MCI Cultural Journal #7: From the Written Journal...

3:21 June 21, 2011

So we're back at the house, and Connor has decided to knock off of the afternoon, and I want to agree with him. I had chatted with Brid downstairs about our class discussion and how we talked about the potato famine and the history of Ireland. I mentioned my family had immigrated to the United States years before, in the earlier part of the 1800s, before the mass exodus in 1847.

I haven't yet been confronted with a question of my ethnicity. I'm sure I'm known as a foreigner, but I have not yet been marked openly as a Yankee. I will closely watch this during my time here.

3:50pm June 24, 2011

So we're still on the road to Belfast, and since the laptop battery has sort of conked out, I decided to get at least some writing in. I've been quite neglectful of writing, something I'm normally good at on these sort of travels. I've just been so busy with ids and the blogs, that the only other time would be to skip the pubs at night. That might have to happen soon as I have just been burning through money. I'm actually a little scared I'll run out of money!

We had a dickens of a time finding the Irish Film Institute this morning. We (Connor, Dan, me) wandered the backstreets of Temple Bar trying to find that damn place for near 20-30 minutes!! The same thing happened to us the night before at the Abbey Theatre.

But here's the purpose for mentioning the misdirection and misfortune; the Irish are inept at giving directions. Ok, ok, I know that's a bit of hyperbole, but there is a distinct difference in the giving of directions between the States and the Emerald Isle. Only once during our travails did the local give us a distance in measurements; only once was it in terms of a measurable quantity. "Go left for 200 meters." "Take the next road down about half a mile." Things like that.

Instead, the Irish denote all distance by the time it takes to travel that particular distance. Maybe it's that they've always measured distance by the time it takes to walk somewhere. Hell, in the "Quiet Man," they walk 5 miles to town as if it's nothing. Surely, you'd just say it's a 2 hour walk or whatever. why would you frame it in distance when it's just a walk that everyone does. It's these little things I notice, and drive me mad!