Irish Colleges...

I've been a huge slacker and haven't written in here in far too long. But rather than trying to make up for it all at one time, I'm just going to make a conscious effort to start writing more often. I think I can; I think I can.

The school system here is so very different. For the entire 'first week' of classes I felt so scattered and confused, and I think I sufficiently frustrated the registrar and my advisor back at Colby as well. You see, visiting students at University College Cork get to "test out" classes during the first week of term. In other words, you just pick classes that you think would interest you and go check them out. It isn't until after the first week of classes that you actually sign up for anything. So the Step Dancing, Set Dancing, and Greek Mythology classes that I went to that first week, I'm not even taking anymore. I dropped them all to take a seminar called Intertextuality in Jane Austen instead. (Way more Chelsea-esque).

I'm also taking two Celtic Civilization classes: Irish Historical Tales and Irish Vision Tales. And in these classes, 100% of my grade is made up of ONE in class essay at the end of the term. I don't have to write any papers in the meantime, nor do I have any other sort of work to do. The professor said that a few years back, plaugerism was so bad that they eliminated all take home essays. Isn't it a little bit odd that instead of kicking the kids who plagiarized out of school and enforcing a more intense code of ethics the school decided to stop assigning essays at all? It reminds me of the trashy novel Schooled that we all passed around in Ecuador. In the book a young teacher discovers that all the assignments she gives her students they in turn hand to their tutors, who obviously get paid bank by the child's wealthy parents to write middle school level essays. So she resorts to having them do the reading at home and do all their writing and course work in class. But has a college system really had to resort to the same thing? It's awfully sad to think that students moral codes are so ... well, non-existent.

Despite that whole fiasco, teachers here really do expect you to take advantage of your education. You can either embrace the classes and learn the material or you can coast by (and trust me, they make the class plenty easy for coasting). The first day of class we are given a 'bibliography' with suggested readings on it. If you choose to do the secondary reading, the idea is that your paper will be substantially better, but you aren't actually required to do any of it, and we only briefly touch on it in class. I suppose this is all fine and good, but I have to admit that at Colby when a teacher lectures on a secondary source, I'm far more likely to understand and retain it than when I just read it myself. So, I'm kind of missing that.

A few more interesting things on colleges here:

a) Law is an undergrad degree. Crazy, huh?

b) Grad students are in classes with undergrads. (God knows why, but in my Celtic Civ classes, there are multiple grad students taking the same lecture as me... Weird?)

c) College here is virtually free for all Irish students. They have to pay a small fee, but other than that, their education is free. Often their housing is even covered by a government grant. In a lot of cases, this creates a huge apathy among students toward their education. Irish professors mention time and again that it would be a "really good idea to attend class"-- because so often, students just choose not to go.

d) For the most part, all kids in the same major track will take the exact same classes. For example, if you are a Celtic Civilization student, you have four or five "modules" (classes) that you are required to take (those are the only ones available to you) during your third year. So the people that you are in class with (at least the Irish full-degree students) are in every single one of your classes. I guess they aren't into educational diversity as much as we are.

Well, that's my ramble on the Irish college system; I promise more exciting things to come soon!

The US is a slacker.

This country is so far ahead of us in so many ways. It makes me feel like we put on a front, pretending that we care so much about recycling, the environment, organic food, free-range meats—but really, how much do we care when we don’t make things mandatory? When we keep recycling an optional thing that one can do if he or she is a 'conscientious' citizen? Or give people the option to buy free-range beef instead of demanding that all cows be free range?

The cashier chuckled at me as I was checking out of the grocery store for the first time. I said very casually that I would like everything bagged, please. After having her laugh, she explained that plastic bags here cost money—22 cents a bag to be exact. She said my best bet was to buy some of the canvas bags and use them again and again. And thankfully she was a sweetheart, and let me have one plastic bag for free just because I looked so lost and confused.

Yesterday Roger and I took a run around the city, and we ended up at our school’s gym. (Sidebar: It is the most gorgeous gym I have ever been in: one room for weights, one hallway for bikes, one hallway for rowing machines, a whole room with cardio equipment (and TVs on every single one), a weight gym just for women, a massive and amazing looking rock wall, indoor pool, dance studio, sprint track, etc…) But we arrived sweaty, red-faced, and dehydrated—majorly dehydrated. We figured we’d just mosey around the gym and find a drinking fountain. Well, that turned out to be much easier said than done. We searched long and hard, and we didn’t find a single drinking fountain. Instead, they have machines that pour the water in from the top (so you can fill your water bottle). This must be the country of Nalgene and Sigg.

My apartment comes with three separate trashcans—as does every apartment in my building: one for compost, one for recyclables, and one for general waste. UVM is probably the only school in America that (maybe) does something like that, and everyone I’m sure considers them really hippy for it. But here its compulsory and second nature.

During our cooking class, Roger was asking our instructor questions about which meats were the healthiest, and he said he assumed that chicken would be healthier than beef. Wrongo. Apparently here there are strict regulations on beef (I believe the regulations are that it must be free-range and eat organic food) because there was some sort of cow epidemic a few years ago. (?) I need to find out what happened; I’m awfully curious. But anyway, the instructor said that chicken can also be found free-range and organic, but we need to make sure to check for that. All I could think of was the Primo menu (I suppose because I saw about a hundred variations of it this summer), which would read “Free-Range Beef”.

In the States, free-range meat is something that is particularly costly. Really, only the more well off people can afford to care about whether or not their meat is free-range. To lots of people, it just means that it costs more money for the same meat. But what if we didn’t give the farmers an option—if all meats had to be free-range and organic just because it is healthier, and far more humane? And, at least as far as I can tell, meat here doesn’t appear to cost more than meat at home. I have a feeling that would be the big argument at home: “It costs too much to make it mandatory because not all farmers can afford it, and not all people can afford more expensive meat.” But it looks like before we can say that, we need to look at a different model and see how other places are doing it. Because they are, and we aren’t. And it’s about time that we caught up.

Oh, one more thing. The bikes that I talked about in my last entry...How often do we talk about reducing our emissions, taking public transportation or biking instead of taking separate cars everywhere? So why don’t we have bike lanes? Why don’t we have a system set up in Boston and New York to have people pay for a bike rental program? I found out how it actually works. People pay ten euro to be part of the program for the year, and then they get a swipe card that they can use to unlock the bike racks. They can borrow a bike for up to a half hour, and then they have to return it to another rack. But they are free to take out another bike if they aren’t finished yet. And then, of course, there are pretty intense fees if you are late, and if you are 24 hours late you have to pay something like 250 euro for the bike itself.

I lied; I thought of something else. Sort of in a different vein, yet just as important—the university here has a child-care program. I have no idea how it works, but from what I gather, it is a program run by the Student Union to provide university students with free child-care so that they can attend classes. In the States, I feel like young mothers are scoffed at. And the general consensus seems to be that if they are irresponsible enough to have children at such a young age, they probably don’t want to go to school. It’s infuriating.

There is no reason we couldn’t set it up as a volunteer program. Colby kids, and I’m sure college kids around the country, love to do volunteer work. So set up a program where those volunteer hours aren’t spent at the local food market or pretending like you are helping at an elementary school, but, instead, they are spent helping someone literally change the trajectory that their life will take.

That is plenty of ranting for ten in the morning on a Sunday. (A fifteen minute song of church bells dragged me out of my cozy bed so early.)

the first few days in Dublin

I can't believe that I have been here for four days, and I haven't written a single thing. I knew that would happen though. I got caught up in running around the city that I didn't stop to think let alone write. (But somehow The Girl Who Played With Fire is still getting read...)

Obviously I haven't been here long enough yet to actually understand anything about the country, so really you should take everything I say with a grain of salt, but here is what I notice at least.

1. There are so many relationships in this country. Or maybe its this continent in general, lots of the couples are speaking Spanish, French, and German as well. But the fact of the matter is-- they are everywhere. And they all look so in love with each other. They are kissy kissy in the streets and gazing seductively into each other's eyes over coffee at a cafe, and they are talking to and laughing with each other. Kristin and I were sitting in the park the other day when we saw an American couple walk in together-- five feet apart. She took a few photos while he looked around and then they left. And then you see the European couples walking slowly, holding hands, and laughing together. American couples need to learn how to love like a European. They'd be much happier, I'm sure. But right now, I'm not looking to see love everywhere I go. And its frustrating that it is inescapable. But still, its awfully sweet. In fact, yesterday we toured the Guinness Storehouse. On the top floor there is a "Zero Gravity Bar" (I think that is what it was called.) -- Anyway, that is where you get a free pint of Guinness and all the walls are glass and you can look out over all of Dublin (Its up on a super high floor.) And there was an old Irish couple there; they must have been 80 at least. He was sitting and leaning on his cane and she was hunched over with her scarf wrapped around her head. And they were sitting snugly right next to each other, Guinness in hand, looking at each other and talking. Now how often do you see that in America?-- an old couple honestly enjoying each other's company? Sometimes. But it is not very frequently. Instead, I feel like I am perpetually seeing couples out to dinner that sit in silence eating their food, not even looking at each other.-- I don't know. It just seems to me like love works differently here. Maybe people's values are different. Maybe enjoying life is more important than constantly having to be the best at everything you do.

2. There are bike rental systems in Dublin. From what I understand it works a bit like a Zip-Car system. You take a bike from one rack, and I assume you pay there, and then you drop it off at another rack. Brilliant, right? And loads of people bike around. In fact, that is one of the first lessons I had to learn: when crossing the street, pay attention to bikes as much as you do to cars. Also, there are special bike lanes on the sides of every road. Its not like most parts I've seen of Boston when I feel like the bikers are going to get run over by a car any minute.

3. There are lots of very cute restaurants, but they are rarely full and busy. (I'm not talking about the pubs; they seem to be packed full. But like normal restaurants with yummy menus and great wine and dessert lists-- the kind of restaurant that would take a reservation in Rockland to get a table-- are all but empty. In fact, I'm not sure how they are making any money at all. We went out for pizza last night, and we ended up finding this little place in the basement of a coffee shop with divine looking pizzas and chocolate cake that looked like magic, but we were one of two customers in the place. A girl Kelsey who has been living in Cork for 8 months or so now says that with the recession a lot of people simply can't go out to eat as much anymore, and everyone is opting to stay at home instead. I wonder why there is such a discrepancy between number of people eating out in the states and eating out here though. We aren't rebounding from the recession any faster than Europe are we? Are people just more careless with their money? She also said that we have been eating earlier than most people go out to eat here, so maybe I'm way off. To be fair, we did go for dinner last night around 6:30, not necessarily the busiest dinnertime. But people rush into Primo at five on the dot to make sure they have a table and start eating. . .

4. The weather. Ireland is known for its weather. And I expected perpetual rainstorms. But I guess that was a bit of an aggressive estimate. It has rained quite a bit, but the weather is a bit like a yo-yo: bright sun for an hour and then sprinkling for a half hour and then a pouring rainstorm for a half hour and then bright sunshine again. I've learned to pack both my sunglasses and my umbrella in my bag wherever I go.

5. The jelly that I had out to breakfast on Sunday afternoon was the best jelly I have ever had in my life. Oh, sorry: they called it a jam. It was like a juice liquid with huge, full chunks of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries in it. So, so yum. They do have a more jello-like jelly, like we have at home though. Thats the stuff they have out at our buffet breakfast in the morning at the hotel.

6. Trying to run down these streets is next to impossible. You have to cross an intersection every hundred meters and at every intersection the cars are coming from crazy (read: the OPPOSITE) direction, and you have to hit a button and wait for the pedestrian light to signal that it is okay to cross. (The signal is a laser sound followed by incessant beeping-- just in case you don't happen to notice that the light has turned green.)

Speaking of which, time for a run now.

So...why Ireland?

I woke up this morning at an ungodly hour; yes, seven o'clock is ungodly. (Have you noticed that a lot of churches are making morning services later? Apparently lazy Americans don't go to church if they have to set an alarm to wake up on Sunday.) Anyway, I woke up ready to pack, ready to go lay on Lucia Beach, ready to go shopping with my grandma and go to lunch with my mom. I realized that I have exactly two days left in this country before I head off for Ireland, and therefore, I better make the most of my two days.

Ireland is all anyone has wanted to talk about with me this summer. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it-- hearing everyone's stories about their trips to Ireland back in the day; I did. I will just be happy to finally GET to Ireland and run around doing everything myself. I don't just want to hear that everyone else thought it was "really beautiful". I want to see it for myself. I don't want to hear that Guinness tastes ten times better in Ireland; I want to taste it. Let's GO; I'm ready.

Amidst these conversations, the same question comes up without fail, "So, why exactly did you pick Ireland?" The question always trips me up. I guess I expect it to be obvious. And, not only that but when was the last time that someone asked that question to someone studying in Spain? "So...why did you pick Spain?" Or France. Or Italy. Or Germany. Why do the reasons for studying in those countries seem self-evident, but my decision to study in Ireland makes people scratch their heads? It could be the language thing. If you take Italian in school, it makes sense that you are going to go to Italy. Same with French and France (although I guess you could also go to Austria or Quebec too.)

Regardless, you have to admit, it is a good question. One that I probably should have prepared a big long rambling answer to before I decided to study there-- in order to avoid the awkward pauses that have become routine as I try to find words to properly explain why I became obsessed with the idea of Ireland.

So, why did I pick it?

When I was in Ecuador, we took a seven hour bus ride to the coast. (Seven hours is a hell of a bus ride when the movies are Chinese comedies dubbed in Spanish, there is no bathroom on board and no rest stops to speak of, and the bus stops every few towns to pick up vendors selling fruit that we were cautioned not to eat although our stomachs were making sounds that resembled a thunderstorm.) As we got closer to the ocean, the air lifted, the smog disappeared, and you could smell a faint tingle of salt in the air.

I was halfway across the world, but it reminded me of home. It was the first time that month that I felt truly comfortable in my surroundings. This all sounds so silly writing it, but I swear the smell of the ocean had that effect on me. I was only in Ecuador one month, which ended up being long enough for only one homesick call to my mum. But a semester abroad is substantially longer. Five months-- give or take a little. I knew that I needed to feel really comfortable wherever I was headed. So I picked a place that would remind me of home every day-- a place where I could sit on a rocky coast and smell the salt tingle any time I wanted. A place that would feel like home regardless of the fact that it took a 12-ish hour flight to get there.

So, there you go. Thats why I picked Ireland. Cork, to be exact.

I hear they have surfing schools there. Game on.

Confessions of a Hostess Series-- #1

I work at the nicest restaurant in town, arguably the best restaurant in the state. And therefore, I work at the place where everyone comes for special occasions. Every night, we have four anniversaries and three birthdays-- at least. There are couples sharing food off each other's forks, daughters paying for their parents anniversary meals, birthday candles stuck in the top of divine dessert dishes, and it happens every single night.

Its such a weird feeling because, well, birthdays and anniversaries are supposed to be something special-- something that happens once a year. And, to see so many happening every week, you realize how ordinary even your most happy, treasured moments are.

Everyone has those same treasured moments. They happen every day. There are hundreds of thousands of birthdays celebrated every single day. Right now, you are probably rolling your eyes at my glaringly obvious statements, but when was the last time you considered the thousands of other people that are celebrating their birthday at the same time as you?

I guess my question is: How do you think we are supposed to continue to remember that our special days are, in fact, something special-- that our special days are important-- when those same special moments happen for a million people, a million times, in a million places all over the world?

9 years from now.

So today I was thinking about how people get sidetracked when they get older. Sidetracked from perfect happiness. Because they get stuck working at a job that makes them furious just to pay the bills. And they get stuck in a relationship they hate because it easier to be in a relationship you hate than to change your life, right? And they get stuck a million other ways. And I think that might be one of the things that I am most afraid of- getting myself stuck so I am not only unhappy but I feel as though it is out of my ability to change my situation. So I thought I would write a letter to myself as an adult. Oh, wait, adulthood happened a year and a month ago, but lets be real, I won't be an adult until at least age 28. Yes, thats the age deadline I've decided to give myself. By that age I need to be acting semi-responsibly. Okay so here's my letter to 28 year old Chelsea...

First of all stop running around. Make yourself a cup of tea or something for God's sake and for five minutes out of the day : breathe. Sit down and take your time reading this.

1. If it sucks- don't do it. There is another way to do whatever it is that is so miserable. If its your job, unless you are suffering through a low level job and you are sure that this is going to be some sort of stepping stone to a better job- peace out. At nineteen you got paid 12.50 an hour to watch little kids and play on the beach all day. So if you are getting paid less than that now to do something shittier- stop that nonsense immediately. If its a guy that sucks- why are you still around? Your life is not a mario game, you don't have a few more lives waiting after you let this one crash and burn. You only have so many years in your life. So enjoy them all in glowable bliss. But on the other hand know that even good things are not good 100% of the time. Give problems time to work themselves out, and be patient. But make sure that every day you wake up with him, you are absolutely in love. And if THAT is not the case- then don't be waking up next to him any longer.

2. Act in a way every day that will allow you to lay down at the end of the night thinking that you are a kind, good person. Make sure that you don't hurt people. And if you do, apologize and fix what you can. But don't act selfishly. Yes, your happiness is important but you also need to be making other people happy.

3. Make sure you stay close to your family. You may not want to live in MC Maine but you know what? If you drift from them who knows how far you'll let yourself get before you realize you want to be close again. So just stay close. They will keep you grounded. And yes, you need it.

4. Go on another adventure. There is no way by age 28 that you have gone on enough adventures for your lifetime. So pack up and peace out. Go live somewhere else for a year. Go exploring and scuba diving and eating all around the world and write about all of it.

5. If you aren't writing its because you are either A) being a wuss about people reading your work or B) you aren't trying hard enough to be writing. So get your shit together. It will make you happier than anything else.

6. Don't write marriage off. Just wait long enough.

The Ex-Factor.

I want to know at what point in a relationship people change their inherent ability to be independent and suddenly NEED so much from another person.  In the absence of a significant other, everyone is just fine to live by themselves, to do their own thing, to rely on their family, friends, career... to live independently.  And then- they start dating someone.  And slowly they let that someone else into their world.  The stage of life that they are in usually determines just how fast the two worlds merge, but usually it happens at a slow rate.  Introductions to the family, meeting the best friends, spending lots of time at each other's home, eventually moving in together.  If its a relationship that is going to last, all these things happen- given time.   And slowly the two worlds become one.  The two groups of friends begin to hang out with each other, his friends become hers and vice versa.  The two families eventually socialize together.  And its one big happy family.  And then suddenly, neither the man nor woman is capable of existing independently anymore because they get so used to having someone else.  And they get so used to having someone else's world collapsed into their own.  I suppose that is why ending a relationship is quite so hard.  Its like two pieces of string all tied up in a million knots.  Before you can have two separate pieces of string again, you have to untangle each different knot and completely separate the two lives before the two can begin to live independently of each other again.  But does this mean that after ending a relationship with someone and finally getting your knots all untied and untangled that you can never be friends again?  I suppose its different for different people.  Different types of relationships etc.  But I think for me, its too hard to keep someone as one little connection in my life when they had been all wrapped up in it.