Hens and Thoughts for Christmas

"On the third night of Christmas my true love gave to me

                                     Three french hens!  Two turtle doves! 

And a partridge in a pear tree!"

Mu-ha-ha fear my awesome google-images + paint abilities!
I give you ... three french hens!

I've got Christmas-related-thoughts, so I'm going with the whole today-is-only-the-3rd-of-12-days-of-Christmas giving me until Epiphany in January. On that note, let me wish you a merry day-three-of-x-mas! Enjoy the French chickens! And here are my mildly-ramble-ly-thoughts:

Annie, Bernadette, and Bilbo

I went to see The Hobbit with my childhood neighbors and awesomesauce friends Annie and Bernedette last weekend. Super duper exciting. 

 

'56 Hungarian Revolution

... the flag with a hole in it

October 23rd is the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, so today I'm going to indulge my history-major-side. Junior year I did an Oral History project interviewing a man who fought in the 1956 uprising as a 15 years old. Part of why I find the Hungarian revolution so fascinating is I spent a summer with brilliant Hungarians, I adore Budapest, and my grandma's side of the family is Hungarian. But it's also fascinating because they were my age and even younger, because those two and a half weeks were epic, and because it's the type of story you hope will end well --even when you know the ending.

I hope it's more like a story and less like a term-paper,
because these people were amazing

In October 1956 Polish workers went on strike, an incredibly risky thing to do under a strict communist government. This inspired students at the Technological University of Budapest, they organized a simple protest walking along the Danube down to a statue of Bam - a Polish native and Hungarian hero who had fought in the 1848 revolution. The students created a list of 16 demands and as their protest grew and attracted more and more students and then workers and people from all over the city they went to the radio station to broadcast them.

Their demands were first off the removal of all Soviet troops from Hungary. Soviet forces had liberated Budapest and Hungary from Nazi forces at the end of World War Two. While it is a huge relief when someone gets rid of Nazis, it becomes worrisome when they immediately set up their own secret police in the same office building and people continue to disappear to the dungeons and death, with no sign that the troops have any plans on leaving it is not as acceptable.

The student's 16 demands listed free and legitimate elections open to all parties.

For the Love of Funny Alphabets

 This fall I'm taking Russian 101. Just for fun because I enjoy studying languages and have a slight obsession with funny alphabets. To be honest this is probably due to the fact that my real desire when-I-grow-up is to be Mara and overthrow evil-ancient-egyptian-pharaohesses by acting as a-double-spy-translator-bad-ass-chick-who-runs-around-bare-foot. Since these dreams of being an blue-eyed-ancient-egpytian-bi-lingual-secret-rebel will most likely never be a reality, I have to settle for attempting to be bi-lingual . . . or more actually jump at any chance to study a language that has a funny alphabet. Although I am miles away from fluent in anything but English, I very much enjoy my kindergarten-level-of-skill at sounding-letters-out-painfully-slow-to-attempt-to-read-words, because the fact that those foreign squiggles mean anything intelligible to me makes me happy.

Missing Gorse

... and other symptoms of Ireland-sickness

After camp we say you get "camp-sick", just as you might have been home-sick when you arrived. There are moments when I find myself a little bit emerald-island-sick. I am grateful as all get out to be home and surrounded by friends and family with a car and jobs and swing dancing and so many people I love within easy access, but I love Ireland as well.

It's been rainy here at home and nothing screams Ireland like rainy days. The rain reminds me of Ireland, it was chilly-near-consent-type of rain and our dear little (un-heated) house on St Brendan's Ave was quite cold, but I remember much more the overwhelming warmth of walking into a pub at night or the cozy comfort of sipping tea wrapped in a blanket on our couch watching the Love Machine or something equally as ridiculous.

Gorse growing on Crogh Patrick (and photographed in the rain)

All's Well that Ends Well

The Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC has an annual Free for All event -- a play from the previous season for free for a couple of weekends. This summer they put on All's Well that Ends Well. I love Shakespeare unabashedly, so a free play by the bard is a great way to spend a night. It's enough fun to balance out hours of waiting in humidity to pick up tickets. The Shakespeare Theatre puts on incredible shows, so the acting, sets, costumes, and all were impressive.
All's Well that Ends Well is just a really weird play.  The end is not quite the resolution you'd hope for/expect. Maybe a large dose of irony would explain it best. Or perhaps the point is that it's a backwards play. All's Well flips all the conventions: comedies end with weddings, but the wedding is in act one instead, the love-lorn woman pursuses the man who must be wooed, then no one appears to be in love at the end. Which is odd, well done oddness, but oddness all the same. To its credit it brings up fascinating questions about gender roles, marriage, and fate vs self direction that are still interesting a few hundred years later. Plus it has some good quotes like:
 “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” 

Avengers Assemble

Lucky Star stealing a kiss from Hawkeye over there

Easter Thoughts About the Ear Story

Happy Easter ! I'm going to get a little theological -- or something like that. This is a mixture of a little bit of my thoughts and a large dose of the campfire talk given by my wonderful Assistant Program Director at camp last summer. (So not my ideas originally and not told as well as by Jabo, but here's my thoughts).

Not only risen, but also genuinely open to poking as well as doubting.
Caravaggio's painting of St. Thomas -- I've got a serious crush on Caravaggio as well, I love his paintings in Rome.

Rome -> Florence

We started Thursday with a delicious Italian breakfast of cappuccino and fresh pastries (significantly different from a full Irish Breakfast), then the three of us stopped by a few last sights in Rome. Such as the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, Piazza Novena, and the Spanish Steps—with daylight, and then we tried to see the bone church with the capuchin crypt, but when we found it the 11:30-3:00 lunch hour foiled those plans. But hey, you have to leave something to see next time right?

After finding a store for lunch and snack foods, we took the metro to Termini to catch our train to Florence. The board listed platforms for all the other trains departed; all except our train, of course. That’s where the adventure comes in! Our train to Florence departed from not one, two, three, four, or thirteen, but from “ES2”. I asked the nice Tren-Italia-man what that meant and he said that ES1 and ES2 are the platforms all the way down past all the other platforms, and then to the right, and all the way down past trains at the very end. We had time to calmly stamp our ticket and board the train, if our train departed from a normal platform. Instead we got to briskly-but-not-quite-full-panic-ly walk from one corner of Termini to the farthest possible point of Termini, completely with a short more-like-panic-full-run at the end which got us boarding the train at exactly 3:13 for our departure of 3:14. It’s not nearly as romantic as all those movies make it seem to hop onboard right as the train pulls away, but that could just be because there was no rain, dramatic music, or beautiful boy waving goodbye to us as we left him behind.

We very much enjoyed resting on the train and then we arrived in Florence around 7pm. Star’s friend from Grove City met us at the station to show us back to their flat, which is up so many steps it makes one appreciate the “Mt Everest of stairs” up to Star and Monique’s room in Galway. We enjoyed the sunset from the roof with a sea of red terracotta roofs all around us, quite a wonderful spot to sit. For dinner we got heaping servings of amazing Italian anti-pastas and pastas galore. It was family-style loads of food for 15 euros, including really nice house wine too, so it was very much worth it. Plus there was a quick stop for gelato on the way home, of course. Although it is always sad to leave the Eternal City, Florence is great as well. 

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One last Old Bridge Gelato before we left town

Highest point of the smallest country

Today we spent the majority of the day at the Vatican. First we went into the Vatican Museums and saw the Sistine Chapel.  Although there is far too much to see in one day, we looped through most of the museum rooms to see an abundance of icons, paintings, sculptures, and all sorts of impressive art and artifacts. While in the courtyard for a snack we were highly entertained by a couple of Japanese boys who just hopped over the chain-fence-ring-thing in order to spin the alien-sphere-with-in-a-sphere-thingy. The Italian security guards disapproved in a "Hey don't do that, but, you know, stop whenever you want, no rush."   Even better, was the Japanese girl who sat down behind me on the bench really fast while her boyfriend snapped a picture of her with my hair. Red hair is apparently a bigger deal for Asians than it is for the Irish.

In addition to the wonderful tourists to watch, we loved all the art and especially the Basilica of St Peter's. As soon as I caught sight of the inside of the Basilica my pulse started pounding like crazy with excitement. I was just as impressed by St Peter's as I was the first time I saw it -- if not more so.


I spent a good deal of the day recalling as much as I possibly could from our amazing tours with Dr Connell and Liz, during my semester in Rome. A couple of my favorite facts are that there is actually not a single painting in the St Peter's Basilica, they're all mosaics. (In large part, because mosaics are easier upkeep and the Basilica is built to last until the end of the world.) Most of the mosaics are so incredibly detailed that it's really hard to tell they're not just painted on canvas. Once you are in the Cupola on the way up to the top of the Dome you are right-up-close-next-to some of the mosaics, which one would swear from farther away are carved and 3D.

After a full day exploring the Vatican and a short fight with numerous ticket machines at Termini, we took the bus and tram to La Fate's for dinner. Our food was yummy, but the best part for me was definitively catching the Erasmus students coming to dinner so I got to see Dr Connell and Miss. Bonifield again. That was really really wonderful, being back in Rome does make me miss my Thomas Morons a lot. Back at the flat we enjoyed more yummy food along with wine, laughter, and to top off the amazing day: tiramisu.

Ostia Antica

 After some wonderful coffee to start off the day, we took the metro to the Roman Forum and got some pizza at the little pizza-place-across-the-ruin-by-the-stairs-where-Kathleen-and-I-used-to-go, I got potato-pizza cause I have missed it. Then we took the metro to Pyrimide station and switched  lines to head out to Ostia. First we visited the ruins of Ostia Antica which is roughly the size of "downtown" Galway. We had absolutely perfect weather (and didn't even get sunburned). So there were some great photos and lots of giggles as we explored and wandered.

Then we kept going for a few more stops and got off in modern Ostia so we could see the sea. It was super chilly, but with a little convincing we all jumped into the water and found that it really wasn't that bad once you were in. Even with the gorgeous weather we were only really sharing the beach with a couple of couple who were busy making out (like they do in Rome).  We crossed some things off our bucket list at the Mediterranean Sea then headed back to the city.

All of us went out to dinner at a B . I tried the pasta dish with Ox Tail, since it is a traditional Roman dish that I had yet to try and it was really tasty. Pretty much just tasted like beef with a slightly annoying bone in the middle. It was pretty entertaining to hear the waiters singing in the other room, they'd joke and apologize to us about it when they came to the table.

After dinner Monique, Star and I walked to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain and past the Pantheon and Piazza Novena on our way home. Since Old Bridge is apparently open incredibly late for a gelateria, we had to grab a second gelato to compliment our late-night-theological-debate. It was a wonderful day and I hope my coin in the Trevi Fountain brings me back to Rome again and again.

Roma Ti Amo

I fell in love with Rome when we came to visit my brother and I knew I'd study abroad there as well. My semester in Rome was incredible. So I am thrilled to pieces to be back to visit the Eternal City. Completely worth the near-total lack of sleep. The lack of sleep was a by-product of this morning/ last night Star, Monique and I had to head to the bus /coach station around 1:30am to catch a bus to Dublin; where we caught a plane to Roma Ciampino Aeroport; where we caught a bus to Termini; where we caught the Metro to a stop right down the street from the condos where Star's-god-parents'-son-and-his-wife live. Right in the back yard of the Vatican! It's so amazing to be able to stay with them here. We found the address alright, then got some help from the nice desk girl at the Candia hotel, then Monique completely outsmarted us all by a long shoot when she realized that our calls weren't working because we were not including the plus sign. Silly European cell numbers. After we dropped off our luggage and were treated to a welcome-to-Rome-cappuccino, we set out to explore and hit some of the highlights. I can barely contain my excitement to be back in Rome again.Combining this extreme level of giddiness with the caffeine of a cappuccino made it quite hard to keep from literally running to show the girls St. Peter's.

 We walked all over the city from the Vatican to St Angelo's Castle to the Victor Emmanuel to the Colosseum to Trasevere for pizza and then Old Bridge for gelato. Then we even got an amazing dinner back at the flat as well. I'm loving soaking up being back in Rome.

I've missed good ol' Belli in Trastevere 

Real pizza!!

I'm in love with Charle Byrne

     I'm seriously utterly and completely in love with Charlie Byrne, so far the solitary fault that I have found with my dear Charlie Byrne is a lack of most Hemingway's books -- A Movable Feast for instance. I'll forgive this shortcoming though, because of the treasure chest of other all the other wonderful (and cheap!) books that is Charlie Byrne. It is seriously like the prize-toy-chest-thing at the dentist, because you never know what amazing surprise you'll come across. But it's even better because 1: you end up with an awesome book instead of a plastic plane and 2: you don't have to let anyone check, poke, clean, or fill your teeth first.

     The majority of books at the unbeatably-awesome Charlie Byrne bookstore are secondhand, meaning it is only roughly organized in alphabetical order, and it is mostly by chance that you happen to find what you are looking for if you go in with something in mind.  The best way to approach Charlie Byrne is to wander and browse until something just catches your eye. One of my favorite things is that there are so so so many books they not only cover all the walls and tables, but the bookcases also spill out the front door and wrap around the entire outside of the store (on the indoor mall side). The books on the outside there are only 1 to 3 euros which is also super exciting. I got Angela's Ashes since it's a very fitting book to read in Ireland. Though I'm leaving it here in Galway and I'm bringing Bourne Identity with me to Italy, because it seems more fun and less sad-starving-damp-and-Irish like Angela's Ashes tends to be. (Although it's a good book so far, despite the sadness.) I figured a spy-thriller is more fitting for a trip around Italy with two friends My next blog post will be from the Eternal City!