Nature is all around

Ross Castle
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Slainte (welcome).

Currently I'm sitting in a small dark internet cafe in Killarney having just sent off some grad school emails and i still have 20 minutes of my paid 30 so i am going to update the old blog here.

Killarney equals touristism (yes i just made up a word but the Irish make up stories all the time so it's fair).  The town is full of little gift shops and authentic pubs, but it feels like it caters more to the outside population than the locals.

But Killarney is close to many beautiful and historical sites.

Ocean View
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1. Beautiful castles.  We walked through a beautiful forest park to get to Ross Castle this past tuesday.  Mallory and I tried to quote as much Robert Frost as we could to make it authentic. The Castle itself overlooks this beautiful lake and we sat there for about 20 minutes watching swans and skipping stones.  The tour of the Castle was pretty blah (nothing we haven't heard before). Although we were reminded that, because they ate on pewter plates which are a mix of lead and tin, they probably died a slow and painful death because of lead posioning.

Ring Fort
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2. The Ring of Kerry.  This refers to a heavenly coastal road that we drove up and down both wednesday and thursday. At some point i forgot i was in Ireland and thought perhaps we had accidently driven to California; blue ocean, blue skies, fresh green grass, live stock roaming wild. I had to hold my breath to make it feel real.  We were even greeted by a rainbow as we drove over one hill. No pot of gold though. But we did find some gold on the hills: gorse (it grows wild all over Ireland).

Bee Hive Hut
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3. Ring Forts. Built in the bronze age (500 bc) and meant for defense.  These forts are obviously in a circular shape and made of cut stones piled on top of each other (they are surprisingly sturdy if you learn that there is nothing holding the stones to each other).  We spent a lot of time "playing" on two ring forts and watching the sheep graze below us and we even had class in one for 15 minutes.

4. Bee hive huts.  The dingle peninsula is famous for its bee hive huts.  Originally these huts were part of monastry life.  Monastic life generally means a community of monks living solitary lives, but in a community  (a community of hermits and loners).  They had community spaces but then also these little huts that were only used for times of inclimate weather and cold; they spent most of their time outside in nature by themselves.  The huts can't really be dated but they are mainly in the south west of Ireland because of the Norman invasion of the 12th century.

Gorse (it grows wild all over Ireland)
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5. Monastries. We saw a few different parts of the old monastries on thursday.  They are mostly in ruin now but the foundation still stands. The Oratory is the area that they have mass and sing, they only time of day they could talk.  These pointed buildings have great acoustics and the monks fully believed that the sound vibrations had power over the body.

6. National Park. Killarney itself has a huge park!!! In it is the Muckross house which is most famous for being the house that Queen Victoria visited in 1861.  But the park itself is wooded and surrounds a huge lake.  On friday we decided it would be a good idea to bike in it.  Besides the off shoots of a painful bottom and sore legs, the trip was amazing.  It was nothing but biking down dirt paths next to the lake (that was so still i could have swore it was made of glass).  A gentle mist settled around us and a feeling of peace (mixed with burning legs) also settled.  We went to see this waterfall in the middle of the park. The water was absolutely clear and ice cold; it was fresh spring water. I took a drink and it tasted amazing.  We also saw people climbing on the rocks and decided to give it a try.  The rocks were surprisingly slippery and i definitely had my whole right foot submerged in the ice falls at one point.  But then Kade did slip and fall in, getting completely soaked, so then i didn't feel so bad!!!  I ended up taking off my shoes and climbing in the cold water and moss laiden rocks barefoot, much like a monkey at some points.  It was the best part of my trip so far because i was completly out of breath and completely invigorated in a new way.  Returning to the hotel and turning on the tv felt plastic and unreal and utterly unhealthy.  Experiencing these pure parts of Ireland makes me look badly on the Celtic tiger boom (although it did bring the Irish up in the European world).

KIllarney National Park
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Whoa, well time is running out here for internet time.

Tommorrow we are stopping in Limerick and staying for a night and then continuing to Galway where we will be staying for about three more weeks.

Right now i am going to get some coffee and sit by the river in an attemot to read some of the 130 pages of Irish mythology McDowell has assigned us for this week.