Sweetmeal Digestives

Cottage 6 is proving to be an absolutely wonderful place to live! I have officially been in Ireland for a week and I am already completely at home and settled here. It feels longer than a week, but in a good way! Here are a few pictures of the place I now call home:








Last night (Tuesday) we had our neighbors over for dinner. Our neighbors, of course, are the program director and his wife, Chuck and Suzanne. We made a delicious meal of penne pasta with meat sauce (we went to the butcher to get fresh hamburger!), tossed salad with fresh carrots and green peppers, bread with olive oil, and for dessert, chocolate-covered digestives. For those of you who don't know, digestives are the greatest treat here! (You can see them in the package on the table in the picture above.) When we arrived in the cottage, the staff of the Park Lodge had started us with some basic grocery necessities - bread, milk, butter, cereal, and these funnily-named after-dinner cookies. Everyone on our trip was hesitant to try them, but I was not able to resist anything even remotely resembling a cookie, so I dove in...and they are good! They're kind of like crumbly graham and animal crackers, but more cookie like. It's hard to explain, but they are 30 cents per package and we have gone through 4 packages in the last 3 days in Cottage 6. Yes, we have a problem. But they are so good! I think Chuck and Suzanne appreciated that classy dessert last night after a hearty student-made meal. It was fun to just sit around with them and get to know them a little better outside the hustle and bustle of excursions and class.

Speaking of class: I am done with class for the week! Here's a breakdown:

Mondays: Irish Catholicism with Mary Clancy. This class is 3 hours every Monday, but it is going to be a lot of fun. she was late for class because she pulled over on the way and walked down the beach - she said it was just too nice of a day not to! We talked a lot about Ireland and very little about Irish Catholicism. Our homework? Read 11 pages as a cottage...for next week. Quite a bit different from CSB, but a work load I can definitely get used to!

Tuesdays: Senior Seminar with Chuck. We will meet for 45 minutes every Tuesday morning. I think his is going to be the most difficult class. We are focusing on morality and how some societies thrive and others do not. For next week, we have to read and write a paragraph-long response to two different right-to-life scenarios. It is going to be a very interesting class, and I am looking forward to some great discussion. As you can tell, though, the work load for the "hardest" class is still quite minimal.
Also on Tuesday is Gaelic Lit. with Jacqui O'Hara. Well, we thought it was going to be Gaelic Lit. It is actually an archaeology class! We have no textbook and no homework. At the end of the semester, we are going to have to write a paper. She is an absolute riot and is completely passionate about this topic she literally stumbled into one day at university!

Wednesdays: Ango-Irish Lit. with Gerard O'Brien. We have a fair amount of work for this class - we have to read 5 short stories for next week. He is very interested in knowing what we think about the different literature we read, and he is incredibly knowledgeable about his field...your typical English professor. It's really great, after so much straight history of Ireland, to experience the history of Ireland through fiction and story. It's a different twist on a fascinating subject.

Thursdays: Sometimes, we will meet again for Senior Seminar for another 45 minutes, but on weeks like this, we will be taking 4-day weekend excursions.

As you can see, my class load shouldn't be too difficult! I will still be able to experience lots of the culture here, but I am excited to get into a little bit of a routine with my days. I already feel like I have learned so much! The culture here is so rich and varied, and every Irish person I meet is well-versed in the history of the country. And everyone is so proud to be Irish here - so much moreso than in the United States. It's really cool.

I had the afternoon off today, so I made my way into Spiddal and explored a little bit. I walked into the completely Gaelic-speaking church to check out mass times, wrote a letter down by the bay, stopped into some little shops (Carol - I found a scrapbooking store!), and ended up having a muffin and coffee at a great little coffee shop, a place I am sure I will frequent often. It is another absolutely gorgeous day here; I need to finish up this blog post and go sit outside and soak up a little bit more of this fleeting sunlight.

Take care, everyone! As always, I love hearing from you!