Apparently My Head is Enormous

So I started up knitting again with a vengeance about three months ago, and I've been moving through this beret pattern with modifications to fit the Noro yarn shown --> Went to the knitting night at This Is Knit in Blackrock, met some awesome ladies (*waves*), and then finished up the hat once I got home.

Except I didn't because apparently my head is enormous. I know that won't be surprising to you mom, but seriously, the yarn I'm using knits up larger than the yarn originally called for (meaning that doing the pattern the way its written would mean my hat was bigger than the sample hat) and it still doesn't fit. Now I'm not completely freakish as it fits just fine circumference-wise (I swear!) its the depth of hat that's the problem. I have to tug at it to get it to barely cover my ears :( So I've decided to just undo it (ie 'frogging' in the knit world) back until before the decreases at the crown and do another 10-ish rows. A little disappointing but oh well!

Belfast Christmas Continental Market

Went to the Christmas Continental Market on Wednesday evening, and is, as my wannabe Bostonian sister (loooove you Liz) would say, wicked awesome. The grounds around city hall are transformed into a tiny magical village of deliciously gourmet and wacky food, painfully tacky gifts (personalized diamante belt buckle anyone?), fragrant beer gardens (one in a teepee!) and all garnished with the amazing Christmas lights I've discovered they do so well here in Ireland. Unfortunately the best stuff for sale is the food (so many fudges and cakes and sausages and wines and ciders etc etc!) which doesn't transport particularly well in the hold of a plane across an ocean in checked baggage, or else I'd be bringing a ton home with me.

Mmmm savory baguettes

The enormous tree

The joy of pick & mix = too much fudge for Katie

My long procrastination!

I need to be papering right now. I really ought to be papering. Classes are finished since last Thursday and I've got until December 15th to get all my final papers (or assessment as they say here) done.

Created by OnePlusYou

So of course what am I currently doing, given my proclivity to procrastination? Why I've joined Ravelry, am playing MouseHunt on facebook, picking out charitable christmas gifts, and am fiddling around with the new camera I bought with birthday money from my parents! (Oh and I'm clearly writing a blog post and playing with countdown generators.)

Although writing this post has gotten me to close some of those tabs, not to mention that the generator's really freaking me out, so I think I'll go read!!

PS- The beau and I are going to this tonight btw! So I really better get to work so I feel like I've earned it.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

(This will be an all-day post that I'll update as the day goes along)

2:15 Pm

I am thankful for ....

These Women

These Women

And THESE!

7:50 Pm

I AM THANKFUL THAT CLASSES ARE DONE!

and for these!

Almost Turkey Time

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow! Thankfully one of my classmates (Rob from Belfast) has an American wife (Julie from Seattle) so we're not going to let Thanksgiving go by uncelebrated. They're inviting about 20 people (!!!) over to their house for a big ol' dinner - turns out she's doing two turkeys, way to go Julie - and the boyf (as my across the hall neighbor awesomely calls my boyfriend) got work off on Friday so he could come join us. Yay!

In the spirit of my recent cooking expeditions, I've decided to be bold and make a few dishes. I'm making a kidney beans dish, sweet potato casserole and Kentucky Derby pie! I'm using family recipes for all of them so the Derby pie isn't exactly like the one in the link, but it'll give you a pretty good idea of the ingredients. Sooo I went grocery shopping today and here's what I discovered:

• Pecans are expensive
• There is no such thing as corn syrup here, rather they use this
• Pecans are shipped from the States
  
• Contrary to belief they have ready made pie crusts so I only have to worry about the filling
• Pecans are still unbelievably yummy
• Irish sweet potatoes are shaped funny
• Screw baking I want to eat my pecans

Alack and alas I can't though. Tomorrow I'll have a running "I'm Thankful for.." post that I'll update throughout the day (who knows, you might get a shout out). In the meantime checkout what happens when turkeys are on the loose!

Photo Friday

Its Friday! woot! Except that I need to be practically glued to my desk this weekend because of paper writing. Bleurgh...

Ye olde timey sign post leading into Phoenix Park

Transgender Day of Rememberance

I haven't been particularly political on this blog yet, but I wanted to let everyone know that today (Nov. 20th) is the International Transgender Day of Rememberance. Transgender people throughout the world have a horrifically high chance of experiencing violence and murder; in fact the Human Rights Campaign states that American Transgender people potentially have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. Even if that's an inflated number the conservative estimate is that transgendered people are murdered at 10 times the rate of everyone else. These are hate crimes. This shouldn't be happening. Period. So today is a day to remember the wrongfully dead among the transgender community. It's still early enough in the day for most of y'all to find an event in your city and attend in solidarity, in mourning, in rage, or in respect. And if you're in Ireland and want to know more check out the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland (TENI) here, or Si here. I'd particularly recommend TENI, as I've met the amazing Chairperson Cat McIlroy. Thanks for reading.


Remembering the (reported) victims of 2008

ps- I apologize for turning the comments moderation on, but ... I figured I needed to.

Internship

So I've got an intership! I'll be helping to plan and execute Hanna's House, a small initiative that will conduct 4 seminars across Ireland about how to create and facilitate non-violent and sustainable communities through a feminist perspective. The seminars are happening in Derry, Sligo, Cork and Dublin - I figured y'all would know where those last two are ;) - and the first one is in Derry on February 11. After the seminars, Hanna's House will conduct a Summer School in 2010.

Now unless they start paying me I won't be staying on until 2010, but I'm certainly going to work until the Derry seminar and see how it's going. Currently it's just myself and the director working on this (it's a subsidiary project of the National Women's Council of Ireland) so I'm really going to be involved in the planning! I'll be doing a lot of communications work and particularly online communications (maybe we'll have a seminar blog hmmm?), which is exciting. For now I'll be going in on Thursdays, but that will probably increase as it gets closer to Feb. 11th.

I'm still on the watch for other part-time jobs, but I think this will really give me something to sink myself into and Ireland work experience and I'll certainly meet a lot of people from women's organizations and maybe they'll have a job available! This can only mean good things :)

Photo Friday!

Halloween!

From left to right we've got a Super Nanny, Doctor Dave, Doctor Who (!) your's truly as Amy Winehouse, Poison Ivy?, Kim Jong-Il, and Sarah Palin. It was quite the fun night :D

On Elections

My President Elect and the First Family!!!

God I wish I could've been in the United States last night! Seeing the pictures of Grant Park in Chicago and election results viewing parties at Bryn Mawr really made me feel apart from things. BUT thankfully the BBC ran a live text commentary from yesterday morning my time (and its still running now!) and a live streaming video coverage of the election from about 8 pm here till the bitter end at 4am this morning, so I was still in the thick of things. Good ol' beeb. It was thrilling to be in class yesterday and have everyone ask me how the election was going? and what I thought? and I HAD voted??? Right?? (Don't worry, I had.) People here in Ireland were still surprised we'd gone for Obama instead of Clinton - which surprised me, but ok - but since the primary everyone I've talked to has been behind him. As an official "American Abroad" I wasn't proud of how my country has been lead in the past 8 years. I've been asked to explain Bush politics I don't know how many times. And now I feel restored and proud. Finally I can throw off the political cynicism that never sat well with me and whole-heartedly embrace my future government. Thank you Barack. Glad you're there.

Here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of his acceptance speech from last night.

Woo Halloween!

Sorry about the delay in posts, but I've been on vacation this week up in Belfast! And today is Halloween! My birthday! wooooo! As you can tell, I'm fairly excited :) So time for me to go now, fancy dinner, costumes and partying awaits...

Cooking and Protesting!

Gonna write more about the university fees protest/march I did yesterday (yay activism!), but just wanted to gloat a bit and tell y'all that I cooked THIS (wrapped up as a bfast burrito with cheese and a fried egg) and it was frickin' delicious.

Temple Bar Market: my new favorite place

Temple Bar Market (photo courtesy of Shannon R.)

So last weekend was awesome! Met up with Shannon (so good to see you friend!) on Saturday at the Temple Bar Food Market which was just as deliciously impressive as I had hoped. We ate real life legit Mexican food, thank goodness I finally found somewhere to get that, and I bought a fantastic loaf of garlic rosemary bread and a small jar of homemade plum chutney. The two of us walked over to the Designer Mart for some browsing, which was similarly amazing. Shannon and I had such a nice time that I've decided that this Saturday routine is going to be my official visitor outing. So all y'all coming to visit me get ready for some Saturday market-ing!

It's apple season!

Photo Friday

My residences is set up like a little village of apartment buildings and mine is the one at the end! (The door's in the middle of these two). Our apartment looks out onto the back so you can't see my window in this pic, but this is what all the buildings look like here.

Cooking Adventures

Big surprise, living on my own away from Bryn Mawr's amazing dining halls has forced me into the kitchen. Which, irony aside, I'm surprisingly enjoying (Crazy I know right??) and turns out I'm not that bad at it. It's alright, go ahead with the "I told you so's." But I'm seriously ok at it. A couple weeks ago up in Belfast I made enchiladas for D and his roommate and they were edible, tastey even! I've slowly been working my way up the sauce enhancement ladder for pastas (ha sounds like I'm pumping steroids into them, I swear its just fresh veggies/herbs).

And today I made soup from scratch, and guess what? I didn't even have a real recipe. I just cobbled together a few different ones and figured it would work out. And it did! This a big deal for me. It was a lentil, potato and carrot soup with loads of garlic and a bit of onion. The prep work was a bitch (I need a sous chef apparently), but I took genuine pleasure in the tasting, stirring and checkups. It was quite palatable and tastey. Wished I could've fed it to someone else though, I got a bit tired with congratulating myself ;)

I want to take advantage of spending the weekend in Dublin and go to the Temple Bar Food Market, (though who am I kidding, I'm sure I'll end up in the book market eventually) and cook something totally awesome with the local, fresh produce. Wish me luck!


ps- tried to upload a vid of my kitchen, didn't work. Sorry!

A Wee Revelation

So on getting off the bus back to Dublin this Sunday night (went to Coleraine/P'Stewart with the beau, which was wonderful) I had a bit of a revelation. I'm going to be here for at least a full more 11 months. Strange that that hadn't sunk in yet, but apparently it hadn't. I realized that this room at UCD, in Belfield, a Dublin village, in the Republic of Ireland is actually going to be my home for the next year. Whoa. How awesome is that? It's not like before when I was abroad in Belfast, because I always had the knowledge that I'd be going to back to Austin and Bryn Mawr in a matter of a few months. It's a whole different ball game now. So I decided, right there on the street in front of the Busaras, that I'm going to get to know this place. I'm going to try to make this city mine and get out there and see what I can see. Slightly weird I hadn't made that decision before, but now I've made it conscious.

So I went into town today. Visited the George's St Arcade, the Cultivate shop, an Oxfam Ireland shop, and Hackett's Garden Centre. Verdicts? I loved George's St. Arcade, it had a fabulous mix of high/low fashion, little veggie organic cafes, bizarre knick-knack shops and a secondhand book stall! Cultivate was cool, I bought some organic pasta, tahini and a little bottle of Dr. Bronner's tea tree soap (I've wanted to try that stuff for ages). I'll certainly be going back there. This Oxfam shop wasn't as great as the one in the Student's Union at Queen's in Belfast, because the clothes were kinda lame; but I was able to find a pretty scarf for only €4. And Hackett's is a lovely teeny tiny garden centre with walls of seeds and bulbs. That earthy growing smell was too much to resist, so I got a smallish lavender for my room and a rosemary plant for cooking!

Moral of my story? I'm feeling adventurous, promising and determined ... woot :D

Yay Money!

My two new favorite words were discovered today: "fees" & "refund". Got an email today from UCD saying that I had quite a nice bit of money owed to me from the college. I knew that my loans from the government were more than my costs here were going to be, but I wasn't sure what that meant. Would it just not get disbursed? Would it float away in the ether of exchange rates? Apparently the full first half got disbursed to the UCD Fees Office and so now I've got extra! And when the second half is disbursed next semester I'll have extra again! This is how I feel about this:

I've opened a bank account finally and once my info gets cleared by amorphous criminal and governmental entities (which should happen by Thursday evening or Friday morning) I'll be able to deposit the refund check. Now I know that this isn't actually real money, but rather a loan from my illustrious country, so I'm going to try to get a savings account too on Thursday/Friday and put at least half of this check in there so I don't spend it and have the previously mentioned illustrious country pissed at me when I can't pay them back right away. So yes! YAY!

Photography Friday!

Or rather I'll say Fotagrafaicht Aoine in honor of this officially bilingual country. And to my Irish readers, if that's wrong feel free to blame englishirishdictionary.com, it's not my fault if y'all are putting false information out there.

ps sorry about the blurriness

Irish Bureaucracy Hooray!

Hello! So like I said in my last post, I've gotten my Garda card! I first showed up here on Monday at about 4pm, but guess what?? The office is open until 10pm but they had stopped issuing numbered tickets hours beforehand, meaning that enough people to fill up 6 more hours were already waiting!! So on the advice of the surprisingly nice front desk man, I came back the next morning at 8:30am to get in the special student line outside. Even though they don't start paying attention to that line until 9am. And the line was already around the block. For reals. All I've got to say is thank god it wasn't raining and that I had had the foresight to buy a breakfast crepe to eat in line (thank you breakfast crepe girl!). It wasn't that bad actually, I got my ticket - wooo #284 - and the lady told me to come back at 12:30. So I walked around downtown a lot, went to the Hugh Lane Gallery that I hadn't gotten to see a few weeks ago, read my book on a bench by the Liffey and window shopped.

Got back at noon and guess what number they were servicing? Why it was 140! Awesome. So I walked more, window shopped more, read more. At about 2:30 they were finally at number 220 so I figured I ought to just stick around there. And seriously, GNIB, you would make so much money if you had a cafe. And you could charge whatever you wanted! You've got a hungry, anxious, captive audience, why not make some serious clams AND chill out the people in the waiting area? Also, my uniformed friends, you have got to make a child play room. It doesn't have to be awesome or anything, just a room with some lame doctor office toys, books and changing table. There were understandably loads of small children there with their parents, and these were some bored and frustrated kids. I felt for them, if I didn't know how to talk I'd have been crying and whining too. And another thing, why in the world is the entire bathroom area lit with blue flourescent lighting? It gave an almost black-light quality to everything and was super unsettleing. That's got to be a hazard in terms of inducing seizures.

What I don't get are the people who waited there the whole day. I was stressed out and uncomfortable enough from just the 2 hours I spent there, I could not imagine how I would have felt to sit there for the entire 7. And I was just getting my student registration done and was relatively secure that my documents were in order and that I would be approved, and English is my first language. It must have been awful for the people who weren't secure that everything would work out. Sitting there I realized that my privelege as a white, educated, English speaker must have reduced the stress level considerably. So way to go fellow immigrants, you've got my respect!

Quick Hello!

Hi!! Don't worry a bigger post will be forthcoming, but as I have class in about half an hour, it'll have to wait until tomorrow morning. However (drum roll please) ........ I have been issued my Garda Registration card and am currently a legal resident under my student visa until September 30th 2009! Woot! And it only took me 7 hours of waiting to get it......

True Facts

Hi all! I'm up away to Belfast this weekend, but here are some facts I've realized about Ireland:

1) It will rain at least a little bit every day. If they have a full day of sunshine, it is regarded as wonderfully freakish and all of a sudden you see way more pale Irish skin than you're used to.

2) Because of the previous there really are rainbows all over the place. In the past week I've probably seen a rainbow every other day, including one gorgeous full-on child's drawing arc. (No luck on finding any leprechauns yet, still don't know where this country is keeping them....)

3) When I tell people I'm from Texas they never bring up George Bush, like most Americans would do, but they always ask me if I ride a horse everywhere and do men really wear those spiky things off the back of their boots and really tight jeans? (My answers being no, not really, and actually yes!)

4) Not surprisingly, I've learned that the majority of the Irish slang I'm familiar with is staunchly Northern Irish (Norn Iron!). There have been plenty of times where I've thrown out a slang term that I thought would pass right on and I'd fit in nicely just to have my housemates ask me What the heck I was saying? and Is that an American phrase? Thanks a lot Belfast ;)

5) People are friendlier to strangers. Not in a Texas "How you doin' honey have a nice day now!" sort of way, but in a "Well we're standing next to each other and we've exchanged a question so we might as well get to know each other!" way. Case in point: I'm in the line for the women's bathroom last night in the Student Bar, girl asks me if it was the line and I say yes, we exchange the stock conversation of "Why is the queue for the women's always so long!??!" As an American this conversation is done for me. Not so to freshman girl studying social science from Dublin "oh just right up the road in the top of Stillorgan". This happens all over the place: on the bus, buying shoes at the shopping center, etc etc.

6) I still get asked for directions. And I totally love that. Thanks for teaching me (giving me the genes for??) how to walk assertively Mom.

My First Trip Into Dublin

This is slightly out of chronological order from the last post, but I made a video from my first trip into downtown on Saturday the 6th. It was a nice foray, definitely a museum kind of day because of the weather. So I went to St. Stephen's Green, had an awesome little lunch in a cafe, visited both the National Museum of Ireland (Archeology & Ethnography site .... of course) and the National Gallery of Ireland. Then I walked up O'Connell St to the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery (a contemporary art museum) but... it had just closed. For another time eh?

Highlight of the trip would definitely have to be the 3 MUMMIFIED Irish Kings on display in the National Museum. I had no idea bog preservation was that awesome, you could still tell that one of the kings had had red hair! Oh or maybe the sad person who's job it was to wear the leprechaun suit plus giant papier mache head. That dude was still there four hours after I'd first seen him while walking towards the river. Talk about schadenfreude, just seeing him made me glad I was sitting on a smelly bus out of the rain.

On my first night out in Dublin, or "Whoooo COPPERS!"

So night before last I had my Irish initiation to a 'country' bar. It was called Copper Face Jacks (more affectionately known as Coppers) and this link's comment section says it all and more. PLUS it was the night after the All-Ireland Hurling Championship (the Super Bowl of hurling in Ireland if you will) so the place was awash with Counties Kilkenny and Waterford fans. The DJ had an almost wedding dance style of mixing, playing a few rap tunes, then a Jackson 5 and Blues Brothers, then a Cotton Eyed Joe-style "Everybody knows the step but Katie!" song. Essentially it was a dance your heart out, laugh at the creepy dudes and sing along at the top of your lungs party, and it was frickin' awesome. Oh and don't worry, I picked the steps up just fine :)

Fourth Night Here

Went to the beach today! .......well, ok it was the Merrion Strand (pokey beach town with a pokey beach), but still it had a surprisingly nice effect. It's amazing what an afternoon on the beach can do for your disposition. Particularly if that beach has happy dogs and giggling toddlers who like singing the chorus of "A sailor went to ......" "SEA SEA SEA!!" It's not that fancy, and there really wasn't that much beach to speak of, but it's a great spot to watch everyone having their post-Sunday lunch family walk.

In about 10 minutes I'm going out for the first time downtown! The two girls across the hall just moved in and invited me to join them, which made my lonely heart leap like the 7 lords (....a leapin'!). I'll give my verdict of the pub soon.