Irish Lesson of the Week: Fish and Chips

 Before I say much else, let me start with this.

American French Fries=Irish Chips

American Potato Chips=Irish Crisps

Just so we are all on the same page. I knew the difference or similarity in fries and chips but it took me a few days to catch the similarity in chips and crisps. I hope that didn’t just confuse anyone even more…

Fish and chips are a really popular food, especially within the UK, and with the link between Ireland and the UK it is no surprise that it has also become really popular within Ireland. 

Last weekend I got to go to what many claim as the best fish and chips, or in slang “one and one”, in all of Dublin.  Leo Burdock’s is just a counter with a line wrapped around the corner. Your options at Leo Burdock’s include Cod or Haddock and really that’s about it. 

 Oh, and you get to choose the type of sauce you want to accompany your pile of grease.

I chose the Cod, feeling for some reason that it was more traditional?

I also had my fries, I mean chips, covered in vinegar and salt, which is common for chips across Ireland.

The men behind the counter wrap up your food in a brown paper package and you are out the door almost as soon as you walked in. Then it's up to you to figure out just where to eat your heap of fried heaven.

My Mississippi vernacular would immediately associate fried fish with catfish in a cornmeal like batter. The cod from Leo Burdock’s, and most versions of the fish in fish and chips, are covered in something closer to a beer batter. It's more like an onion ring batter than a piece of catfish.

But it sure was delicious...(notice the grease)

The only problem with the best fish and chips in Dublin is that you get so much food you should split it between several people (fish and chips were often known as a working class food, so lots of food for little money makes sense). It is also greasy (kind of like a normal day at KD Fried Friday) so you are left feeling really full and in desperate need of a place to wash your hands, face and maybe lap from where you set the brown package. But it’s all in the experience.  And a worthwhile one all-together.

Cheers!

 Chelsea

PS. After Leo's we went for a quick walking tour of the Jameson Distillery. It was a free tour as part of Dublin's Culture Night where events were offered across the city. The tour is of the old distillery, which they have turned into a museum. I think it would have been more interesting if they were still making whiskey there. But it was a fun night! 

Irish Craft Beer Festival

Last Saturday I spent the day at the Irish Craft Beer festival thanks to the recommendation by a friend.

I hopped on a bus from the city center of Dublin and arrived at a large convention site. The convention center, RDS, is home to several large meeting halls that host all sorts of events. The first building I saw had a large sign for the “Irish Antique Collectors Convention.” While that sounded fascinating, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for and eventually I found the beer.

When I got to the festival around 1:30pm the convention hall was almost empty. Which in the beginning was nice because there were no lines and it gave ample time to talk to the brewers about their beers. The good news for the breweries and the sponsors of the event was that as the day progressed the crowd grew.

I have been surprised by the choice of beer here in Ireland, or the lack there of. One of the cultural stereotypes of the Irish is that they are heavy drinkers, and in particular heavy beer drinkers. Guinness has helped perpetuate this stereotype around the world, but I thought that the bit of truth in that stereotype would translate into lots of choices in Irish beer in pubs.  

This is far from the case. While Guinness is always on tap, most bars and restaurants are filled with common American and European beers. A pretty typical tap selection at most pubs includes Miller, Budweiser, Heineken, Carlsberg, Guinness and maybe a Fosters. Except for Carlsberg, I can get all these beers in Mississippi, a state with a limited selected on beer. (for all sorts of reasons. If you are interested check out Raise Your Pints) I guess the problem of just a few companies owning all the beer isn’t just an American problem, its international. This might be a little more radical on beer purchasing than most of us will go, but it is interesting to see just how few "local" beers there are anymore...

 http://www.drinkamerican.us/faq/59-who-owns-what-beers.html

This beer festival was nice because it gave me a chance to try some of the local beer that I had been expecting. In all there were about 16 breweries, and I think 2 whiskey distilleries. I learned that I really like Irish Reds. The Irish Red is an ale like a Pale Ale or an Indian Pale Ale but both of those types of ales, which are really popular in the US, are known for a hoppy finish. The Red Ale is usually described as having a caramel finish with some fruit flavoring. Its hard to explain but you don’t really get a fruit flavor as much as just a smooth beer without the overbearing hops that IPAs can sometimes have. I think the beer festival was my first ever tasting of a Red Ale.

All the breweries have great stories and I enjoyed trying them all but at the end of the day I liked the beer from White Gypsy brewery in Co. Tipperary (In Ireland the county you are from is almost like the state you are from in the US) the best. I had a great time talking with the guys who started White Gypsy and I really loved this line in their description, “We also grow our own hops at the brewery which allows us to make Ireland’s only fresh hopped 100% Irish beer. Our philosophy is about getting back in touch with the things that made Ireland famous for its beer but have long since been forgotten.”

Check out the website if you are interested in reading the stories of the other Irish brewers.

http://www.irishcraftbeerfestival.com/brewers

PS. Oh and the day was also really nice because Dublin had beautiful weather (even though we were inside) and I was with fun friends! 

Cheers!

 Chelsea 

#1 What I Read this Week

I am predictable. The first guess might be Willie Morris or Eudora Welty and while they are both on my small but mighty bookshelf in Ireland, I opted this week for an American classic with different deep southern roots.

I haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird since I was in middle school (maybe early high school-bad memory) but I was in the local bookstore a few days ago and they had just stocked the shelf with lots of copies of Harper Lee’s namesake. It looked to me like the bookstore was preparing for some freshmen literature class to descend on the bookshelf but before they could it caught my eye.

It all seems a little wasteful and ironic. I have a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at home (even though it hasn’t been touched in years) and if I was to buy a second copy Square Books seems like a much more iconic place to purchase the book than a bookstore in a new strip mall in a small town in Ireland but maybe that irony in the location of purchase drew me to the classic?

Or maybe I just needed a little classic Scout, Jem and Atticus to remind me of the power of strong character? Cheesy, but true. Or last option, maybe I was just a little homesick and Harper Lee seemed more approachable than Yeats?

Whatever the case, I bought it and read the whole thing in just a few days (a result of lots of “personal” time and train travel). And whatever significant or insignificant reasons led me to pick up To Kill a Mockingbird off the bookstore shelf were well guided because it is just such a great story!

It is simple and easily relatable, even to Irish freshmen, and has this great fable quality with its moral.   

I stand by my choice in an American classic and suggest everyone give a read over the book we have all probably read at some point.

I started off with what was almost like a comfort food of literature, but this coming week I’m diving head first into the fish and chips of Irish literature with Roddy Doyle. (calling Roddy Doyle the fish and chips of literature could easily cause a bar brawl of intellectuals-to keep peace I just like the cheesy comparison). 

Cheers,

 Chelsea 

Irish Lesson of the Week: Arthur's Day

This is super quick, but I want to get it posted before I head off to a special celebration.

Today is Arthur’s Day-Happy Arthur’s Day! It is a worldwide celebration, so don’t think that you are limited being in the United States. However, I do think Ireland puts a heightened focus on this holiday.

The Arthur in Arthur’s Day is Arthur Guinness and it shouldn’t take much guessing to make the connection of Arthur Guinness to the beer that has become a staple of Irish pubs and a trademark of the country around the world.

Today is Arthur’s birthday and the entire world celebrates by raising their pints for Arthur at 5:59pm Irish time. I’ve heard from some that Arthur’s Day is the Fall equivalent of St. Patrick’s Day in the Spring. I’ve yet to experience either to compare but soon I'll have some idea... 

(Arthur Guinness: the man, the myth, the legend)

What I have noticed is that the modern Guinness does an incredible job of marketing this as a national holiday and in turn their profits soar for a day. I think ol’ Arthur would be proud of his modern company. 

Arthur's Guinness

Just a quick note for all out there at home who are grimacing at the idea of drinking a Guinness, the Guinness of Ireland is much better than any Guinness in the US. It sounds like a lie created to make people who have traveled to Ireland sound cooler, but I promise it is true. 

I'm off to watch the entire country of Ireland give a cheers with some new friends at the local pub. Until next time...

Happy Arthur’s Day Y’all!

Cheers,

 Chelsea 

Getting Settled

I’m starting to feel somewhat settled and my schedule is falling into place. For the first time I am a making a conscious effort to schedule time for things that during the hectic pace of undergrad life I often threw to the side. Instead of reading the New York Times regularly or watching an interesting TED talk I was constantly hanging out with friends and in no way would I ever take that back. But now with more alone time than ever before in my life I’m going to make the most of it.

This little ramble has left me with a new structure for my blog. To hold myself accountable and help me remember all the events from a week, I’ve got a few types of posts that will be making their way to the World Wide Web weekly.

I’ll always try to keep you readers (I can say it in plural because I know at least my Mom and Dad are reading it) updated on what I did during my weekend travels and how my classes are progressing.  As well as a weekly post on an “Irish lesson of the week” along with a post about things I’m reading or watching and want to pass along.

There will most likely come a point where three posts a week is a bit excessive, but right now with everything being so new and exciting it seems like a good idea.

Coming up next…The Irish Lesson of the Week.

Cheers,

 Chelsea  

Garth and Afro

After our first day of class some of our professors took all of us to the local pub for a beer (all very Irish…). After the pub a couple of us went to our new friend's apartment right across the street. As the night progressed the guy who lives in the apartment pulled out his guitar. He started with some Irish folk songs (singing while drinking is like a national sport here) then started to take requests from the group. One of the girls yelled out “The River” by Garth Brooks. I immediately threw up a time out to the conversation and had to ask “did you really just request a Garth Brooks song?” It became obvious pretty quickly that it was popular enough for the guy to know how to play it and then the entire apartment filled with Irish accents singing “And I will sail my vessel ‘til the river runs dry…”

The night only got more bizarre when a few hours later we were brainstorming more upbeat songs that we could all sing (The River and Irish folk ballads don’t do much for the mood of a party) and someone suggested an Afroman song. Again, I had to pause the conversation and make sure I had heard correctly. “Afroman? Like the Afroman from Hattiesburg who used to work at T-Bone Records?” And yet again the Irish surprised me. They all went into Colt 45. Every few lines I would have to stop them to make sure that everyone knew that “pinebelt” was where I was from.

All in all it was a ton of fun getting to hang out with people from my program and I have a feeling that these sing-songs are going to be a common occurrence. I’ll keep everyone updated on what song makes me feel at home next.

For good measure...

After a little research, I now realize that Garth Brooks is much more of an international superstar than I ever knew. Garth Brooks' Ireland

Cheers,

Chelsea 

"Mom-Where is my lunchbox?"-The First Day of School

Yesterday I walked into a classroom for the first time as a student at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth. Not only was it my first day as an “official” student in Ireland but it was also my first time to venture into a class as a graduate student, or in the irish term “post-graduate.”

Let me just make this really easy-IT WAS AWESOME.

I could end it with that but for my mama’s sake, I’ll expand.

Within my program there are about 17 students. The official course title is Community Education, Equality and Social Activism. It is a joint program between the departments of Adult Education and Sociology. We finish the course with a Masters thesis (thanks to the honors college, this shouldn’t be hard work).  The core classes for the course include power and politics, understanding inequality and equality and pedagogy of adult and community education. Plus there are credit hours given to our thesis work and work within the community. We also get to choose 1 elective a semester (but have the option of sitting in on the classes we don't officially register for). This semester I get to choose between a critical media course, a class on social movement practice or the theory of political economy. Since we can sit in on the classes I'm not too worried about which one I will actually choose. 

The professors all come from really varied backgrounds but all seem to really support the idea that this isn't a typical lecture, all of our courses are centered around dialogue. We spend Monday and Tuesday from 10-5 in class together and then the rest of the week is ours to fill like we want (more to come on this, I’m in the process of joining some clubs and getting an internship). 

The class schedule is in part to make the class accessible to what the university calls “mature” students or in American university lingo,“non-traditional” and so far this has been one of the most impressive pieces of the program. The group of 17 is so diverse. There are a few of us who have recently finished undergrad (all with very different majors) but the rest of the class is largely made up of people who have returned to school later in life.

Several students have children of their own and work the rest of the week. A few have spent some time doing political activism work or community organizing and are returning to school for better job opportunities and everyone seems to have really different beliefs ranging from the far left to the far right (which mean really different things in an Irish sense than they do in an American one). It has just been really interesting to hear their stories. 

The Irish government claims that there is free education for all. Districts are broken down regionally and there is a local department that awards “grants” or scholarships to students. As Ireland was booming these grants were really generous, but now as Ireland, like most places in the world, deals with a time of financial uncertainty these grants have been drastically reduced.

However, even with drastic reduction of fees I get the impression that it is much easier for people to return to education later in life than it is in the US. Not to say that it is easy or doesn’t take courage, because I have a lot of respect for anyone who is willing to make an effort to change their course in life but it puts how the US system works in perspective. If a country like Norway is on one end of the spectrum with open and free education at any level for all citizens and the US is on the other end with really high prices and few scholarships (of course putting the US at the end of the spectrum excludes countries with little to no access to education) then Ireland is somewhere right in the middle. 

Many of the “mature” students in my class expressed how they didn’t have the opportunity to go to college when they finished high school because of issues relating to situations (like being from working class neighborhood) but through government grants they are now able to return. 

In Ireland the conversation about educational access is all about the class system and since it is a very white country the conversation doesn't include the link between class and race that is part of the same conversation in America. But the distinctions between class create the same sort of issues dealing with educational access as if we were talking about a place like Sunflower County. 

 I don’t want it to sound like I haven't thought about the opportunity of educational access (the aim of the Freedom Project is to provide access and you have to be close to blind to not think about this issue while working with the SCFP) but somehow I had spent a lot of time thinking about this notion without including myself in the equation. I just feel really lucky to have the opportunity to be here. I'm privileged enough to be given a year to do nothing but learn and grow and not very many people are so lucky. 

Everyone in my class is making big sacrifices to come to Maynooth for two days and be a part of this program. It made it feel like everyone was genuinely excited to be in class. It also makes me really realize how lucky I am and how the least I can do is be prepared for class and contribute what I can. 

So I guess to sum it up, I'm really really looking forward to my course this year. I think I'm going to learn in ways and about subjects that I can't even imagine AND I couldn't be any more grateful for how lucky I am to get to spend a year reading, writing, making new friends and growing up.

Cheers,
 Chelsea 

The Oxford of Ireland-Oxford, Mississippi that is

Well first things first, greetings and thanks for taking the time to follow my journey through Ireland. I  went back and forth about blogging but in the end I think it is going to serve as a great way to hold me accountable for putting my pen to paper (or should I say keyboard).

Since this is my inaugural post, I want to let yall in on the place I will be calling home for the next year. Maynooth.

Maynooth is located west of Dublin, about 25 miles or so. It is connected to Dublin by bus and train.  (I’m going into Dublin tomorrow on the train for the first time. Since I traveled over with two super big suitcases I thought it was best to splurge on a cab ride from the airport instead of dragging my bags through public transit.)

Maynooth claims about 12,000 residents but an exact  count is difficult because the city a town of college students. The town is home to a branch of the National University of Ireland and is historically significant as the home of St. Patrick’s College, the national seminary of Ireland.

St. Patrick’s College is was and still is the training ground of most Irish priests. It is beautiful and picturesque, just like you would imagine an old stone castle built in 1795.

 (the main building of St. Patrick's with a cathedral attached to the right wing)

From what I understand, during the Vatican II (1962-65) St. Patrick’s began expanding in the hopes that the new leadership at the Vatican would inspire people around the country to flock to the order.

At the same time that St. Patrick’s was expanding it also allowed “lay” students to enter the University. By the mid 1970s there were more students not on the fast track to priesthood than there were. Eventually in the mid 1990s the Irish government established a separate University for the “lay students”, creating the National University of Ireland-Maynooth.

As St. Patrick’s was buying up land and buildings for a planned growth in the priesthood during the 1960s, an ironic twist began to take place in Ireland and around Europe in the decades to come.  Ireland began to turn against the once iron first of the Catholic Church (I plan to post more on this later) as the rest of Europe moved away from Christianity and organized religion all together. So since independence in the 1990s the secular NUI-Maynooth has slowly begun to buy building by building from St. Patrick’s.

This has left the University with a north and south campus. The South Campus is home to the picturesque stone buildings of St. Patrick’s and the North Campus is filled with modern construction and the amenities of most college campuses. There are cafes, bookstores, a sports complex and dorm rooms.

(entrance to South Campus is through this set of gates with a guard cottage)

(the Maynooth Castle still has remnants standing that great visitors on their entrance to South Campus)

I live on the North Campus in an apartment style dorm in Potter’s Hall, a part of the larger section of River Apartments (but I have yet to see a river). I have a private bedroom and bathroom but share the “flat”, a kitchen and living room, with 3 other “mates.”  My room is small, but perfect for a single person who only brought suitcases for a year (no matter how big-still just suitcases).

(my building-Potter's Hall. In total there are probably 10 other buildings like mine)

(Welcome to my office, walk in closet, dining room, kitchen, den, and living room)

My room could not handle the amount of furniture and matching fabric that makes Martin at Ole Miss the special place that it is, but for a year in Ireland I think its going to be just great.

(my window over looks a large athletic field)

The campus is just a few minute walk from the small downtown of Ma-noot (as said by the locals).  I think it takes me maybe 5 minutes from my dorm to the start of downtown.  The first sign of downtown is a newly opened shopping mall that has a Dunnes Store, which is a one-stop shop for almost anything you could need.  The rest of downtown is a mix of local shops, pubs, restaurants and chain fast food like Papa John’s and the Irish version of Burger King (Chicken King).

(the main intersection of Maynooth, not quite a one stop light town)

(Mantra-recently built, this is Maynooth's largest dance club and apparently one of the biggest dance clubs in Ireland. I have yet to fist pump there.)

(sweet downtown)

The President of the Student Body at NUI-Maynooth describes the town and university like this, "Maynooth is about 50:50 students to residents and has seven pubs, a seminary, two massive supermarkets, four pizza places, a University and nowhere to park. It's the strangest and best town in the world." 

Sometimes I think we could easily say the same thing about Oxford, MS. A strange and wonderful place...

I hope to update everyone soon about my coursework, interesting Irish history, irish drinking culture, etc.  Stay tuned.

Cheers!
 Chelsea