Time to say goodbye. Paesi che non ho mai...

Alriiiiight. This is my last blog entry. Do not cry. We can talk in person. Way better.

I think it wise to bring this blog to a close as my time in Ireland comes to a close. Karver and I talked about it, and while my life in Winston-Salem is super interesting, we decided that it is not quite blog-worthy material. I can see it now, "So today I went to the Pit because it was Japanese night and i heard they had origami sugar cookies..."

Anywho, time to relish the last foreseeable time that my life will be interesting enough for other people to read about.

On Monday I took my one and only exam -- History of Irish Thought (keep in mind I turned in six papers the week before). The actual test part, like actually answering the essay questions, was not bad at all, but the having to pay to get a bus to the exam site, the waiting for an hour and a half in the cold, then taking a bus back part was pretty bad. Not important, not important. What IS important is no more school until 2009.

My plans on Monday were to pack most of my things that night, then to take a bus to Belfast early Tuesday morning so I would be at my friend Hannah's house by Tuesday night. Everything went according to plan untillllllllll I missed the linking bus to Belfast. Not awesome.

What had happened was the bus driver was unsure as to where I was supposed to get off to get the linking bus to Belfast, but he was sure I should get on the bus because it was the only bus going up north. I got off the bus at a big station where I thought I heard I could get a linking bus to Belfast. When I asked the woman at the help desk, she stared at me blankly and told me I should have gotten off the bus about 40 minutes ago and that there were no more buses to Belfast that day. Sweet.

Buuuut she did tell me that I could take a bus to Ballyshannon, then take a bus to Enniskillen and take a bus from Enniskillen to Belfast in the morning. Soooo I waited for the next bus to Ballyshannon (where ever the heck that is). Then because it was raining and I had some time before my next bus, I decided to go into wee pub in Ballyshannon, as you do. So I walked out of the rain, looking fairly disheveled, and into the pub with my backpack and huge plaid satchel. There were five local men at the bar and there was a seventy-year-old bar tender behind the counter. When I walked in they all stared at me like I was from planet Zor and the room went dead silent. I ordered a half a pint of cider (the man gave me a whole pint, which I had to drink rather quickly before I went on the bus) and only when I was settled in the corner, bags down, book opened, did they resume talking. Such a weird experience.

So now after a kind of light-headed bus ride from Ballyshannon to Enniskillen, I am on my own to find a place to stay for the night. It's raining pretty hard, I have a heavy backpack, and a man at one of the bus stations told me that he would not "fancy a stay in Enniskillen" and that it was in "the rougher neck of the woods". Ok. Whatever. I knew that as soon as I found a bed and some food I would be fine. See, in the picture below, Enniskillen does not look that bad.
I had walked up and down the main street for a while, trying to stay in well light areas, and had not found a sign for a hotel or hostel -- enter low moment #3 of Ireland. The third low moment of my time abroad was when I was wearily waiting by a church in the Enniskillen rain to find a hostel for the night and nobody entering the church for a service would talk to me. The people at the church ignored me when I asked for help. I almost cried, not because I needed help that badly, but because of the hypocrisy of it all.

The first person I asked walking out of the Pharmacy was totally willing to help me out and pointed me in the direction of the best youth hostel. The hostel was really big and nice and inexpensive. When I walked in (still all disheveled I guess) the woman at the desk looked at me and said "I had a bad day too". She gave me a four person en-suite room all to myself.

Once I set my stuff down, dried off and made my bed, I walked about the city to find the open-late Chinese take-out place. Chicken chow mein and a book of Seamus Heaney poems made my night pretty ok. Then watching "Wedding Crashers" in the hostel lounge with 30 rugby players made my night actually pretty good.Ok, in the morning I caught an early bus to Belfast and Hannah and her dad picked me up at the station. yaaaaaaaay. Finally I am with my friend in her city!

Hannah and I had so much fun -- just a really good having no work, having no agenda, hangout time. My favorite. We went for lunch and coffee and desserts. We met up with Hannah's friends. We went thrift store shopping and to the big Belfast market. We ate with her family. We stayed up to watched the BBC show about Merlin the wizard. We laughed together. We went to Hannah's friend's Christmas party. We read the Christmas story out of the Message on the city bus. "The sheepherders returned at let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen."
Despite having to use pounds and its crazy traffic, Belfast is a good city with good people. I took the 8 hour bus ride back to Galway today with no problem. I went via Dublin instead of via the West coast like last time. I know how to get off at the Dublin bus station and get on a bus that says "to Galway". Much easier.
Right now I am in my apartment, with all of my apartment-mates gone home and 1/3 of my things left to pack. My friends, Karen and Shane, just visited to hug me goodbye. I just listened to all 5 of Sufjan's Christmas CDs. I am taking a taxi to the bus station at 7 AM to head to the US of A. I cannot wait to see my family and friends (that's probably you).

Tie up your boots
Jump off the ladder
Pack up your clothes
Nothing's the matter...
Chestnuts and fire
Holly and hay
Jesus and Mary
What a great day.
~Sufjan

Mission Semester Abroad, Galway 2008: Complete.
It's been fun.
Thanks for listening.

salamanca. safety. snow.

I wish the world was flat like the old days and I could travel just by folding the map. No more airplanes or speed trains or freeways. There'd be no distance that could hold us back. Deathcab.

Let's talk. I got back from Salamanca, Spain at 3.30 AM on, I guess what is still today. I will tell you tomorrow if all of the painful traveling was worth it. I kinda think it totally was. Maybe as the realization of how much fun I had sets in the memories of the traveling will fade and become an unimportant recollection.

On Monday night I did not sleep because I was writing a history paper. On Tuesday at 8 PM after I finished said paper, I slid it under the history secretary's door and walked home. I made dinner, packed things for Spain, and said goodbye to my flatmate who was going home for Christmas. At 1.45 AM I walked downtown to the bus station. At 5.30 AM I arrived at the Dublin airport for my 7.30 AM flight. I landed at 11 Madrid time. Then after lots of walking and two metro stops later I figured out how to get on a 1 pm bus to Salamanca, putting me there at 3.30 PM.

I must give a special thanks to Kelsey Paul for sending me very detailed metro and bus instructions, without which I may have never made it. I would also like to give a special thanks to Austin Jones who helped 48-hours-of-no-sleep-Molly back from the bus station, without which I may have never made it. I would also like to give a special thanks to Susan Walters, who was really excited to see me...that just made me feel good.

So at this point I am in Salamanca. The city pretty sweet -- very Spanish in my mind, but then again, it is the only Spanish city I have seen. The buildings and walls are made of this tan/golden stone and there are a good number of big old churches. The streets are cobblestone and there is an awesome big plaza (more on the plaza later). The summary of the trip is that it was great to be with friends in the place they have been living all semester. We hung out in gift shops, in restaurants, in the Wake student centro, in bars, in the plaza, on a bridge (is that loitering?), and in the cathedral. It was freezing all week. I wore the toboggan Luda made me and bought some guantes.

The lovely Susan Edwards of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Mount Tabor High School is studying through the Wake program in Salamanca, so we got to catch up. What fun. What a small world. She is still the same great gal as she was in Senor Boyst's class.

On Wednesday night the Wake program was having a final dinner and Susan Walters checked with a prof to see if I could come. She said I could. So I went. And everyone was like -- who the heck is this girl and do how do I not know someone in our program after 4 months? It was fun, plus tapas are delicious.

Ok, now for the best story. There is an event in Salamanca called Nocheviaje. It is basically a huge early New Year's party for the students in Salamanca before they go home for Christmas. It. Was. Unreal. There were 30,000 students in the plaza. You might say -- Molly, that seems like a lot of crazy college students to be in one place at one time. And I might say -- yes, yes it was. I do not believe that I have been on an emotional roller coaster as steep and curvy as Nocheviaje in my whole life.

Five of us, Kelsey, Austin, Susan, and Susan's roommate, Andrea headed toward the plaza a few minutes before midnight. Within a couple of minutes we found ourselves in the huge jumping crowd. I believe I thought something like "Ha, ha! This is crazy!". After about two minutes of being at the mercy of the crowd my thoughts suddenly switched to "No ha ha. This is not good at all." We all looked at each other, well not Andrea because she got pulled away, but the four of us made eye contact and it was clear we were all in self-preservation mode. After hand/shoulder holding, a punch in the face, a crushed water bottle, hand signals, lots of pushing and squeezing through, and a meeting place, the five of us made it out. It was one of most insane times of my life.

Because I care about you, dear reader, and think that getting crushed in a crowd would be a horrible way to go out, here are some tips if your find yourself in a similar mob situation. An excerpt from an article entitled Large Crowd Safely (you will notice that my friends and I employed some of these potentially life-saving tactics):

"Panicked crowds move fast and release an incredible amount of energy, usually compared to the energy generated by a running train: once a crowd gets moving it is very hard to stop, and the flow of people could literally sweep you off your feet.
So, if you find yourself in the middle of a moving crowd do not fight against the pressure, stand still or sit down, because you could easily get trampled.
Do not move against the crown; instead, move in the same direction of the crowd, take advantage of any space that may open up to move sideways to the crowd movement where the flow is weaker.

If you fall, get up quickly. If you cannot get up because you are injured, get someone to pull you back up.

Because the noise level in a crowd could be too loud for shouting to be effective, use gestures to communicate to each other.

Grab your friend's hand or shoulder to remain together. Alternatively, decide on a gathering point where you will meet and account for each other, should you get separated.
The worst scenario is to be pushed by the crowd against an immovable object. Try to stay away from walls, fences or barricades, as the crowd pressure can build up rapidly.

If you fall and cannot get up, keep moving by crawling in the same direction of the crowd, or if that is not possible, then cover your head with your arms and curl up into the fetal position."

The rest of the trip was grand as ever. Being abroad is real fun. Friends are real fun. Traveling back was not as awesome. It was similar to the way there except add 30 minutes of walking to the Salamanca bus station in freezing rain, an extra hour on a Spanish bus due to snow (see picture above), an extra 30 minutes helping a young lady from Greece who was crying because she thought she had missed her flight (we ran to the check in place and she just made it), a Spanish couple making-out beside me the whole time on the plane (never ok, but especially when you are elbowing me in the head, sir), and three hours waiting for the next bus to Galway. I did shell out the seven euro to take a taxi back from the bus station at 3.30 AM. That was for you, mom.

Here is a picture of the same sculpture found in the first picture of this blog entry. The first picture was taken Wednesday night in the plaza in Salamanca. This picture was taken on Saturday in the Madrid airport. I turned around after hugging the Grecian girl and there it was. Interesting that a two-ton metal bust has such an easy time traveling traveling Spain. It seems to mock me.
Closings thoughts:
-My Skype isn't working -- bummer. I will have to wait to talk to people in person.
-It smells like pumpkin muffins with raisins in my room for some reason and I want to be home.
-I have an exam tomorrow morning on the History of Irish Thought. Yikes. I have to take a bus to get to the exam site.
-I got my hair cut pretty short in Salamanca. It cost 14 euro. I know mom, just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's a good deal.
-Seriously, why does it smell like muffins?
-Just when I was loosing faith in humanity while traveling (post plane PDA couple), I saw a crying grandmother throw down her bags and run to her special granddaughter who screamed with excitement and jumped into her arms.

We can walk out after dark
Because it's Christmas time
Colored lights glow from the park
Because it's Christmas time
And the bells on the reindeer sled say
It's Christmas time
And the quilts on the back of the bed say
It's Christmas time
-Sufjan

in the name of love.

If you scroll back to a few posts ago, where I gave you photographic representations about things I was thinking about, you will be able to scroll to the picture of my friend Elisabeth (she is in the black and war paint).

I bring this up for two reasons. 1. she was here this weekend and it was unbelievable. 2. you will be able to see how many other pictures you had to scroll past in that post -- meaning I have done a lot of stuff and my time here is almost up (insert yell of excitement for coming home / fear of not being able to adjust to normal life... however you think that might sound).

Elisabeth Elliott, friend from Wake Forest and Camp DeSoto, all around classy lady, and referenced in the paragraph above, came to see me in Galway this weekend. She shimmied on over on Thursday night from Granada, Spain, where she is estudiaring for the semester.

I am still trying to process and verbalize (or type-a-lize in this case) how it was for her to be here this weekend. It was just so good. I was saying to her that I am glad that she came at the very end of the semester because I might have abandoned ship had she come earlier. And by ship I mean Ireland. Don't get me wrong, I have loved it here and have met some wonderful friends. BUT being with Elisabeth, I was just so relaxed and felt understood. We both know what it is like to be from the South, from Wake Forest, from Camp DeSoto and to be away from it all by ourselves for four months. We understand each other and love each other and had so much fun.
Ok, sappiness aside, as far as our agenda went for this weekend -- nothing too crazy went down. We hung out in my apartment, on the streets of Galway, in a Cathedral, in the market, in a cafe, in bookstores, at the university, in pubs, at a bus station, at a friend's house, and in a really romantic restaurant. We ate a lot of food, we listened to a lot of music. We laughed a lot.

On Saturday during the day she went on a bus tour of the Cliffs with her friend from home, who happened to be in Galway at the same time (rando), while i worked on a paper (blah). And on Saturday night we went to my friends' house for a Christmas party where we had mulled pies and minced wine... wait, is that right? The bus we were waiting for to get to the party decided not to come. We were very cold. But singing Bono at the bus stop at least warmed our spirits. We caught the next bus. The party was fun. Here is a picture of us there taken by Hannah. Elisabeth left this morning. Now (after I finish this blog, now) I am writing a really painful history paper so I can turn it in on Tuesday and head to Spain on Wednesday. The life I lead. History papers are painful, but are bearable when cushioned by a visit from a friend and a trip to Spain on either side.

I am going to Salamanca, Spain for three days and will visit my friends Kelsey, Austin, and Susan. I will be there on their last days in Spain, so things could be crazy. I am staying at a pretty sweet hostel that Elisabeth was kind enough to call and book for me while she was here. Let's just say that after studying in Spain for a semester, her Spanish is stronger than mine, go figure.

A heads up for why you may never see me again -- getting there and away from Salamanca might be a little challenging. Let me just say that I have a few crazy flight times, a few long bus rides, an ornery cellphone, and do not speak Spanish. We will roll the dice on this one. Fingers crossed. Where is Scooch Roobs to help his family in Spanish-speaking countries when you need him? (ps - cousin reunion in less than 2 weeks!!!!).

Always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name

It is freezing here -- I skated to the library.
Here are the complete photo albums, as promised.
Now back to papers. blah.

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