A year and a bit...

So I'm clearly not going to be a blogger. On the other hand, every now and then I feel like writing about some stuff. Maybe someone will read it. I'm pretty sure I don't care if they do. It's weird public therapy that the public may never see. So a little over a year after my last post, I am sitting in a cheap hotel in Belfast agonizing over yet another chapter. I finished the one on dads (mostly anyway) and did some fantastic new stuff with the Troubles chapter. Now I'm tackling Travellers and frankly, I'm just tired. I'm so close to the end that I am just ready to be done. This trip came at a less than ideal time. I'm not working on the Troubles chapter at the moment and this summer couldn't have been busier between travel, surgeries and other miscellenaous obligations. Of course, none those obligations included nearly as much running as I should have been doign, but I digress. Now I'm here, trying to figure out how to make the most out of my time. I'm sad. Really sad, actually, because I haven't been away from both Dan and Cillian for this long, well, ever. It's especially bad since Cillian is in a super fun stage that I hate missing. I have developed a knack for sniffing out happy moms and toddlers in a crowd so I can get all weepy about missing mine. I just might be getting creepy for some people too :) The trip felt like it took forever and a day to get here. I flew out of Newark (stupid idea) so I spent two hours in the car, 7 hours on the plane to London (which was extraordinarily uncomfortable), a miserable hour and a half in the London airport dashing between exhausted Olympians and hung over travellers only to go through a perpetual hell of security (three times). Then there was another hour on the plane to Belfast and 30 minutes on the bus into the city. Thrown in a ten minute walk to the hotel and you get one cranky, overly emotional grad student who cried into her Irish stew at lunch and then forgot to buy an umbrella. Twice. In the pouring rain. After a much-needed nap, I am feeling less dramatic about my academic existence and have a plan or something like a plan for the week. I think I might even have some time for some sightseeing. I had a royally healthy dinner of fish and chips and a Guinness at The Kitchen Bar and I'm considerably better. On the down side, I was really hoping to see a more vibrant city than the one we saw in the dead of winter. While there were definitely more people around during the day, it's still a strangly empty little place. So much was shut today (to be fair it is a Monday), but, well, I don't know. We'll see what the week brings.

Dads and a kick in the teeth

It's been ages since I've posted to here, and I'm really going to try to be better about posts. I'm hoping to use it as a way to hash out some ideas that I'm working on for the dissertation and maybe just to write a little about whatever is brewing around in my head.

So today, I'm finally back in the saddle again after an uphill battle with this current chapter. It's not that I haven't had anything to say about this chapter (father's rights and adaptations), it just feels like the hampster may have had a heart attack in the wheel. I just couldn't get anywhere. But today I broke through. I wrote a little, I did some research and it's making sense. I'm not exactly sure what it was that gave me the kick in the teeth that I needed, but whatever it is, it worked. I charged upstairs to my loft office and despite the heat, plowed through some work on my introduction.

Of most significance today, I listened to a podcast of the Dave Fanning show about stay at home dads. The interviews were exactly what I expected - dads saying that they were ready to step up to the plate and help out and that it's not just women's work, etc., etc., - but what I thought was more interesting was that the show even existed at all. The whole concept of a stay at home dad is still so foreign and so almost shocking that there needed to be a feature on the radio. It's not to say that things are all that different here. I'm not actually concerned that we are shocked that there are "stay at home dads", but more that there is a need to identify parents by gender. Does it really matter what biological status a caretaker has? Why do parents still have to be labeled as workers or stay at home? The podcast is worth a listen. Of particular note is Dave Fanning's response (quite quick I might add) to one of the father's who noted that schools are often setup to cater to mothers rather than parents. His response: "There's nothing wrong with that, deal with it." I guess a women's work is never done.

Back to the grind

At this point, I'm not sure that anyone is still reading this, but I'm trying to get into the habit of posting anyway. Maybe someday I'll write something really brilliant that the world will not be able to miss! In the meantime, this has just been kind of an exploratory project in blogging and such.

So we're home and back to the usual nonsense that makes up our days. Dan is back at work and I'm home studying for exams (mostly :)). Most importantly though, I'm spending quality time with my cats!

Cong

We drove to Cong today. Cong is north of Galway and is the town where they filmed a good bit of The Quiet Man. There isn't much there at all except for a bunch of tourist sites including Dan Danagher's pub, and this little place to sit quietly and reflect on the film!

We arrived there around 2 p.m. and realized that the memory card for the camera was still in the laptop in the hotel, so we hopped in the car and had to drive another 15 minutes north to Ballinrobe to buy a new one. By the time we got back, the Quiet Man Cottage Museum was closed so we could only wander around the town.

Cong Abbey is right in the center of town and considering it's mostly just remains of an old monastery, the grounds are truly beautiful. The abbey sits on the bank of a small river known for fishing. On the other side of the river, there is a nature trail that winds through the property.


We drove back into Galway and met up with Rachael and a few other conference-goers for drinks at Neachtains and then dinner at the Dáil Bar on Cross Street. Considering it was Saturday and Eyre Square gets a bit sketchy at night, we decided to head back towards the hotel. We ended up back in Garvey's again for a few drinks before calling it an early night. Only one day left :(

Good times, good friends

We headed into the conference for a bit this morning and then back to city center for some lunch. Rachael had never seen The Spanish Arch so we wandered down in that direction. The arch is a remnant from the 16th century and was likely part of the old city walls. The area along the Corrib River is absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the city. Once again, the weather surprised us and it turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day.
We finally ate at Ard Bia along the river. We had eyed it up a few years ago and never actually went, and I regret waiting so long. It was absolutely delicious. It's a tiny cafe in this little stone building right on the river. It looks a bit medieval on the outside, but the inside is really cozy with tables tucked underneath stairwells with bunches of pillows and cushions. You almost feel like you're eating in somebody's kitchen. Rachael and I both had a chorizo, gubeen and onion jam sandwich (just thinking about it makes me drool) and Dan had seafood chowder. Really, really good. I had to buy some of their onion jam too - it was too good to leave behind.
After lunch we wandered around for some shopping. I was thrilled to raid a cheap dvd place (Zhivago's) and found a couple of films that I can't get back in the states.. After that we walked back towards the university and met up with Mary and Rachael for a drink and some food at the River Inn. We got lost on our way there by making the cardinal mistake of traveling in Ireland - NEVER assume that a road is running straight or parallel! We were right in assuming that the road we took would get us where we were going, but it took us a little bit longer than we thought.

We headed back to campus for the Sean-nós performance. Sean-nós is a traditional form of singing and dancing that is found mostly in the west of Ireland. It really is beautiful and very cool and forced me to practice my Irish a bit. The venue wasn't great for this kind of thing - it was in a big lecture hall (hence the need to zoom in with my camera), but it was truly a treat to see something like this. The video below is of the last performance of the evening.

We finished the evening at a friend's house for a bbq where we caught up with old friends and met some lovely new ones too. Good times.

Conference Day

So today, I actually went to the conference, and considering it's the reason I'm here, I think at least one visit was in order. I attended a good panel on film this morning and followed that up with a talk/interview with Bernadette McAliskey. The latter was a bit of a disappointment though, because she really only talked about her childhood and her parents rather than her work as a civil rights activist. The last work related bit of the day was my conference panel. The paper went well, but I think everyone was extraordinarily tired and ready to call it a day.
We met up with Rachael and some UConn alum for drinks and dinner at Riordan's. I had egg mayonnaise which is downright sinful - what's better than eggs topped with mayonnaise? Eggs topped with mayonnaise on brown bread. MMmmm. Dan and I added some Irish stew and Shepherd's Pie to the mix and stumbled home with full stomachs.
Unfortunately, Galway city is getting a bit sketchy at night. Quay and Shop Sts. were packed full of young kids looking for trouble. It was a little unnerving to walk through roving bands of thuggish, drunk brats with big glass bottles - all of which were ready to pick a fit if given the slightest of reasons. The Gardai were nowhere to be found, which made the uneasiness a bit worse. Let's just say we were happy to get back to the hotel and tuck Rachael safely into a cab.

Tomorrow we're back to vacation mode.

Connemara

We spent today on the N59 exploring Connemara. The weather turned out to be quite nice so the scenic aspects of the trip were even better since we could see for miles. Connemara is beautiful with mountains dwarfing the low-lying bogs and sheep dotting the hills (and roads).

The area is fairly touristy so there were tons of shops and restaurants tucked into the hills. We stopped at Joyce's Craftshop - the sign said it was the best in Ireland ;). It actually is quite a nice shop. They have a lot of gorgeous sweaters and yarn, but the warm sun was so strong that I had little interest in purchasing an enormous wool sweater. We did get to see the Giant of Connemara.


The giant stone statue sits across from Joyce's with a sign that reads "Late 20th c. antiquity - This stone monument was built in 1999 for no apparent reason." I love it!

We left Joyce's and continued along the N59 to Clifden. We had never been there before and I must say it's a hidden gem. The town is packed full of restaurants and shops and sits along the coastline so it offers great views and fantastic seafood. We had lunch at Mitchell's Seafood Restaurant and I think I'll be dreaming about the cod and leek pie for a few weeks. It was absolutely perfect, and Dan's smoked salmon on homemade brown bread was pretty damn good too. Clifden is also the site of the first Marconi Telegraph tower, but by the time we had eaten and shopped we opted out of visiting that area which was still a few miles further south. Instead, we made our way back to Galway, stopping at the Connemara Marble Visitor Center (aka - Gift shop for tourists).

Tonight we are going to conference to hear the controversial roundtable on immigration. This panel has caused quite a stir with some of the potential conference delegates - well really just one - it's quite a long story, but in any case some accusations of xenophobia and racism arose in a flurry of emails. So - here we are at the contested roundtable. I hope it's as good as I anticipated it to be!