Christmas is all around us!

I'm going to be back in the 'States soon! On Sunday, I travel, taking planes trains¹ and automobiles. I'm on the same trans-Atlantic flight with Jen, a friend from the program, which is nice-- we're going to try to switch seats to sit near each other. I'm getting in to Grand Rapids, my final destination, late at night. And then I'll be in Michigan 'till the 11th of January! I might not write in the 'blog during that time; after all, its purpose is supposedly to record my life abroad, not in the tiny village where I grew up.


This past weekend, I spent most of my time writing, or researching for, my final essay. Saturday night, though, I got to take a break, because some friends of the family were in town. Steve Cousins and his friend Joe were visiting Ireland, and my mother gave Steve my phone number in case they made it to Galway. They did, and on Saturday night they wanted me to show them around. All I can say is: man those guys are good craic. Hanging out with Steve and Joe is the definition of good craic.

We went to dinner at a seafood restaurant on Quay street, after wandering around pretty much the whole downtown area. Afterward, I took them to The Crane, which has officially become my favorite pub. I knew there would be a trad session going, and since Steve and Joe are both musicians I figured that would be the best thing to show them. When we got there, though, there was an actual event on. It turned out to be John Renbourn, the guitarist from The Pentangle! The Pentangle was a band that my parents loved when I was growing up, playing folk-jazz type stuff, and the song he was playing when we walked in was"Lord Franklin," one of my favorite folk songs they did. He's probably one of the better classical guitarists in the world. Steve, Joe, and I were all very impressed.

After he finished, there was the requisite trad session. It was fun, not particularly exceptional... until one of the fiddle players shushed everyone and then started singing, sean-nos style. Sean-nos, or "old style," is the "traditional" style of singing in Ireland, very lilty and ballad-like, and it's quite rare to hear these days, especially in a big city like Galway. I turned to Joe and Steve and informed them that they were very lucky indeed to hear it. It was an excellent night overall.


And now, a couple pictures, from Galway at Christmastime.

First, by popular² demand, a photo of Virginie and I:

Flatmates!

The streets of downtown Galway have all been decorated with lights... it's very beautiful.

(Sorry it's so blurry, night photography is not my strong suit. Actually photography overall is not my strong suit.)

There are also large Christmas trees scattered around, like this one in Eyre Square:


And, finally, taken just today... the winter sun over Galway Bay.




1: I'm actually not taking any trains, for once, unless you count airport trams. Just buses, cars, and airplanes.

2: And by "popular," I mean "maternal."

and now for something completely different

I am officially done with my first semester as a postgraduate student. I handed in my last essay yesterday afternoon, after a rather brutal night spent writing it. I have much to talk about in this 'blog... but I'm not going to discuss it today. You can expect more entries this week, breaking from my usual Sunday schedule

Right now, though, instead of Ireland I'm going to talk about America.

I have made up my mind that I am absolutely going to vote for Dennis Kucinich. I've admired him for a long time, and this video made me love him just a little more:


As one of those way-too-many Americans who has no kind of health care whatsoever, I agree that it should be made a priority. This summer, I turned twenty-three and had to go off my parents' insurance, and I certainly can't afford my own right now. I recently informally polled my friends to see how many people in my general age group had health insurance. It was about 60%-- 40% were completely uninsured.

I've heard people joke about elections and say "Who are you voting for?" "A rich person who I have nothing in common with." Dennis Kucinich may get a congressman's salary (I have no idea how much they get paid, but I assume we take care of our Reps, especially as they vote on their own pay) but I feel like he knows where people like me are coming from. Dennis Kucinich has his priorities more in line with what I believe than any candidate I've ever seen.

I know he probably won't win. He's an underdog. Still, I've finally found a candidate who I can actually support. (I voted for Kerry last time. I didn't particularly like him-- I recall the website johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com-- but it was really a lesser-of-two-evils situation.) You may think I'm being young and idealistic and throwing away my vote, but it's really not the case. In fact, I'm cynical enough to feel like no one I vote for will ever make it, or make a difference, so I might as well throw my vote away for something I believe in.

Besides, Kucinich lived in a car when he was 17. Now there is a man I feel can understand my needs.

it's that time of year again...

Yes indeedy, it's that magical time of year that transforms every student into a caffeine-fueled pile of stress that is just this far from a nervous breakdown. I'm speaking, of course, of finals.

I have one essay turned in already, one started, and one that I don't even know where to begin. (It's history, my weakness. I haven't taken a history class since I was 14, and I haven't the slightest idea how to write a history essay.) So I won't be giving you anything insightful this week, I'm sorry. My last essay is due on 10 December, next Monday I believe, so if I don't give you an update next Sunday that's why... but I'll make up for it with something substantial later on. Our class is going to Dublin on Thursday for a "research field trip"-- we'll be going to the Royal Irish Academy, the National Library of Ireland, and the National Archives of Ireland for presentations on how to research their material. I'm excited, if only because I love Dublin. A lot of people here don't care for the city, but in the short two months I lived there, I really fell in love with it.

Anyway, to make up for the lack of content, I give you a panorama of Galway that I made. (Click on the picture for the full size!)

Galway city at dusk, from a hill near my house. You can see the bay and the dome of the Cathedral.

Righty-o. Back to work.

A taste of Thanksgiving...

This past Thursday, I had my first-ever Thanksgiving away from my family. It was odd, to say the least, especially because over here it isn't a holiday. Still, a bunch of us Americans from my MA group got together for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out better than I could have hoped!

There were six of us total: Jen, Meredith, Beth, Meg, Pat (Meg's brother, and not part of our MA,) and me. Everyone brought something, except Jen who was hosting. We didn't have a whole turkey, because there were so few of us and the only turkeys that Meredith could find were 13 pounds; however, Meredith (who is an amazing cook) made four turkey drumsticks and six turkey breasts, and she sliced the turkey breasts and stuffed them! With homemade stuffing, of course.

The spread:

(I made the green bean casserole, top right, and it was delicious!)

Desert was also delicious, and featured an unnecessary amount of pie:

That's an apple pie and a cherry pie, by Beth (who did the lattice crust by hand,) and two different types of pumpkin pie, by Meg.

I don't have a group picture yet-- Meg took one, with the auto-timer on her camera, and promised to email it around, but so far hasn't delivered.

I do, however, have a video!

Backstory: when we were on our Carraroe trip, one of the events was singing. Our favorite song was this one, Bean Pháidín, mostly because of the beginning to the chorus: "SEEEEEEEEEEEEE an trua ghéar nach mise, nach mise..." This video features Meg (left) and Meredith (right) hacking through the Irish and Meredith getting excited about her favorite Irish word ("fuinneog," window.)


Overall, it was a very fun evening. It did make me miss my family quite a lot, though. Back in the 'States, Thanksgiving weekend is always a minor reunion, but over here I spent the weekend reading and researching for my final papers. Well, I'll see them soon enough-- I have less than three weeks before winter break! That, of course, means I have less than two weeks before my finals are all due... *sigh*

cúpla focal

Today I'm going to talk about a couple of my favorite Irish words. I've already discussed "craic," but that particular word has entered Hiberno-English and is widely used even by those who have no Irish.¹ The words I'm discussing today are just a couple that I have come across in my Irish class that struck my fancy.

Glas: this word is commonly translated as either "green" or "gray," depending on the context. This might strike an English-speaker as being a little odd-- these two colors are so different that it's strange there would be only one word for both. However, that definition is a little vague. More accurately, glas means "the color of the sea." The fact that different languages divide the spectrum differently fascinates me, and the fact that Irish has a word specifically for sea-color says a lot about the Irish relationship with the ocean.

Cailleach: the most common translation I've seen of this word is "hag." However, while "hag" has a negative implication in English, there isn't anything implicitly bad about being a cailleach, unless maybe you're using the term on a little girl. It is also used to mean "old woman," "witch," and in older contexts, "nun." As a concept, it's really something more like "wise woman" or "crone," describing an older woman of great knowledge that deserves respect.²

Sasana: the Irish word for "England." This amuses me greatly, because the derivation of Sasana is "Saxony." Someone from Sasana is a Sasanach-- a Saxon. Also, on a related note, the word danar. I have seen this word used, especially in resistance poetry from the 18th and 19th centuries, to mean "invader" or "foreigner"-- but it literally means "Dane," and comes from the Viking days. (Sometimes, in resistance poetry, the English are referred to as danar, essentially casting them in the role of the pillaging Vikings.)



1: One of the distinctions about Hiberno-English is the use of the word "have" to mean "know," especially in the context of a language. You don't know Irish, you have Irish.

2: For example, my mother! ♥

there's diamonds lying in the road

This weekend¹ has been full of cultural activities for me!

As you may recall, a couple weeks ago at the BAFFLE poetry festival I met a young man named Neil McCarthy. Neil had invited us to an event he hosts every other Thursday called "the Voice and the Verse," a little show that pairs a local poet and a local musician to perform together. This past Thursday, Beth, Jen, and I decided to check it out, so we went on up to The Crane.

The show was excellent! First, a guitar player named Jamie did a few songs to open. His music reminded me a bit of Dave Matthews, though less pop-y. I recognized him from Shop Street-- he's one of the regular buskers. He has always amused me, being a redhaired Irish guy with a high tenor voice who sings Johnny Cash songs in the street. His original stuff was very good, though.

After him, the main act came one: a performance poet named Stephen Murray. Oddly, I have actually met him before! When I was in Galway during my study abroad, I got to see a great deal of the (April 2005) Cuírt Poetry Festival, but my favorite event by far was the slam poetry competition. I had been the only one interested out of my class, so I had gone alone to the pub where it was held and ended up talking to one of the poets for half an hour, before and after the readings. His poem had been my favorite, and he won that competition. That poet was Stephen Murray, who is also a good friend of Neil McCarthy's. What a strangely small world! Anyway, Stephen recited some fantastic poetry, accompanied by a guy with a guitar who did backup rhythms for his poems. Stephen's poetry is very good, but he also performs it impeccably, which is of equal importance with slam or performance poetry.

When Stephen was through reading, the musician who had been accompanying him took the stage for himself. All I can say about him: wow.

Dan Donnelly is his name; he calls his band "Sonovagun," though it's pretty much just him with a recording box to loop sounds back and accompany himself. I highly recommend giving some of his music a listen, because it's very good. Very pleasant indie-folky guitar pop. He performed for the rest of the night, playing a mix of his own stuff and some fun covers.

After the show, Beth and I talked to Neil for a while, and he informed us of a small informal jam going on the next day, at a pub called The Nauchton. Dan Donnelly would be playing there, and Beth and I enjoyed his music so much that we decided to check it out. So the next night, we went out and brought Meg with us.

This show was a much more typical bar show-- it was packed, standing room only all night, and noisy. People were talking the whole time and the music was just background noise. Still, we secured places near the front of the crowd and watched the whole 2+ hour set. Afterward, Dan came and shook our hands, recognizing Beth and I from the night before. He had CDs for sale, and I decided to buy one. The problem was, I had a hard time deciding which one I wanted. He has two full-length albums for €10 apiece, and a single for €5. Both the albums had songs I really liked-- "Spare Change" on one and "Diamonds In The Road" on the other. I was debating buying both, and he saw this uncertainty, because he said "Tell you what. For €20 I'll give you both albums, the single, and a DVD of two concerts!" Done! So now I have the whole Dan Donnelly collection. It's really good stuff.

It was still fairly early, not even 11pm, by the time Dan got packed up. Meg, Beth, and I weren't sure if we wanted to stick around, go somewhere else, or go home, when Neil came up and invited us to go to another pub with him, Dan, Jamie (the other musician from the night before) and their girlfriends, to see some more live music. We were surprised and a bit flattered, so we went along to another pub. This place was a lot quieter and the music was very low-key, so we just sat around and chatted for a bit until around midnight, when Beth, Meg, and I got too tired and went home. The only bit of excitement here was when a very drunk man started harassing Beth. He was hitting on her in a very vulgar way, and got hostile when she rebuffed him. Dan Donnelly jumped up and confronted him, and looked ready to fight him until he backed off. A Northern Irish man ready to start a bar fight to protect someone he just met? I guess stereotypes exist for a reason. ^_~


Overall, an exciting and enjoyable weekend. It was very nice to get see something a little different than crappy dance music or kitschy tourist bars. I like that Neil has sort of befriended us-- I feel like he can introduce me to a lot of the indie/art scene in this town. I knew it existed, I just hadn't found it... but Thursday, watching slam poetry among lip-pierced intellectuals, I finally felt like I'd discovered my crowd.




1: And by "weekend" I mean "Thursday and Friday." I spent Saturday and today doing homework.

a few pictures...

For this Sunday, I give you a few pictures that I didn't take. All these were taken by the lovely and talented Beth Blonigen, and shamelessly stolen by me.

(Click for larger versions)

This first one is a cottage in Connemara, from our trip to the gaeltacht. It's a good representation of the landscape out there...


Half of my MA group. This was also take that weekend, at An Cístin, the pub in Carraroe.

Left to right: Grace, me, Tony, Katie, Debora, Meg, Jen, Meredith, Caelen.

Taken this past Thursday, at The Crane in Galway.

Jen, Meredith, and me being a dork as always. (Though my hair looks fantastic!)

Monday update!

Things I have seen in the sky today, in reverse chronological order:

-A shooting star

-Fireworks

-An enormous yellow waning-gibbous moon

-A perfect, well-defined, brightly colored rainbow!




The photos don't do it justice. But it was absolutely gorgeous, and as far as I can tell had a complete 180° arc over all of Galway.

Baffle 2007

Last night, I went to BAFFLE, the Bowes' Academic Fellowship and Fraternity of Literary Esoterics. I have no idea what that name is supposed to mean, but it's an annual poetry festival/competition. It's held in Loughrea (or Baile Locha Riach,) a small town in East Galway. Beth, one of my friends/classmates, lives in Loughrea, so she hosted myself and Meredith, another friend/classmate, for the night. It was a lot of fun!

Meredith and I took the bus out-- it was about a 45 minute ride-- and Beth met us at the bus stop. She gave us a quick walking tour of the town, pointing out the numerous pubs and Ireland's only working moat. (Apparently, it is fed by the namesake lake and circles the town, and is "working" in the sense that the water actually flows through it.) After stopping back at her house and an hour-long misadventure with her door, we went down to festival.

There was a poetry competition being held in three pubs. Thanks to the door problems, we got to the nearest pub about half an hour after it started. We each got a pint and stood listening to mostly old Irish men reading poems very badly. (It doesn't matter if the poems were good or not-- some were and some weren't-- but most of the readers just did not know how to present their work. Unfortunately this is all too common with poets, from the readings I've been to.) During the break, we struck up a conversation with the only other person in the pub that seemed remotely near our age. Aside from him and us, everyone there was at least fifty years old. This young man, whose name was Neil McCarthy, turned out to be one of the poets-- he read second-to-last. He was a very cool guy, and in addition to his poem being very very good he also was a good reader. After the competition, in which he was announced as one of the five who will move on to the next round (tonight), we invited him to come to another pub with us. He gladly obliged.

On the walk to Beth's favorite local pub, I talked to him a bit and found out that we had both been present at the same slam poetry competition, at the Cuírt Poetry Festival in 2005-- my only previous Galway experience. Not only were we both there, but he is very good friends with the poet that won that slam-- who I had spent at least half an hour chatting with, before and after the readings. Neil and I probably even spoke, because I remember the winning poet having friends nearby. What a small world!

We all left the pub around 1 am, and Meredith and I spent the night at Beth's house. This morning, Beth made us tea and Meredith made us scrambled eggs, and we were all greeted by the beautiful view from Beth's front windows:

(Click for a larger, prettier version!) It was dark when we arrived the previous night (It gets dark here around 6:30 now!) so we didn't get to see what a gorgeous view she has of Lough Rea until this morning.


Today has been spent working on my last midterm essay-- a history essay, on patterns and trends in 19th century emigration. In case you were wondering, this is what essay writing looks like...

Notes, books, and cup after cup of tea.

Dia duit! Ayla is ainm dom!

This past weekend, my MA program organized a trip for our whole class to the gaeltacht-- the Irish-speaking region of Ireland. Half of the class is Irish, and therefore learned the language in school at least, but the rest of us have only been studying it since the beginning of the semester. I was a little apprehensive about it, as my Irish at this point is mostly limited to the title of this entry (Hello! My name is Ayla!), but it turned out very well.

The town we stayed in is called An Ceathrú Rua, or Carraroe. We stayed in two houses-- four in one and eight in the other. I was in the house with eight: Grace, Katie, Duíbhir, Jeremy, Beth, Megan, Jen, and I took up four rooms. (And one bathroom. Showering was quite an ordeal of scheduling.) Our Bean an Tí, or "woman of the house" (house mother), was a young woman named Maíre. She had a year-and-a-half old son, James, who was our entertainment the first day. He toddled around and responded to spoken Irish, but not spoken English. She and her mother fed us dinner and breakfast and gave us sandwich fixings to make Saturday's lunch. It was all wonderfully filling food, topped off with delicious tea. Everyone in the house spoke English but preferred to speak Irish, so we just pushed Duíbhir, Katie, and Grace to the front and had them speak and translate for us. I confidently thanked people, though-- "Go raibh maith agat" was the phrase I used most often during the weekend. I figure, if you only know one phrase in the language of an area you're visiting, "thank you" is a good one to have. Even if you can't speak their language, you can at least be polite.

We had a program of classes and activities scheduled. The activities were, for the most part, entertaining. The classes, as far as us non-Irish students were concerned, were very juvenile, which annoyed me. I may be a beginner but I'm also a grown-up. (A grown-up who, incidentally, has a double bachelor's degree in English and Linguistics and has, at one point or another, studied Spanish, Latin, and Italian.) I can handle a real textbook, I don't need a children's book. Still, I feel that my confidence and grasp of Irish improved from the weekend, just by being surrounded with it and listening to it. I was able to see it in use and get a feel for how the language really sounds.

The activities were things like singing, set dancing (think Riverdance, only done by clumsy tired grad students,) a short hike, a day tour, and a scavenger hunt. The singing was probably my favorite, followed by the hike. The weather was beautiful this weekend, and we got to see some of the beautiful desolate bogland of Connemara. I would post pictures, except I forgot my camera. (I'm pretty annoyed by this.) Other people took pictures, though, so eventually I might steal some of theirs to show. The landscape there was unlike anything I've seen before-- and this is only an hour's drive from Galway. I sometimes wish I had a car here, so I could drive around and get a real feel for the countryside. And then I remember that I'd have to drive on the other side of the road (not to mention the other side of the car) and I'm dissuaded. (Though I would like to try driving here some time, if only to see if I could manage a stickshift with my left hand. Most people here drive manual-transmission cars.)

Overall, the biggest thing I took away from the weekend was a much deeper appreciation of the Irish language. So far, I've been studying it in much the same way I studied Latin: with an emphasis on translation, little to no speaking, and no practical application. This weekend, I got to see people who use it as their first language, to communicate every day, and I was struck by just how cool it really is. My MA coursework includes Irish classes, but I think that (if I get into the PhD program here!) I am going to continue taking classes next year. Irish is a beautiful language, and I would really like to be able to speak it.

Mid-week update! Now with content!

In case you're wondering what exactly I'm doing with the whole grad school thing, here's a paper I finished today! (Also useful in case you're wondering why English is the language here nowadays instead of Irish.)

The Shift from Irish to English

I know it feels rather rushed, but when there's a limit of 1,500 words, which I exceeded by 100 words already, that's kind of unavoidable.

busy busy busy

No real post, today, sorry. I am far, far too busy writing mid-term papers. And by "writing" I mean "tearing my hair out and bashing my forehead against the keyboard." (Wait, I was supposed to do work in grad school?)

So instead, here is a pretty photograph and my gallery of photos so far.

I call it... "Ireland Is Pretty"


More photos from Ireland.

Note: all pictures, unless otherwise noted, are taken by me, with a Canon Powershot A540. I am by NO MEANS a photographer, so any pictures of quality are entirely accidental. I'm not a visual artist, and I really don't understand visual art a lot of times. When it comes to taking pictures, I just try to accurately record things that I like.

What's the craic?

I've been here a bit over a month now, and I had been doing pretty well at fighting off the third-week illness¹ that afflicted everyone else in my class. This weekend, however, it finally hit me. It started out with a really bad sore throat, transitioned into a very solid cough, and now has moved up into my sinuses. I'm going to do my best to write a coherent entry though I can't breathe out of my nose and my head feels like it's being held upside-down underwater.


I have gone to a couple of pubs in the the last two weeks, so I thought about writing on pub culture. Then it occurred to me that you can't talk about pub culture without talking about the craic.

Craic, pronounced like "crack," is an Irish word. It is most often translated as "fun," but that isn't quite accurate. A closer translation might be "entertainment," but that also isn't exactly it. It's one of those wonderful words that doesn't have a strict analogue in English. As a concept, it's something like "a good time."

It's usually used as a noun and occasionally a descriptive. Of a person, you can say "he's good craic." Of a place or activity, you can say "it's good craic," or "the craic is good." You and your friends can be messing around, not taking things seriously, "for a bit of craic." You can even ask someone "what's the craic?" if you want to know what fun things are happening. I was invited to a pub on Friday, the Roísín Dubh², and when I got there I was informed by an Irish guy that, even though it's usually busy, the craic is good.

Of course, thanks to my Linguistics background, I can't help but hear something idiomatic without trying to figure out its cultural context and distribution. Of course, most of the Irish people I've met have been around my age, but it seems pretty common with both young people and older people. I get the feeling that it's a bit more widely-used here in the West. When I was in Dublin on my study abroad, I didn't meet too many Irish people, but I did talk to some, and I don't remember hearing it once. Now, I've only been here a month, and I've heard it all over the place. One young man who has lived here in Galway all his life uses it frequently, but I know a girl from Dublin and I don't think I've heard her say it once.

Of course, these are all generalizations based on my rather limited observations. No matter who uses it and where, though, I think it's a pretty darn cool word.




1: This is something that college orientation programs really should talk about-- the fact that, in the third week after school starts up, you probably will get sick. Everyone coming back from their holidays and being closely confined is a great opportunity for disease, and colds never fail to go around.

2: "Roísín Dubh," or "Little Black Rose," is a nickname for Ireland.

Just a short message for a Sunday night.

The West of Ireland is, I think, a more extreme version of the rest of the country. No matter what sort of conditions are influencing the country, they are more so in the west. It seems to have been true throughout history-- in the 19th century alone, the Blight hit hardest in the West, as did the Famine, and then most of the emigration came from Connacht too. Right now, I would describe the West (or at least my part of it) as: stucco-walled, tile-roofed houses with lace curtains, heated by turf fires and with broadband wireless internet. This combination of tradition and cutting-edge¹ technology is pretty typical of Ireland these days: in Dublin, for example, there are internet cafés in 18th-century buildings.

If you haven't been to Ireland, I'm guessing you've never smelled a turf fire. Turf-- or peat-- is cut from the bogs and dried into brown bricklike chunks. The smell is unique: kind of like wet leaves burning, but with a sort of brackish oceanic touch to it. I enjoy it quite a bit. Though my apartment has electric heaters, I keep my window cracked when I see the bluish smoke spiraling up from my neighbor's chimneys.²



1: I really don't like this term. It seems so... late 80's, I guess. I always think of dial-up modem sounds and black computer screens with green graph lines when I see the phrase "cutting-edge". Which, I guess, is pretty ironic-- the term itself has an implication that is the opposite of what it originally meant? But I can't think of a better word right now.

2: You can tell that I am my father's daughter, because when I see chimneys the first thing I look for is raincaps. Most houses around here don't have them for some reason, but then again the roofs are pretty steep and made of the kind of tile that would get quite slippery in the (frequent) rains.

I'm a legal alien!

I know it's not Sunday, but I figured I'd do another post, just to get this thing up and running.

Today, I went to the Garda National Immigration Bureau to register as an alien. I have been in the country for almost a month-- I got here September 2nd-- but due to some problems with getting my loan, I wasn't able to register for school until yesterday. Now, I'm (finally!) officially a student, which means I can finally get permission to live here for a year. (Note: you can stay, as a tourist, for three months, but any longer and you have to have a job or be in school.) I got together all the necessary paperwork: my passport, my student ID, a letter from the school confirming my funds, and a letter from my apartment manager confirming my residence. The only worry was that the €100 immigration fee is, according to the website, only payable by credit card. I don't have a credit card, just a debit card, so I called the Gardaí and asked if that would work. I was informed that, for some reason, their system will accept some debit cards but reject others. He suggested that I have someone with a credit card come along who can make the payment for me if my debit card doesn't work.

Luckily, I have a wonderful roommate. Virginie agreed to come with me, way too early in the morning, and wait so she could pay in case I couldn't. So, this morning, we got a cab across town to the GNIB.

I've had horror stories from classmates of waiting in line for four, five, six hours, before being turned away, and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen to me. The office opens at 07:30, so we got there at 07:15... and there were already about twenty people in line. It was a chilly morning, and there were people wearing blankets. Eventually, they let us in (there were a handful of people behind me in line by this point) and we all took numbers and filled out paperwork. My number was B07; the counter started at A88. For the first two hours, the seats were all full, so I sat on the floor and read articles for my History class. Eventually seats started to open up, so for the last hour, Virginie and I both had chairs.

Finally, after three hours of waiting, my number was called. I handed over the paperwork and watched as the officer typed into computer. He took my picture, then typed some more. He took my debit card, and happily it worked, so I signed the receipt and watched as he typed still more. This all took about ten minutes. Then he printed my ID card, handed back my papers, and I was free to go. I felt bad about making Virginie get up early and come all the way across town for nothing more than moral support, but she was an absolute sweetheart about it.


So now, I have a nice little laminated ID card with my slightly stunned photo. (I wasn't expecting to have my picture taken; I actually brought passport-sized photos with me, assuming that's what they'd need.) Three hours for just that? But you know, I didn't really mind.

I have seen British satirists, like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, comment on the almost ludicrously counter-productive and disorganized nature of their government's bureaucracy-- Ireland is, I think, much the same. They both said things to the effect of not trusting a really efficient government, and that excessive paperwork is something of a comfort. An inefficient government could never oppress anybody. I think I agree. To me, waiting in lines (or queuing, to use that delightful verb) is part of the experience of living in Ireland. A country whose filing system seems to consist of writing things on sticky notes is a country I can fit into.

The Italian government, during World War II, actually saved thousands of Jews through the power of bureaucracy. Though Mussolini allied Italy with Germany through the Pact of Steel (mostly based on his lying about the Italian military's numbers) it was mostly about advancing socialism. The Italians, "short dark people" as my Italian professor used to put it, never felt comfortable with the whole Aryan thing-- being pretty much as non-Aryan as a European can be. So, when the Nazis trying to evict Jews from Italy to concentration camps, the Italian government responded by creating a quagmire of paperwork for them. "Ok, you need to fill out this form, take it here, get it stamped here, then fill out these three forms and get them each signed separately. Oh, and you don't have a passport? Well then you're going to need to go to this office, and this one..." etc. Thus, the Jews got shuffled around indefinitely and many never made it to the concentration camps.

So really, it might be a pain, but I can never get too mad about having to wade through paperwork. It's all part of living in a small, politically neutral country.

A little about me!

My name is Ayla (it rhymes with the Eric Clapton song "Layla") and this is my 'blog about being an American grad student living in Ireland! I am in the process of getting a MA in Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. I plan on updating this 'blog every Sunday with thoughts (and pictures!) about my experiences.

This is me:


I was born in Tacoma, Washington, grew up in Spring Lake, Michigan, got a dual bachelor's degree in English Literature and Linguistics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, and now I live in Galway, Ireland!




I have a fabulous sister named Hanna


and two fabulous parents, Bonnie and Michael.


As you can see, we're a pretty serious family.


I have a wonderful boyfriend named Jim.

He just graduated from Michigan State, in May, with a BA in French, and now works for Quicken Loans. Because he's awesome.

I miss them all quite a bit, but hopefully this 'blog will help make the distance a little less.