Home from the Emerald Isle

Well, we made it back from Ireland after a busy, but exciting five days in Ireland. Chris, Evelyn, Andrea, Carin (our friend from school), and I set off for Ireland at 5:15 am Monday. Nicola, another friend from school was suppose to have joined us, but she overslept and had to travel to Dublin on her own. Anyway, we travelled to Dublin via (taxi, ferry, train, tube, train, bus, ferry, bus, tram). It sound a lot more complicated than it really was. Needless to say, we arrived in Ireland by about 7:00 pm MOnday.

On Tuesday, we went and toured old Dublin, OConnol Street, the Natrual History Museum of Ireland and the National Gallery of Ireland. The first was really neat in that they had a lot of preserved animal specimens ranging from microscopic plankton to a blue whale. Dubliners call it the Dead Zoo. The art gallery was really nice. They had a Picasso, which didn't impress me at all. In fact, it looks much better on the post card. However, they had a Vamerre (?) which look fantastic in real life, but not so great on the post card. That night, we went to a pub near our apartment (O'Sheas) that has been in business for over a hundred years. We had a couple of Guinness's, the girls had soda.

On Wednesday, it rained and rained and rained. I don't mean a nice sprinkle or all day mild shower. I mean it poured cats and dogs all day long. If that wasn't bad enough, the wind was blowing hard. By the end of the day, we were all in various states of wet and our umbrellas were in various states of damaged. However, we did manage to go and see Kilmanham Goal, which was a prison built in the 1700's. It is were the prisoners from the various revolutions attempted in Ireland prior to their independence. It was a neat place, but the tour guide was very dry.

After that, we went to the Old Jameson Whiskey distillary. There was only room on the tour for three people, so the girls and I just looked around the gift shop and waited upstairs in the tasting room. The bartender, who serves the complimentary whiskey, served me a head of the tour, and gave the girls a soda. He was very nice and funny - telling me that if I hurried and drank it, he would give me another and my husband would never know. They put on this whiskey taste test, which was a lot of fun. After that, we went to the Guinness plant. After touring the plant and finding out how they make Guinness beer, you get to go up to the bar on the top floor which gives you a 360 degree veiw of Dublin while you enjoy your complimentary pint of Guinness. I can't say how much better it tastes in Dublin and especially at the Guinness plant. Todd, I thought of you all the while I was enjoying my free pint. I even picked up something for you at the gift shop, but you have to wait to see it. After that, we were all pretty tired and soggy from the rain, so we just picked up some sandwiches to take back to the apartment.





















Faye and Chris at the Guinness Plant

The next day, we split up for the day. Nicola and Carin went shopping, while Chris, the girls, and I took a train out of Dublin to see alittle more of Ireland. The country side was beautiful, and the area around Dublin reminded us of Wisconsin. We went to Malahide, Ireland to visit the castle there. This castle is one of the oldest in Ireland and has been in the same family for 800 years. It is really neat from the outside, but the insides weren't as 'midevil' as were would have liked. But it was still very nice. The girls really liked the playground area on the castle grounds. It had a lot of really neat stuff. The walk from the Malahide train station to the castel was about 20-25 minutes, but it was through some beautiful woods.















Malahide Castle, Malahide, Ireland


When we got back to Dublin, we went to tour the crypts at St. Michans. This is a church which was founded in 1085. The current church, was build in the 1600's, but the crypts were original. Anyway, due to unique conditions in the crypts, the bodies buried there are naturally mummified. So, you go down into these very creepy, old crypts and in the very back of the first one, are five mummified bodies. Two are around 150 years only, one is around 300 years only, one is around 400 years old, and the last, the one in the rear of the crypt, is around 800 years old. Due to how the body is displayed int he coffin (arms/legs crossed), it was determined that the body was that of one of the crusaders. Anyway, in Ireland, it is considered good luck to touch the bones of one of the crusaders, so those who wanted to could go into the crypt with the mummified bodies and touch the finger of the 800 year old mummy. Well, Evelyn wanted nothing to do with that, but the rest of us did. It was very creepy. We then left that crypt and went into another. This one had two crypts which we could see. One contained the remains of two revolutionaries. They were both - hung (but not until dead), their entrails were removed and burned in front of their eyes, their head was cut off and their body quartered. The other is an aristocrate whose family hated him so much, they refused to have anyone else buried there. That evening, we went back to O'Shea's and had dinner. I had Irish lamb stew - it was great.















St. Michans Crypt

So, today, we got up at 5:00 and began our journey home. After getting the tram, bus, ferry, train, train, tube, train, ferry, train, walk we made it home. Overall, it was a great half term break holiday. The girls really enjoyed it and want to go back.

FYI - Food

I thought that every now and then, I should include a blog on some of the differences or unique features of the UK and specifically, the IOW. One of the things that I find amazing here, are the school lunches. School lunches back home are fairly bad, both in terms of nutrition and in terms of taste. Here, the school lunches are amazingly good in both respects. This week, we have had Thai curry hicken with rice, mixed vegitable stir fry with oriental noodles, and mac and cheese. Tomorrow is Sunday dinner (my personal favorite meal of the week) which is roast, potatoes, veggies, and all the trimmings. Today was actually the first time the food wasn't very good. I had chili, which they serve with rice. It was pretty bad. The lunches here are served on real china plates with metal spoons, forks, and knives. They do not use paper, styrofoam, etc, at all in there food program.

The thing I especially enjoy about lunch, is that for me, its free. In the beginning of the year, we could sign up to do lunch duty. Our normal lunch is 40 minutes, if we do lunch duty, we get 20 minutes. In return, we get paid £8 per day and get a free lunch. Anyway, I ment to sign up, but got busy and never got around to it. Anyway, I usually ate my lunch in the science block computer area. A lot of kids use the computers in that area over the lunch break. Anyway, one day Jackie (another science teacher) and I noticed that we were supervising the computer area, but neither of us were on lunch duty. So, she went to the admin. and told them, so now, we share the lunch duty in that area. Which basically means that I still do the same thing at lunch, but now I get free food and £8.

Other food differences:

Ketsup is called tomato sause, barbeque sause is brown sause, vinigar is always served with fries, which are chips. Chips here are called crisps. Biscuits are cookies, unless they have chocolate chips, in which case they are cookies. More people here eat lamb burgers rather than hamburgers made with beef. Here, you will find one small jar of salsa in the store, but many different types of curry/masala sause. Coffee only comes in small bags measured in Kg and chips (crisps) come in large bags with many small individual portioned bags inside. There is nothing for kids to drink other than milk, juice in cartons, water, or soda. No kool-aid, frozen juice, juice boxes, etc. The kids here are fascinated by the concept of meatloaf (they have never had it, but have heard about it on TV) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh yeah, jelly is jello and jam is jelly. Budweiser is an import - and people drink it. They can not envision what we would call a biscuit, even though I have explained it to them. All there deserts (which they call pudding) has some type of sause (cream, custard, etc.). The pudding is pretty good, but I don't care for the sauses.




The little pink shop is the confectionary shop up the road from our house. I took this picture from the upper deck of a double decker bus. I thought it fit into our discussion on food.







Hope you have enjoyed this installment of How is it Different.

Its Almost Half Term

Well, four more days of school, one staff development day, a weekend, and we will be heading to Ireland. We will be staying in Dublin from the 23rd through the 27th. To get to Dublin, we need to take the ferry from Ryde to Portsmouth. In Portsmouth, get on a train to London. Take the train to London and switch trains there. We then are on a train headed to Holy Head. When we arrive there, we take a ferry from Holy Head to Dublin. When we get there, we take a bus to our 'hostel'. The nice thing is that we can do all that for around £100 per person. Its also nice that they use the Euro in Ireland, and currently the Euro is trading at approximately 1.4 Euro per pound

I have included a few pictures of our house, finally. I just have one picture of the outside and one of part of the living room (or reception room as it is called here).















Decided it would be fun to add English words that we discover here. So here are a few:

American Way English Way
Right a way Straight Away
Get in Line Queue Up
All Said and Done At the End of the Day
Give me a call Ring me up
(to do something) Only once A one off
Someone stole something Someone pinched or nicked something

Well I will make sure to have a pint of Guiness for you all.

What's Happening on the IOW

Well, thought I give everyone an update on what has been happening. School isn't getting any better. However, I am adapting my expectation in an attempt to make it through. Caryn, one of the new teachers from South Africa, had such a bad day on Friday, that she is thinking of quitting. They just don't pay us enough to be treated the way we are. The admistration is no help, and sometime make things worse. Luckily, I am extremely adaptable.

Life outside of school is very nice On Tuesday night, I started adult language classes. I am learning Spanish. I only had one class, but it seems to be going well. The really nice thing is that the classes are free because I teach at the high school.

On Thursday nights, a group of us from school often go to the local pub (Fowler's) for 'Curry Night'. Indian food is VERY popular here. In fact, it is so popular, that you can get curry sauce with your chicken mcnuggets at McDonalds. Anyway, as we meet upstairs in the family room, Chris and the girls join us. We can get some good Indian food at really reasonable prices. This is also the place where we go after school on Friday to share our war stories and a few pints. Anyway, they are a really great group of people.

After a few early difficulties, the girls are settling into their school. We had a couple of instances where the teachers made comments about the girls being 'American'. The last one was their science teacher who said that 'American must have very low standards, as their work was not good enough'. Well, you can imagine how well that went over with me. After a lengthly conversation with said science teacher, he apologized to both the girls. I made it very clear that I would not tolerate any more remarks about their nationality. On the other hand, the girls are making friends and have started getting out of the house and doing things, like shopping.

As far as Chris is concerned, he just had a birthday (41). I know I said that he was here on the island, - but we have him chained up in a dungeon somewhere on the far side of the isle. That explains why you haven't heard much from him. We are thinking of letting him out for the weekend - we'll see.


In two weeks, we will be having our first break from school (half term). We are planning to go to Ireland for several days. We will visit Dublin (the Guiness plant), kiss the blarney stone, etc. Should be a lot of fun. More about that later.

Take care, post comments - they make me laugh when I read them at school - and I need the laughs there.

Cheers

Our First Castle

Well, last weekend we finally started playing tourist. We visited Carisbrooke Castle, which is here on the IOW. It was built around 1100 and has been under siege three times. The castle is also where King Charles was kept prisoner and where he escaped from before he was beheaded. I have enclosed a photo.

We also visited Osbourne House, which was the principal home of Queen Victoria during the last 30 years of her life. During that time, the IOW was the principal seat of English government. It is a very beautiful house, and the gardens are fabulous.

Tonight is open night, where prospective parents come to the school to decide if this is where they want their kids to go. I have to put on an exhibition of some physics experiments. Overall, it should be a drag.

I saw the article in the Post Crescent about Ellen and Sara's marathon success. Congradulations both of you, we are very proud.

Cheers for now.