Heartbreak

Because that's what's going on here. I can't believe it, I can't believe that it's our last day. I can't believe I'm only waking up to Taylor and Honie one more time, that I'll never knock on the window of 88 Garden and see Dano working and Howie and Ryan being silly on the internet. Words are failing me right now, in a serious way, so here's my Goodbye Ireland Playlist.
My Heart's Tonight In Ireland-Andy Irvine
A Minute Without You-Hanson
The Rare Ould Times-Flogging Molly
Fuck Her Gently-Tenacious D
Silver and Cold-AFI
On The Floor-The Felix Project
Don't Forget Me-The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Another Irish Drinking Song-Da Vinci's Notebook
Sweet Caroline-Neil Diamond
We Didn't Start the Fire-Billy Joel
Ireland's Call-The Irish Rugby Team
The Steps of St. Patrick-Jason LeVasseur
Gone Crazy-Marcy Playground
Jude Law and a Semester Abroad-Brand New
I Miss You-Blink 182
Time of Your Life-Green Day
Whistling Song-Disney's Robin Hood
Last Dance with Mary Jane-Tom Petty
Livin' on a Prayer-Bon Jovi
I am a Rock-Simon and Garfunkel
Wake Me Up When September Ends-Green Day
The Son Never Shines (On Closed Doors)-Flogging Molly
Living in America-The Sounds
Insomniac-Straight No Chaser
No Better Place-Fountains of Wayne
Save Tonight-Eagle Eye Cherry
I Remember-Damien Rice
Free Falling-Tom Petty
Anywhere Is-Enya

Cheers to Ireland. Forever and always.

My Apologies

I will post again, I promise. It's just been a crazy couple weeks, but hopefully later tonight, when I finish one of the 900 papers I have to do, I can take a study break to post. I have to fill you in on Northern Ireland, London, and Sweden, as well as the time the fam spent here in Dublin. Fear not, gentle reader. I will return.

A Happy Post :)

I'm in a wonderful mood right now, right this second. My roommate is laughing and smiling and drinking, running around being silly and we're all just having fun together. We're playing punk Christmas songs, and watching the sun set and getting ready for a hot evening on the town. I love you all. I'll be back soon.

Academic Outrage!

First, some general things. I got two papers back, one yesterday, one today, got As on both of them. No big deal. O'Connor totally tore my Joyce paper apart, sentence structure-wise, and apparently I use too many commas for her taste, and I am an "irresponsible writer". Whatever the hell that means. Still, I got an A. And Celtic Myth...easy class, easy paper, no worries.

On to the real reason for this post. *Warning: The following poem may contain some disturbing images for my more sensitive readers. If reading poetry about Barbie dolls and things of a sexual nature will bother you, exit the post now. But I urge you to open your mind and continue reading.*

This following piece was shown to me by Austin several months ago, and since then, I've hunted out many things Denise Duhamel has written, long poems, prose poems, and literary journal pieces. She's brilliant. So read.

Kinky

They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance.
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips,
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls,
up until now, have done neither of them much good.
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body
under the weight of Ken's face. He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite. And she is imagining
she is somebody else-- maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.

The night had begun with Barbie getting angry
at finding Ken's blow up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch. He was defensive and ashamed, especially
about not having the breath to inflate her. But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned.
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark,
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids.
Then, they let themselves go-- Soon Barbie was begging Ken
to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how
to pivot as though he was on a runway. Ken begged
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her
on the kitchen table until she grew dizzy. Anything,
anything, they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.

[Poem by Denise Duhamel, yoinked from americanpoems.com, with one minor spelling error corrected by me]

This. Is. Good. It's fun, and it's relevant, and it's political and social, and people can relate to it. Basically, this is everything that poetry should be. It's accessible. And, aside from all that, it's well written, and her voice is sharp, witty, fresh. She brings so much pop culture into this piece, but it doesn't dumb the poem down...if anything, it takes the readers who can latch on to things like Barbie and Dr. Ruth and brings them into poetry. Plus, that opening line is just amazing. Read it again. This poem is out there, and unpretentious and demanding of attention, and deserves to be read again and again. And to get inside the head of a Barbie doll...the woman's amazing.

But how I got onto this. I was thinking about this poem this morning, and I wanted to read it before I headed off to class, so I googled it, and found a link, and after I read the poem, I noticed there was a comment section. So I opened it up and the first thing I see is "That isn't poetry. Poetry has rules."

People like that are why poetry is remaining an inaccessible art form. Poets think they're so high and mighty and that they belong to this little secret society with symbols and words that no one else understands, and that the denser a piece is, the harder it is to understand, the better it must be. I hate people like that. Plus, those people usually write terrible poetry. If you ever hear anyone say:

Oh, poetry is easy.
Poetry comes natrually to me.
That isn't a poem because is doesn't do....(whatever)
Yeah, the only good poetry is rhyming poetry.

Just go ahead and smack them in the face. Really really hard. And tell them it was from me. Or better yet, read this poem to them. So I plead with you all...print this poem off and tack it up somewhere in your room or on the fridge or on a message board at work. Post it in your livejournal or blog. Or just read it to yourself, and think about it.

Current Mood: Righteous indignation :)

The Heart of a Rebel

I'm just done cleaning the apartment for our inspection tonight, and I wanted to give a quick post. In my Hisory of Northern Irish Troubles class today, Danny Morrison came in to speak to us, and this man was amazing. He was a member of the Irish Republican Army, and Sinn Fein, has been in and out of jail since he was 16, took up arms against the British State, and has almost been killed more times than can be counted on one hand. I urge you, plead with you, to look this man up and read his story. Here are my impressions that I took down of him during class.

He looks like a sweet old man, but there is a wariness about him, an edge. The lines around his eyes, the deep pockets underneath them speak of more than age; they speak of life. His eyebrows furrow, and a vicious blue light comes on when he speaks of the British military: “fired CS gas in, choking babies, choking old people”. The fingers on his left hand are thin, quick, graceful…jazz fingers, and the gold band sits simple and quietly proud on that forth digit. The right hand, though, is thick, chapped red and swollen with arthritis, which I like to fancy comes from his youth. I can see him young, tall, fiercely handsome and charismatic, fumbling in a dimly lit warehouse or basement with dismantled pieces of near-obsolete guns, piecing them together Frankenstein-style, thrusting them into the hands of dewy-eyed boys. Fingers curled and aching around the trigger, tense and sore with nerves and cold, bleary-eyed from an all-night watch. He is a ghost of that boy, a skeleton onto which I can superimpose my own views. There is a shadow that clings to his whiskey cheeks, hangs around his shoulders like a shroud, and it is the blackness of what he has done: the people he has killed, the screams of terror he has elicited. But there shines a tear-silver sheen over that black, and those are his fallen comrades, the years he was starved, beaten, mistreated in prison, the broken promises, the trust betrayed, the secrets he’s hidden and uncovered. The outrage throbs. He is proud, and doesn’t apologize for what the IRA has done, for what he’s done. He is hurt, has grown old watching his friends, neighbors, family sprayed with bullets, dying and bleeding in the streets.
“You cannot push people around for fifty years and not expect a response”. Still, after all that has happened, there is a hope. He is old now, and settled, ready to accept the peace process. He got involved in the IRA when he was sixteen, just a boy interested in electronics who managed to build a radio transmitter, one that became Radio Belfast, the voice of those behind the barricades, and then slowly got more involved, stashing guns and grenades underneath his bed in his parents’ house. He was the editor of Republican News when the Blanket Protest began and continued. His job was to talk with Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers, he was a public spokesman for Sands in 1981, and attempted to negotiate for the end of the strike.
“The screws had no authority over us…I spent five years readin’ and writin’”. He was, at one time, the director of publicity for Sinn Fein, and sort of idolizes Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, to a certain extent.
The contours of his face are surprisingly smooth; I find myself wishing to see a long and puckered scar running, perhaps from his eyebrow back and curving across his skull. [Had a friend who got his arm broken, and they tried to drown him in a bucket of disinfectant, and the guy had a nervous breakdown, was sent to a mental hospital] [Men put in hoods, loose-fitting clothing, subjected for ten straight days to helicopter white noise, threw them out of helicopters, letting them think they were high in the air, forced them to run across glass and barbed wire, fired blanks close to their heads] [RUC Soldier actions against his kids: Kevin, 15, on leaving a school dance was kicked so hard he ended up in hospital with a blood clot on his testicles. Liam, 11, was searched on his way to school, and he had a letter from his father in his school bag. He was forced to removed his shoes and socks in the street, and the soldiers attempted to make him eat the letter]
He regrets the death and suffering; both of his best friends were killed, one while he was attending a funeral. In his recent years, he has talked with Unionists and is able now to see things from their side of the table, and regard them as people who have also suffered losses than the faceless enemy.
“I did not act only on emotion all those years ago, though emotion did play a part; I also acted rationally”.
He is calm, well-spoken, simply clothed and unadorned. But his story is his garb, and he is dressed like a solider-king, a freedom fighter, a desperate poet, screaming, hands clenched, one around a gun, the other around a pen. He is laughing and grinning, but there are tears on his cheeks, in his eyes, and he is tearing at his hair, and the laugh might be a keening cry. He is blithe and pithy about skirting death the way he has, but still, when he gets up to walk away, his legs are stiff and uncooperative, as though there is shrapnel lodged somewhere just behind his knees.

So. There are my initial thoughts, unworked over and pretty well unread over, except to transfer them from my school notebook to the computer. I know it's no pretty piece of writing, that it's fragmented and mildly incoherent, and there are a couple images that don't make sense. But there's emotion in there, and that's what I wanted to show you, what this old man with a thick Belfast brogue was able to elicit from me, a middle-class American girl from halfway around the world. No wonder he was followed and adored by the IRA men and boys he helped to recruit, no wonder he made such an impact. I met a living, breathing piece of Irish history today. And yes, there's a poem in there somewhere, at least one, maybe two or three. Have a good day, everyone, and spare a thought for those who have lost lives, loved ones, a homeland, and a sense of self to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Not quite sure

This isn't really a post about anything. I suppose I could upload my pictures and do Northern Ireland, but the batteries in my camera are dead. So that isn't really as much of an option as I thought :).

It's Gma Nancy's birthday! Happy Birthday, Grandma! Can't wait to see you.

So I applied for an internship about a month ago with the Indiana Writer's Conference, but I haven't heard anything back from them, so I am forced to assume that I didn't get the job. Which is disappointing really, because it's normally an automatic thing, to go from IR to IWC, or vice versa. If you do well at one, the other one usually takes you. So. I don't know what else I could have done, or who else got the job. So. A little disappointed, but I'm applying for another internship this weekend, fingers crossed I'll hear something positive back from that one. Grrr...I don't know. It's frustrating, although, maybe it'll work out better. I will be busy with classes and things, and the money-paying job that I will have to get when I get home. Still...I hate rejection. *deep breath* Okay. I'm good.

Been doing laundry and cleaning and generally bumming around the apartment all day, and am now contemplating going out tonight...maybe I can talk Howie and Dano into hitting a pub with me. Not to really drink, but just to get out of the flat. Howie wants to go to Donegal city tomorrow, but. I just don't know if I can afford it; I need to save for Sweden :) Which is going to be awesome.

"Where is your boy tonight, I hope he is a gentleman."

Been downloading music today, and spent most of the day with my headphones on. Not really my headphones...I think they're Honie's. That's Stephanie, by the way...we call her Honie, 'cause she misspelled her name on one of her airline bookings :). She's great.

It's hard to think that I'll be home in just 5 weeks. It just doesn't seem like I've been here that long. *counts* A little over 2 months. Wow. And it's really incredible how used to everyone here I am. I can't imagine going home and not being able to walk downstairs and argue with Howie about books, or upstairs to talk to Aaron and Rory about music and socialism, or just be silly all the time with Taylor and Honie, talk to Jes while I walk to class, crack jokes with OC while we try not to get called on in class...I do miss my friends at home, a lot, but these people are amazing, and we've shared some pretty great (and terrible) experiences. One of our number is home this week, stateside, for a funeral, and I know everyone here is aching for him. It's a small enough group of us that we're all friends, on different levels, sure, but we are friends. And I don't know what I'll do when I'm back in Indiana, and Honie is in New York, and Taylor's in California, instead of in the living room to laugh at me when I wake up late and groggy.

We've put a ban on talking about going home, until December 2nd. Honie said it couldn't be 'til the last month, but I said we couldn't talk about it on my birthday either, so we're mum 'til then. But I can still be sad about it here.

I'm feeling restless tonight, perhaps I'll go for a walk to soothe myself. The parks here are all gated, so there's nowhere I can go to sit and write at night, but maybe a walk will clear my head.

Deutschland uber alles!!!!!

Hey all, sorry it's been so long since I've posted; I've been running around the world :). So I think I ought to be forgiven my couple week respite. But before we get into Germany, here's a picture of what I did a couple of nights before I went to Deutschland.



The man on the left is Seamus Heaney, who is of course, one of the most amazing poets alive right now, and one of my personal heroes. The man on the right is Richard Murphy, who is another fantastic Irish poet, and I got to hear him read at Trinity; Heaney introduced him. Casey, Honie, and I had a wonderful night there. Look both of them up if you have the chance. But okay. Gehen wir nach Deutschland!

So Germany was a small trip, just me and Ryan. But Ryan flew out on Wednesday and skipped a couple classes. After my accidental booking with Scotland, I didn't feel good doing that, so I left on Thursday. The plane ride wasn't too bad at all. I read most of it, and we landed a little bit ahead of schedule. Nice job, Aer Lingus.

Standing at the luggage retrieval for quite some time, waiting for my backpack to show up, when this rather severe young blonde woman comes rushing over to me. "Are you passenger Kelley?" she asks, and I reply in the affirmative. "Your bag is still in Dublin, come with me please." A little dazed, I follow her, still not quite sure how she knew who I was. "Do you speak German?" she asks once we reach the desk, and I seriously contemplate telling her that I do, but am a little bit worn out and boggled by the whole situation, so we proceed in English. I realized that I didn't have the address where Ryan and I were staying, and I explained that I could get it as soon as I met Ryan, so she instructed me to get him and then go to another desk. So I wander off through customs, looking for Ryan, who had sportingly agreed to meet me at the airport. I wasn't upset at all about the bag, just slightly annoyed that 1) I had asked if I could carry it on, and was denied because of the disposable razor in my bag (oh yeah, I'm gonna hurt someone with that) and 2) As I thought about it, I distinctly remember the woman in Dublin not putting a tag on my bag.

Ryan and I find one another, and he is surprised that I am taking the left bag thing so well. So we get to the desk, give the man the address where we're staying, a slew of phone numbers, and then we are on our way, on the very solid and dependable S-Bahn.

A couple things. We stayed with a friend of Ryan's, Sylvia, and her boyfriend, Guenther (yes! what a great name!), at their apartment, which is why I didn't know the address. Also, Germany has an AMAZING mass transit system, consisting of the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, and the Bahn. It's great. But the stations are a little confusing, as they're stacked on one another.

We get back to the apartment with minimal getting lost (neither of us are too great with directions) and Sylvia is cooking supper for us, which turned out to be what can only be described as a giant apple pie. Apfelstruddel. And it was very tasty, and we had a couple beers and a long talk about American politics, and the situation in Germany, and books and school and Sylvia's job. *Weird thing: there was no awkwardness in meeting Slyvia. She talked around me like she did Ryan or any of her friends. The three of us had a long discussion about her contract at work, which Ryan and I decided would never happen at home. She and Guenther also did nothing to hide their disagreements over the weekend from us. They're a very open, very opinionated, very blunt sort of people, and it was very enjoyable to watch my own reaction and Ryan's to them. Americans are a very prude and private group.

Slyvie had to work again the next day, so Ryan and I decided to wander Munich on our own. He's been there before, when he was 17, so he had things he wanted to show me, but all in all, it was a very low-key day. Here's what we did!

This is a government building down on one of the squares. I was in a random picture taking mood the whole day, so bear with me. We walked the streets of the city for a little while, and hit Victoria Market for some lunch, where we both ordered in German :) Which Ryan doesn't know, but I'd say he gave a pretty good stab at it. But we had bratwurst, saeurkraut, kartoffelnsalat (potato salad) and bier. Sehr gut!
I can't for the life of me remember the name of this building, but it's important...rich people live here. I'll think of it and then edit the post. But it's a pretty cool building all the same, yeah? The Residence! That's what it's called.
This is the most garish church, at least on the outside, that I've seen in my entire life. The picture doesn't even do it justice. It's the most ridiculous color of 1973 gold/yellow that I've ever been exposed to. It's ridiculous. Ryan laughed at how much I hated it. But come on. I learned over my weekend in Germany that I do not appreciate the Baroque style of architecture. Mostly, because there's a lot of gold and plasterwork involved. Gothic is way cooler :).
Pretty park just outside of the main part of the city where Ryan and I walked and talked religion and listened to a pretty good celloist. It was nice to see flowers and trees at the same time. There aren't a lot of big wild trees in Dublin, and I miss them. So I took lots of pictures of trees.

After this, we walked around the grounds of a summer home that belonged to the royal family of Bavaria at one time, and there were a bunch of Greek god/goddess statues, so we played a name the gods game, and I think we got them all, and walked through the woods on the grounds and tried to catch leaves, and saw the house where the beaverkeeper lived. Yeah. Kind of a weird place. But it was really pretty.

After castle wandering time, we braved the U-Bahn again and went out to the Olympic village from the 1972 games. It was kind of weird, because the whole place is pretty much abandoned. Just empty buildings that sit there. Guenther said they occasionally have concerts out there, but other than that, pretty much dead. Except for the cool tower here, which Ryan and I decided was worth the 4 euro to go up.
So here's Munich. The curly buildling in the right foreground is the BMW museum, but we didn't go to that. It was closed. And I'm not sure how clearly you can see that white blobby thing in the back centre, but that's the new soccer, er, football stadium, built for the 2006 World Cup Finals. Yes. I have knowledge.
After that, we were pretty thirsty, so we decide to give into more toursity urges and head over to Hofbrauhaus for a LITRE OF BIER. Yeah, no measly pints for the Germans. Ryan decided he needed to snap a picture of me enjoying my brew. My cheeks are already a little pinkish; not only was it a lot of beer, but it was pretty strong too.

The Hofbrauhaus is a little strange. You walk in and it's just these two huge rooms of long tables. We sat with an Austrian couple, and then when they left, some German students came and sat with us. We toasted them, and they took pictures of us.

Here's the one I took of Ryan, who was really enjoying his beer :) In a serious way.
Okay, and apparently, the feathered hat association of Germany was having a meeting there that night, because WHAT IS ON HIS HEAD! I pretended to take a picture of Ryan so I could snap one of that baby. Seriously, sir. Lay off the booze. And get a mirror. But it wasn't just him. There were like nine or ten guys at that table with feathered hats. We were jealous.

After that, we head back to Sylvie's, where she sends us immediately back to the U-Bahn, because "we have to get on the 8.44 if we're going to meet Guenther on time". Seriously. These people were really on schedule all the time. It made Sylvia nervous that we cut it so close. She waited behind on my bag, which I wholly appreciate. She met us out later, and we went out for Indian food, and then for drinks in a hookah bar.

That night, at about 1.30, we were waiting for our U-Bahn home, and it was about 20 minutes late, and I guess this guy behind us heard us speaking English, because he started explaining his theory of "The Black Hole of U-Bahns" that happens every night after 1. Turns out he's from Canada (9 hours north of callgary) and he was a little drunk and a lot crazy, but kept us entertained for the duration of the wait and the ride.

The next morning Guenther and Sylvia piled us into their car (BMW, baby!) and we did a castle/church tour of the entire state of Bavaira, I'm convinced. As I said, I didn't really like the chuches,and I feel kind of weird taking pictures in a church, so I don't have pictures of those, but I'll tell you about them. I do have one of the castle, though.

This is Linderhof, which is the smallest of crazy King Ludwig's 3 castles. He bankrupted his family building all these castles, and this is the only one of the three that actually got finished. It's nestled very prettily in the Bavarian Alps (which is a hard words to type), and has a lot of rooms, all done up by color. Ludwig was a big admirer of Louis the 14th of France, the Sun King, so a lot of this little palace looks like the one in France, and there are portraits of the Sun King everywhere. Kind of a creepy obsession, if you ask me. But. The guy was crazy.

So we get back in the car after wandering around the grounds of the castle for a bit. And we hit up five different churches, all of which sort of looked the same to me, but it was still pretty cool. All small and done up garishly in the Baroque style. Look it up. It's hideous, but Ryan maintains I feel that way because I'm a Protestant :). Maybe he's right.

Once again, my morbid fascination with graveyards (did I get this from you, Grandma?) made me take this picutre. Because. Come on. How cool is that plot? I love to look at the way different cultures honor their dead, and this might be my favorite. It's really pretty and natural and very pleasing, and takes some work to maintain.

After we left this church (which was in...man...it was in the place where they have the Passion Play...Oberramergau! I'm so good at this game) Slyvie and Guenther decided it was time for coffee and cake. So we had that for lunch. Hooray! I love Germany!

When we were finished with our tour, we went to Guenther's Oma's (grandma's) house, because it was her 94th birthday. I spoke a little bit of German to her, and she spoke a lot to me and Ryan; we wished her Happy Birthday auf Deutsch, and she decided that Ryan and I were both far too skinny. Slyvie told her we were from Ireland (it's easier than explaining everything) and she decided we needed black tea, because that's what you drink in Ireland. So. She made us each drink 4 cups of tea. And these really good biscuit things with apple jelly in the middle of them. And chocolate shortbread cookies. And as we were leaving, I noticed a pin-up poster on the back of her door, like you get out of those TigerBeat teenybopper magazines...only it was of Pope Benedikt. Yeah. 'Cause he's from Germany, Bavaria specificall, and they're really proud of him. But Sylvia and I laughed about it once we got outside.

We went from there to Guenther's parents' house, where we talked a little bit to his 13 year old sister, who was really excited to meet "The Americans" and she said about 3 sentences to us, and got shy. But she sounded very good, if really formal in her answers. I suppose that's how we sound to them too. But his family was a lot of fun, and very friendly. His dad showed Ryan his beerstein collection (Oh. Stein. Not a German word for mug. It means stone, and Sylvia was very confused the first time Ryan used it).

We left from there and went out to supper. I love German food. Big hunks of meat soaked in beer sauce, potato dumplings, bread dumplings, noodles, and beer. Holy crap. What's better than that? Oh, and we had soup too, and ice cream when we got back home. The Germans are huge on sweets.

Home and to bed decently early that night, as we had to get up early the next morning to get to the mountains. Guenther is in a scuba diving club, and their last dive of the year was that day. So we went along, intending to climb the mountain. Which we did. Here's the view from the top of the first one.

Ryan, Slyvie and I took a a cable car up this far, because none of us were really wearing proper shoes for intense mountain climbing. So Ryan made fun of Sylvia and I the whole way up, because neither of us were really crazy about the swinging, uncontrolled motion of the cable car.
This is about halfway up the rest of the mountain...the cable car only took us so far, and he had to climb the rest of the way. And really, I thought this was just a cool picture. You can't really see it very well in the pic this small, but there's a cross on top of the mountain. Look hard.
This is the view once we got up by the cross. Wow. Yeah, I'm on top of a mountain in the Bavarian Alps.
So I updated the traveling shoes. I've been doing that whenever I feel like I"m in a place that represents the country really well.
We had lunch on the mountain, and Ryan tried this half beer, half lemonade drink, which was surprisingly good, and then got back down, since the weather didn't look that great. So we went to find Guenther and his crew, and these trees were really great and very fall-ish.
Here's a cool shot of the lake nestled down in the mountains.
And there's Guenther and his crazy friends in the water. He said it was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Holy crap. Yeah. They did three dives, I think. When they were done, we went out for (what else) cake and coffee, and I had an amazing cheesecake with candied cherries on it, and hot chocolate. Yum. Also had an interesting discussion about names with them; Ryan was telling Sylvia that he liked all these Irish names (Conor, Patrick, Dierdre) and she made faces at him. She then told us about a couple she and Guenther were friends with, who have children called Leopold (they call him Poldi) and Nemhotep, something weird like that. And apparently, the German state has a list of names that you are allowed to give your kids, so they don't grow up with something embarassing. Somehow Nemhotep made the list.

So the next day Ryan and I wandered Munich for a little bit, bought cheese covered pretzels and chocolate for breakfast (yeah, that's right) and then caught a train to Landshut, where Slyvia works. We were gonna wander around there for a little bit, and then she was going to drive us to the airport for our flight home. So we saw some of the buildings and a few parks in Landshut, then we decided we were thirsty. So we stopped at this little cafe', and had a beer and some water. I had a Colabier, which is half coke, half beer, and it was ridiculously tasty. Ryan thought so too. So we ordered another one. And some pizza. And spent a good chunk of our afternoon just hanging out and talking. The waiter was amused by my attempts at German, and taught us some new words.

So on our way to find Slyvia, which turned out to be an adventure all in itself, we found...A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL! I didn't even have to beg to go in, although I'm sure that Ryan wished he could have disappeared once I got in.

Let me preface this by saying...I really like architecture. A lot. Especially Gothic architecture. Blame Mrs. Adamson if you want, but it's a weird passion I have. So here's a few of the (lots) of pictures I took in this church.

Oh yes. Check out that vaulting! This is the transept of the church, and I'm lying on my back on the floor in the middle of this church. Ryan had mysteriously disappeared :). No matter.
Here's the giant crucifx at the front of the church. Seriously, it was probably twice lifesize and very creepy.
Yay umbrella vaults and pillars!

I'm a little crooked in this picture, because I was leaning over some velvet ropes and trying to get all three windows in, which didn't really work out very well for me. Still cool though, yeah?

After we were done at the church, we went to meet Sylvia. But I didn't really know where we were going, just following Ryan, who didn't really know either. So we followed some signs, and and I had to ask a couple people for directions (WHICH I DID! AND I UNDERSTOOD THEM!!) and we found Slyvia aobut 40 minutes later than we had intended. Both of our phones were out of money, so we couldn't call her, and she was pretty worried. That German punctuality thing, you know. But we made it to the airport on time and everything, and they didn't lose my bag on the way home. And it was raining when we got back into Dublin, so Ryan and I walked for a little while in the rain when we got home, but it was no big deal.

Germany rocks. Das ist alles.

I Really Need to Learn How to Manage My Time

As I've just pulled a second all-nighter in as many weeks. Taylor and I...we just get crazy when we have things due, and pretend we don't, and play games instead. I don't know. So I was up all night writing my stupid Northern Ireland paper for stupid Kevin Rafter's stupid class. Yeah, it's not my favorite. And Joyce was cancelled today because our instructor...em...didn't show up. She's a little spacey, we think she might have forgotten to set her clock back. I still like her, though. And it gives me another week to catch up on Ulysses. It's. It's a difficult book to understand, but so long as I read the extra notes and things, I am enjoying it. Once we finish, me, Howie, Ryan, and whomever else wishes to join us are going on a Ulysses Walk around Dublin. Good times, good friends.

Got (mostly) registered for classes yesterday afternoon, which was nice. Here's a rundown:
Junior Honors Seminar. (which i'm not in yet. problem with permission. but later today.)
Linguistics 303, honors section
Comparative Lit class called Free Will and the Existence of Evil. Also honors.
Poetry Workshop. Of course :)
Ancient Ideas and Experiences, which is another honors class.
Editing and Publishing.

Apparently, I think the transition from doing nothing (which, let's face it, is what i'm doing here...i go to class 3 days a week) to doing FOUR FREAKING HONORS CLASSES will be no big deal. The schedule itself is just a little shady...I have one Friday class, but it's at 12.20. Hopefully I can make that ;) And my Tuesday/Thursday is a bit rough; I start at 11.15 and go straight 'til 5.15. But Monday/Wedneday is nice. So I can get a job and work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. To pay off all my study abroad debts. Which are totally worth every single minute I'll have to spend doing whatever menial job I find at home. I did register with IUCareers.com, so I'll have a resume' posted online and things like that, and I have another internship for which I have to apply. And yeah, I know those don't pay. But I need at least one more.

A shoutout to Mike, who just got accepted into his kick-ass investment banking program! Way to go, dude :)

And one also to Jill, who made it into her upper level photography class, because she put together an amazing portfolio. :)

I have such talented friends.

On slate for today...make it through Rafter's boring class without sleeping too frequently, go home, eat some supper, curl up in bed with Eldest, and read about 3 pages before I fall asleep. I'll set the alarm for later so I don't wake up in the middle of the night, and I'll get up and post...Germany. Yes. Because Germany rocked my socks off.

A Poetry Post

Because. I love poetry. And you love me. So you have to deal with it.

So. I've been doing a lot of scattered writing while I've been here, snippets during classes or en route to the various places I've travelled, but nothing overly spectacular, save for this one piece I've been working on since Galway. A long time, I know. Most people don't realize what goes in to poetry, they just see the 20 finished lines, and think, "Oh, I could do that in 5 minutes." Yeah, try a couple months of constantly dwelling on those very few lines, trying to make them as perfect as possible. Not so easy. But it finally came together for me while I was in Germany, as did the idea for my undergraduate thesis. It's titled, at least right now, Selected Snapshots of Europe: A Poetry Album, and the idea behind the collection is to collect poetic photographs from the places I go. (And any feedback on this idea, a way to par it down or refine it, is always appreciated. Work is constantly in progress) Once that idea clicked for me, I needed to do something about it. So I emailed my English Honors advisor, got her approval, and then emailed Cecil, who oh so kindly agreed to chair my thesis. I'm on the ball. And I feel really good about this project, and pretty confident on the lead poem, which I'm going to share with you here. Any of my poetically inclined readers, feel free to comment on it constructively, as I'm always looking for good commentary and missing my poetry workshops a lot. Even if you don't know anything about poetry, but like or don't like something, let me know. I think poetry should belong to everyone, and not be locked up in workshops on campus or smoky coffee shops or bars at 3 in the morning. Talk to me, people. If you read this post, you must comment. I'm making it a rule. And if you don't...I won't post any more and you won't have anything to read on breaks between classes or before you go to work or just before you go to bed, whenever you check this. And you won't know what I'm doing. So. Don't post at your own peril. Not that I'm threatening you or anything (Austin, you're exempt, because we've already talked about the poem). So now, a poem.

It’s Worth a Thousand Words


But a picture cannot describe the heat
of a blackberry, plucked
from a bush that pushes
between the cracks of a stacked
stone wall, smashed
against the tongue, seeds
slipping between teeth
and the bitterness of unripe
vermillion juice.

Nor can it echo the honeybee song
soft and easy deep-throat
thrumming as he leaps
daisy aster morning glory
face and wings dusted finely yellow.

It does show off brilliantly
the eye-tightening leaves
of autumn, grainy
red, dirty orange, but if you breathe
deeply just above the glossy
print, you cannot taste
the wet dark weight
of decay and inescapable winter.

That's the lead piece. Hope you enjoyed! And have a good day...I know I will. It's Harry Potter night at Leeson.

A Scotsman clad in kilt left a bar one evening fair.

Okay, so I owe you guys a couple of posts, so here's my Scotland post. Story first. So, because of a booking mistake that was totally my fault (I forgot to even look at the difference between am and pm) Howie and I flew out of Dublin at about 6 in the morning, on Thursday, so we missed a class, but DK was really cool about it. So no worries, other than Howie and I looked like death in the airport. We did share some of his mom's homemade chocolate banana bread, and bought some Bailey's for later, and Taylor gave us a package of Cadbury cookies that we also ate for lunch, so the morning wasn't too bad. We got into Edinburgh around 7.30 in the morning, and it was dreary and grey and didn't look all that inviting, so we were a little bummed. Once we got out of the airport, though, and into the city, the sun came up a little bit more, so things started to look a little more cheerful. Then, we went to the park and these flowers put smiles on both of our faces.



Aren't they so friendly and happy looking? It was impossible for us to be unhappy after we saw those. Still a little (or a lot) tired, but pleased.
This is Edinburgh Castle. It sits on a hill in the middle of the city. And when I say it sits on a hill, that's not really that impressive, because it seemed like we were walking uphill the entire time we were in Scotland, no matter what way we were headed. So we wandered around the city until noon, and then we headed over to our hostel, ditched our bags, picked up a map, and headed to a grocery store, where we bought stuff for a picnic lunch, and then made our way out ot the edge of the city, where the map said there was another giant park. Here's what we found.

This is Howie, reading and relaxing on our mountain. Yeah, we had lunch on a mountain. And then hung out there for a long time. Like five hours. Just drinking and eating and talking and being friends. It was really pretty awesome.

Here's another shot of Picnic Mountain.

This is the view from Picnic Mountain. The building right in front of us is some kind of city building, like a city hall type thing. And then a bunch of the main part of the city. So after we were done with our picnic, Howie and I headed back to the hostel to wait on the rest of our friends. The plan was to do some homework, but I actually ended up falling asleep. When the rest of the kids got there, though, we all got up and went out, had a couple beers, and got silly in the streets. Not because we were drunk, but because it's really really fun to skip down hills.

We took the crowd up to Edinburgh castle the next day and went on the tour. This is Ryan smiling pretty for me :). Actually, it kind of looks more like he's smirking, but. Whatever.

Me and Jes and our cool tourguide. Yeah, I think kilts are sexy. What of it?

View from the wall of Edinbugh castle.

They are called the Knights of Ni! Actually, it's Erin O'Connor and Jes getting into medieval sprirt with some really cool helms.

After we saw the castle and did a little bit of shopping, we took the whole crowd back up to Picnic Mountain, but not for nearly as long as the day before. It was just a cool spot to chill and look at the city. The Leeson kids had a couple of near death experiences on the mountain; Jes tried to scale a bit of it, and slipped and fell a couple feet, but caught herself before it got too bad, and Ryan was walking to the edge of a cliff, and tripped, and only just caught himself. Dangerous stuff.


After lunch, we went and explored some more of the city that Howie and I didn't get to. If you know me at all, you'll know I have kind of a thing for graveyards, so that's why you have some random gravestones in here.

I got a little artsy. It's not super cool, but I like the way Honie and Dan look in this picture. We did a little more walking around and stopped by the grocery again and picked up some stuff for supper and some bottles of wine, and went back to the hostel. The way it was set up, there were seven of us, and we had six bunkbeds in one room, and then another one in another room, but so we had a whole room to ourselves. So we had a picnic again, this time on the top bunks in the room, and we were flipping through channels and found Antique Roadshow, which we managed to make into a drinking game. That's classy, Leeson kids, realy classy. :)

So the next day, we took a train out to Stirling, and made it to Stirling castle; this is a view from one of the back walls.

Here's the wedding party at Stirling! We saw a wedding at Edinburgh too, but I couldn't get a picture of them. But yeah. All the men are in kilts, of course, and the bride was very beautiful.

If you've never heard of the unicorn tapestries, take a break real quick and google them. They were made in Scotland, but they were purchased at some point in time by a Rockefeller, and then when he died, they were given to Cloisters in NY. You should go see them. I have. But anyways, they have a team at Stirling that is weaving another copy of them all by hand. It's a really cool process, although the weavers did kind of look like animals trapped in a zoo.

Here's one of the finished pieces. So pretty, and probably the most famous in the set.

We, em, got a little bit lost. We got on a bus that we thought was taking us to our hotel, but really, it tried to take us to Glasgow, so when we told the lady we were going the wrong way, she dropped us off in the middle of nowhere in the dark. Nice, eh?

After spending our day in Stirling, we headed up to Inverness, which is where Loch Ness is, for the day. This is the Loch. Can you see Nessie? Look carefully on the left side of the picture...I think you can see her.

Yeah, I know I look ridiculous, but. It's cold and rainy and absolutely glorious. This was my favorite day in Scotland, and maybe one of my favorite days of the whole trip over here.

We took the boat through Loch Ness and went to Urqart castle, where Jes and Erin are croched in what I think is a latrine hole. Not sure. It was a little bit cold.

Tiny boat on Loch Ness.

It rained a lot...of course there was a big strong Scottish rainbow!

Heh. When we got back to Edinburgh, we did a little more shopping, and Erin, for some reason, bought four of the same scarf, but while we were sitting outside, she got a little cold. And put them all on.

Okay, there's Scotland, bascially. But I need a nap. I'll do Germany soon, and maybe a poetry post, if you think you'd enjoy that. Let me know!

Hi, my name is Erin...

and I'm a book addict. That is all I can tell you.

After college night last night, and sleepover time with Jes, I spent a lovely afternoon with Howie. We wandered the city in a very leisurely way, and I finally managed to not feel like a tourist today. I did, however, eat a ridiculous amount of food with Howie. We split a family bundle, which contains more food than I'm going to mention here, but let's just say...I haven't eaten anything else today, and I'm glad.

But we also spent some time shopping; he bought pants and I got a sweatershirt, and we didn't pay but 15 euro between the two of us. Show me a store in the states where you can get jeans and a hoodie for under 20 dollars. We also tried on crazy European shoes and laughed at tee shirts and crazy man underwear. Bought some jewlery from a street vendor which is probably going to turn Howie's finger green, and wandered into a soap store, under the mistaken impression that it was a candy store. A very nice lady showed some bath bars to us, and we walked around and smelled things and left the store with the taste of soap on our teeth.

And then we went to the bookstore. The sick thing is, Howie is just as much of a book addict as I am...so we were there for two hours. Yeah, that's right. So we were just following each other around, pointing out books that we've read to the other one, constantly saying, "Oh, you'd really like that, you should pick it up sometime soon." And we probably could have each spent...hundreds of euro on books today. I've got to be the only person you all know who, when checking out at the bookstore, makes recommendations to the cashier. That's got to just be me.

But I had a good day with Howie, and lots of talking and laughing and fun times happened.

Things I Miss

This isn't a sad, oh I'm so homesick, post, but really, just things that I miss, besides my family and my friends, because you all know that I miss you gobs.
* Kool-aid
*Steelers and Colts games
*Movie nights with the boys
*Shopping with Jill
*Taco Bell
*The park
*Murphy
*Hugs and kisses
*Feeling academic
*All of my books
*24
*Delivery pizza
*Ranch dressing
*Poetry workshops
*Video games
*My desk
*Big parties
*Light beer
*Chocolate syrup
*Orange juice without bits
*Lifting weights
*Drying my clothes
*Tacking things up on my walls
*Snuggling
*Hide and Seek
*Tickling
*Grape jelly
*The Christmas lights on our porch
*College basketball updates from Mike and Christy
*Practicing hapkido with Michael
*Arguing with Dean
*Nuzzles with Matt
*Talking on the phone
*Driving my little car
*Dressing up
*Going to class in pajamas
*The way the leaves change at home

That's not all. But that's what's on my mind this morning. Now, I'm off for shopping with Howie and Taylor.

Welcome in Brussel!!!!!

Okay, I finally have fifteen seconds to sit down and finish something, so here comes the post about Brussels. The title line is something a crazy waiter said to us on our second to last night here. So our flight left at....6.10 in the am. And because it was the night right after Howie's birthday, we got about an hour of sleep before we left. But we did have fun sleepover time with Ryan and Howie...Howie and Jes talked about long distance relationships, pros and cons. Ryan and I discussed Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Star Wars. Yeah, it's a whole big clan of geeky kids over here. But anyways. On to pictures and the weekend.


This is me and Jes standing outside Leeson with all of our bags at a ridiculous time in the morning. We look dirty and pale and very happy. That, by the way, is my sweater I bought from the Aran Islands and wear at least 3 times a week, because it's so warm. I was struck by this picture, mostly because it's the first picture I've ever seen of myself where I don't really look like a kid. I think I look kind of like a grown up...something about my face. A little unsettling and very thought-provoking. And I need a haircut in a bad way. Oh, and in the taxi on the way there, Erin O'Connor looked at me and said, "Belgium is on the euro, right?" (they are). And I looked back at her and said, "Um, what language do they speak?" (Dutch and French). Just to give you an idea on how much research we didn't do before we went.

So we got into Belgium, and took a bus to the metro station, but we didn't feel like figuring out the metro right then, so we took a taxi out to our hotel and dropped our bags. Turns out the metro ran pretty much right to our hotel, so we went back to the station, bought some tickets and headed back into the centre of the city. Where we found these delectable waffles. Just look at them. A note on public transportation in Belgium...you buy the tickets yourself and you scan them yourself before you get on the metro. Once we realized that, we didn't pay for tickets any more. But look at those waffles!!!!!!! That one in the middle on the front...syrup is dripping gently off it, into a warm and sticky puddle on the ground. So so so so so tasty.

This is Team Belgium with their first waffles. The final waffle count for the weekend was 21...and 3 ice cream cones. We're fat kids.

This is Sint Katelijne, the first cathedral we saw when we got there, and it's big and Gothic and cool.

This is Mannekin Pis, and it's a statue of a little peeing boy. There are two different stories surrounding the legend of the mannekin. One is that Brussles caught on fire, and he peed and put it out, and the other, more likely, story is that a wealthy shopkeeper lost his son in a crowd and he found the boy four or five days later, standing on a street corner, peeing. I'm not sure why this little guy is such a big attraction, but there he is.

The first beers of Belgium. We had them at a respectable time, something like 4.30 in the afternoon. Dan had the white one on the far left, and it's called Steendonk, Erin had the dark one in the middle, called Maredsous #8, and I had the pretty pink one on the end. It's called Kriek, and it's a beer made from cherries. Very tasty. The beer count from the weekend was a little ridiculous, but between the four of us, we managed to try 30 or so different kinds of beer. Belgium was amazing, did I mention that?

Sint Mikel's, another big amazing Gothic cathedral. This was one our landmarks for the weekend, and I'm pretty sure Dan took about 500 pictures of it. The picture doesn't even do justice to the way it stuck out above everything, towering over the streets around it. It's on a hill, sort of, in the middle of town, and it's just fantastic. Let's go inside.

I just took a couple on the inside, because I don't feel so comfortable disrupting people, being touristy while they're trying to pray. And even though I'm not Catholic, I lit a candle and said a prayer for Josh. Because. Let's face it...prayers never hurt anyone.

Here's a random picture of the metro station that we spent a lot of time in. Kind of looks like New York.

This is my shoe. My left shoe. I decided it would be a good idea to write around the bottom edges the countries that my Chucks travel to. I did tack USA on the front of Ireland, and now Scotland is on there too. England is next.

Erin and Dan getting rowdy on the metro. I don't remember why they decided to kill each other. But this is on the way home from our mini pub crawl.

Jes and I are lovers, not fighters.

So the next day we hopped on the train for 3 euro and went to Brugges (say it brooj). And this is a tower covered in ivy. Just chilling in the middle of town. Yeah, architecture in Europe pretty much rocks.

Me on a bridge over the gorgeous canal in Brugges. There were little boats that went by and everything. We had lunch in a garden of an art gallery, with three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I don't know where the fourth one was. But then we went into the art gallery for a little while and wandered around, basically just explored the city. Had a couple beers and went shopping. I own the most ridiculous ring in the universe. It's roughly the size of a head of lettuce and kind of looks like one. But I love it.

This was just too cool a picture to pass up. The store was called Temple of Beer. And this isn't even half of the shelves on the back wall. That's all that would fit in the picture.

This is a giant cathedral in...where did we go...Gent. That's where this is. After we left Brugges we went to Gent for supper and some more picture taking. We had supper at this place called Old Louie's, and it was owned by some ladies from New Orleans, originally, and they played jazz music and made really good spaghetti. But they charged us for water.

It rained while we were in Gent, so here's the rainbow.

Erin O'Connor got a little cold when it started raining, so I donated my scarf to her, Jes gave up her coat, and she's sporting Dan's hat. Doesn't she look warm?

So the next day...Sunday...we hop on the train again and go to Waterloo, which was really...well, it was actually a little disappointing. You'd think for all that happened there, the museums would be a little bit better. Well, two of them were really cool. The rest were...eh. But before we went up to the monument for the Dutch prince who was wounded in the battle, this lady attacked Jes and painted a bird on her face. She looked pretty hot.

Here's some little model guys doing battle in one of the museums. I cheered for Napolean, but he still lost. Jerk.
Here's the view from the top of Lion Mountain, which is the monument to the Dutch prince I was telling you about. We had lunch there. With the Lion. Rawr.

And there's the lion. It took 226 very steep stairs on a very narrow stairway to get up there. And we all know how I am with vertigo. But I didn't throw up or even get very dizzy on the way down, so go Erin!

Here's Dan taking on Jes and Erin in a pistol duel in the giftshop. Dan claims he won, but I didn't see a clear winner.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get all of this up, but really, my week was two days long last week...I didn't even have time to unpack from Belgium before I was jetting off to Scotland, which I will post about as soon as I get my pictures downloaded.

And again. I am trying to keep you guys updated, but I can't take pictures of us singing Irish songs as we rode the metro home, or how much we laughed, or the way that the cobblestones were slick and dark in the rain or the smell of waffles and fries and mussels all mixed together in the air. That's what it's really about, the friends and the experiences and all of us mashed in one bed and sneaking around the hotel because we're poor college kids. It's fun, and there's definitely a lot of Leeson Love.