Traveling

(This is a long one. I bolded the key points in case you want to avoid my rambling).

The weather has been slightly less sunny since my last post, and I have experienced some difficulty with my housing (as in, discovering broken appliances, no hot water, and random failure of the internet). I had a patch of roughness, but I have since accepted it and have mostly resolved the issues. I have also decided that when those rough patches hit again (as they inevitably will when living in a new country), I just need to remind myself of how awesome Ireland is and how lucky I am to be here. That may not fix my oven, but the attitude will definitely make the problems easier to get through!

On an even lighter note, I have travel updates!

Last Friday was the first class field trip to three "Big Houses" around Cork County. "Big Houses" were basically mansions built across the past few centuries by members of the Anglo-Irish, Protestant Ascendancy class. As Ireland was controlled by England, many English serviceman were moved to Ireland and were given land that was taken from the Irish.

They used the land to build large houses, gardens, and plantations that were passed down through those families. Although they were alienated in England because they lived in Ireland, they also were not well accepted by the Irish, mostly because they were Anglican protestants and carried a very anti-Catholic sentiment. They also didn't much like the Irish. Regardless, these houses were mostly burned down during the War for Independence as a way for the Irish to reclaim their land. As this happened, the Ascendancy class fell into rapid decline.

We read a book by Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen, who was a part of an Ascendancy family. "The Last September" is about Danielstown, a Big House in Cork County, during the War of Independence. The book takes inspiration from Bowen's life on her family's land, and analyzes a culture that, in the face of destruction, remained very proper, traditional, very ignorant of the world around them, and very much trying to be a part of two different worlds. Needless to say, it doesn't have a very happy ending.

For the trip, we visited a house that avoided destruction, and still owned by the same family as it was centuries ago. The family was also close with Bowen's family, so the owner knew a lot about the world Bowen came from. The house wasn't open to the public and we were too large of a group to go through it, but we were able to go through the house's gardens. Anne's Grove feels like acres and acres of land molded into the most beautiful and serene of gardens and natural life I've ever experienced. We spent about two hours exploring the land (and even getting lost once), and then got the key to the Farahey Church from the owner.

Farahey Church was the Bowen family chapel, built in the 1880s and serving the family through its prime. It is a consecrated Anglican establishment, but still hosts an annual tribute to Elizabeth Bowen. It is where she, and many others in the Bowen family, are buried, as well. A mild hike from the church is where Bowen's Court, or their Big House, once stood.

We learned that Big Houses were very expensive to build and more often too expensive to maintain, which contributed to the decline of the Ascendancy, as well. Bowen, who had no children and was an only child herself, was the last in line to inherit Bowen's court. She did, and she owned it for many years, until in the 1960s, she sold it. When she sold it, she told the new owner to carry on the hospitality of the house by living in it as her family did for so many hundreds of years. He agreed, but when she came sent something to Bowen's Court in later years, her messenger informed her that the house had been completely destoryed. Lo and behold, the new owner tore it down no more than a year after acquiring it.

We visited the rubble, now surrounded by farmland. The owner (the same family who had purchased the land the '60s) is apparently moving to turn it into a BioDiesel plant.

From the ruins of Bowen's Court, we traveled to Fota House and Gardens, which is on an island very near Cork City. It is partially owned by my college, and includes a wildlife park and museum. We had a light dinner in the House, had the chance to explore the mansion, and then the gardens. The beautiful scenery, more manicured than Anne's Grove, wrapped up our trip and we headed back home.

The rest of the weekend I spent at the Cork Folk Festival, and then celebrating a friend's birthday, and talking with locals in pubs. The Folk Festival was pretty sweet. The main events were Sunday afternoon; we ended up seeing a singing group on one end of St. Patrick Street, tradition Irish music and dance on the other end, and a juggler/clown the middle. It was a little rainy, but still pretty warm, and definitely fun. That day, I also bought a Cork Rugby jersey and an Irish flag...both on sale at a local store.

Our group ended up meeting a couple of people in a pub on Saturday night who invited us to a party we (gladly) declined, and then we ended up carousing with some drunk people on the street outside of a 24-hour pizza joint on our way home. While the boys in the group enjoyed singing loudly with some people in our group, I ended up being roped into a conversation with "Maria," a twenty-something Irish woman who had a lot to say about history, politics, and Ireland in general. She was generally pretty repetitive and didn't let me get a word in edgewise, but she did say some interesting stuff about Ireland's independence and current politics. We exchanged e-mails and she said she'd be up for a more sober conversation down the line.

On Monday, the class went on a Literary Tour of Cork, which highlighted a lot of places around the city that have literary significance (including where James Joyce's family owned property, and where Frank O'Connor found inpiration). The highlights of the tour were far from literary though...we were followed by three homeless men who liked to interject in the conversation at random moments, and we witnessed the end of a brawl that had moved outside of the bar and onto the street.

That was really the extent of my weekend, and since, I've been preparing for the next adventure.

I am leaving tomorrow to go to the Aran Islands with class. As stated in a previous post, we are going to Inishmaan, where the first language is Gaelic and there is only a small population of people who actually live there.

We will be leaving tomorrow at 10 AM, traveling Northwest toward Galway (a western port city), but stopping over in Coole Park. Coole is a very significant park in Irish literary history, as it was a place where Lady Gregory lived and where W.B. Yeats spent a lot of his life. We have two hours in the park to eat and to explore the forest (where Yeats liked to write), and then we return to the bus to complete the trip to the Galway are. We'll leave a port in Rossaveal (in the middle of nowhere) to take an hour ferry ride to Inishmaan, sometime in the evening.

We are being hosted by locals, all of whom know our professor well and sound pretty hospitable. While I could have stayed in the house of 16 rooms with the most eligible bachelor on the Island, my friends and I opted for a cozier cottage that can only host three visitors. The house is owned by an older woman (I'm not sure if she is, or was, married). I will be staying there with a guy from DU and a girl we met through class, who goes to school in another state that I can't remember at the moment.

Anyway, the three of us will be greeted with a nice, warm, hugely portioned dinner (I am told)when we arrive tomorrow evening, and then consulted about what we want for breakfast and at what time on Thursday. We opted for the smaller setting in order to get to know our host and more locals, even if there may be more of a language barrier when we converse with them. This will be my first host-family experience, and I'm very excited!

We have all of Thursday to read, write, think, and explore...the island is only about 3.5 miles wide, and if the weather's nice, our professor says it can be the most beautiful place on Earth. I hope the weather's nice, because the Atlantic really batters the island otherwise, which our professor plainly calls, "Hell."

We also have most of Friday to spend around the island, but we leave at about 4:30 in the afternoon. We'll return to Rossaveal and then go through Galway city. Our professor said we can be dropped off at a number of places during the trip; she planned it against a weekend so that we could have easy access to a weekend trip.

The guy from DU and I will be getting off in Galway City and meeting some of our friends from other programs to spend the weekend. We just booked a sweet B&B (as the seven hostels were booked solid) and have loose plans to check out the Galway Oyster Festival, the Cliffs of Mohr (just a short trip from the city), and whatever else we can find. We'll be there until Sunday to return to Cork at an undetermined time, and then resume class on Monday. I'm pretty stoked for the travel opportunities, and way excited to see a completely different part of the country!

It will be a bit before my next update, but I will surely be writing later about my island experience and my weekend in Galway.

Can I just say now...I love Ireland.

~MJ

Pictures are from Anne's Grove, Bowen's Court, Farahey Church, Fota, St. Patrick Street, and a pub across from the Beamish Brewery. All are taken by me, with the exception of the one in which I am hugging a tree; that photo of what I do best was taken by photographer Dan McClanahan (danmcclanahan.com). He's a fellow classmate who takes about as many pictures as I do...but is often better at it than I am:-)