Sick.

I haven’t updated my blog in a while, I know. Everyone here is getting sick, and it was only a matter of time before I got it. However, it feels like my symptoms were worse than everyone elses. I was stuck in my room dying of illness and boredom alike, my head felt too heavy to do much but lay in my bed like a sick slug, my voice dropped two octaves, and my coughs were thunderous and unladylike. Actually, they still are. I think the most accurate description of my position came from my brother Parick, when he was describing his own symptoms in St. Louis: “Last night I couldn’t sleep, because my nose was stuffed up. Not just sniffly, it was like trying to breathe with a cork in each nostril.” I know exactly what you mean. Also not very ladylike.

Ben, my friend from France, took it upon himself to entertain me and make me feel better. He visited me many times, and brought me movies to watch. We watched “Into the Wild” together, and I really enjoyed it, all things considered.

When I’m complaining about my problems to him, I think about how difficult it must be for him to understand what I’m saying. English is his second language, and I already have adopted talking slower than I naturally do to make it easier for him. He understands a lot, but now I feel like I’m throwing wrenches into the works: every other word is squeaked-out and practically unsaid because of my lost voice, and I can’t articulate very well when most of my consonants sound like n’s because of all the snot in my face. Maybe he understands it all, or maybe he just understands enough to know that I’m complaining about being sick, and catching every third word is enough for that I’m sure. Ben also made me some tea that I didn’t want, but this miracle drink has become a salvation for me. It’s definitely the closest to relief I can get, which he is smug about because he basically forced me to drink it in the first place.

Going to the pharmacy in Ireland is an interesting experience. Every medicine is behind the counter, and you have to describe your symptoms to whoever is working there. My first experience at the pharmacy was met with a teenager with blue streaks in her hair who was chomping on gum. You tell them what’s wrong with you, then they will pick which medicine is best for you and hand you about 8 unfamiliar pills. Needless to say, I’ve requested that my family ship me a bunch of medicine as soon as they can.

I went to the pharmacy and told the woman I had a stuffy nose, sore throat, congestion, coughing, and body aches. A cold.

“Do you want something non-drowsy?” she asked.

“Yes, I definitely want something non-drowsy.”

She shuffled behind the counter a bit, and came up with a box of medicine called Benylin.

“Here, there are pills for day and night.”

“Oh, but I don’t want anything that will make me drowsy,” I said.

“Ok, well then just don’t take the nighttime pills, only take the daytime pills,” she suggested.

I said “Wait. You want me to buy all this medicine and only take half the pills? Then it won’t help me the way it’s supposed to, will it?”

“This medicine will make you feel better.”

“But is that Sudafed over there? Can I just have some of that?”

“This is the medicine you want. And some of these.” She took out a box of throat lozenges called Strepsils.

Fine. Despite the fact that her qualifications to diagnose me and prescribe half the recommended dose of a medicine just to avoid being drowsy were questionable at best, I paid for them both and left.

I got back to my apartment and found that the throat drops could only be taken once every three hours. Great. That settled my cough for about as long as it took to dissolve the little drop. The Benylin, which mandates that I “follow the dosage instructions,” didn’t give clear dosage instructions at all. There were four pills for each day that were to be taken in the ‘Morning, Mid-Morning, Afternoon, and Night.’ It didn’t say anything about time in between pills, which made things difficult for me. My morning starts around noon, my afternoon is around 4, mid-afternoon would obviously fall in between, and I wouldn’t take my nighttime pill until I was ready for sleep. That means I would take three daytime pills in about four hours, and then one nighttime pill around midnight. That just didn’t seem right. I found a system that I implemented for a few days in which I took them about 4 hours apart, starting from the time I woke up, but after a few days with no results, I just depended on painkillers and tea.

All the walking to the store and back and taking care of myself made me realize how much I took for granted being a sick child who’s mother could care for her. I hate being a sick, independent adult. This experience definitely gave me a better idea of what it must have felt like for Patrick when he had kidney stones in London and mom wasn’t there to help him through the surgery. Only it was as if I had kidney stones AND couldn’t stop coughing. Imagine that.

Tom Foolery.

Megan R. and I found ourselves with some time on our hands, and were feeling particularly mischievous, so here's what happened:

We knew that Tadhg, (pronounced Taig, for the record. Irish, huh?), who is one of Brendan's housemates, always locked his door unless he was in the apartment. The other boys left their doors open all the time. We knew from Katt, another one of the housemates, that Tadhg was in the living area watching television, so we sent her in to distract him so we could go into his room without him knowing. We made post-its with labels and put them all over EVERYTHING: "Tadhg's door," "Tadhg's light," "Tadhg's wall," "Tadhg's dirty sock," etc.
We decided that any pieces of clothing on the floor would say "dirty" and any hanging up or in the closet would just say "Tadhg's shirt." We ran around as fast as we could, and in the about five minutes we were able to cover the whole room, and all his possessions, with post-its. His smoke alarm, his mirror, his shoes, his socks, his books, his passport, his toilet, everything.

Here you can see some of the floor labels on clothes, carpet, shoes, and dirty socks.

Katt helping out in the closet.

We rolled one up in his toilet paper so that he wouldn't find it for a little while. haha

After we finished, we went into the kitchen as if we'd never been there, and sat down with Tadhg and Katt and watched television. We couldn't stop laughing, so eventually he got up and left. We followed him from a distance to his room so that we could hear his reaction, and we definitely got our money's worth :)
Although he has peeled most of them off, he stuck them all to one of his walls as a display.

Then we broke into Mickey's room and did the exact same thing, which he found two days later and hasn't removed one post-it yet. We had a bet that it would take him over a day to realize it, because his room is such a boyish disaster, but apparently he noticed immediately and was too lazy to do anything about it. Success :)

New Grange, Tara, Old Mellifont Abbey.

We took our first Saint Mary's trip on Saturday, which is one of a series that will be taking as a school while we are here. Roberta, the Saint Mary's representative living here, is fantastic for having arranged them all. I love that the buses look like caterpillars! :)


Thanks to Miss Meagan Drone for the majority of these pictures, especially the artsier ones, because my camera ran out of batteries so I stole these from her facebook.

First we went to New Grange, which is one the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, and is the most famous in Ireland. It is a large mound built of stone in around 3100 B.C., and was used as a tomb. It was built so that the sunrise during the winter solstice would illuminate the chamber through the narrow entrance. We all went inside the small tomb, and our guide Carlos simulated the how the sunrise would look with different lights. He did say, however, that the actual sunrise would be much more magnificent than a 40 watt bulb.
There were ceremonial carvings along the walls, the most famous being a series of swirls as you'll see in my pictures.

First, Megan R. and I decided that while everyone was taking pictures of famous monuments and scenery, we would take pictures with the mundane, everyday things around us. We thought our mothers would appreciate our senses of humor while we were traveling. Really this brilliant plan only lasted about two pictures, beginning with me and a mop.

Unfortunately, this is about the best picture of New Grange as a whole that we have, and it includes the office at New Grange in it. It's an enormous mound.

The Entrance into the tomb. You can see the swirls on the rocks that I was talking about. Because these rocks are about as tall as we are, and they block the entire entrance, they built stairs going around the rocks. The tomb was a narrow passage, and we had to duck and walk sideways at one point to get into the heart of New Grange, but it was worth it. No pictures were allowed inside, sorry.

View from New Grange.
Megan R., Me, Meagan D.

We also went to Tara, which is basically an enormous area full of little muddy hills, and a few very large ones. We spent about an hour running all of our energy out up and down all these hills. Unfortunately, we don't really have any pictures capturing the hills. However, I do know that some girls have videos of all of us running up and down them, so I'm in the process of tracking those down now.

Here is Megan R. and I at Tara, you can see a bit of hillyness, but not nearly as much as there was. The view from Tara was fantastic! We could see so far, and it truly is a shame that that type of magnificence can never be captured in a photograph, because all I thought at the time was how much I wanted to share it with my friends and family at home.

I don't honestly know how this picture came to be, and I don't think Megan does either, but both of us think it's hilarious.

Old Mellifont Abbey was my favorite stop of the trip. There were a ton of ruins from the Abbey all around, and every single part was a photograph waiting to happen. As you will see, we climbed all over them.



When we first got to the Abbey, this is what we saw.

So we were jumping in it and having a grand ol' time, when Roberta comes up to us and says "Girls, you know this isn't the Mellifont Abbey, right?" She leads us to the edge of a hill on the other side of where the bus was, and there were ruins EVERYWHERE. We all had a good laugh about that! Here are the rest of the pictures:


Awesome picture of Meagan D.

Me feeling liberated.


The entire SMC group.




This was one of our favorite pictures of the day.

Modeling as I'm sure the monks would have.


We also went to a cemetery down the road so that we could see the enormous crosses. After all the jumping and running, coming here was pretty sobering pretty fast. There were a lot of stones for infants who had died. An interesting difference here is that marker stones are used to write about the whole family. Entire families were buried in the same plot, and one headstone was used with a list of names. If someone new passed away, they would add the name and some information about them, leaving space below the names for other relatives to be written about when their time came.

Here is one of the crosses. It stood probably 30 ft or so tall, and was wider than it looks in this photo.

Here is a cool image of the cemetery and evening sky at the time.
Being here made me very homesick. A lot of the graves had messages from living family members written to their loved ones that we could read, and it made me miss my family a lot.
Two particular ones hit me harder than the rest:

One was from a daughter to her father. She wrote about how his hard-working hands kept the family together, how he taught her to ride a bicycle, and eventually how she was holding his hands as he "slowly slipped away." It made me emotional, and reminded me of how much I really miss my Daddy.

The other one was from a girl named Geraldine to her mother. It was a small poem saying:

'If ever I lost a friend,
I could always find another.
But I lost my very best friend
The day I lost you, mother.
Love, Your Geraldine'

I felt like I would have been saying the same things, had I been Geraldine, and while we were driving to the next site I couldn't help but reflect on my childhood the entire time, and think of how loving my mother has been to me.

I miss you, Mom and Dad, more than I can say.

Sláinte.

Viking Museum.

We all decided to go to a Viking Museum for the afternoon in Dublin. Although we had a pretty good time together, I think it's fair to say that none of us are putting this on the list of 'Dublin's Must See Attractions.'


Here is Me, Meagan D., Brendan, and Megan R. at the stairway that connected the Museum to a church.


Meagan and I in the stocks.


They had a lot of crayon etching stations for children that we took full advantage of.


Me buying a slave for 5 euro. Apparently she was an Irish princess, so I think I got a pretty good bargain.

Katt and I pondering different Viking Trivia Questions.


Me mourning the dead.

Enjoying a Viking bed that was more comfortable than the bed in my apartment.

Self-Explanatory.



Meagan D. and I in a beautiful church.
Thanks to Jenny for this artsy shot.

The Train.

Me, Megan R., and Katt


Brendan and Meagan D.


The Train to Dublin is far more luxurious than I imagined it would be, especially with the ticket prices being as low as they are. The ride from Maynooth is about 25 minutes, and makes somewhere around 5 stops on the way to the city.

I usually bring some things to entertain myself during transit, but on our most recent trip I was fascinated by the interactions of a family next to us and watched them the whole time instead. They were speaking English, but with what sounded like Italian accents. A large man was sitting with his two sons, who were about 5 and 8 years old. The children were debating whether they were looking at the sun or the moon outside, and therefore whether it was night or day. (it was about noon, for the record). The younger of the two insisted that it must be nighttime because the moon was out. "It's not the sun, it doesn't have any of those sparkly things around it," he insisted. This was an interesting argument, as it was cloudy and all that could be seen was a ball of light, not as bright as the usual sun, brighter than the usual moon. I can understand his logic. The older said "The moon isn't out anymore, it's lunch time!" Touche.

They soon moved onto a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that quickly turned into a game of Rock-Paper-Anything that beats Scissors.

"Rock, Paper, LAVA!" the older boy shouted triumphantly. "Nothing beats Lava!"
"Aw, you're right!" the younger agreed.

"Rock, Paper, SCISSORS!" the younger boy yelled, and was immediately reminded of the rules of the game and how scissors is never an acceptable answer anymore.

He tried again. "Rock, Paper, POOP!"
"Poop?"
"Yeah, Poop!"
"Poop doesn't beat scissors!"
"Yeah huh, it'd get all over everything!" he said in a disgusted voice.

This logic could not be beaten, obviously, so he was given the win that round by his brother, who seemed equally disgusted at the idea of poop everywhere.

During these debates, their father remained looking sternly forward. He was a large man - tall, broad shoulders, large arms and stomach, with huge hands that looked worn from labor. His seemingly-dangerous demeanor was handsome, with his very mysterious, dark features and rough exterior. His bushy black eyebrows cast a foreboding shadow over his eyes. However, every now and then, one of his sons would focus their attention on him for the moment, grabbing his arm and hugging him, and his entire body would relax. His eyes would crease deeply with his smile, and he would tap one of their noses, making them laugh briefly, and then they would return to their debate. Or he would momentarily pat his hand on the top of their heads, which he could easily palm, before going back to looking stone-faced. I thought the affection this brutish-looking man showed his children was incredibly masculine, and it captivated me. His outward tenderness toward them was fleeting, but always enough to give the boys what they needed before they went back to their discussions. It was clearly a minimal indicator of his obvious love for them.


On the ride back home, however, we didn't have cute families to watch, so for our own entertainment we practiced smiling like Brendan does when we take pictures of him:


Brendan argued that we smiled too much for our pictures, and this is his impression of our overly-enthusiastic smiles:


Therefore, that's the only way we smiled the rest of the trip:

Dublin.

The train station in Maynooth is small, and the trip we took to Dublin on Saturday took about 25 minutes.




Here we are waiting patiently at the station!


Meagan and I on the luxurious train.


There were these tall puppet men in the middle of the city doing skits, and the horse men gave me a balloon they had. They tied the balloon holder in a knot, handed it to me, and when I took it they shouted "She accepted!" I gave it to a little boy I saw later on in the city.


These puppet men were loud and hit each other with sticks a lot. They were trying to play stick ball.




The girls in front of a castle!
Another castle.

Me taking a picture of...

....this castle.

We thought that this sign was hilarious because it was
so graphic!

At a campus in Dublin.

More of the campus.

A beautiful church we explored.


I LOVE the doors in Ireland. They are all different bright colors consistently throughout the city. There are postcards and other memorabilia dedicated solely to the doors of Ireland.


To top off the night, this man gave us a ride in a horse carriage through Dublin for half price! His horse was named Lucy, and he told us about different music festivals in the city.

Here we are on our buggy ride: Me, Alayne, and Megan.