Dear family and friends,

I am terribly sorry I fail so miserably at updating this.  Things get so busy and I just *finally* got (at least moderately) reliable internet.  Since finals are coming up I still don't have time to write out a long post so... back to bullet points!

Over the past month I have:

• Gone to Valencia, Spain
  

1. Met up with two of my sorority sisters from UMD
2. Went out for tapas
3. Tried Aqua de Valencia
4. Climbed the bell tower of the cathedral
5. Saw the embalmed arm of a martyr AND randomly stumbled upon the Holy Grail
6. Ate paella on the beach
7. Saw an IMAX, an aquarium and a really cool dolphin show

• Gone to Dublin
  

1. Took a duck boat ride and saw U2's recording studio
2. Watched the Ireland-France world cup qualifier in a pub 
3. Visited Dublin Castle
4. Took a tour of Kilmaenam Jail

• Gone to Munich

1. Had beer and giant pretzels at Hofbrauhaus
2. Visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
3. Made lots of new friends on the various tours we took (of Munich, of the beer halls, of Dachau)
4. Climbed another bell tower
5. Saw a church that claims it was built by the Devil

Up next: 2 papers due by Friday, a week in Morocco starting Saturday, then an exam and two more papers, back to Dublin to see Eddie Izzard, and then home for the Holidays!

I'm sure i've forgotten some part of my adventures but those soon-due papers are calling... back to work, see you guys in a few weeks!

To the Land of the Faries...

Last week was fairly uneventful. I had a midterm essay due today and, since I had a weekend trip with my study abroad program, I spent all of last week attempting to write it. Probably the biggest even of the week was finally getting Morocco booked! First I had to deal with some high-school era drama when one person decided to convince everyone else in our group it was too expensive and a week in Greece would be cheaper (which is not actually true) but I used my “Lauren is super excited voice” and told them about all the different things we could do in Morocco, and how the exchange rate is in our favor, and how exotic the country is… and then insisted we go book the tickets as soon as they were all back on board. Everyone is now as super excited as I am, crisis averted. ☺
Anyway, this weekend we went to County Kerry at the Southern tip of Ireland to see the Ring of Kerry. We woke up painfully early Friday morning (7:00 is too early to be awake), got ready to go, met outside our apartments at 8:15, annnnd waited for Dennis who was still asleep. He finally gets outside at 8:25. We’re meeting Brian, our CEA director, at 8:30. Supermac’s, where we’re supposed to be meeting Brian, is easily a 20 minute walk. Oops! Way to go Dennis! So we head off at a brisk pace, and halfway there we see Dennis disappear around the corner, already a few minutes ahead. Fifteen minutes later we get to Supermac’s and see Dennis already sitting there with Brian. Naturally, we gave him a hard time about keeping us waiting and then completely deserting us. Apparently, he felt guilty about making us wait and didn’t want us to be late on his behalf, so he decided not to walk with us. Logic FAIL, Dennis! Luckily Brian is very laid back, and we still had plenty of time before our bus was scheduled to leave, so no harm done.
After everyone arrived we headed over to the bus station, ready for the first leg of our journey: a 3 hour bus ride to Limerick. We had a bit of a layover in Limerick and, since it was still fairly early, we had time to wander around a bit and grab a cup of coffee. Then back on the bus, ready for the next 3 hour bus ride to Killarney in Co. Kerry. In Killarney we ended up having a loooong layover because the tour bus to take us around Kerry was stuck in traffic on the way from Cork, where it was coming from having picked up the rest of the tour group. Since we never knew how much longer until the bus would arrive, we had to spend the entire time at the Killarney bus station, which lost its appeal very quickly. Finally, around 6pm, we got on the tour bus and began the hour and a half trip to Carciveen, where we were spending the weekend.
Carciveen was a very cute, quaint liitle Irish village, and we all loved it. Perhaps part of the charm was the movie-plot story that came out of it. Our good friend Dennis had originally been planning to split away from our group to find the town his grandparents had come from. He knew there was a church there that was named after one of his ancestors, and he knew he still had some relatives living there, though he had never met them. Well wouldn’t you know, that town was Carciveen. The church was called the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church, and is thought to be the only church in the world that is not named after a saint. Daniel O’Connell was known as “The Liberator” and is one of the most famous Irishmen of all time so… pretty important guy. On top of seeing the church dedicated to his great great (great?) grandfather, Dennis walked up to the house his grandparents told him his relatives lived in, knocked on the door, and asked if they knew “Willy Muskrat.” (Great name, right?!) Well, Willy was right inside getting ready for Saturday mass and, after the classic “I’m your cousin, from America,” they invited Dennis right in for a cup of tea. Turns out he also has a cousin who is a first year here at NUIG so he’s going to try to get in contact with him. He also now has somewhere to go for Christmas, since he is staying to travel after the semester ends and was planning on spending Christmas alone in a hotel somewhere. Heartwarming, eh?
Ok, back to my own life now. Friday night, after settling into the Ring of Kerry hotel, we had dinner (salmon with roasted vegetables and a lemon tart for dessert. Yum!) and then a Ceili workshop. A ceili is a traditional irish folk dance, think the line dances and such in movies like Pride and Prejudice. We learned the basic steps, and then four different variations. Our tour guide for the weekend explained to us that each village would have their own variation of the dance, though they are all centered around the same basic steps. It was SOO much fun but absolutely exhausting. We weren’t even going through full dances and we still could barely make it through a few cycles! After the ceili we were all very tired, and knew we had to be up early the next morning, so it was off to bed.
Saturday we drove to Valentia Island, famous for its slate. It is a very small island, but one with absolutely incredible views. We walked up a hill to a cliff and could just see the ocean out in front of us. It was breathtaking. We also stopped at a spot that had a great view of the Skellig Islands. The Skellig Islands are two small islands/giant rocks about twelve miles from the coast of Ireland. Around 500 AD, a group of monks moved out to the larger of the two islands, Skellig Michael, and built a monastery at the peak. It was occupied for a number of generations, until a final Viking attack likely wiped out all the inhabitants. Since the island has no fertile ground to raise crops, and little space to keep cattle or other farm animals, the monks would have had to make the long (and dangerous) journey through the sea back to Valentia to stock up on necessary food items. The ruins of the monastery are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of only two in Ireland, the other being the Hill of Tara. Much to my dismay, we weren’t able to go see Skellig Michael up close. ☹
After our morning tour around Valentia, we headed back to the hotel around 2pm for lunch and a free afternoon. We spent the afternoon napping and then wandering around the town, taking a closer look at the church and peeking into a few of the shops. Later in the night, after dinner, we had a presentation about Gaelic Football, presented by members of two of the All-Ireland champion teams, as well as by one of the most famous footballers in all of Ireland (says Brian… he could barely sit still he was so excited). If you don’t know what Gaelic football is, I would highly suggest youtube-ing it. It’s a strange combination of soccer, rugby, football, and basketball. It’s a very fast-paced game where pretty much anything goes. Brian says there may still be some championship games going on, so we’re going to try to get tickets for a game ☺
After the presentation, we had table quiz night! My team didn’t do so well, but in our defence a lot of the questions were sports related and, more specifically, European sports related, asking who played for which team in what year, and which county football team won this tournament in this year. The “local” team (the presenters stayed around and formed a team) ended up winning. It was still fun though, I quite enjoy trivia.
Sunday was spent on a morning walk to some nearby rock forts from the first century, then a bus ride around the Ring of Kerry for the afternoon, ending back in Killarney. Sunday was very foggy, so visibility wasn’t that great, but the scenery was still beautiful and very unique. It was definitely reminiscent of every “fairy glenn” or “leprechaun’s forest” you’ve heard of. While driving around we even passed the “Leprechan Crossing” sign me, Nick and Alanna have a picture with from when we came a few years ago. I was very disappointed we didn’t get to stop, but it did remind me of when we came last time and Nick mysteriously toppled over backwards down the hill. Certainly pushed by a leprechaun. Probably because he was making fun of Alanna or something. Either way, it was a fond memory ☺
We finally made it back to Killarney, and began the (exhausting) five hour bus marathon back to Galway. We ended up arriving in the city 40 minutes early, which was wonderful in and of itself. But then we found out that Bus Eireann, the bus service we’d been using, runs a complimentary bus service to Corrib Village and Gort na Corrib, two of the student apartment complexes, on Sunday nights because so many Irish students go home for the weekends. The bus took us directly from the bus station to right in front of our apartment cluster, as close as you could possibly get. Not having to walk the forty minutes from the bus station back to the main entrance of Corrib was absolutely wonderful, and allowed for the “it’s good to be home” collapse on the bed come that much earlier. Sunday was thus ended in deep sleep within twenty minutes of arriving back home.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend. Now I’m looking forward to this weekend! We have a long weekend because of a bank holiday on Monday so me and the girls from my program are jetting off to the Netherlands for a few days! We have a lot planned so i’ll be sure to update again once I get back!
Hope all is well, love and miss you all!

<3 <3 <3

A long overdue post...

 

First off: Sorry this next post has taken sooooooo long for me to put up!  Every time I’ve gotten time to sit down and write this, something else has come up that I’ve had to take care of… minor things like grocery shopping or a society meeting or, you know, class.  But now I’m done with classes for the day and I only have a tiny bit of homework so I can put that off for later J

 

Life has been busy as usual here.  In addition to classes, my friends and I have spent a considerable amount of time lately trying to plan some trips outside of Ireland!  Over the past month we have visited Blarney and Cork, the Aran Islands, and Dublin (to be in a Dublin pub for the toast to Arthur Guinness, celebrating the 250^th anniversary of Guinness)!  This is all in addition to exploring Galway itself, partaking in the Oyster festival (at which I discovered that I actually quite like oysters… hooray for new discoveries!) and finally scoping out which are the best pubs and which are better left to tourists and freshers (the overly-rowdy first years).  I am super excited about the trips we have planned, though.  After about 4 hours on Monday night (thank you, slow internet) we booked the cheapest combination of flights to the Netherlands.  At 1:30 am, we decided to put off booking a hostel until the next day.  This time meeting on campus with a much stronger internet connection, we researched different housing options.  Everything from hostels to hotels to canal boats to apartments.  Dennis finally found the cheapest option, an apartment, complete with kitchen, that would fit all of us and would only cost 14 euro a night per person.  BOOK IT! We all shouted.  Then Niki wanted to just see the pictures so we would know what it looks like… Niki take his computer to look at, I look over her shoulder, and notice one tiny little detail… the apartment is located in Wroclaw…POLAND.  Luckily we caught it before we booked, and we now know not to ever leave planning details up to Dennis.  Anyway, we finally managed to get everything booked, for the right city, and we’re heading off at the end of October, taking advantage of a bank holiday giving us a day off of class.  It should be a good weekend, everyone is actually really excited about going to the museums so our next project is to work out an itinerary with everything we want to do so we stay organized, don’t miss out on anything, and work in a trip to the Efteling amusement park as well because everyone wants to ride in the cannibal pots and eat poffertjees.  Yum!

 

The following weekend I’m leaving everyone here behind and heading off to Barcelona, where I’m meeting up with one of my sorority sisters who is studying abroad in Rome, and then we are making our way to Valencia to meet up with another abroad ADPi!  That weekend will be the Valencia Tennis Open so we may try to catch a couple tennis matches (rumor has it Andy Roddick will be playing… no word on Rafa yet, though).  Valencia also apparently has the biggest aquarium in Europe so we’ll most likely go see that, too!

 

The last trip we have planned (so far) is a weeklong trip to… MOROCCO at the beginning of December!  As most of you probably know, Morocco has been at the very top of my list of places I want to visit for a long time, so finally being able to go, and at a really good price, is super exciting!  We will be staying in Agadir as our “home base.”  We talked to a travel agent about going to Morocco and she said it’s actually among the top tourist destinations for people from Europe, and specifically for people from Ireland.  Agadir is on the coast, so we’ll certainly fit in a beach day, and then we can arrange tours to Casablanca, Marrakech, Fes, etc through the hotel.  We can also arrange camel tours into the desert so… that’s a must!  I’ll certainly have more details about that trip as we get closer!

 

Aside from planning trips, we have also been exploring Ireland, as I mentioned before.  We recently had a very busy weekend, spending a few days in Dublin for the Guinness festival, going to the Aran Islands, and exploring the Galway Oyster festival.  Dublin and the Oyster festival were both really neat, and we’ll be returning to Dublin in a few weeks through our study abroad program.  The Aran Islands were also through out abroad program, and were absolutely amazing.  We rented bikes, which was an adventure in and of itself since most of us haven’t ridden bikes in years.  After a couple crashes (into walls, each other, thorny bushes, and even a car or two (luckily both parked)) we made it out onto the loooong road around the largest of the islands, Inish Mor.  We were very lucky and got a fairly clear, relatively warm day!  While riding around the island we stopped at the old lighthouse, which gave spectacular views of the entire island.  We also biked up to Dun Aolaugh, a bronze age hill fort that uses a cliff face as one wall of defense.  Naturally, when you have ten 19-22 year old students ready to explore EVERYTHING, they’re going to want to lean over the edge of the cliff and see the ocean crashing against the rock face below…  After about 20 minutes of this… and countless pictures trying to get the cliffs, and the ocean, and the STEEP drop off into the picture, our study abroad director had to excuse himself and go where he couldn’t see us anymore.  Later we asked why he left… he couldn’t stand watching us without worrying we would fall.  Oops!  Mental note: don’t do anything adventurous… or potentially dangerous… in front of Brian. 

 

All the societies have now started to pick up.  I joined a couple different ones, and have a “meet and greet” for the archaeology society tonight!  Fun fact: the head of the archaeology department here is named… Dr. Jones!  I am amply amused by this and now have a great desire to rent Indiana Jones.  Okay, back to societies… I also joined the Film Society, a society that watches films, runs workshops on making them, etc.  Last week they showed three films in three nights.  I went to the Tuesday night film with a friend and saw… Twilight!  Always an amusing choice.  The best part however is that I stopped by the vending machines to get a snack for during the movie.  As I’m looking through the options-potato chips, sodas, candy bars-I come across a… MORO BAR!  Now, I first had a Moro bar in NEW ZEALAND and haven’t been able to find one since.  They’re not sold in the US, or in Europe (so I thought), or even in Australia, so you can imagine my surprise!  Naturally I bought it, and googled it when I got home (I was too nervous to try it in case it wasn’t a real Moro bar).  Lucky day for me, turns out they’re sold in two countries: New Zealand and Ireland!  Random? Yes. But oh so exciting and delicious.  They’re a bit different from the original, but still yummy so I’ll be sure to bring a bag of them home… and actually share them this time since I always rave about them.  (Side note: I did bring a bag home with me from New Zealand all those years ago… and I fully intended on sharing them!  But they were just so delicious…).

 

Now lets see… last bit of information… I finally got registered with the Garda  (immigration), which means… no more threat of being deported!  I can stay!  Hooray!  J

 

Well I guess that’s about all… nothing much planned for this weekend…possibly a day trip out into the country or something.  Going out for dinner tomorrow night at a multi-ethnic food place for my 21^st birthday!  My roommate’s birthday is actually on Friday too so we’re doing a big joint party extravaganza… well, dinner and then out to a pub.  Very excited!

 

Love you all and hope all is well!

 

<3

Another week gone by and I’m still happy as a clam… or as an oyster here in Galway!  Oyster’s are one of the main products out of Galway Bay, and all around the county they’re gearing up for the various Oyster Festivals.  The festival in Galway city starts next Thursday so we’re going to try to go on Friday when most of us don’t have any classes.  We had originally planned to go to Munich for Oktoberfest but we have a CEA trip to the Aran Islands planned for Saturday, and after talking to one of our german friends here she told us that Oktoberfest is really just a huge, over priced tourist trap that the locals don’t even go to.  We may still try to go the next weekend but I think at this point we’re planning on going to Paris or Berlin instead. 

So this past weekend we ended up on a spontaneous tour of Southern Ireland!  The original plan was really quite simple: the girls wake up super early on Saturday morning, take a 4.5 hour bus ride to Cork, take a taxi to Blarney, kiss the Blarney stone, take a taxi back to Cork in time to catch the last bus back to Galway at 5:45.  By Friday night this had morphed into: drive to Blarney with an irish friend (thus cutting the journey time in half), spend the day at the castle, drive to Cork, meet up with a friend of mine from UMD who is studying in Cork for the semester, spend the night in a hostel, explore the city on Sunday, and be back by the afternoon.  Saturday came and the first half of the plan went perfectly.  Then, as we were preparing to head back to Cork, we decided to go for a drive to explore the countryside… unfortunately the “tomtom” GPS system we were losing was not very reliable and we ended up horribly lost, driving around rotaries 8 times trying to decide which exit we needed, driving miles out of the way when we could have just made a u-turn, and finally ending up almost 2 hours away from Cork, in Killarney.  It was already getting late so we decided to just stay the night in Killarney, a tourist-y town along the Ring of Kerry.  It wasn’t by any means what we had originally planned, but sometimes spontaneous adventures are good, and we certainly made the best of it!  Unfortunately for me, I came down with a pretty bad cold Saturday night and spent the car ride back to Galway pretty miserable.  Thankfully I was able to stop in a convenience store near the bed and breakfast before we set out to get myself some cold medicine and tissues… “man-size tissues,” to be exact, because they didn’t have any normal sized tissues.  As miserable as I felt being sick, we all got a laugh out of the man-sized tissues… each one roughly the size of a small dog.

Sunday night started “Fresher’s Week” here at NUIG.  Whereas in the US freshman tend to show up on campus earlier than everyone else for orientation and such, here they start a week later.  They have all finally moved in and, lucky me, Corrib Village appears to be Fresher central.  Since classes haven’t picked up as much for them yet, they’ve been very noisy, coming and going at night (I know, I know, I sound like an old crone complaining about those young hooligans making so much noise) and, while usually I would be more understanding, they’ve taken to breaking into the apartment buildings and pulling the fire alarms.  They got our building Sunday night, when I was sick and trying to sleep.  The alarm system isn’t tied to any sort of response team, so we (all us boring old folf who wanted to be awake for classes on Monday) had to shuffle out into the cooooold night air and call security to come shut the alarm off.  Sadly, security was already busy taking care of other issues across Corrib Village so we were stuck waiting for almost half an hour.  Thankfully things have calmed down at least a little bit since then.

Other than those little bits, everything is flowing very smoothly here.  I have a nice little schedule for each of my days, going to classes, getting readings done, running errands (though grocery delivery means I don’t have to walk 40 minutes with heavy bags!), and exploring the city.  A friend and I went on a quest for a bookstore and stumbled upon the most fabulous little bakery!  Now, it isn’t much of a “classic” bakery with cupcakes and such, but it does have some yummy breads and a few pastry type things, and the most delicious sandwich station!  Whoever comes to visit is getting dragged to it.  You don’t get a choice haha.  I ended up getting a southwest chicken wrap kind of sandwich, and me and Dennis bought a loaf of banana bread to split.  It was yummy, but nowhere NEAR as good as mommy’s banana bread!  Plus, they put some kind of strange raisin-type fruit in it… I think it’s called a sultana or something.  Not my favorite but still pretty good.

Now some of my friends and I are planning to go see a movie tonight since we can get a good student discount, and my roommate’s professor practically made seeing “Inglourious Basterds” an assignment.  And really, what kind of friend would I be if I made her go all alone?! 

So that’s my life here so far!  Still having an amazing time and soooo glad I get to be here all year!

 

<3>

 

PS my address while here is:

 

Lauren Earl

91-4 Corrib Village

Newcastle

Galway

Ireland

 

(PPS- if you ever send anything that can’t fit through a mail slot, please let me know!  They keep larger items behind the front desk but apparently it’s “too difficult” to send us an email or something if we get mail.)

Slainte!

Here I am, a week into my Irish adventure, and life couldn’t be better.  Sure, the apartment isn’t great, and the weather (with the exception of today) has been cold and rainy, but then I look out my window and see the Corrib river in my backyard, and the green green grass, and usually a rainbow, and the ruins of an old church (yeah, archaeology nerd), and giant swans swimming, and leprechauns playing… really, how could I not be happy here?

           

            I arrived at Shannon airport last Tuesday…1.5 hours ahead of schedule, which was VERY nice because, really, who likes spending more time on an airplane than necessary?  I made it through customs and immigration fairly quickly, and was met outside by Brian, the director from my study abroad program, and three others from my program: Dennis and Colleen, both from NJ, and Steve from Colorado.  Brian gave us all student bus passes, and we boarded the bus to take us to Galway’s city center.  Oops! First problem.  Apparently, in order to use a student bus pass you need to give them an Irish student ID card.  Obviously none of us had those yet.  The bus driver was a bit grumpy and threatened to kick us off at the next stop if the bus inspector came on.  Luckily he didn’t, because then we would have been stranded in a small town somewhere between Shannon and Galway. 

            Finally arriving at the bus station near Eyre Square, in Galway’s center, we got two taxi’s to take us to Corrib Village, the apartments we are living in.  The two guys took one while Colleen and I took the other, along with Brian.  Unlike the bus driver, the taxi driver was very friendly, pointing out places to know (like grocery stores and pharmacy’s) and giving us fatherly tidbits (he has three daughters of his own so… even though Galway is safe, don’t walk alone at night, don’t leave your friends and go with someone you don’t know, watch your drinks if you’re out at a pub or club… the usual).  After we all got checked into our apartments (first impression: small, dirty, everything’s broken… well that’s just lovely) we met up again, joined by some of Steve’s apartment mates, a Canadian named Dylan, and a Luxembourgian (which is apparently the correct term according to Microsoft Word) named Laurent, and headed back into the city center, about a 15 minute walk through campus, across a bridge, and past a beautiful cathedral. 

            In town we stopped at Dunne’s so we could all buy sheets, towels, duvet covers, jackets (because the guys didn’t think it would be cold in Ireland…), and everything else we couldn’t fit into our bags when we packed.  After some shopping and exploring, we stopped in at a pub for our first pint!  It was nice sitting and talking with my new friends, just getting to know each other a bit better.  After sitting for a while, we set out once again to stock up on some groceries from the Dunne’s grocery store.  You know, the basics, bread, pasta, apples, and giant jars of nutella for the guys.  Enough to get us through the first few days until we could get some real shopping done.  Unfortunately, as happens with Ireland, it started pouring on our walk back and, try as we might, we couldn’t keep our bulging paper bags from disintegrating, resulting in a few casualties, led by the glass nutella, jar crashing to the ground.  The last ten minutes of the walk we were undoubtedly marked as outsiders, draped in sopping, shredded brown paper, with piles of things strategically balanced in our arms.  My crowning glory in all of this: I still had a fabric bag stashed in my purse to try to cut down on paper and plastic at the grocery stores at home.  Thank you, Pier 1, for providing me with this stylish (and inexpensive!) lifesaver!  I cannot even count how many times that little paisley bag has come in handy in just one week.

            We finally made it back, just as the rain stopped, and I met my new roommate!  Niki from Colorado, along with one of our apartment mates, Delphine, from France.  We met the other two in our apartment, Geoffrey and Guillaume, both from France as well, the next day.  Niki and Delphine were just on their way out to do some shopping of their own when I got back, so I spent the afternoon finishing unpacking, and just settling in.  We all met up again in the evening and headed back into the city center, to Market Street, for dinner.  After some delicious fish and chips we decided to head back and catch up on some sleep since we were all jetlagged and thoroughly exhausted.

            Over the next few days we all got together for CEA and NUIG orientations, city tours, and our own nightlife tours, visiting a different pub each night (because contrary to apparently popular belief, I have actually been embracing my Irish heritage and going to pubs!).  So far our favorites have been The Quays (pronounced like ‘keys’) and The Front Door/Sonny’s because of the great atmosphere in each.  I had an especially fun night at The Front Door when, within minutes of arriving, I feel a tap on my shoulder and hear “wait, Lauren?!?!”  I turn around and whom do I see?  Katherine Simpson, an old high school acquaintance who had moved away during our junior year.  As if that wasn’t cool enough, she tells me she had seen Mike Gardner, another guy we knew from high school, just minutes before.  We see him heading upstairs a few minutes later, so we grab him and have a mini high school reunion, at a pub in the middle of Galway.  How.  Cool.  After celebrating for a few minutes we left to rejoin the groups we had come in with.  Mendham was wonderful and all, but we’re here for the international experience, making new friends and all.  It’s nice to know I’ve got some connections to back home if I need them though (doubtful that will be necessary, but still comforting). 

            After almost a week of orientations, tours, karaoke (for international students), and exploration, we finally started classes on Monday.  So far I have only had two of my classes, but I couldn’t be more pleased with them.  This semester I will be taking three archaeology classes and two celtic civilization classes.  From now until mid-October I am taking Public archaeology and a course on Hunters and Farmers in Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe.  Once those end I will start a course called “Landscapes of Cult and Kinship in Early Medieval Ireland.”  The two celtic civ classes, “Families, Fili and Fools” and “The Stories of Medieval Wales” last the whole semester, though they only meet once a week on Thursdays so I won’t have either of those until tomorrow. 

            Tonight I’m going to an ISS meeting, the International Students Society, where we will think of activities to do during the semester to help bring the international students together, as well as introduce us to more Irish students.  Following the meeting we’ll be having an ISS meet and greet type event at a Pub back in the city center, complete with freebies and, most importantly, free food!  I’m getting terribly bored of pasta, though I’m certainly impressed with my creative ability to mix together whatever is lying around the kitchen and come up with a dish of carbohydrate-y deliciousness.  Other meals consist of spreadable cheese on toast, muesli and yogurt (my favorite breakfast) and, if you’re my roommate, peanut butter and trailmix sandwiches.  Meanwhile, my French apartment mate Geoffrey cooks amazing dishes like chicken cordon bleu, elaborate pasta dishes with fancy vegetable salads, and roast chicken… for LUNCH.  After laughing at our pathetic excuses for dinners he promised Niki and I that he’ll cook occasional meals for us, and he’s even taught us some easy and inexpensive delicious side dishes.  Should work out pretty well, I think!

            Now that we’ve all settled in, my fellow CEA-ers are planning our first excursion outside of Ireland… a trip to Munich for Oktoberfest!  Hopefully we can get all the details figured out and start another adventure!

            Now that this post is over two pages in Word (single spaced… more than I usually need to write for homework assignments!) I’ll leave off so I actually have something to blog about later!  I hope you’re all doing well and I’ll talk to you soon!

 

<3

Bon Azewa!

I don't have a lot of time for this post so it's going to bemostly bullet points. We're working longer hours because we have a lot to finish before our last day on friday!

So this past weekend was spent at Simleu Days, a street festival in a nearby town. It was SO much fun and I definitely think I made the right decision in going.

~Started off with lunch with Szolt's family (our Romanian-Hungarian team member) at his childhood home in Simleu. His mother made us an amazing meal of samale (stuffed cabbage), chicken, watermelon, and plachenta, a type of jam-filled doughnut. His 5 year-old neice was also there and she's just about the cutest thing ever. She wants to be an archaeologist so we were having a lot of fun chatting with her and telling her about Porolissum.
~Visited a medieval church after lunch. Lunch went really late though so we took a quick look and were out before6:00 mass.
~Headed to the festival, which wasn't very crowded that early. SPent some time wandering around, shopping, and finding WATER because it was almost 100 degrees out. We grabbed a couple tables under one of the tents and stationed people there all night so we always had a meeting spot/resting area.
~Ran into Stefan, who had invited us to his birthday party in Moigrad a few weeks ago. His friend's band was playing, so we watched them. Pretty good, though they admit they'll be better when they have a singer.
~Had the most fun when the next "band" went on...a duo called "Daggu and Kleo." Daggu had really long braids/dreads, and they were both lip syncing the entire time. They kept trying to pep the audince up but noon was very impressed. Then they brought out the free CD's to throw into the audience and people went crazy! We were really interested in hearing what their CD would sound like, so Ashley and I battled our way to the front and started dancing and pretending to know all the lyrics... it was really amusing. After quite a few tries I finally was able to grab a CD out of the air (thanks to all the frisbee practice we've been doing here!). Super excited, I ran over to show Ashley I had caught it, we celebrated, and then realized there were two different CD's. By the end of the concert we had managed to get a copy of each. Good thing we did too! The songs are terrible... one just goes "I like flowers, I like flowers" for an entire song. It's provided us with many laughs.
~Met up with an archaeology team working in Simleu, including the three who came to visit Porolissum a few weeks ago. We spent the rest of the nigth with them which was alot of fun.
~Watched some other bands... Desperado (Romanian cowboys), Cargo, and Iris. They were all really good. We ran into some of our friends from Moigrad and hung out with them during the concert.
~After the concert we went on the bumper cars! SO dangerous... they dont have a line so as soon as it stops everyone runs out onto the floor and fights over cars. I was halfway in one of them and actually got pulled out and then had my foot run over as the other guy got it. It was so chaotic, but you get really excited when you finally manage to find (and stay in) a car!

That's about all for this update... i'm out of time and that sums up most of the festival. Not much been going on in the trenches... started taking up the "tomb" only to realize the corner was a hearth. Slightly disappointing. 3 more days to excavate, then home sunday! Amazing how time seems to fly :(

Love and miss you all,
Pupici!

Lauren

Bon Azewa!

So this past weekend we took a trip up north to Maramures county, a more traditional part of Romania, well known for its woodwork. Each house in the region has these great big wooden gates in front, carved with rope motifs and, more often than not, religious symbols. It's amazing how intricate the designs could be, and they were all handmade. We also visited what was, up until a few years ago, the tallest structure completely made of wood in the world. It's a wooden church, no metal bolts, nails, or anything, standing 74 (i think) meters high. It was recently beaten out by another church, also in romania, that stands 102 meters. We planned on stopping to see that one as well but we got caught by a torrential downpour sunday afternoon and decided to skip it since we've already seen about 5 of these.
Sunday was pretty busy...we stopped in Sigethu and visited the communism museum that was erected in an old prison where political prisoners were kept. It was really interesting and kind of creepy, each prison cell was devoted to a different topic such as women prisoners, the arts in prison, etc. THey showed how one prisoner sewed a poem onto his bandage in morse code. Way cool. We also visited Elie Wiesel's childhood home, which was recently converted into a museum. It was pretty small because they're trying to renovate around water damage right now but since we spent so much time talking about it in school it was neat seeing more about his early life.
After Sigethu we drove for a few minutes and then took a short walk through some woods to a big river. "Hey, look across the river... see that? That's Ukraine! Let's throw rocks at it!" None of us actually hit it, but throwing rocks in a river is always fun :)
We continued driving and went to a town called Sarpeda, where they have the "Happy Cemetary." All the grave stones are painted blue and have caricatures of how the person died. Some of them are really funny and, though some were kind of sad, it's cool to see that they're willing to laugh about life, death, and everything in between.
Other than that there isn't a whole lot more to report. Trench work is pretty slow since Alexandru is going into crazy-mode, insisting he have total control over every decision made. Still opening new trenches so I spent all of yesterday with Bridget and two Romanians, Cris and Adi, digging and shoveling. Hardest work I think i've ever done! Over the past week I've also drawn a plan of a big rock pile (had to stay after work for 3 extra hours because it needed to get done ASAP and the doctorate students, Rob and Zsolt, needed help. Today I drew a profile which gives the strata of the trenches, and I also worked total station last week which uses GPS coordinates to plot exact points for each of the trenches and important features (it's what you see them use along roads when they're surveying land... same concept and equipment).
We also had a photo shoot yesterday! Some touristic magazine came by to do an article about Porolissum so we had to get back in the trenches and pretend to work (it was already technically lunchtime so we only pretended to work). That brings the count up to 3 Romanian publications so far... I already have one newspaper article from 2 weeks ago and i'm hopeing these other 2 articles come out soon so I can bring them home!
This weekend we're going to Simleu (pronounced Shim-lay-oo) Days, a festival in a nearby town. From what I've heard it's a lot of food, live music, and carnival-type activities. Eric (our director) has said it's a lot of fun so i'm really excited. Sadly, it's going to be out last weekend already!

Hope everyone is well at home!

Pupici! (Kisses!)

Bon Azewa!

So Val and I finally gave up on the pit of death Monday. We worked there in the morning but it was starting to dry up, so we handed it over to some other people :) Still managed to find some nice pieces of pottery before we passed it along though. Found a fairly large piece of a basin in another trench, too.
Tuesday we got caught by big rainstorms TWICE so that whole day was mostly a bust, and then Wednesday afternoon was also a big storm, so we stayed up at camp washing pottery. It's really fun when people are washing pottery and get excited about a particularly large or interesting piece and you look over, only to realize you had found it a few days ago. I found a couple of the really nice pieces so I was VERY proud of that. My next mission is to finally find a coin. So far the Romanian's are beating us, 4 coins to 3.
Today we finally started digging into what the Romanian director is certain is a tomb. Unfortunately, he showed up after the American co-director gave us the go-ahead and was not happy that we had started digging in. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that it's actually a tomb, but Alexandru is so certain it is that he was planning to have a camera crew onsite to film the uncovering of the tomb. He made us stop before we had gotten very far... hopefully I'll be able to continue with it tomorrow because we're all anxious to see what it actually is.

Although there hasn't been much else happening on site, we've had an adventure or two in the afternoons, after the "work day." The most recent of these, and to date one of the best, was an adventure down near the spring where we explored an abandoned, and reportedly haunted, house. Ashley, Bridget, Dara, Johnathan and I all hopped the gate (which was locked...and had rusty hinges...oops!) and headed up the steps to try the door...as we were heading up we heard funny noises coming from behind us... Sean was stuck on the gate. Naturally, we laughed at him for a while and then finally went to help him over. For some reason I was at the front of our line and went to check the door handle...locked. As I walked forward to check another gate I hear the door handle start to rattle. A bit freaked out I jump and turn around really quickly, only to see Bridget was also trying to open the door. We continued forward trying every door on every shed and every window but sadly everything was locked. BORING! Until, that is, we notice some fresh wood chippings in front of the shed... and some cups and jars in the kitchen window... and some fresh flowers in another window! But EVERY hinge was completely rusted. Slightly creeped out by all of this we decide to look around the other side of the house. We turn around and walk past the shed and what do we see? A half-unstuffed bunny NAILED to the wall. CREEPY! Naturally, we stopped and took a picture with it. It's probably cursed but we figured we had already hopped the fence, and picked some apples and peaches, so taking one picture wasn't going to curse us any more than the rest of that...
Our adventure pretty much ended there though... to get to the other side of the house we would have had to walk through a VERY overgrown garden and none of us were too excited to try avoiding all the nettles that were probably growing.

Other than that life at Porolissum is pretty low-key. We've been making a story line for a movie we want to film... basically a murder mystery... we have such an amazing setting it seems silly not to! And then this weekend we're taking a trip to Maramures county. We'll be going to a city called Baia Mare, where they have some nice museums, and some other small towns that are very traditional. I'm really excited for that! And then next weekend we're going to either Shimleu Days which celebrates a nearby archaeological site, or some of us might try to make it to Budapest. It's a bit of a trip but should be exciting!

I'll have tons to say about Maramures next week i'm sure.

XOXO
Lauren

ok, i'm going to try not to write such a novel this time...

Over the past week the excavation has yielded some interesting results...
What we thought was a tomb last week turns out to probably just be a late phase floor so we're a little disappointed about that. Alexandru, our Romanian director, really hopes to find a tomb though so when we uncovered some columns (!) on Thursday he decided that was probably a tomb...after we get the area cleaned up and documented a little we'll dig under and see what we find. Meanwhile, I spent most of the week working in the "pit of death." It is so far the deepest area of the site, and we've dug down almost 2 meters. Me and Val have been working and finding a number of large pottery pieces, most have rim pieces, rim and bottom, and even one that has part of a rim, an entire handel, AND part of the bottom. We also found the spout so it's a jug, we're hoping to find the rest soon. ALso lots of big bone pieces so we think it was a garbage deposit. After finding so many things we remaned it "Lauren and Val's Awesome Pit of Fabulous Finds."

We've also spent our evenings mostly hanging out on the west wall, which I can't remember if I mentioned it but is now my favorite part of the entire site. It's so peaceful and you can see all the hills in the distance. It's beautiful. We watched a big storm in the distance the other day and since there is so little light pollution we could see every bolt of lightening. It was soo cool to see, i'm going to try to bring my camera next time and get some pictures. We also like to go sit and watch the sunsets with a bottle of Uncle George's wine. I went to visit Uncle George the othe r night but he wasn't home. Instead Aunt Veronica, his wife, made us more gogoc and chated with us. It was lovely. Most of the families make their own wine, which is really neat. All the houses have grape canopies over the entranceway. We also were invited to one of the ROmanian workers houses for Crepes which was a lot of fun. We got to see her horse, water buffalo, and chickens, and then we learned to make crepes. It was really fun! It's so cool being able to interact with the locals here.

My last observation for this post: it's really neat seeing how they're all starting to develop the area. There is a lot of construction, especially near the city, and people are starting to build bigger and nicer homes. It's great to see the progress they're finally able to make!

Ok, off to lunch in the "big city" where everthing else is closed on Sundays...

Love and miss you all!

Lauren

Life in Romania is still crazily busy, but it is still amazing!

Over the weekend we went hiking a couple times. Saturday we went to find the Monk's Cave which was used during the time when free religion was illegal. The hike was overall very pleasant, though the very end, right before reaching the cave itself, was pretty rough. In the forest there was a near-vertical slope that we were actually crawling on our hands and knees to get up. It was very amusing hearing everyone else having as much trouble as I was...you just had to be careful they weren't above you and about to slide down on top of you! One of the guys had very poor traction on his shoes and slide hlafway down about four different times. The cave itself wasn't terribly exciting since it was pretty much just a hole in the rocks, but I think it was worth the trip.
On Sunday we went for a walk in the woods along the Romans trench and vellum defense line. It was cool being able to see the ditches and hills they had built 2000 years ago that were mostly still standing. We followed it through the woods until we reached the site of the watch tower, in the middle of a field. We rested there, watching a big herd of water buffalo grazing in the fields. On the way back we had to climb another pretty steep bit of hill...we decided to race each other up, one boy vs one girl at a time... sadly I got paired up against a cross-country runner and lost :(
In terms of actual excavation, we have found a lot more pottery and bone fragments. We have found a number of human bones, and are now fairly certain that the floor we uncovered may actually be the top of a tomb. A discrepancy in the floor pattern makes our supervisor, Eric, think the tomb was probably robbed at one point. That has been our main focus over the past few days, so we are still waiting on opening a new trench.
Our afternoons have been pretty full of soccer and football. Last week we went to have our first soccer practice before we take on the Romanians at the end of the season... we were walking along the roman road to the amphitheatre , dribbling and passing the ball, when me and ashley both tried to steal the ball... I lost and in true Lauren fashion was scratched, bruised, and bleeding before we even made it to our practice space. We also made up a new game, called "Madness." We still dont really know the rules but the basic objective is to distract someone with a socccer ball and a frisbee, then pelt them with the nerf football. With little contact with the outside world, it's a great way to amuse ourselves :)
Last on my update today: All our wishes seems to come true in Romania! A couple days ago we were really craving some Mac and Cheese... we come in for lunch and what has Teresa made us? Romanian mac and cheese! (Noodles with FRESH, local cheese). Then we thought about how much a cookie break in the middle of the morning dig would be...and then, during a break at our halfway point, Eric pulls out a box of cookies! Another day, after digging, we were talking about how much we would LOVE some gogoc, a type of donught, and Teresa brings us a huge plate of gogoc... this also worked with watermelon, nutella, and, amazingly enough, a Trampoline! Romania is such a magical place haha. We're almost worried about wishing for anything else...the Trampoline seems like a pretty good place to stop!

All in all, still enjoying every second of my trip! We should be meeting the rest of our team, the ROmanian students, tomorrow so i'm really excited for that, and then we'll be all set!
Hope all is well at home, i'll try to update again soon!

<3,
Lauren

Hello from Zalau, Romania! Sorry this first post has taken forever but this is the first chance i've had with internet. We've been pretty busy our first week. We spent a few days in the city of Cluj where we explored and checked out some museums. It was really neat flying into the city because it is located very close to the carpathian mountians so the surrounding area is very hilly. It was cute to see little villages nesteled in the valleys.
Last friday, while walking around CLuj, I quickly learned that street lanes and stop lights are really just suggestions that drivers can feel free to take or ignore. It's a bit frightening, the drivers here are worse than the taxis to Foxy's! Saturday we drove from CLuj to Porolissum, stopping in another city called Turda along the way. Here we visited a museum that was closed for renovations, but since the archaeological community in Romania is so small we were able to get inside because our Romanian supervisor went to school with the museum's director. We also visited an old salt mine which was cooler than any other mine i've visited! (And yes, I have visited a couple of mines!) We also went to the local market which was a really interesting experience. You can get just about anything and all the fruits and vegetables looked delicious!
I also learned another thing: not finishing all the food on your plate is a BIG no-no. UNfortunately, though the food is absolutely delicious (i've yet to have a single bad meal), the portions are WAY too big!
After our Turda adventure we finally got to Porolissum. Sadly, we arrived during a torrential downpour. We all were so excited we decided to go exploring anyway. SO glad we did, too! The site is WAY bigger than I thought it was, and we had such a great time running around discovering places. Probably the coolest thing we found was the amphitheatre, which seated about 5,500 people when it was in use. We're planning to put on a play and/or talent show in it one night. :)
On sunday we had a day to relax. It was cold and rainy in the morning but by the afternoon it had cleared up enough that me and the other girls walked down to the nearby town of Moigrad. It's a very cute little town, and it made us laugh that all these rundown looking houses had giant satellite dishes attached to their sides. The walk took a long time but we enjoyed it. We were even lucky enough to see a chicken cross the road! We of course ran over to finally see why, exactly, she had done this. She wanted to peck at a brick. Not the most exciting outcome, but i'm glad I finally know the answer :) After our walk we went back to our camp and played with Pixie, our camp dog! He (yes, Pixie is a he) belongs to Teresa, who is the local woman that cooks all our DELICIOUS meals for us. We're all so happy to have a camp dog who wags for us whenever we come back from the fields!
We started Monday with an early morning "official" tour of Porolissum. After walking around a bit we were set to work cleaning some of the structures that are already on display. We basically had to clear trenches around the base of each structure to prevent too much plant life from growing and weakening the structures. While we were doing this we met a couple of tourists! They were both raised in ROmania but currently live in Pennsylvania. It was cool talking with them, and even cooler to see tourists exploring our home!
Tuesday we finally broke ground in the forum! The boys slept late so they had to spend the morning cleaning the last few structures, but us girls got to head down to the forum and start excavating. I love the walk down to site. We walk through these big, flower filled fields, surrounded by beautiful hills. It makes me want to sing like in the Sounds of Music. Sadly, we cant run and spin around like Maria because, as we quickly learned, the field is also full of a stinging nettle plant. I still have a couple welts on my ankles from where I accidentally rubbed against it. :( We began the excavation by sorting through some topsoil, in which we found a number of pottery and tile/brick pieces. My first official find(which I get to keep!... because it's pretty common) was part of a roofing tile. We also got to start troweling in the trench, which is more precise, and I found what looks like it will be a sizable piece of pottery vessel. Unfortunately I couldn't take it out because it extends into the layer below which we were currently working on. I was super excited to go back and get it out today, only to find that our Romanian workers had dug it out and demanded a day off work because they thought it was a good find. We still need to explain to them that you can't just pull things out of the ground but instead work in layers to determine chronological order. On the bright side, it IS a very nice piece. The whole bottom of a small jar. Today (wednesday) we also found the first coin! We haven't been able to clean it yet so we dont know the date but we're hoping to find some more in the near future!
Hopefully i'll be able to update gtain soon, but these trips into Zalau may be rather scarce, depending on how supplies and such are running. Everything is amazing so far and I miss you all but i'll see you in just over a month!
<3,
Lauren

PS- 1. Twilight is even more popular in Transylvania and
2. Our romanian supervisor kept telling us to beware of the mini draculas that were coming whenever it rained. We thought it was superstition. TUrns out he just forgot the wordfor "mosquito" :P

Next stop: adventure!

So as many of you know (well, all of you should know now, if you're reading my blog!) I am setting out for Romania on Wednesday, June 17th, and will be there until July 26th.  I am attending a 7 week field school called the Porolissum Field Project, a joint American-Romanian archaeology project excavating the forum at Porolissum, an ancient Roman military base founded under Emperor Trajan in 106 AD. 

Porolissum is located in the famed province of Transylvania, about 8 km from the modern day city of Zalau.  During this field season I will be living in accommodations built by the Salaj County museum specifically for these excavations.  I am so excited for this because we will actually be living in a rural Romanian town called Moigrad, so I will truly be able to experience and participate in the Romanian culture.  Not only will we be working with the local people, but we will also be living and sharing this experience with them.  Oh, and did I mention that a local woman cooks all our meals for us?  I can't wait to try some authentic Romanian cuisine!

Unfortunately, living in such a rural area means there is no internet access in Moigrad itself, and very little cell phone reception.  That's where this handy dandy blog comes in!  Every few days (or whenever something really cool happens!) I will be able to make the trip into Zalau, where internet cafes are on every street corner.  That means my main form of communication will be this blog, but if you're dying to email me (callisto357@gmail.com) or facebook me I will certainly try to get back to you ASAP!  

Now my last little tidbit (since I feel like i've been typing this for quite a while...) is about... MAIL!  Everyone loves mail!  SO, if you leave me your address (either email it or message it to me) you just might be lucky enough to warrant a postcard or two!  And guess what, you can even send me mail if you really wanted because i'll have a mailing address too!  You can send me letters at: 

Lauren Earl, Porolissum Field Project

c/o Salaj County Museum of History and Art 

Str. Unirii, nr. 9

450042, Zalau Romania

*Because of the distance, any mail could take up to 2 weeks to find me.  

Hopefully i'll have some interesting stories to tell you all about, and some even more interesting pictures to show you once I get back!  

noroc (cheers)!,

Lauren