Castle Ruins Take 2

This week has been a little slower, but still awesome. Tuesday night I went to The Stables again and ordered my first drink from a bar ever. Once again irony hits me. I’ve been of legal age in America for over a year and buy my first drink from a bar in Ireland. Anyway, here it is:

It’s called Bulmer’s. It is a hard apple cider. It tastes like apple cider with a beer aftertaste. So it was still gross, but not nearly as gross.

Here’s the group I went with:

(From left: Grace, Shannon, Rachel, Erin, Hobbs, Molly, Shelby)

Classes have been both interesting and boring. On Wednesday we watched a documentary called Man of Aran (Aran is a set of islands off the coast of Ireland) by a guy named Robert Flaherty. I had to watch his first doc in my non-fiction class at CMU called Nanook of the North (about Eskimos in Canada). They’re both extremely slow, and worse was he tried to get stories from them, so they’re also completely fake. However, I enjoyed talking about how it was a myth because of the existence and use of elements in the movie. I think I might have been the only student who enjoyed that.

My teacher also told us how he legitimately likes teaching American students. At first we were like, “you’re just saying that because we’re American,” but he gave a reasonable explanation that didn’t sound too much like bullshit. Apparently, in high school here, Irish students are really not encouraged to have opinions at all, so by the time they get to college, where the teachers want them to discuss, they won’t say anything at all. Americans, on the other hand, don’t mind saying their opinions as much so teachers (or, at least, my teacher) enjoys teaching more.

Today, my other teacher showed us The Dawn, which is a movie that romanticizes nationalism, and is one of the first Irish movies to break Irish stereotypes and focus on Irish topics. We also watched clips from Into The West which romanticizes travelers (or gypsies) in Ireland. That movie is complete stereotyping, but I still want to watch it because it had Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney in it, and I don’t know how on earth I forgot to put them in my list of famous actors from Ireland! (Gabriel Byrne is in movies like The Usual Suspects and Man in the Iron Mask, Colm Meany is best known for his role as Chief O’Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generation (<-yes, nerd)). The second part of the day we watched Poitin which is a movie about some “drug” dealers (they were dealing poitin which is an illegal alcohol, so I don’t know what the correct term for that is). It was completely in Irish, so we had to watch it subtitled. I actually didn’t think it was half bad, but apparently the Irish hated it when it first came out, because it showed the darker side of Ireland. I think as Americans, with all out drug running and mob movies, we would be like, “So?”

Also! At lunch they were serving battered Haddock (a fish) and I finally found something I enjoyed eating! Mmm fish!

After dinner, a few girls and I walked to MORE castle ruins. This place is full of them. These ones were of an old tower, and yes we climbed it, and yes mom, I was safe…mostly. :)

Here it is from a distance:

See? The steps are perfectly safe...you know...except for the missing one.

View from top:


I was at the top there:

Tomorrow Dublin!

P.S. Mom, I really was safe. No freaking out from these pics!