Ireland by birth, Cork by Grace of God: first week of school part 2

Everyone knows that there is much much more to studying abroad than studying! After a full day of school and a night in the airport, instead of heading home for an early night like a responsible individual would, my roommates and I headed into the city center to bring welcome home Sam McGuire! Ol' Sam is the trophy given to the winner of the All-Ireland Games Gaelic Football tournament and 2010 marked Cork's 7th win and the welcoming home of the players with Sam McGuire was quite the spectacle! Corcaigh Abú!! (Irish for Up Cork/Come on Cork!) Wearing our 5 euro Cork shirts from Pennys, we fit right in with the 40,000 other fans that had gathered for the celebration. 40,000 people is about 1/3 of the population of Cork city, just to put it in perspective. The program consisted of typical pump up music performed by Cork natives (you know, like "We are the champions," "Don't stop believing," and a clever cover of "Your sex is on fire" by Kings of Leon changed to "Bring back Sam McGuire") and lasted way too long. After 2 hours of standing on your feet and taking a million pictures of cute families all decked to the nines in their Cork gear, the celebration gets a little old and all you want to do is see Sam! Eventually Sam made his appearance and everyone went crazy, including me, who has seen 1.5 gaelic football games! It was really all about the atmosphere, these people were so excited/happy/overjoyed that I was too!

Biggest Rebel fans from apt 84!

The next night (last Tuesday) was my first real night out after the Irish students had arrived and if you want to see a spectacle come to UCC's freshers week. Oh. My. Gosh. These Irish students are NUTZ. A group of friends and I headed out around 10:30 to the city center to be bombarded by half naked girls cackling, wearing an inch of makeup, and probably only an inch of fabric too. While the girls probably took 2 hours to get ready, their male counterparts decided to really dress it up by wearing sweatpants. Sweatpants=the staple male pant at UCC. This, although extremely unattractive, is much more practical than the girls' gameplan of wearing sky-high heals and an alcohol blanket out. Meanwhile, my friends and I were dressed like extremely practical grandmothers in flat shoes and sweaters, we looked frumpy in comparison to these girls.

My apartment is about a 30 minute walk away from the city center where the clubs and bars are concentrated, and despite seeing the massive numbers of drunk people around our apartment, we thought that we could find some fun in the city center. What were we thinking? We should have forseen that the number of trashed teens would only increase as we neared the location of more alcohol! The city center was a sight to behold, but wearing far too much clothes with far too little alcohol in our bodies, we decided to head home and debrief the spectacles we have seen.

Exploring Cork culture at St. Finbarr's Cathedral

I love the Irish, don't get me wrong. I was just utterly overwhelmed and concerned that this debauchery would be a nightly occurrence for the rest of the semester and the relaxed pub atmosphere I had grown accustomed to had such been snatched away by 17 year-olds on their own for the first time. Luckily, that turned out to be a needless concern. For Thursday of the first week of school I went to an Irish house party and met lots of relaxed Irish students wearing real clothes and smiles!

Full of the excitement of the first few days of a new school year the next few days consisted of a club and societies fair, lots of people looking lost, and free stuff being handed out around every corner! The club and societies fair was very overstimulating and resulted with me signing up for 9 different clubs/societies including both the Labor Party and Republican Club. In my defense, the room was very hot, full of people, and full of charismatic people with accents promising candy if you signed up! So far I have yet to follow through on any club invitations, but once I gain some courage I plan on checking out the choral club, mountaineering club, canoe/kayak club, surf club, the cow-punchers society and/or ultimate frisbee. We'll see, who knew I was too shy and reserved to attend a meeting on my own? I definitely need to suck it up, smile, and start to try new things!

Looking good while cutting onions for family dinner

The weekend was spent mostly surrounded by Americans because almost all the Irish students go home for the weekend. On Friday some friends and I went to some Cork Culture Night events including a youth choir performance in Saint Finbarr's Cathedral and an Aerial dance performance! Both performances were spectacular and goosebump-y but my favorite part of the evening was exploring parts of the city that I had never seen on a beautiful night underneath Jupiter! Saturday was also spent exploring followed by an evening "Beach Party" in a neighboring apartment.

I spent Sunday recovering from the weekend of exploring and preparing for our first family dinner! My roommates and I decided to have a weekly (or bi-weekly) family dinner where each week a different person presents a family recipe or meal and then we all chip in to buy the ingredients and cook it! This week was Ruby's night and we made a cheese ball, french onion soup, and brownies. I was in charge of cutting the 9 onions that made up our soup and wore my swim goggles to keep from crying. After a round of skip-bo and stuffing our faces we snuggled and watched 300 on TV. All in all, it was a great first week and weekend!