Weekend Warrior

A lot has happened since I last wrote for you! I guess I’ll go back 3 weeks and start by telling you about the Cork Jazz Festival. From October 24-27^th there was live Jazz in the City Center. Jazz Weekend is one of the liveliest in Cork all year, and I went downtown to experience all four days of it! The first day was my favorite because we headed downtown in the afternoon, and before the sun went down there were people playing on almost every street corner. We saw all different types of performers, even a band performing a jazz rendition of Get Lucky. That night, and for the next three nights after, we saw live jazz in several different pubs every night.

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The following weekend was Halloween. While the Irish do have the same traditions of dressing up, carving pumpkins, and trick-or-treating as we do in America, they also have some additional strange customs I learned about in my Aspects of Folklore module. November 1^st is a quarter day that represents the festival of Samhain and the start of the season of darkness and storytelling. The strangest Samhain tradition is the serving of Halloween Brack. Brack is a giant loaf of bread/cake with items baked into it. The item you get in your piece of Brack is an indicator of what will happen to you in the future. For example, if you get the pea it represents poverty in the year to come, the ring represents marriage, and the dreaded matchstick represent domestic abuse. We decided to avert any dangerous bakery related psychic mishaps and not try any brack. Instead, we stuck to American tradition and dressed up in costumes for a couple nights out on the town.

The next weekend, I went on a trip to Dingle with the Mountaineering Club. Dingle is a tiny, isolated town, in which our 60-person group took over an entire hostel for two nights. On the schedule for the weekend was hiking, climbing, and banter (this is not a joke, the club promised banter). So, the first day we had a choice to either go on a hike or chance the weather and attempt a day of outdoor climbing. I of course chose the latter, and the weather gamble did not pay off. As we walked to the sea cliffs we were hoping to climb, the sun was out, pictures were taken, and we were optimistic! However, once we abseiled down to the shore to climb a route back up it got FREEZING. And wet. And windy. With the Atlantic Ocean waves crashing at our backs we managed to get in one climb with frozen fingers and toes. After that we had to call off the outdoor climbing due to unsafe and intolerable conditions. I was bummed, but we had a back up plan. Despite how tiny the town of Dingle is, they have an enormous indoor climbing wall. It wall was amazing! The gym was at least triple the size of the one in the Mardyke at UCC and it had so many different routes that I did not climb the same one twice in the five hours we were there.

After an exhausting day of climbing for me and 11 others, and hiking for the rest of the group, we headed back to the hostel for dinner. Club members made us dinner both nights; we had homemade spaghetti bolognaise and then chicken curry. It was nice to be cooked for, and the group meals had a great family feel that I have been missing in my apartment. As was promised, after dinner the banter ensued! Around 2AM the giant dinner table was cleared and we began to ‘table boulder.’ What is table bouldering you ask? Just what it sounds like! We climbed under and around the table utilizing climbing skills we learned on the bouldering wall. It looked very difficult and I was reluctant to try and fail, but when people chanted my name I had to step up and give it a shot. I began laying face down on top of the table, flipped under and climbed to other side but could not manage to pull myself back up and complete the problem, but I was close. I guess anything can happen when you put a bunch of climbing enthusiasts under one roof!

(here's a picture of Hannah table bouldering because there are none of me)

The next day we explored the town of Dingle. Keep in mind that it is a tiny town and the weather was awful. We basically only went to a world famous specialty ice cream store, and I am not complaining. I split a pint of homemade baileys and chocolate chip ice cream with some friends, and enjoyed the warmth and good company in the tiny shop for a while. That night we decided to get out of the hostel and hit the town. However, to get there a couple of us had to wear headlamps because the streets were so dark. It’s a new fashion trend that I am definitely planning to bring back to Santa Cruz if they don’t put streetlamps on Bay St. soon.