitas, and BBQ chicken wings, . For the most part, my health has been perfect over here, probably because its never been freezing cold over here. Sorry all of you in the States, but you can't complain because it's warmer there now than it is here.
Proabably the best part of the experience so far has been traveling. So far, I have made it to Connemara National Park and also, the Burren and Cliffs of Moher twice. Check out my facebook for a bunch of pictures. I should have a lot more up in the near future. Ireland's landscape is just incredible to witness the stark contrast of rural farmland with snow capped mountain, with lakes, forest, and the ocean. The views are just breathtaking from all the day trips we have taken so far. This past week, I visited Scotland for 5 days! I had a blast spending two days in Glasgow, two in Edinburgh, and one in an airport(on accident). We missed our plane on Saturday night and had to pay 60 pounds for a sunday afternoon flight to dublin, which so happens to be delayed! We attended a Celtic football club soccer match at 3 and left a little bit early to run to the hostel, and then to the train station for the 5:00 train! It just so happened that there are two trains on platform 15, and we get on the wrong one, which went to the middle of nowhere. We even asked if this train was headed to prestwick international airport and got two verifications. However, the lady who collects our tickets after we leave the station tells us we're on the wrong one. So we went back to the main station and got on the right train an hour late at 6. We get to the airport 5 minutes after the flight leaves and with RyanAir airports, they are in the middle of nowhere so the next flight was not until the next day at 11:40. My roomate Dan, and two girls from Marquette we were traveling had a great night spending fifteen hours in the prestwick airport. It was the coldest night of sleep I ever got. I woke up once with my winter coat and my hands were frostbitten. It was so cold I could not believe! We got woken up three times by security once, a coffee shop the other time, and then just the crowd of early flights! Ryanair is not on my good list right now. Besides that one mishap, Scotland was so much fun. We also took a 12 hour day trip up to Lochness with a bunch of photo stops along the way. The views were incredible as well. We got to see her where Mel Gibson filmed Braveheart, took an hour boat cruise on the Lochness in search of the monster. In Edinburgh, we took a scary tour of the underground vaults, which were filled with 13th century torture stories and haunted ghosts and gyspies that lived here. In Glasgow, we saw the soccer game and it was awesome just to be at the game because there was so much passion for the game as well as camaderie.
Overall, I'm really excited to travel again. Actually, I'm going to Madrid and Barcelona in 9 days to stay with my friend Rachel from MU in Madrid. Also i'll be meeting quinn in barcelona with rachel for the weekend! Then we are going to spend thursday night in madrid and friday through sunday in Barcelona then go back to madrid for monday and tuesday. I'm really excited but I may need to brush up on some Espanol! (especially so i don't get on the wrong train and miss another flight). Hopefully my future posts won't be as long and unorganized as this but its a good idea so I can actually remember what i did over these 5 months when I look back on it next year.
Cheers,
Brian
