Things I miss from Portland

This is the complement to previous post.

• Great library system
• mini cooper 
• drinking coffee on the way to work (can't do that on a bike)
• high speed internet (available here but I don;t have it)
• pizza (sure we have it but it isn't Handsome pizza, Apizza Scholls, Kens Pizza...)
• drinking and driving (okay that sounds stupid, but in Ireland you don't drink and drive (not even 1 drink usually) so not as easy to go out for a drink with pals unless you are walking)
• friends and family (it would be a bit rude to not put that in the list)
• beer (how can one not miss good beer, good variety, cheaper than here)
• lots of playgrounds (they have good ones here but they are few and far between. In portland they are everywhere)

From the US

• package tracking (Fedex, USPS,UPS all easy to track. In Ireland you pretty much get a week when things will get delivered and other than that you have no idea where package is...)
• trader joes (not a portland only thing...)

things I like about ireland (and don't like)

Overheard the other day a a discussion between Sarah and Audrey on move to Ireland and what the good things are...

SO to be helpful I will throw some out there from my perspective. Granted these are the little things but isn't life in the end about the little things

Things I like

• train/bike commute (much more relaxing than car commute)
• irish scones (yum)
• relaxed work environment (If work was an Oven then the oven temp is a little less warm)
• Chicken curry
• Gaelic sports (football and hurling)
• walking to school
• walking to grocery store
• Pay as you go trash (much cheaper than monthly bill. Only pay when you put bin at the curb and recycling is free so you only pay for compost and trash)
• roundabouts (they actually are more convenient than 4 way stops)
• Irish accents (when the kids going to get themselves some...)
• less junk mail (junk mail is not delivered by post office but by separate paid delivery folk. They don't come by often)

Things I don't like

• no breakrooms at work (which means no free coffee, no fridge for home lunches,etc...)
• overly complicated laundry (dryer requires emptying water and lint
• Poor advertising of events (many of the fun activities are word of mouth, through the grapevine... Jack would not have been in GAA sports without word of mouth, would would have missed trad night at pub, would have missed Wren's boys, etc...)

I know I had another thing on the don't like list before I started but its gone now. On the upside the like list is longer for me, and not all the differences are things that I could readily have in US, atleast where we lived

Rob

notes on driving

(and yes this is 4th post in one day...)

Parking lots:
I answered a phone call heading into a parking lot. A little distraction and I found myself driving the wrong way through a parking lot roundabout. It would be hard to drive wrong-way on a main road, but it is easy to go wrong in a parking lot.
I have also found myself coming out of parking lots on the wrong side.
On rides with traffic and signs it isn't hard to remember where to be but parking lots are another story...

Ireland and Northern Ireland:
Turns out they are different countries so even though highways have the same name M1,M2,M3...
doesn't mean they connect. I made this error returnign from Belfast. The M1 goes south from Belfast and goes North from Dublin. Unfortunately the M1 from Belfast turns west and never connects to Dublin M1. There is an A1 in the middle... The GPS told me this but I ignored it and paid the extra hour lesson for not trusting google.

Parking spaces:
pulling in with wheel on the right is a little harder for some reason, but parking spaces also seem micro sized. There are just a little narrower and probably shorter too. The ramp between levels in the parking garages are narrower than needs be too.

Politeness:
On the upside, light flashing to let people turn in front of you is quite common, so around town drivers can often be courteous ...

thats all about driving for now. Sarah and I stiff have to sign up fro drivers lessons to get licenses so who knows what else we might figure out. Luckily from me work trips it seems like switching back to the other side of the car is like riding a bike and not easily forgotten

Rob

I think I like old Irish people best of all

By old I really just mean those who lived most of their lives before the Celtic Tiger, the Motorway system and shopping centers.  I have been spending about half of my social time with the over 55 set in Maynooth and I like it.  I know some from daily Mass, some from my library book club, and some more from the class I've been co-teaching with my friend Niemh.  These folks are interesting and completely different from their grandchildren.

For that reason and just because I want to learn more, I've been reading both Irish history books - the easiest ones to digest, and memoirs and the odd novel written by an Irish writer.  For one thing, after living here for a bit, they all make more sense than they might have had I read them in Portland.  Also I think they are giving me a sad look at what may be gone from Irish society.

This country used to be much bigger for one thing.  It took 4 hours to get from Maynooth (where we live now) to Sligo before the Motorway system.  Now it takes just 2 hours or so. When people here gape at us for the crazy/brave move we've made from the west side of the U.S. to Ireland their shock is in no small part fueled by the sense that moving just to the other side of Ireland is really far away.  And in some ways it still is.  The accents are different, the landscape is different, and if you go all the way up to the North, everything is different.  The wounds are still very fresh and although it doesn't feel dangerous to be in Belfast, you can still feel the sense that it would be easy to offend someone.  By being Catholic, by being from the Republic of Ireland, by not understanding well enough how much pain surrounds the Troubles.  I guess that understanding how little you know is the first step to not offending.  So, I'm at least on my way.  Living here essentially makes me wish that I could just be Irish so that I would get everything.

Last thought, that actually was the reason I sat down to do this posting in the first place, is a passage from the memoir I'm reading at the moment called "Me and Mine" by Anna May Managan.  It refers to the way that cancer - both ovarian and breast - felled the author's aunts and her mother one by one over the course of a frighteningly short span of years.  It just was so true and so sad I had to share it.  Mostly for my siblings.

"Katsie was the next to take ill.  'It's the change', was Mum's confident diagnosis of her sister's symptoms: forgetfulness, weight loss, and the disappearance of her smile.  She spent her days hair awry, make-up and nail-varnish free, out on the balcony of her council flat, brooding and smoking.  Hauled to the doctor by my mum, when he asked what the problem was, Katsie replied that her body just wasn't working properly any more.  'Show him', my mum ordered, and Katsie demonstrated by trying to walk across his consulting-room floor in a straight line but travelling sideways.  She was swiftly diagnosed with a secondary cancer in her brain; the primary was in her breast and she died a couple of months later. "

A few more crisps

These were not as good as roast beef or the turkey crisps.

Gammon is ham by the way

Wrens day

One more tradition for the Christmas season .

In ireland they celebrate Saint Stephens day ( the day after Christmas , Boxing Day in UK).

the story goes that Saint Stephen was hiding in the woods as roman soldiers were walking by. The cry of a flock of wrens gave away his location and St Stephen was captured and later killed .

He is recognized as the first to be martyred after Jesus ...

To explain the wren boys is harder . I believe the wren boys seek the wren and the straw men seek to protect the wren . The straw men save the wren from the wren boys and them crown the wren .

That is my poor mans version of the story . Maybe Sarah can translate a more accurate version ...

Rob