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Stephanie's studying abroad!Following
The Walsh family motto is “Transfixus sed non mortuus.” Translation: Transfixed but not dead.
I’m still trying to figure out how this is a good thing….like we’re paralyzed but we’re not dead, soooo yay for not being dead?
Confused.
I’m writing a paper for my American history class about Irish-American identity, and researching it today made me consider my own version of the Irish-American identity. I think I do have some of the traits that various sociologists and historians have identified as the “pillars” of Irish-American identity (though they were discussing the nineteenth century).
I think the key point of the Irish-American idea is the hyphen: Irish-Americans are simultaneously committed to America and to Ireland. It’s not so much divided loyalties as it is passion for both countries - obviously I’m not as passionate about Ireland as the famine immigrants were in the 1840s and 50s, but I’ve always felt very defensive of Ireland and proud of it as a country, even as a kid. Though I’d never been here before this September, it was always MY country. Being here has really strengthened that - I love it in a different way now because I’ve seen it and know what it’s like (obviously not as much as if I’d grown up here or lived here for a long time, but it’s still changed my love of Ireland). You don’t really get the hyphenation with my other ancestry: you don’t see the Swedish-American identity or French Canadian-American identity being discussed (the latter mainly because it’s a horrific hyphenation). And of course I’m very proud to be American, because, despite our failings, America has done a lot of things to be proud of and still stands as a beacon of freedom and opportunity for people around the world (oh lord, starting to sound like some insane jingoist).
I think a part of that love of Ireland is a sort of aggressive attitude - the sources all talked about the militant Catholicism and militant nationalism of the Irish in America in the 1880s and 90s. While I’m by no means a militant Catholic or nationalist, I think to some degree I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder in terms of my heritage: it’s always “Yeah, I’m Irish, which is the awesomest and best ethnicity to be so respect it!!” There’s a definite defense of “my people,” and I take any opportunity to remind people that the Irish were discriminated against in huge numbers when they first arrived. I guess to some degree I feel like I’ve come from a line of Irish who got to America, started with nothing, and then somehow became the darlings of the immigrants (being Irish is generally considered cool, and there’s lots of St. Patrick’s Day nonsense, which I gleefully take part in because of my heritage).
It’s an interesting topic to tackle, eh? I’m really glad I’ve had the opportunity to explore my heritage and its implications more via my studying at Trinity.
Possibly my favorite cultural disconnect so far.
Especially when Fiona misheard it as “make it rain on the house”
In its infinite wisdom, Trinity gives its students “Reading Week” in the middle of Michaelmas term so they don’t lose their minds. I decided that “Vacation Week” was a much better title, and so I spent the last week travelling around Italy with my friends Meg and Elise.
The trip was such a nice break from the constant staring at computer screens (for both work and entertainment) that I’ve been doing all quarter, and it was wonderful to be out in the sunshine again (though it did rain for half the trip - Florence was very dreary!) Still, it was such a fun time.
We went to Florence first - I’d been there once before, but just for the day, so I’d had the very abbreviated version. We visited the Uffizi, the Gallerie della’Accademia (home of Michelangelo’s David), Il Duomo, and generally wandered about and shopped and took in the sights. My favorite thing we visited was the Boboli Gardens - they’re part of what used to be a palace of the Medici family. They were absolutely GORGEOUS, plus we were there around twilight/sunset so it was even more beautiful. I kept expecting a Roman god or goddess to come wandering around a corner.
The Cypress Alley
Next was Bologna - made even better by the fact that I got to see my darling Talia!! Her apartment is totally adorable and charming, I was happy that I got the chance to see it. Talia gave us a wonderful tour of Bologna, which is a really beautiful town - there’s porticoes on every building, so all the walkways are covered (which was nice since it was raining.) My favorite bit was our hike up to San Luca - it’s a church on a hill overlooking Bologna and the surrounding countryside, and the views were just beautiful. Everything looked like a Renaissance painting. It was a LOT of steps to get up there though!
Our final stop was Rome, which I think was my favorite of the three cities. It’s just such an amazing mix of modern, old, and REALLY old. We hit up all the classic places - the Vatican (St. Peter’s and Sistine Chapel, both of which wowed me to no end), the Colosseum, Palantine Hill, Castel Sant’Angelo, everything! My favorites were the Palantine and St. Peter’s. St. Peter’s really reminded me about the good of Catholicism and the ability of faith to unite people from literally all over the world. I have my issues with organized religion, but it was something mighty impressive to be standing in St. Peter’s. I found myself humming “Imagine” by John Lennon of all tunes, which was strange and not so strange. I think in the end all religions are saying something along the lines of Lennon’s message, it’s just important to focus on that rather than the squabbles about doctrine or who owns the holy land. Hard to get that message across to an entire civilization though.
Inside St. Peter’s
My other favorite was the Palantine Hill - there was just so much history there! I totally geeked out. It was also just ridiculously beautiful - it was good to be the emperor! The surrounding view of all Rome and the Colosseum was simply stunning. I wanted to wander around there all day as well. It’s simply amazing to think that people have been living there for thousands of years and those buildings are still standing. That’s something I love about Europe - there’s monuments and buildings still standing as the cities have grown and changed around them.
Overall, it was simply a lovely trip. It was nice, in a way though, to be homesick - I felt like there was something worth coming back to (in both Dublin and California), and it made me realize how lucky I am to have any of these experiences at all. So yay for that and tons of gelato :)
This past weekend, I went and stayed with my cousins in Kiltimagh (pronounced Kel-sheh-mah), Co. Mayo. It was a really incredible and eye-opening experience, and I’m happy beyond words that I was able to get out there and meet them.
I came down on the train on Friday; Mona and her daughter Lenore came and picked me up from the station. I stayed with Mona, who is really sweet - she’s 70 and retired. Lenore works as a PA with kids and adults with disabilities, and Mona’s other daughter Donna has her own business - first aid instruction for corporate offices. We went back to Mona’s (where I stayed for the weekend - Mona lives on the main road in Kiltimagh, Aiden Street, in a very snug and cozy 1930s house) and had some dinner and chatted about this and that. We figured out exactly how we’re related - Mona’s grandfather was a brother of my great-grandfather. (I got a ten page family tree to take home, which was awesome!)
Mona had some great stories about the family - her father was a Sinn Féin supporter in the 1920s, and he lived next door to a policeman of the town who’d let them know when there was going to be a raid. The policeman couldn’t be seen going over to a Sinn Féin’s house to warn them, so he’d send his son - a little ten year old who’d come in and announce, “Daddy said to tell ya they’ll be raidin’ tonight.” When I told her my own family stories, and in one, that I spent all my time on the softball team dancing and picking flowers in the outfield, she said “You don’t like sports? Ah - you’re a true Walsh” which made me laugh out loud. Glad to know it’s a family trait!
On Saturday Mona, and Donna gave me the whistle-stop tour of eastern Mayo, which was such a blast. We went to Westport, a town right on the Atlantic coast, which was beautiful (if cold!) There’s a mountain, Croagh Patrick above the town that has a church on top of it - one Sunday a year there’s a big pilgrimage to the top and something like 20,000-30,000 are on the mountain at any given time. Donna had worked with the emergency medical units on that Sunday before and had some rather hilarious stories of truly stupid tourists. The highlight of the day was definitely seeing the old Walsh homestead - there’s no house there anymore, but the fields are the ones that the Walsh family originally lived on and worked. I stood there for a minute soaking it in (somewhat literally - lots of rain in Mayo).
It’s really something to stand somewhere where your family lived and worked for so long - who even knows how long - and to come there as a citizen of a different country and really a different world. Seeing the small town the Walshes came from (about 1,000 people) and the fields literally in the middle of nowhere where they lived brought home to me what a connected world I live in, and how lucky I am to know such a diverse group of people and visit so many places.
On Sunday Mona and I went to mass and then she and Lenore drove me to the train station. Going to mass again was nice - sort of strange and unfamiliar in its way, since I haven’t been in about twelve years, but simultaneously reassuring in its continuity. I’d forgotten how much I love the part of mass where you wish everyone around you peace. There is something incredible about looking into the eyes of someone you don’t know and telling them “Peace be with you” and meaning it completely. If more people in the world did that more often, in a religious context or not, that’d be an amazing step forward for society.
All in all, an amazing and thought-provoking weekend. Seeing where you come from really makes you think about where you’re going.
It’s been too long, my friends! And by my friends, I mean my study abroad blog. Let’s get cracking on the updates, shall we?
The weekend before school started I got in touch with some of my relatives who I didn’t know existed, which was really exciting! I had coffee with my cousin Billy Walsh and his wife, and they invited me to Sunday dinner with their oldest daughter and her husband. Coffee and dinner were SO fun! They were all hilarious and the food was delicious - it was so, so nice to have a homey, family kind of time. It was really sweet and welcoming, and Geraldine (Billy’s wife) told me I have a standing invitation for dinner any time I’m feeling homesick. I had such a lovely time and it’s fun to find relatives I never knew existed! Since my roots and family were a big part of my coming over here, it’s so great to already have that happening. I was really happy about that.
I survived my first week of class, and I have to say I rather like what I’m taking. All my professors are really intelligent (it’s the sort of situation where everything they say makes you go “Woooow…that’s so true…I never thought of it that way before!”) I especially like my Themes of Modern American History class - getting the U.S. from a different perspective is totally eye-opening. It’s funny though - I agree with a lot of the criticisms my professor makes, but at the same time I’m kind of defensive of America cause thems my peeps, after all! It’s great though, really makes you re-examine the history you’ve been taught 5 million times in California.
School is much more of your own initiative here - you’re not given specific pages of reading you need done by each class - you get about 8 books per lecture and choose which you want to read. In terms of grading, it’s just one or two papers per class (I’ll be writing five 2,000+ word papers this term - ack) and that’s all you’re judged on. It’s going to be intense and I’m a little freaked out, but I know I can get help if I need it, so I’m trying to just get into school mode (a bit of a challenge…) and trust in myself to do the best that I can.
The first weekend of the school term I went to Cork and Killarney! It was SUCH a blast - I went with Jacob and Safia, who are both awesome and hilarious, and we had such a great time. Ireland really is beautiful - it completely lives up to expectations of the lush green-tasticness. It was so nice just staring out the window at the rain-soaked hills on the bus. I think my favorite thing we saw were the grounds of Blarney Castle - the castle itself was very cool, but the woods that surrounded it were absolutely stunning - you went in ten feet and the “real world” completely disappeared. It was so dense and green and beautiful, I wanted to run away and live in a cottage there and never come back! It was very ethereal and other worldly - a faun or centaur walking through would’ve been more at home than we were, I think. I loved it. I really want to go back if I get the chance!
Killarney was equally beautiful, but in a slightly more rugged way, which I loved as well. We had a rather hilarious time trying to walk the Ring of Kerry - the woman at the hostel kept insisting that we couldn’t get on it because “It’s a circle, it has no beginning!” It took us a good five minutes to convince her that we just wanted the road that one would generally drive to do the Ring of Kerry, which had to exist.
I got a bit homesick over the weekend since the Beat was having its auditions - I can’t wait to meet all the new members via skype tonight! But it was sad not to be there with all the old Beaters and singing with them. I think it’s not just the singing but the fact that they’re my friends (and basically second family) in San Diego. I’ll be back with them in January though!
Now I’m in the midst of my second week of class and it’s pretty successful so far. I went on a tour of the Dail with DU History Monday which was kind of hilarious because once the guide found out I was the only non-Irish person there, it became a personal tour of the Dail for me. Whenever he mentioned America, he would refer to me (“And this is from your Civil War, which was fought over slavery”) and took time to explain when things were different and similar between Ireland and the U.S. It was really funny but it was also really sweet. That’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of the Irish - they’ll go out of their way to help you if they think you need it. When I went to the rare books room in the library to do some research, the librarian could tell I hadn’t been there so he explained how everything worked, found my book for me, and set me up at a desk.
The difference between Irish and U.S. political buildings is really interesting. The Dail is easy to tour - you just ask your TD (congressperson, basically) and they set it up for you. And it’s really different in that we were walking by the big politicians - Michael Higgins, one of the candidates for president, walked by us when we were waiting outside (I’d seen him on Trinity campus once), and while our guide was talking to us on a staircase, the speaker of the Dail walked by and smiled at us. I feel there’s much more public access - politicians aren’t so far and away like they are in the U.S. Personally I think that’s a good thing - I think we glorify politicians in the U.S. They’re people just like us, and they should be more accessible to our demands and criticism.
I had my first Boydell rehearsal last night and it was really fun! It’s great to be doing choral music again (especially Christmas choral music!) I went out to the pub with some of the girls after and they seem really cool. I’m excited to sing more with them! We’re doing a tour to Galway in November and we’ll have a concert down there with Trinity singers (the co-ed group), so that should be great.
This weekend I’m heading to Galway with the International Society, which should be tons of fun too. I’ll update again then. Dea-beannacht!
“Recipes!” I thought with disdain. “Recipes are for the weak.”
With that, I clomped down the stairs, determined to make Chicken a la Stephanie - aka chicken breast, broccoli, onions, garlic and olive oil. Cooked. Somehow.
The chicken breasts package had oven and grill suggestions for cooking on the bottom.
“Hah!” I thought. “I shall neither grill nor oven! I shall sauté!” (A rather fancy chef word I know).
Brimming with confidence, I chopped the onions and broccoli, and sliced the garlic. I heated the pan and poured in some olive oil. Once the pan had heated up, I dropped in the chicken breast.
“Oh,” I noted, “That was rather loud. Maybe the pan shouldn’t be so hot…whatever!” The broccoli, garlic and onions followed, and soon my dish was humming merrily away.
I noticed soon after that the onions and garlic were becoming, how shall we say, well cooked. I figured brown was not quite the color one wanted so early in the cooking process. “Oops,” I muttered under my breath. I took them out and put them on my plate.
The broccoli began to brown soon after. “Oh ho,” I muttered. “Shit,” I added, in a very chef-like fashion.
I noticed the chicken was still rather pink in the middle, so I cut it in half in the pan and maneuvered it so that the pink sides faced the bottom of the pan. “Take that, bacteria!” My false bravado did nothing to convince me that my dish was going to be delicious.
As the chicken sizzled, I began to pray that my dish would be one, edible, and two, somewhat appetizing. I plopped the chicken on the bed of now lukewarm broccoli and onions, and eyed it suspiciously. I cut a piece off and…it wasn’t half bad!
I’m no Julia Child, but the chicken was tender, and the broccoli was quite nice with a bit of salt on it. If I’m still alive tomorrow morning, I’ll deem it a success, and my forays into the kitchen will continue.
Last night was Culture Night in Dublin, one night per year where tons of art shows, educational institutes and museums are free all over Dublin. It’s been going on for five or six years and it was crazy cool.
The first place we went was called New Acropolis, a school of philosophy. They gave us cake and tea (the most boss apple crumble ever) and then we listened to one of their mini-lectures - they had ten minute lectures all night. The one we listened to was on imagination, and the speaker (I’m kicking myself for not getting her name) made the argument that imagination is the link between ourselves and timeless values like justice, courage, etc, which are both external and universal, and can also be found within ourselves. Imagination is not the same thing as fantasy, but a creative means of picturing the intangible future in which we achieve those values. I loved that idea.
Next we went to Red Dog, an art gallery in west Dublin. For Culture Night they had a bunch of different posters that were all inspired by the trees in Phoenix Park. They were giving away copies of them - Sinclair and I got two cause we asked nicely! They also had big rolls of paper with prompts for drawing logos that told you what the company was and what audience they wanted to attract. I drew one for a company called Airfield, which is an urban farm that is a refuge from city life without being too far away.
My logo.
Our next stop was the Instituto Cervantes (which we all insisted on pronouncing in a ridiculous accent), which I think is a Spanish school. There was a photography exhibit but I didn’t see much of it cause I was too busy buying their delicious food! They had real guacamole! And salsa! It was amazing. I missed Mexican food…
Hng. Mommy missed you honey.
After that my experience with culture night ended, cause James, Safia and Kelly and I went to the first DU Dance Society event of the year! It was an hour salsa class and it was a lot of fun. I’ve done salsa before so it was fun to get back into it and then meet a couple new people after during the reception for members.
Next we went to Mac Turcaill’s Pub (I still have no idea how to say that) for the first International Society night. We didn’t end up meeting too many international people cause we were having too much fun talking to each other, but the drinks were pretty cheap and we did meet a French gal and German guy, so that was cool.
All in all a very fun afternoon and evening :)
