“Yer in Ireland, me lady”

In the interval between Scotland and Ireland, I had stake conference. President Monson and other general authorities spoke. President Monson’s talk was the one that stood out to me most. He told a story (a story from sometime in history) of a new prison warden who was making a lot of changes and trying to make it nicer for the people who were in the prison like implementing sports, walking with the prisoners and asking them their opinion of the place and what should change, and doing other small things like that. Many people scoffed at what he was doing (they didn’t think the prisoners deserved it at all and should be treated gruffly) and one person even said to him “Warden, don’t you know that a leopard can’t change his spots?” He replied “But you should no that I’m not working with leopards. I’m working with men. And men change every single day.” President Monson was highlighting the fact that we as humans have the power to choose how we act and how we live. I think it’s also important to remember that we shouldn’t judge others or give up hope if they’re making poor decisions currently in life. Because they have the power to change. And one day they might. It’s also nice to remember that just because you have one bad day that doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck like that forever. The power to choose is an important one and we shouldn’t forget that it has been given to us.

All right, on to Ireland? This trip started Wednesday June 1 and went through Saturday June 4. The very short plane ride was interesting. It took much longer to get to the airport and go through the check in procedure than it did to actually fly to Ireland. Once there, we got strange new currency called Euros. I don’t like them much. Later in the trip, an Irishman called it monopoly money. I agree with that description. It just feels fake somehow. In a way that pounds never did. And the coins are too much of the same color and size. It was hard for me to get the hang of. Anyway, one of the first things we did in Dublin was almost get run over. The crossing thing was making strange noises and there was a red countdown and we didn’t know what it meant and so we just kind of ran for it. At the next crossing, when the green man came on (the fact that he’s green is no surprise – he’s like that in England too), he was walking the other way and not the way he usually does. I felt as if I was looking into a mirror. As he lit up it also made a noise that reminded me of an alien space ship shooting at you. I suppose the fact that the guy was green kind of fits with that noise. It was so weird. I was a little bit shaken and feeling kind of like my first day in London was; I felt as if I’d been dropped into the middle of a completely foreign place. But then I saw a Tesco and then everything was lovely. :) Tesco is our favorite store to go to to get candy, random things, or even lunch in London. They’re all over Britain and it was nice to see them in Ireland as well. After that, things weren’t so bad. It was just a good reminder that Ireland is a different country and they might do things differently than I’m used to. It was also interesting to see the similarities with the US that England didn’t have. For example, yield signs actually said yield, the guy in charge of the country is called the president, and the road signs were mostly on blue and green instead of the white with red outline that they are in England.

The first time I saw a speed limit sign, my heart literally dropped through the floor. I was in a big, bulky bus that didn’t really fit on the street very well and the sign said the speed limit was 80. After my initial panicked reaction, I processed the small print which told me ‘oh, by the way, that’s km/hr dearie’. At least they stick the little km/hr at the bottom of their signs. In England, there are no units attached to the number on the sign which was always strange to me (oh, by the way, in England the speed limit is in miles/hr). In Ireland, I saw a speed limit all the way up to 120. It was still a shock to see numbers like that on a speed limit sign. It made me feel like I was in a race car. :P

The first night, we just kind of checked into the hostel and tried to plan what we were going to do. Oh, by the way, I wasn’t with the whole group of 40+ on this trip. There were five of us – Jason, Laura, Amy, and Catherine were with me. When we got to the hostel, I began to discover the Irish personality – similar to the English one except very bubbly and bold sort of and…oh, it’s useless to try to describe I guess… They do have their own personality though. You’ll see a bit of it shortly. As we checked in, I asked if I could book a room for the last night (I was staying longer than some of the others and so needed to book the last night separately). There was a kind of older Irish man (ok, so ‘kind of older’ in a 20yr olds mind comes out to something like maybe late 50’s, early 60’s or so) and once we’d sorted out what I wanted to do, he said, “That’ll be one million Euros. …(long pause)… But just for you darlin’, I’ll make it 12.” I only had a 50 euro note. At the desk they only had 20 euro notes and the rest of the money they had was in coins (but I needed 38 euros in change!). Instead of giving me 18 one euro coins, the Irish gentleman at the desk asked of my friends “Hey Blondie, can you lend your friend two euros?” I turned around to see who he was addressing and realized that we all had the same color of hair… and that none of us looked particularly blond to me. I guess Europeans just have a different definition of blond or something. Anyhow, I borrowed the money and got reasonable change in return. This is the same receptionist that told me when he was helping me a few days later (they hadn’t recorded that I’d paid before and the people that were there in the morning wouldn’t give me a receipt to get the key later), “Don’t panic, don’t panic. I’ll tell you when to panic.” It kind of reminded me of how in England people will just come up to you if you look lost or stressed out and just help you out. They’re all about being calm and mellow here which is so very nice (and so different from the stressed out environment of BYU during finals time or even during midterms). I digress. So what did we do in Ireland? Lots of stuff. See below for details.

Thursday

Today we took a train to a little town called Bray (which was so cute and little) and went on a hike. For the first little bit, we walked along the beach which was sandy, but with rocks. It felt so nice to feel the breeze, hear the ocean waves, and just walk down the beach. Eventually, we got to the hill we had decided to hike. It was absolutely beautiful. So green. In Ireland, we decided there is only one shade of green – dark and luscious and beautiful – whereas in England it’s also very green, but there are various shades of green. We saw some random ruins on the hike and weren’t sure what they were. Anyway, we wanted to spend time roaming around the Irish countryside and we did in our own way. It was awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

After we got back to Dublin, we went to see the Book of Kells (which is a really, really old book and is very cool) and Trinity college in general. We also found the place where Oscar Wilde had lived and where Handel’s Messiah was first performed. After we were done walking around, we watched a production of Romeo and Juliet. The funniest part of the play was when the friar tells Romeo to “Cease thy womanly tears” and Jason laughed and muttered ‘womanly tears.’ Perhaps he’d forgotten that he was sitting right behind a feminist. The death glare that Amy shot back at him sent me into a giggle fit that eventually caused her to start laughing as well. That was my favorite part of the whole play. Oh…Ireland was a great idea indeed.

Friday

On Friday Jason and I jumped on a tour bus that would take us all the way to a place called Cork and back in a day with certain important stops and an entertaining Irish tour guide. It was so much fun. We weren’t very far down the road when the tour guide said “OH, A MAGIC HORSE! Does everyone see the magic horse? Oh, good, then I’m not crazy… The magic horses are the white ones. Everyone knows they’re magic. Nobody knows why. But if you see seven white horses in a day, you’ll be married within the year.” Since it was an unusually sunny day in Ireland, we couldn’t look for rainbows, gold and leprechauns, so we decided to look for magic horses instead. We only found 3. We decided that meant that instead of within one year, that should mean a person will get married within two years.

The tour guide was just very Irish and very entertaining. The Irish accent was also fun to listen to. Once he told us to be back to the bus at “Tree tirty tree. Half past tree.” Half past a turtle and a tree, got it. He also was telling us that Obama had visited Dublin recently. He said they were well chuffed about it (translation – they were very pleased). He said they like him so much they even learnt to say his name properly [the next bit is spelled phonetically]. “We used to call him Barrick. Barrick, Barrick, Barrick” (said quickly to emphasize how they were saying it wrong) “But now we know it’s Barrock. Barack Obama. We like him... We also had a visit from Queen Elizabeth II. We like her too; she’s much better than the last queen who visited Ireland. When Queen Victoria came, she didn’t even know where she was. At her first royal banquet and appearance, she smiles and waves to all the people and then she turns to her page and says ‘Where am I and what is that smell??’ The page replies ‘…Yer in Ireland, me lady…’” It was very entertaining whenever he would talk to us while driving the bus. It was awesome.

As for what we saw, our first stop was the rock of Cashel. It was this tower thing with a cemetery by it. Apparently in Ireland, lots of castles and fortifications were built to try to help guard against invasion. Some of the noble families even built towers for themselves just to live in and feel safe. It was interesting that they chose to live in a prison-like place because the threat of attack was that real. So there are lots of things like this scattered around Ireland it sounds like. The people used to be tribal so every big tribe probably had a castle that belonged to them. One such place is called Blarney castle. That was our next stop. At last, I found a place that really felt like a castle. To get to the top, we got to explore big chambers and clamber up small windy stone stairs. The view from the top was beautiful. And of course, also at the top is your chance to kiss the Blarney stone and get the gift of gab (eloquence and persuasiveness, etc). The Blarney Stone just means the outside wall of the castle. And so, they have people up there that will make sure you are safe and lower you down to kiss the stone. And kiss it I did. Can’t you tell I’ve been insanely eloquent ever since? ;) It was fun to walk around the grounds around the castle too. I’m glad we went. It was way cool.

Saturday

We spent the first half of the day wandering around Dublin. It’s not nearly as cool as London is. It’s a lot dirtier and there’s not a whole lot that’s cool to see in the city. We did, however, go to George Bernard Shaw’s house and look at the small museum that was there. He’s the playwright that, among other things, wrote Pygmalion. I spent some time just hanging out in the very small garden. It was peaceful (besides the banging coming from the neighbors next door who were breaking up some rocks). I tried to imagine what it would be like to live there, grow up there. It was my favorite thing we did that day. Later on we caught our plane back to London. Once we had landed, we had some difficulty getting from the airport to the centre. Someone trespassed on the train tracks, so they had to shut the whole thing down for awhile and then lots of lines and stops on the tube (the underground train system) were down. In all, it took us about 4 hours to get home. We were grateful when we finally got there. Ireland was great, but it was a nice feeling to be back home in London…