Hi,
It’s 11 p.m. and we are stupidly listening for election results.
It is just too late here and too early at home. I recall 20 years
ago, my first presidential election (no Mary, it can’t be!! 10 year-olds
can’t vote!!!) how indignant I was that at 3 p.m. on the west coast, hours
before the polls closed, Ronald Reagan was declared the winner. How
dare the media influence the elections all across the country with this
information! However, now that I am 8 time zones ahead of the west
coast and wanting to hit the sack I’m looking for any scrap of information
the media will give me as to which way the wind is blowing. (By the
way it has been blowing here but we in Limerick have been spared the heavy
rain other parts of the country received.) As the end of a presidency
draws near, it is interesting to hear the pro-Clinton sentiments here.
I think if Bill is looking for a new residence come January, he could find
quite a welcome here. {If Bill does come and live in Ireland, and
I hope that he does, he could certainly become a secondary physics teacher.
In that case, he would need a degree in science and a teacher education
program and we would welcome him with pints and tweed at the University
of Limited Utility. Even before he is officially registered and has
received his free bookmark and Gaelic ruler, he could sit in on my sessions
in EN4003 dealing with the management of scarce rural resources and antediluvian
butter stored thousands of years ago in bogs. As an auditor.
So he has that option open to him.}
Well, I have a new catch phrase. "It’s a cultural thing." I was at the parent board meeting tonight. The 45 minute meeting which lasted 90. That’s not a cultural thing. I’ve been to plenty of those back home. It’s just what went on in that 90 minutes that had my first comment to Mark upon my return home as "How can they look so much like us and be so different?" {I looked at her blankly from underneath the can opener.}
They speak the same language, albeit with a funny accent and a few different meanings to their words. For example, there’s this question people ask. Simple question. "How long are you here?" And I would always say "We’ll be here for five months." And they would give me this blank stare like, "Where did that answer come from?" It has only taken me two months to learn how to answer this question properly. Because, you see, with those words they are not asking how long will you be living in our beautiful country. They want to know when you got here. It’s "How long have you been here?" not "How long will you be here?" Not exactly the natural meaning the typical American would attribute to those words, but that’s how it’s done here.
But my American colleague on the parent board and I sometimes just sit there and laugh. For a fundraiser, we suggested a carnival, with game booths like fishing, nail polishing, ping-pong ball toss, {ring the Gak}. Simple stuff, fun get-together for the community. No, the Irish don’t do carnivals. OK, how about a rummage sale? No. You could hardly expect the people around here to go to something like that. I talked to Maura (my local Irish friend) about it and she said it would be such a foreign concept to people here that they would not even be likely to check it out. An aside, I was at a junk store recently and talking with the proprietress about teacups. Somehow she knew right away I was American (I get that a lot!) and she had recently returned from America and she wanted to know if I liked to go to garage sales and said how much fun she had going to them when she was in the states. It was so funny that she should mention them, because not one hour earlier, I had commented to Mark that a huge impediment to my living here long term would be the lack of garage sales!
OK, for more cultural chasms that appeared at tonight’s meeting. A meeting or 2 ago, I suggested a video night in the Halla (the school hall). Friday night, kids could come and watch a video, eat some popcorn. The kids would have a great time. And surprisingly enough, they agreed with me! But here comes the nitty gritty. One woman approached the local hotel which apparently does some video functions, sporting events presumably, about perhaps borrowing their big screen TV. It seems that they don’t actually own the TV, they rent it when they need it to the tune of £250. A little rich for our blood. OK here’s where I come in. It just so happens that the junior infants have recently learned the word "shop" and the teacher I volunteer for was talking with the class about different shops, including shops owned by families of the students, such as a butcher shop and ta-da! an electronics shop. I proposed that I could maybe find out which student’s family owns this shop and see if perhaps they would be willing to lend a TV. Maybe that would be a way to get a TV within our budget. Oh no, you can’t possibly contact the parents! That would be too personal, too invasive.
OK, so then I proceed to tell them this thing we have at our school
back in Seattle. Lots of parent involvement. And we have this
volunteer form where parents indicate how they would like to participate
in the school, what their skills and talents are, and business contacts
that they might have so when you need, say, to buy wine for a function,
you can find that dad that can get it for you at cost. Could we do
something like that here, sort of poll the community to find out what resources
they have? I mean, how can that mom who owns the electronics store
offer to lend you a TV for a Friday video night if she doesn’t even know
you want to borrow it? NOOOOOO! The people here will only give
out the minimum amount of information they actually must. The consensus
(among the non-Americans) on the parent board is that too many hundreds
of years of oppression by the British will tend to make one hoard whatever
personal information they can.
12 November 2000
Hello again,
What? We still don't have a president? Listen guys, somebody needs to fly to Florida and help them count those stinkin' ballots! {Ballots?! We don need no steenkin ballots!} We can't go anywhere without somebody asking the people with that funny accent why they don’t have a president. And we've got another funny accent hangin' with us these days, as Mark's mom, Andie, has joined us for a visit.
She arrived Thursday. Her flight was due in at 2:00, so I picked Melinda up after her 1:10 dismissal. By the time we started the car it was 1:18. We drove to Shannon airport, pulling our parking ticket out of the machine at 1:55. We walked into the arrivals terminal and took a seat. At 2:03 Andie walked out of the baggage claim area with a cart (that's a free cart on this island, by the way) full of suitcases and we pushed it to the car, loaded it up, and drove to the parking lot exit whereupon the gate opened for us with no money exchanged, as we fell within the 15 minute free-parking time limit. When was the last time any of you did that at SeaTac or SFO or Houston Intercontinental? Like clockwork! {or benign chaos,….}
Saturday we got up early and headed to Galway. It was a beautiful clear morning and a lovely drive, or at least as lovely as one could hope for with 6 in a Fiat Punto. I am sure my husband, who rode with a 4 year-old in his lap for most of the day, can fill you in on all the gory details. {In theory, I could do that but most of the memory has been expunged by the passage of that great healer of all wounds…. What is that ? } However, as we made our way through the series of 74,286 roundabouts which bring you from a point 2 miles east of Galway to the city center, it began to POUR! Luckily it was just a squall and by the time we found the carpark it was no longer raining and we were able to do a bit of walking and shopping in Galway. We looked for tweed for the dear professor, but found nothing to fit the bill. {Silly me - I had no idea it was supposed to go on my bill. I had been trying to get my arms through the thing.} However, the professor bought a lovely Christmas bauble for moi, a Claddagh ring.
I'm sure you are all familiar with the Claddagh ring as an Irish institution of sorts, but the ring actually came from the Claddagh region of Galway along the River Corrib. Thus Galway was The Place to buy it. The guys in the jewelry (jewellery if you write in Irish) shop were great. I knew that there was a particular direction to point the crown on the ring depending on whether one is married or single, but I was not sure which direction meant which condition. Well, the answer I got was, " If you're single the crown points to the wrist. If you're engaged or married, and I can see that you are, it points to the nail. But if you're out looking for a bit of fun, you can wear it the other way." And the other guy piped in, "And if you're having a row…" and demonstrated holding the finger up, crown to the wrist, with a definitive "so there!" flourish.
After a nice lunch we headed to Connemara National Park, northwest of Galway. It is an area of beautiful bogs and meadows ruled over by 12 mountains known as the 12 Bens (or Bins). We had some scattered showers, which yielded several spectacular rainbows. {Yes, up in the front they were seeing great sights but back in the back we too should have rights! While you sipped your tea and talked on and on, back in the back seat we played Pokemon. The front seats are comfy, informed and urbane; the back of the Punto is mildly insane. We fight over peanuts and pencils and space. We fill so completely this little, small place, so that when we stop and the door is forced open, we all tumble out just like we was hopin' that this is the end of the trip but it's not.} We worked our way around to Kylemore Abbey, once, of all things, an abbey, now an exclusive international boarding school. Its setting at the foot of a high mountain on the shore of a lake would make anyone long to be ignored by a pair of rich, jet-setting parents, at least for a while.
Today we figured that something under 13 hours of driving and touring was in order so we headed for Bunratty Folk Park, three quarters of the way between here and Shannon Airport. It is purportedly the second most visited tourist attraction in Ireland, although we have not discovered what the most visited is. Answer that question and win a penguin bar! However, while there, I invented a new game, which I am now fairly well qualified to play. I think I shall call it Calendar Questions. The way you play, is you take one of any number of 2001 scenic calendars of Ireland, going through it page by page, saying "Been there? Done that?" For every "Yes" you score a point. I got a 12 on one and an 11 1/2 on the second (because, although I have been to Donegal, I am not a Donegal fisherman).
Bunratty is much like an Ulster American Folk Park for the southwest of Ireland. There are various 19th century dwellings, such as a Kerry fisherman's cottage (complete with ropes to secure the thatched roof against Atlantic gales) and a Georgian home as might have belonged to the minor gentry. It also has a castle, but no coffin ship to take one to the new world. {In place of that are these: a wee donkey, and a leuchterweibchen.} And given its proximity to Shannon Airport, it has a very active merchant population. Can you spell "duty free"? Andie and I can, with gusto!
Tomorrow Andie and I will do a bit of touring while the professor and his children hit the books, but Tuesday and Wednesday we will all go to Dublin (after a lovely train ride -- we're ditching the Punto {That plain little professor did a plain little thing…}) so I'll give you a full report of the capital in my next letter.
I wanted to mention again our Web site. Within a few days after we send each of these action-packed e-mails we add them to the Web site, complete with links to pictures of some of the things mentioned. The address is: http://homepage.eircom.net/~mroddy/Roddyweb If you have trouble connecting to the site, please let me know.
Also, if you are having trouble reaching us at the juno.com address, try mroddyn3@eircom.net. It seems to work better.
Slan,
Mer
