Trathnona maith agat!

I sit here listening to strong winds and heavy rain.  But we are snug in the Ethan Allen showroom.  It is about 8:40 Sunday evening which means I have only 55 minutes before the start of the Mariner’s final regular season game, but not before the end of 2000 activity for them. Is this season a nail-biter or what?

Mark is back.  He arrived Wednesday morning bearing Seattle Times sports sections and Captain Crunch.   What a guy!  It was nice to have the sports sections, for although I have caught up on the game recap most days via the Seattle Times website, I didn’t stay on-line long enough to read the background Is-Lou-Gonna-Be-Here-Next-Year kind of articles.  So now we just wish bad things for Cleveland.

I have had a busy week, meeting new people.  Monday night I went to the AGM of the Parent’s Association at school.  AGM stands for Annual General Meeting.  Anyway, I joined the parent board for Monaleen School.  I thought it would be a great way to meet people and perhaps offer a fresh perspective as well as get a few ideas to bring home.  For instance, apparently in the past, parent volunteers in the classroom were greeted with anything but open arms.  In fact, they were often greeted with nothing more than a closed door.  I had heard as much before I made my pitch to the principal that I had some time on my hands and if she could use some help typing or photocopying or other such office work I was available.  Imagine my surprise when she said they could really use some help in the junior infants (age 4/5) classroom.  So at the parents’ association meeting I mentioned that I was volunteering one morning a week, and that led to lengthy discussion, most of it of the positive variety, given that the junior infants and senior infants classes have 35 children per class with only one teacher.  However, all you Assumption School parents and pre-school co-op parents will share my surprise at the one parent who said "I don’t think parents belong in the classroom, it is too unstable for the children."  Hello, I think a model like Assumption with its many, many parent volunteers who help the school run, also serves to show the children just how important their education is to the parents.  OK, off my soapbox.

Tuesday morning I attended "Plassey Partners", the faculty spouse’s club.  Not that I saw any gentlemen in attendance, but it’s still nice to know they could be there if they wanted.  I remember back in my days in public accounting how much that organization, "CPA Wives" frosted me.  Oh, so the up-and-coming young male CPA has his wife out at some tea chatting up the managing partner’s wife while the young female CPA’s slave away in their cubicles with no one to network for them!  Pretty bleak, huh?  Anyway, the Plassey wives were quite nice, and even invited me to join their Monday morning art group.  So I went out Friday and bought all my paints and brushes. It’s so nice to have the time to indulge my little hobbies…

Wednesday I attended a meeting of the International Women’s Organization.  They are, as the name implies, a group of women from around the globe.  The organization has been here for 20 years and among other things produces a relocation guide to Limerick and the Shannon Region which I have found quite helpful, offering advice on such topics as education, insurance, and telephone (but where were they when I dialed the date?).  One of my fellow IWOers is also new to the parent board at Monaleen School

In fact I introduced myself to her, because I was quite taken aback by her at the Monaleen meeting.  As we were signing up to be on the parent board (no elections here, they seemed to be willing to take anyone with a pulse) we needed to spell our names for the secretary to record (to be read back, in full detail, and I mean full detail, next September) she began to spell her name.  Cathy I-Zed-Zed-O.  Dumb American that I am, I sat there thinking who is this Zed guy and why is she saying his name when she’s trying to spell her own?  Oh well, I caught on eventually.

Speaking of letters, Melinda is fascinated these days with the letter H.    But lest you think that is an aetch, it isn’t.  It’s a haetch.  She picks out haetches on every walk we go on.  [[Feeling lost?  I know I am.  Mark, here ? just thought I’d intrude and say that when you are feeling lost, and it can happen at any time, trust me, it’s best to sit right down.  That’s right.  Sit down, stay put, and wait for your parents to come and find you.  I repeat ? just wait.  Your parents will come for you or you will realize that it’s just the way of the Irish to pronounce the names of their letters a bit differently than you and I, normal people, do.  Instead of saying "zee" for the letter Z, they say "zed".  Likewise, instead of saying "aetch" for the letter H, they say "haetch," actually making use of the sound made by the letter.  So does Melinda.  That’s why she looks for haetches instead of aetchs.  See?  You feel better now don’t you? Bye for now.]]

One more cultural difference, besides their weird letters, is the use of the word "scheme".  In my book, scheme has never been what I would call a bad word, but somehow, "scheme" always carried with it something that was just a bit, maybe, like you were trying to put something over on somebody.   But here scheme is used all over - to refer to the milk program at school, a plan for housing development, a vaccination program.  No harm, no foul.

For you readers out there, I was in a bookstore recently and saw an entire table filled with copies of a single book.  These books had a sepia toned cover and as I walked by I noticed the word "Ashes" on the cover.  I thought the store was perhaps dumping excess copies of "Angela’s Ashes."  I looked again.  No, the title was just "Ashes" and the cover explained that this was about all the people that STAYED in Limerick and made this city the wonderful place it is.  They didn’t go running off like some people.  Frank McCourt’s book generated a lot of hard feelings around these parts.

We had a beautiful day yesterday.  We drove up to the Cliffs of Moher.  Them are some high cliffs.  Greater than or equal to 1,000 feet!  Mark snapped a picture of Emmeline on her belly looking over the edge.  Thank goodness I didn’t see the actual event.  Just looking at the picture sends my stomach into flips!  But it was a beautiful day and we could see out to the Aran Islands.   The kids had their first view of the Atlantic Ocean.

After the cliffs we went to The Burren.  It is a desolate landscape.  The story about it goes that one of Cromwell’s surveyors looked it over and said that there was "neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him."  In the summer I understand, it is covered with beautiful alpine flowers.  We saw the Poulnabrone Dolmen, one of Ireland’s finest ancient monuments.  [[Me again.  It’s a tomb, really.  They entombed people there.  Famous, rich, powerful people I think.  Ordinary people were buried in ordinary places, places with dirt and worms and things that appreciate a bit of carrion now and then.  But the rich ARE and apparently always have been different.  They could pay, even back then, to have ordinary guys haul these massive stones together in a roughly rectangular arrangement, about 5 feet wide (2.7 cubits?), 9 feet long, and 4 feet high.  They made the side walls out of single Humongo Stones - slabs of rock really.  The back and front walls were also Ungainly Slabs but not as high as the sides.  This allowed for, what? viewing by the undead?   easy escape in case a mistake had been made? (Who remembers that scene in The Holy Grail?  "I’m not quite dead yet!")?  Anyway, they finished their work by placing a FIVE TON slab on top of the walls.  The whole affair had to point east so that the dead could catch the sunrise.  It’s been there for more than two thousand years.]]

Today we had a good deal of rain but found a sunbreak to leave to visit the town of Killaloe on the Shannon.  Of course, the sun was all but gone by the time we arrived, but it was still a nice outing.

We found this morning that they do know how to sing in Ireland, we actually had a choir at Mass!  They were quite good.  It was nice to hear some music, and still they finished in 45 minutes.  The best of both worlds.

[[Well, Mary left off here.  She has a terrible sore throat.  She is going to go and find an Irish doctor tomorrow.  She has gone to bed.  Actually as I check my watch it’s now 1AM and so we can safely assume that most everyone has gone to bed.  The exceptions, of course, as faithful readers will know, are wandering in and out of pubs down on O’Connell street, lingering noisily beneath the windows of the Royal George hotel or driving oversized trucks filled loosely with stone slabs and towing empty beer kegs on chains behind them as they speed on potholed streets in an unending circuit around the block.  I am still awake because tomorrow I will get to teach Irish education students!  I have not had any teacher dreams yet this fall so I am trying to keep my record clean by being way too prepared for tomorrow’s class.  I have been cutting out little strips of overhead, making "spinners" (don’t ask) and writing my plan in little tiny scribbled notes that I have overwritten now several times.  In rewriting my plans I have discovered that I could possibly need, oh several overheads of diagrams, quotes and stuff.  I had better get busy!
P.S. The M’s won and so will be playing with white socks on Tuesday.  I fear that I will never understand that game….]]

OK, it’s Mary again.  I did not mail this, excuse me, post this, (do you post an e-mail?) Sunday, since, as Mark told you, I was suffering from quite a sore throat.  I went to the doctor on Monday.  Called at 8:00 and they said be here at 10:00.  Very nice doctor.   Took a bit of a medical history.  Listened to and poked in all the customary places for a sore throat.  Wrote a prescription for amoxicillin, and sent me on my merry way.  All for £20.  Anyway, the amoxicillin started working right away and I am loads better.  So good I might be able to stay up for the whole game tonight.  Go M’s!!!!!

Talk to you later,

Slan,
Mary