3/14

I’ve tackled this obstacle about a hundred times since I got here, and I’m getting used to answering this question smoothly nowadays. When somebody here from America asks me what part of the States that I’m from, I’ll tell them simply that I’ve lived all over the west coast: California, Nevada, Washington State, and Oregon. When someone from Ireland or any other European country asks me where I’m from, I always tell them that I live San Francisco, California just for the simple reason that it’s a big enough place and most everybody knows it. It avoids having to explain where Reno, Nevada is and it keeps all the Reno 911 jokes at bay. Most times when I tell somebody that I am from the Bay Area, a typical response would be “oh, I love San Francisco. The weather is beautiful” or “I’ve never been, but when I do go to the States, it’s the first place that I’m going to see.” Today, while getting my haircut at the local barber shop, was the first time that I actually regretted telling someone that I was indeed from there. Never before have I gotten the response “oh…so you’re one of the gay people, then.”  Coming from most other people this comment would sound offensive, but this barber’s expression never changed as if it was just something they openly ask about here in Ireland. On account that I am not gay, my instinct told me to become offended. Had I been a much more snide of a person and less afraid of a bad haircut, this would have been the perfect opportunity to retort with a snappy retort of a question. I think something along the lines of what I would have liked to have said was “are you from Ireland? does that mean you’re a drunk with no long term goals?” It took only about ten seconds for my temper to subside when I told myself “what have I got to worry about? He’s the one in the hairstyle business.”

I politely told the man that no, I was not a homosexual but that if he were to ever go there to not start accusing people of being so as most people wouldn’t take kindly to it.  I then told him that I’m not actually FROM San Francisco, but rather a place nearby that most people here in Ireland wouldn’t know about so I opted for something a little more internationally known to avoid conflict.

Something small, I know. But I thought it would make for an interesting story while walking back to my apartment. I guess from now on I’ll have to be more careful with where I say that I’m from. Maybe I’ll stick to the truth and tell them that I’m from rural, small-town Fernley, Nevada or maybe I’ll just make up a new, funny place from now on. We’ll just have to see whatever kind of mood I’m in.

3/11

I’m finding it harder and harder to get the time to write in this thing. I apologize for my lack of action on the blogging field. Scotland was an incredible adventure. Freezing cold, but incredible nonetheless. I didn’t get to see much of Glasgow on account that we flew into Glasgow-Prestwick and immediately hopped on the train to the city centre and only hung out around there while waiting for our oncoming train to Edinburgh. I’ve since discovered that while it is spelled Edinburgh, it is pronounced “ed-in-burr-ah.” Don’t ask me why. I still haven’t figured that one out. Nevertheless, it was one of the nicest cities I’ve ever been in, if not THE nicest I’ve ever been in. Only thing holding me back from saying that was the ridiculous temperature/incedible winds. I told Fei Fei that it felt like we were in the damn arctic. The architecture was amazingly old, huge, and gothic to the extreme. All of the old stone has since been turned black from years of burning coal (they stopped and the air quality is incredible.) Tons of old, towering cathedrals and royal castles everywhere. Tons of history of the Scots fighting for their castle with the English, power being shifted back and forth over the generations and even a story of when the English had control over Edinburgh Castle - the Scottish scaled a gigantic, western wall secretly in the middle of the night to fight for their castle back. I learned at least 10 different ghost stories and walked the very same streets they used to hang grave robbers. Did you know that the reason we’re so advanced in anatomy now is because of two particular Scottish grave robbers who would sell the bodies to the medical students?

We happened to be in town on the same exact day that Scotland was playing England in the Six Nations Rugby match. A brief lesson here. Rugby is HUGE over here. Bigger than American football, if you can believe it. The Six Nations is a tournament held once a year between Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, France, and Italy. Scotland happens to be in last place at the moment while England is tied for second place with Ireland and France - Wales is undefeated. Well, as luck would have it - Scotland won that game and the whole city was in the best mood that night. Made for a great time walking around the streets/pubs/clubs of downtown Edinburgh. I’ve never seen so many kilts in my life or a group of people so happy all at the same time. It was incredible.

We also took a 12 hour bus tour (we stopped a lot for pictures) and had the opportunity to visit Loch Ness and sail across it. That was probably a bit overrated, but it still made for a good story to say that I once sailed Loch Ness. For the record, I didn’t see any monsters. My theory on that is, even if there was a monster there at one time (there’s no reason there couldn’t have been), it’s probably dead by now. It’s been hundreds of years and the thing probably croaked a long time ago and has since decayed and given food to millions of fish. That’s my take on it at least.

I’ve got two more days back here in Cork until we head to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. It should be a blast. The plan as of right now is that when we get back from Dublin, we’re to pack our backpacks (i’ve still got to go buy one) and head off on our month long trip to continental Europe. We’ve for sure got a free place to stay in all Rome, Paris, London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Freiburg (Germany.) If I have the opportunity, I’d kill to see Athens, Lisbon, and Prague while I’m there. If I can’t - I guess that’s just one more reason to come back next time.

3/7

I’m going to Scotland tomorrow. We fly out in the early morning. I’m excited. The plan is to fly into Glasgow and immediately thereafter take the train to Edinburgh. After we leave the train station, find and check into a hostel for a couple of nights - leave our stuff there with time to make it to the big castle there (the name is failing me right now.) A lot of our roommates just happen to be in Scotland at the time. We’re only going to be there for three days, but I would be the happiest little boy if we could somehow manage to see all Loch Ness, JK Rowling’s house, Sean Connery/Craig Ferguson having breakfast, and the place that golf was invented. Boy, I’d kill to play a game on that course.

It just dawned on me how long it’s been since I’ve been golfing. That’s one thing I’m going to be doing a lot of this summer. You can count on that. There’s a good chance I won’t find a way back on the internet until Monday. So in the meantime, Cheers!

A love for fancy cheeses

There is this place here in Cork called the English Market. I need to take pictures of the place because it is totally, without a doubt the best grocery shop I’ve ever encountered in my life. It’s a little semi-outdoor (it’s got a roof, but the only doors are gates.) All the little shops are divided in squares smaller than my bedroom with shelves to the roof, fruit in old wooden barrels, and uncooked meats of all varieties hanging out on ice right where you can pick it up if you want to. Today I saw a beheaded pig sitting on a table and some of the biggest eels of my life - they were terrifying.

I was beyond excited (and still am) about finding this cheese place within the market. A guy cut me off samples of four different gigantic cheese wedges and they were all super fancy. I ended up splurging on three hearty slices of this cheese that I didn’t know the name of today and it cost me near 7 euro.  Totally well worth it in my opinion. I went to take a nap earlier but couldn’t stop thinking about my new found love in the refrigerator.

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what I want to do when I get back to the United States. Where I want to live. The places I want to work. Do I want to go back to school? Really, as of right now nothing is definite. I’m really open to moving anywhere. I really want to live in NYC and Boston one day. Seattle and Portland are very easy to move to again. I miss them both terribly and I’m thinking that may just be the easy route to go. I’d love to move to the Bay Area, but that’s going to require I find a number of people who want to share a small space with me and lord knows most of my friends back in Reno aren’t going to do that. I want to go back to Starbucks - find a second job dealing in fine cheeses or something. I’d really love to learn about fancy cheese…really. I want to get in super good shape. Go hiking a lot. Write a lot. I’d love to take some fun classes at the community college. I want to learn Spanish. Maybe take a photography class or a cooking class. I need to learn to cook. I like it when I do it. I guess that’s all easy. It’s just seeing where the wind’s gonna take me.  We can only wait and see.

3/1

So finding a comfortable place to sleep has been a problem thus far into my trip. The plane was the most uncomfortable place ever and I got a sore neck from the only hour I actually managed. First night here, the guy we were borrowing the air mattress from was out of town and I had to try to stick with tiny couch cushions. Last night, we got the air mattress only to find that it had a small leak. I woke up pretty much on the floor on top of a deflated air mattress and my back is really stiff. Hopefully I can figure something out today. Maybe I’ll look for a sleeping bag.

Went to Blarney Castle yesterday and kissed the Blarney stone. It’s funny about this because when you kiss it, there is a camera thing there that takes a picture of you kissing it - the guys working there (what a job) give you a hand when it comes to kissing it because it’s really dangerous to get to. You have to dangle backward over a spooky castle ledge holding on to two metal bars built to give you a grip. Whoever designed it was a real jokester. Anyways, the guys who work there, after you kiss the stone, they give you a redemption tag that you bring to the front sales desk where you can preview the pictures they took of you and it is supposed to cost you 10 Euros to get an actual printout of the picture…10 euros? seriously? So…our natural solution was to use my digital camera and take a picture of the tv screen that my picture was demonstrating. We’re proud of that one. It officially marked my first touristy thing that I’ve done here. Afterward I went to my first Irish Pub and had my first Guinness in Ireland…TASTY!

I’m not quite sure what the plans are for today. I’m exhausted from all this running around and not sleeping well, but I’m excited to do all this cool stuff at the same time. We got our tickets to Scotland yesterday. We fly into Glasgow next Saturday and plan on taking the train to Edinburgh. We’re only gonna be there like three days, but we’re probably just going to walk around the city and take pictures - I don’t know what we’d do there for longer than that. Nonetheless, before I left America I told myself that I was going to do everything in my power to see Scotland, Greece, and Prague…so far, that’s one down and I’ve still got over a month left. Fei Fei and I are going to be traveling a lot when her spring break rolls around on the 13th of March. We’re doing St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, and for sure going to be in Rome and Spain for a little bit - where else, I’m not quite sure. But Hopefully I’ve still got enough money in my account by then.

I’ve been taking pictures like crazy, however haven’t had a chance to load them onto my computer. I’ll be sure to post them soon.

2/29

Alas, I’m here. I woke up at 13:45 today (hehe…1:45pm)

The flight was long and uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep and my personal tv didn’t work so I couldn’t enjoy the lovely Ben Stiller movies on the plane. I made it into Cork and have already been hit on by four random girls. FOUR! It’s awesome being “that foreign guy.” I’m new and I have things to talk about and opinions to share that nobody has heard before. It’s neat. I can see why people love moving to foreign lands. Nobody has said anything about an accent yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s obvious that I’m not from around here.

I’m sleeping on Fei Fei’s floor in her dorm room and her roommates are all cool. We’re all the same age and get along fine (at least I think so.) I didn’t spend a lot of time yesterday venturing around Cork city much on account that I was so sleepy and my head was spinning. I calculated it out, and aside from the hour of sleep that I got on the plane, I was up for a good 36 hours. When I flew out of San Francisco, it was 2pm, broad daylight. It quickly got dark as we flew over Canada and then as soon as we all started to get comfy, it was bright and sunny again. That sucked.

I’ve already noticed an abundance of cultural differences, but I think my favorite one was a newspaper headline in regards to a local man protecting his children by “beating off a bad guy.” I chuckled to myself literally for about five minutes. It was on the front page in big, bold print even.

Last night I followed Fei Fei’s friends to this public underground parking garage where they were having this rave of sorts. It was a big party in a parking garage full of people relatively my age. Met a lot of people. Shook a lot of hands. I had a good conversation with a German, 3 French kids, and a bunch of Americans. One girl who lives here in Fei Fei’s hall even used to live in Seattle. It’s crazy how the world can be so small. Get this: her boyfriend back home literally lives down the same street I used to. Literally. She knew the exact location when I told her 45th and Stone was my old house. Yeah, nuts. Apparently there’s a guy who lives here from Reno. I haven’t met him…but I’m just befuddled.

I haven’t taken any pictures yet. My head was hurting really badly yesterday and was in no mood to slow down foot traffic by stopping to take pictures. I’ll get to it soon. We’re going to see the Blarney Stone today and I’m really debating on whether or not I wanted to kiss it. I could only imagine some dumb teenager peeing on it trying to be funny.

Also

I was just sitting here, it’s only been maybe five minutes since my last post. But a giant security guard with a scary, vicious, sniffy police dog came around searching for bombs…I know I don’t have anything suspicious on or about me, but I still felt really threatened and scared. It was a scary dog.

Sitting at the airport

I’m here at the San Francisco airport, SFO if you will. I found my way past all the check ins and security quite easily. Didn’t set off any buzzers, which is always good news.

Weird thing is that they asked me to be here 3 hours early. My flight boards at 1:30 and I’m sitting here ALL BY MYSELF in the terminal. I’m sure I’m at the correct gate. It says gate A5, flight EI146 to Dublin “on-time” but I’m seriously the ONLY person down here. It’s all quiet and I’m listening to myself rattle on the keyboard as quietly as if I were back at home…in the dark. Hopefully people start coming to this gate or I’m going to start to worry. There’s not even a person behind the counter at the gate. I seriously think I’m in the only isolated place in all of San Francisco right now.

Funny note: Upon coming down the escalator to this section of the airport, my eyes were met by what looked like at least a hundred asian guys. It was funny. I didn’t quite know what to think when they announced that a flight to Japan was now boarding and they all stood up. I’ve never felt so tall in my life. Maybe I’ll go to Japan one day. I could join a track and field team and kick ass in all of the jumping categories.

“the last time you leave the USA for the first time”

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I kept waking up every hour or so. It was cold and my pajamas were in the washing machine. Consequently, I had to sleep in my underwear. Which is fine on warm days, but it was much uncomfortable last night. Top coldness off with an overwhelming sense of nervousness and it’s a proven way to be sure you’re tired the entire next day. It might be a good thing considering that I’ve got an 11 hour flight ahead of me (that’s right, I said 11. It was 17, but I was able to change plans and now I’ve got a direct  flight to Dublin - then a half hour scoot on over to Cork.) I’ve also had some gnarly diarreah which seems to have followed me into the morning. Do you think nerves has anything to do with that? Or is that strictly the fact that I’ve been loading myself up on Mexican food this past week on account that I’ve been told there is none in Ireland.

I still haven’t finished packing. I need to be in San Francisco by 11:15, meaning that I’d need to leave Gilroy by 9:30…meaning that I’ve got about 45 minutes to pack and shower and get out of here.

I think that once I get there, I’ll be fine. The only Irish related worry that I have is meeting Fei Fei at the airport. She will be in a class when I’m scheduled to arrive at 11:30am. She gets out at noon and will be taking the bus to the airport. I guess I can just find a bench to sit on for the time being. I’m just worried we’re not going to be able to find each other once at the airport. Neither will have phones (how did they ever find people in the old days?) I guess I’m just gonna have to wait and hope. Maybe she’ll page me.

I don’t really feel like it’s going to happen. Right now I’m just kind of apathetic. I feel like for some reason, something is going to go wrong and I’m just going to end up back here on my grandparents computer talking about why I couldn’t go to Ireland. My passport wasn’t valid, my ticket didn’t work, the airport’s workers were on strike…something like that.

Thank you to everybody who helped me out here. Grandparents, Parents, Friends. It was a big collaborative effort  and I’m glad I’ve got you all in my life. (I’m just saying that in case that my plane crashes and those were my last words. I wanted you to know I was grateful.)

 Wish me luck!

This is driving me nuts. Are you guys aware of what’s going on with this whole Roger Clemens being on trial with our United States Congress right now?

Here’s the low down:

Roger Clemens, like Barry Bonds, was/is one of American Baseball’s most highly regarded record keepers and arguably one of the best ballplayers in history - certainly of their generation. There has been a lot of speculation going on in regards to whether or not these players have used steroids in the past to pad their stats and give them an extra boost in their abilities. Basically, cheating.

OUR COUNTRY IS IN A WAR, PEOPLE! Our dollar is at a record low. Foreclosures are at a record high. Barrels of gasoline have reached $100 for the first time in history. Our country is on the verge of another damn depression and our congress can’t find anything better to do than try to figure out if a popular BASEBALL PLAYER cheated. Are you serious? I’m a very big baseball fan and I find this appalling. I personally think steroids were good for sports and even the economy in general (it’s a long story, but pretty much “who would want to watch a bunch of skinny guys slap singles and steal bases?”…and the fact that people were spending millions and millions of dollars to spectate this sport when all the juiced up people were homering their way into record books.) Maybe I’ll write another long blog about it one day, but I’m tired right now and I just wanted to vent for a little bit.

For the record, I just took a little break in writing this and put some serious thought into the topic at hand. The only reasonable answer I could come up with to this stupid baseball anomaly is that perhaps it’s just a break from what’s really going on. Something other than our failing country to put on the front pages of our newspapers and keep us happy and uninformed. This baseball controversy seems as good as an excuse as any, so what the hell?