België!

Only 6 weeks left in Spain, wooooah. The time has really gone super fast, it's crazy. Packing my life up for 8 months last September seemed kind of daunting, but I'm glad that I went to talk to one of my Spanish professors on a whim and ended up applying and getting my position here. It's been a "trip" ...hardy har.

Speaking of trips, I spent half of my spring break in Belgium. The last time I was there was for a week and I came over while I was doing my study abroad in Italy.

First, let's do a little more background story about my Belgian ancestors (I already did a bit in an earlier post, but now I have pictures of them):
Those are my great grandma and great grandpa Adam(s) with my great uncle Rene and great Aunt Irene, circa 1918. How cool is that? My dad's cousin Marilyn DeFauw Digdo, Rene's daughter, just uploaded that picture online and I just saw it for the first time the other day. Sidenote: my great grandma Martha Adams married my great grandpa Adolph Adams after her first husband, Michele DeFauw, died at the end of World War I, so the kids in the picture are actually his stepchildren. So it turns out that if Martha DeFauw Adams' first husband survived, I would never have been born, not to mention my grandma or my dad or everybody else. Which also means Rene and Irene were half siblings of my grandma, even though she never referred to them as half siblings since she grew up with them from the beginning, along with her "full" sibling, my great uncle Aime, who was born in 1923. My grandma was born in 1925, by the way, in Illinois. My grandma is the member of the Adams/DeFauw family still alive -- Rene died about 10 years ago, Irene died about 5 years ago, and Aime just died in the past year. Another factoid: The Adams family had the "s" added to their name when they emigrated to the US, for reasons I don't really know.
Here's a picture of my grandma Darlene Adams Boberg in the early '40s, with my great grandparents:
My great g'pa developed ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) later in life, so that's why he's in the wheelchair in the picture.

My grandma, great grandfather and great aunt Irene

Anyway, I'm a bit foggy about why Martha and Adolph decided to leave Belgium. I wonder how their siblings reacted, too, when they must have known they would never see them again after they took the long boatride over to the states.

OK, now that I got the little snippet of history out of the way, onto the story about my last trip to Flanders (fields, where the poppies blow)...!

I arrived at the Brussels Airport during the evening of Wednesday, April 8th and was picked up by my dad's second cousin, Marlene DeClercq, and her husband Dirk VanLancker and their daughter Sophie. During my trip, I stayed at the VanLancker's home in Nazareth. Here I am with Marlene and Dirk:
My dad and Marlenes' mothers are first cousins, and my dad's grandfather and Marlene's grandfather were brothers, so the common ancestor is their great grandparents...whew, that's weird to explain. Anyway, we were off Dirk and Marlene's home in Nazareth in East Flanders for a low-key evening in. I tried a new Belgian beer -- Leffe. Oh so yummy, oh so potent. I'm sure the Belgians think I'm a cheap date what with my getting tipsy after a few beers.

The next morning, I went off to the Vanderbauwhede home. Darlien, Hans' Vanderbauwhede's wife, is my dad's second cousin, too. While I was there, I got to hang out with the kids -- their names are Bert, Anneleen and Lotte. They are 17, 15 and 13, respectively.

Anneleen and Lotte with the horse

There was a pretty somber mood in their house, because their grandfather had passed away from cancer only 2 days earlier, so the timing was really bad, but it still ended up being not a totally doom and gloom visit. We watched some movies and played with their horse, a 3 year old haflinger mare named Naveena. I got to ride her, and it was the first time I'd been on a horse with virtually no training whatsoever, so that was interesting.
How cute is Naveena? She would never be used for the kind of riding I did/do (show jumping), but riding is riding. I'd love to have a project horse like that that I could train and maybe use for showing. The bonus to buying young, untrained horses is that they are much cheaper than the ones who have already been trained and won crazy championships and such, already. Horse tangent....Moving on!
Later in the day, I headed over to another relatives' house, the Schaubroeck home (also a second cousin of my dad's -- sensing a pattern here?). They invited over a friend of theirs to translate, since Christian and his wife don't speak English. The funny part is that their friend was a Economics professor at Iowa State a few years back. Small world, y'know? After we ate dinner and talking with the Schaubroeck's daughters, I went to Ghent with everybody for a little bit. We went around the city and had some Genever at a famous little bar.

The next morning -- we're up to Friday, now -- I went out with the VanLancker girls, Stephanie and Sophie. They are a bit older than my brothers, about 6 and 8 years older than I am. We went to Kortrijk for the morning + afternoon and walked around, got coffee, shopped, and looked at the sights. Kortrijk is one of those little, well-preserved medieval towns.

Stephanie and Sophie

Me and Stephanie

Me, by a famous bridge, Broeltorens, + towers in Kortrijk

That's what it looks like at night...thank you Wikipedia, for the picture.

Beguinage, which is protected by UNESCO

OK I am going to leave this post at that, seeing how it's already pretty long. Also, I'm feeling like death with my cold + ear infection, so I'm looking forward to faceplanting in my pillows. I'll write about the rest of it in the next post!

Actually, before I go faceplant, I want to post a list of the books I've read since September. I have become a reading machine, no foolin':

• When You are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold
• An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison
  
• Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
  
• Dry, Augusten Burroughs
• Frankly, My Dear, Molly Haskell
• Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
• The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates
• Rape: A Love Story, Joyce Carole Oates
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
  
• The Pact, Jodi Picoult
• Keeping Faith, Jodi Picoult
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  
• Salem Falls, Jodi Picoult
• Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult
  
• My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult
  
• Lucky, Alice Sebold
• My Sister, My Love, Joyce Carole Oates
• The Witch of Portobello, Paulo Coehlo
• The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

...I think that's it, but I'm just listing them from what I remember reading month by month, so there might be another one or two I'm forgetting. Right now I'm starting to read The Laws of the Spirit by Daniel Millman.
So, 21 books in 6.5 months = a little over 3 books a month, so I average a little over a week for all my books. Go me.

Hooray for meeeeee

Just got some good news -- my application to renew my job in Spain was accepted. Yay! I don't think I'm going to come back here, but at least it's an option for me, now. Also, I requested to teach at an official language academy for adults, which would more enjoyable for me. And if I were to come back to Spain, I would definitely look for Spanish roommates so I could go to the next level of really solidifying my Spanish -- even though I've really enjoyed living with my American roommates, I still feel like I missed out on that particular opportunity. I don't know yet where the Spanish Education Ministery will/would be placing me, so when I know I'll let everybody else know.

Right now, one of my biggest concerns is impending unemployment. And getting a writing gig is especially hard to come by right now, so I've been really anxious about going back home. Frown town. Worst case scenario, I'd go back to Victoria's Secret and work there until I find another "real" job.

Soon I'll be posting about Belgium. In the meantime, I'm still enjoying/savoring every morsel of Belgian chocolate I brought back...yummmm!

spring break account, part one

Ever heard of reverse culture shock? It´s what happens when you go back to where you live from another place and it seems foreign. That´s how I feel returning from Belgium -- I knew it would happen, so I braced myself for the constant ¡¡¡HOLA WAPA QUE TAL UN BESITO Y TUS VACACCIONES DIME TODO!!! ...No punctuation necessary.

Mis vacacciones were excelente. I went with my roommates Becca, Claire and Michelle to Germany and Austria for 4 days (actually Michelle is a former roommate, but yeah), then I broke off from the group and went to Belgium to see family. I´ll start from the very beginning (a very good place to start):

FRANKFURT
The girls and I got into Frankfurt late on Friday the 3rd, from Seville. We started off the day, early, and took a bus to Seville in order to make our early afternoon flight to Germany. This may be too much info, but whatever: the bus always makes me feel queasy, and it was especially aggravating because I was getting over the worst of my stomach flu. The first few days in Germany were hell, and I stuck to eating pretzels (but I did cave and get some Starbucks, too, which I later regretted, that day). Anyway, we got into our Frankfurt hostel pretty late at night and just chilled in the main lobby room with people from all over the globe -- there was even an American guy there, so I chatted with him, a British guy, a German guy, and a whole bunch of Croatians...it was a total sausage fest, there was not one other girl apart from me and my roommates, so we got a ton of attention by default. I think some of those guys were on their 5th or 6th German beer and were definitely feeling it. So we just chatted with them, and the Croatian guys playing us some music and we sang with them. Becca and I took the main singing parts, since we´re constantly singing at ¨home.¨ It was fun. The not fun part was the mosquito infestation in our room. Claire and I were attacked with bugs, and I seriously looked like I had chicken pox on my arms and legs for the rest of the trip. I´m still completely red and scratching them, I think I must be allergic to the German bugs, or something. Anyway...

MUNICH

We left for Munich on Saturday morning, and I did my usual sleeping on the train thing, for probably 3 of the 4 hours on the trip. I possess the happy skill of being able to sleep anywhere in any configuration. We arrived in the early afternoon and settled into our hostel and went to get Starbucks. Being a former Starbucks employee, I had to impress my roommates with the complexity of my drink order (Iced triple grande caramel soy latte, please). I was so extremely caffeinated after that, I thought my already naturally jumpy legs would fall off from over exertion. I would say I have that weird ¨disease¨ restless leg syndrome, but it´s never bothered me. So...the Germans. I was immediately struck by how many blondes are in Germany and how tall everybody is. For the first time since I´ve been here, I felt like I fit in, height-wise (Spaniards, overall, are really short). German sounds really, really weird to my ear, so that was an adjustment. Lots of ¨k¨ sounds and such.
First, we went to an outdoor market and checked out enormous pickles and schnitzel and frankfurters and the like.

This was right after I had left my coat in a McDonald´s bathroom after being sick and forgetting to take it with me (woops). I was a bit upset, because it turns out it was stolen - I went back to the hostel to rest for a while and try not to yak while Becca kindly went back to ask for it. Frown Town. Anyway, once I felt a bit better, we went out again. We went to the Munich Olympic park, where the Olympics were held in 1972. Pretty awesome.

And the German police are total BAMF´s, as expected. They charged the girls and I 40€ fees for having the incorrect ticket on the train without any sympathy whatsoever that we´re tourists and don´t speak German. Fork over the money, ladies, was the vibe we got. Ironically, that was when we were on the way to check out the Dachau Concentration camp, so the image of nazis was fresh in our minds.

Dachau, as you´d imagine, was a rather intense way to start off the day. We got one of the audio guides, which I was responsible for holding and telling the girls about (being the journalist that I am, I´m always eager to know everything possible about a new place, not to mention I´m very interested in the history of the Holocaust). The atmosphere of Dachau is stark and creepy. We went into the rooms where the cremation ovens and poison gas were and we saw the bunkers where they slept. The audio guide had info about every area of the camp, including first person accounts from camp survivors and American camp liberators. Some of the info was told by a narrator, about people who were killed. Sad.

After that, we got back on the train (with the correct ticket) and we set off for a 4 hour bike tour around Munich....it was a great way of seeing all the key sites of the city in a relatively short period of time.

We got to stop in some of the main plazas and see a whole bunch of statues representing Bavaria with lions and the like. Our tour guide was this Hawaiian guy who was extremely funny and had us ring our bells and shout ¨mullet¨ every time we saw one. Unfortunately for Claire, who gave us the idea of going on the tour, a guy got a flat tire and we had to make an unexpected stop. The guide couldn´t fix it, so the guy ended up taking Claire´s bike, and Claire (being just over a hundred pounds and pretty short) was the unlucky one to have to sit on the front of the guide´s bike. ¨Is it too hard?¨ *wink* ...So ridiculous. We kept on keeping on and we went to an enormous beer garden where the beers and pretzels are bigger than your head.

When the tour was over, the girls and I went out with some people we had met on the tour to Hofbräuhaus, a famous beer house. I only had one more, and not even the entire thing, since I was pretty dehydrated, but fortunately, almost over my stomach flu.

Moving on...

SALZBURG
We set off for Austria the next morning, which was a short train ride just over the German border.

Salzburg is stunning -- the Alps, the chalets, the water, the snow, the buildings, the music...I love it all. I really want to go back and see more of Austria, especially Vienna.

The first day, after settling into our hostel, we were off on a tour of the sites in The Sound of Music film. I was in the musical in high school, so for me, it was pretty cool, if really cheesy. At least we got to see the great views of the city and hear more about the story of the real Von Trapp family rather than the syrupy sweet story you hear in the cheesy, cheesy musical.

The house used in the movie

An accurate depiction of both my feelings about The Sound of Music and how I was feeling when spring break started.

We met up with 2 guys from our hostel, and we went off on a self guided tour of the Salzburg to see the salt fortress and other sites around the city. The salt fortress was quite a hike, but the view made it all worth it, especially with the sunset.

The next morning, we went with those two guys (an American and an Australian) to see the Alps. We took a gondola up to the summit and hiked around. Stupid me, I wore the worst possible hiking shoes, so I had to hold hands with Zach and Russ, our two new friends, so I wouldn´t plummet to my death off the side of the guiderail-free Alps. I´m not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of being in traction-less shoes in hard snow when a cliff is involved. Way to go, Meg...

After that, we went on a mini boat tour that was included in our ¨Salzburg card¨ purchase which also had taken us up to the Alps. We went on the main river of Salzburg in a little motor boat and saw some awesome houses, narrated by some creepy recorded voice both in German and then played in English.

We went out for some drinks by the water after that. So pretty.

We also went to Mozart´s birthplace (also on the Salzburg card list of attractions). Ever since I saw the movie Amadeus, I was really interested in Mozart. The movie isn´t a completely accurate representation of his life, but it´s still really well done -- probably why it won best picture in 1984 and was nominated for a bazillion other awards. I love the villain in the movie, Salieri. Ironic they made him the villain, seeing how I´m pretty sure Mozart and Salieri didn´t interact, at all, in real life. Also, the movie showed that Mozart didn´t have siblings and that he only had 1 child, himself, when in reality, he had 6 (even though only 2 survived to adulthood).
Unfortunately, we weren´t allowed to take any photos of the house, which was so lame. There were tons of things I wanted photos of, including weird things like locks of Mozart´s hair. They also had his first violin as a little boy, and it was so small. There were lots of commissioned paintings of him and his family and examples of his own handwriting and the original copies of his music. I love Mozart operas, especially Le Nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute. My dream would be to sing the Queen of the Night aria, someday -- I already practice it a lot, haha...

VIENNA
The next day was my last day -- I took the train to Vienna with the girls, and all I did there was take a short walk around the center, eat pizza, and go check out the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, with all the Lippazaner horses. Unfortunately, the tour the girls and I wanted to take was completely booked until 4 pm, which was too late for me to go to in order to make my flight to Brussels. Boo :-(. I´ll just have to go back someday, I guess.

Some nice Viennese lady took that picture for us.

OK, that´s about it for part one of my spring break...Belgium deserves its own post, especially since this one is already so long. Hasta ahora...

¡TENGO AGUJETAS!

How would you feel if you suddenly had to join the cast of a play and you didn't know any of your lines? Well, that's one of my recurring dreams, and I felt like I was living it for real in the aerobics class I took today. Claire (roommate) and I decided to do an aerobics class today at the gym we go to, and it turns out the bulk of the class is choreographed, and it's like we're in a Britney Spears music video, or something, that's how complex it was. It was quite effective in making us sweat/raising the heart rate, though, so hooray for that.

When Claire and I arrived at the class, the instructor was super enthusiastic about us being there and, as if we didn't stick out enough already, she shouts "¡Estadosunidenses! ¡Qué chulo!" (Americans, how cool). Then she said some other stuff to the class and us about what we were going to do and then she addressed Claire and me again to say "Guiris, síguenos y hagad lo que podéis," which means "foreigners [think "gringo," but the Spanish version], follow us and do what you can." I had no idea it was going to be so ridiculously difficult! But it was fun, so ultimately, vale la pena (it's worth it). So that was my ridiculous experience of the day.

I've been going to the gym a ton lately to run/do pilates and now aerobics in order to ponerme en forma or get myself more in shape for the upcoming swimsuit season. Claire has done a great job of being moral support, Colorado mountain woman that she is -- she is by far the most athletic of the group of Americans here. She's run a damn marathon, for god's sake, not to mention she was on a bazillion sports clubs in high school. What did I do in high school? Drama club and traveling choir and church choir cantoring...oh, and I rode horses in the first part of high school before I gave it up and then picked it back up when I was 21.

School has been good here ~ here's the Easter poster I made:
And yes, I did the drawings -- that's about as far as my drawing skills go, don't judge. I basically made little doodles in my notebook and then redid them, bigger, for the big old poster. So I made an Easter egg, an Easter bunny, and a Peep. I miss Peeps...! I also printed out 2 of my old pic's : my first communion and a pic of me with my bro's when I was 2 and we got a pro picture taken complete with bunnies. I also wrote out and translated part of the chorus from the "Easter Parade" song (you know it: "In your Easter bonnet / with all the frills upon it / you'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade"). Oh, and I translated it to Cuando llevas el sombrero de Pascua / todo de vuelo / serás la mujer más distinguida del desfile de Pascua.

Euro-DST starts today, woop

I only now just figured out how to change the date settings on my phone so it would read month-day-year instead of day-month-year. The time also used to read that obnoxious 24 hour military thing, now it's back to good old American 12-h time. Hooray.

Big week coming up after this upcoming one. :-D Thursday, we'll be going to a Spanish production of Jesus Christ Superstar (YAY), then we'll be leaving for Germany on Friday morning. It'll be a pretty stressful day, Friday, first getting to Seville on a 3- hour bus (luckily for me, I have the delightful ability to sleep in any/every environment), then we'll mill around the dinky Seville airport to get to Frankfurt that night. This will mark the first time I'll be in a country 1) without speaking the language and 2) not knowing anybody ELSE who speaks the language.

Sure, I'm not completely fluent in Spanish, so I've discovered how body language comes in handy when I've reached a communication impasse, but I'm going to hit a huge wave of culture shock in Germany. And the German language always freaks me out, since you can say anything and it sounds like a death threat. That's probably just being an ignorant American...then again, the Spaniards I've mentioned that to laugh and say they agree, so who knows.

At least my trip to Germany/Austria will be a nice little segue to Belgium, since Dutch and German sound really similar to my ear, kind of like Portuguese and Spanish, like they are mutually intelligible. Not sure, though.

By the way, my Belgian relatives are descendants of my Grandma Boberg's first cousins. Cool, right? My great grandparents left Belgium in 1918 or 19 after WW I with my grandma's older brother and sister, but my grandma wasn't born yet...she was born in 1925, in Illinois. Sidenote: if my grandma HAD been born in Belgium, then I would have an in on the highly coveted dual citizenship, since American grandchildren of European-born grandparents can get a European Union passport on that merit alone. So frustrating! That would mean, then, that my second cousins on my dad's side are eligible for that dual citizenship, since their grandparents (my great uncle Renee and great aunt Irene, both deceased), were born in Belgium. And yet, I'm fairly sure none of them have any interest of living or working in Europe. Murphy's law?

More about family -- I am completely unaware what happened with the Italian and Swedish sides of the fam (my maternal grandpa and paternal grandpa, respectively). My Grandpa Catanzaro grew up hearing his parents speaking Italian, so I'm going to assume you'd only have to go back a few more generations to find out who emigrated from Sicily. Oh, and they changed their last name from whatever it once was to "Catanzaro," for unknown reasons. Catanzaro is a name of a city in the southern region of Calabria in Italy, which isn't even in Sicily. They might have been fugitives, which is kinda funny.
The Swedes are even more of a mystery. Boberg is a swedish name, though, even though most people don't think that. And I don't have the typical Swedish looks, either. I might not ever figure out when or why the Swedes in my family decided to head over to the US, especially because my Grandpa Boberg died in 1996 and all of his siblings are also gone. My Great Uncle Ben died a few years ago. I met one of my Grandpa Boberg's cousins, Glen Slater, within the last 10 years, and he showed my dad and I some of the Swedish family tree, but that stuff is lost on me. My dad would probably know more than I would. I should probably ask my Grandma Boberg what she knows about this whole thing, because I'm confused/curious.

Speaking of closer relatives, I'll be heading to Illinois this summer for a least a week or so to hang out with the grandparents/cousins/aunts/uncles. I'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing, though, probably just catching up and hanging out, and I'll be answering a barrage of questions about what I've done/what I'll be doing with my life. I don't even know yet!

¿viviendo la vida loca...?

Right now I'm watching mindless American TV and mourning the apparent death of my built in camera card reader. Why did it happen? Come back to me, card reader. This is a cruel joke.

Lots of junk happened since I wrote last. The padres came to Spain, we did a whole lot of stuff, but I think anyone who reads this also sees my facebook. In any case, some photographic highlights (scenery/indoor shots to start, sorry):

Fans at the Alcázar in Seville

The ever-impressive Plaza de España

The enormous, medieval structure, Ávila's "muralla." Bonus points to you if you can find the storks in this pic!!!

Salamanca's "New Cathedral"

The ceiling of a cathedral in Madrid.

Now for pic's with the parents.

With mom in Ávila

With dad at the Alhambra in Granda

The parents doing their "cute" shot at the Alcázar in Seville

With both the parents at Ávila's ridiculously old pig (their city symbol, I think, apart from the wall)

With the girls: Claire, me being burned, Michelle, Emily and Becca (Kim couldn't make it)

Life is good otherwise, despite worrying about future employment. I've reached the home stretch of Spain life, which is weird, but cool. I still have plenty of trips on the horizon, which is exciting. Spring break, AKA "semana santa" (holy week) is not the next week but the one after that. I'll be traveling with Michelle, Becca and Claire for 4 days, then heading off to Belgium for 5. Yay. :)

Lots of stuff going on...sleepy time! Tomorrow is my long day...in Spanish terms, anyway.

In Madrid, otra vez

I´m being un-Spanish tonight, since I plan on faceplanting in my pillows in T minus one hour, more or less, seeing how I´m completely wrecked. Maybe I figured it´d be the best way to empathize with my soon-to-be jetlagged parents? I´m in Madrid por la noche, and I´m going to get my padres around 9-ish.

Luckily, I was able to meet up with Emma, another conversation assistant, working in Madrid. She´s from the British version of my same program and I met her at the hostel where I was staying in November, along with a bunch of other UK-ers and Aussies and Americans. It´s really odd to hear so many people speaking English, since I´m so used to constant Andaluz (Spanish dialect). The hotel where I´m staying even has two English news stations on, which is cool. It also has a French and a Portuguese station, and I watched the Portuguese one for a long time because I was simply mesmorized by how similar it sounds to Spanish --I could understand virtually every sentence, and if there was a word I didn´t get, it made sense it context. So weird. I had no idea that Portuguese and Spanish were THAT mutually intelligible, even though when I´ve heard Portuguese briefly, before, it sounded like the inbred child of French and Spanish.

Emma was able to tell me how exactly to get from the center of Madrid to my hotel, so that was pretty cool. Being alone in a hotel isn´t, so much, but oh well.

The padres and I will be hitting up Madrid, Toledo and Salamanca in the next three days, then we´ll be returning to the Andalucía region so I can get to work. After work, we´ll be going to Seville, Córdoba and Granada, on different days. It´s going to be a whirlwind tour and the guide is yours truly...I´m a bit irked about the being the group communicator, but it´s all good. The worst part will be ordering food, no doubt, seeing how I´m not quite knowledgeable about all food vocabulary, especially when it´s just Spanish food. I do have one tip for any potential visitors, though: a Spanish tortilla is not a quesadilla, or anything that is normally found in the US. You have been forewarned...


After the ´rents leave, I´ll have a few weeks just to chill in Cabra...hooray. Truth be told, I´m more of a homebody than a traveler extraordinaire, even though I like both...obviously. No doubt the constant moving around from my teen years has contributed to the omnipresent bee in my bonnet to travel.

(Wow, I am clearly out of my mind tired when I type things like that...woops!)

Time to watch more Portuguese TV and then hit it. ¡Buenas noches!

back from Irlanda

I spent the long weekend in Ireland (Andalucía had a holiday weekend -- funny that all the English speakers fly the coop, then)! My Irish family made contact relatively recently -- Bernadette, my cousin, already met several of my second cousins, some whom I still have never met in my life, for some reason. Probably has to do with the distance issue, being that we left Illinois in 1988. I can't remember who, exactly, made it to my Grandma and Grandpa Catanzaros' 50th wedding anniversary in 2004, either.

Woops on the tangent.

Ireland was incredible. And the saying is that the place is immaterial without the its inhabitants is true. Everyone was warm, welcoming and eager to meet more of their American family. I learned more about my Great, Great Grandma Moriarity and her reasons for leaving Ireland. It had to do with the Potato Famine (An Gorta Mór) which still managed to ravage the country decades afterward. Bridget was born in 1875 and I'm not entirely sure of the circumstances surrounding her departure and whether it was her idea or her husband's, really. Also, it seems like it must have been a miracle that they survived what was probably a horrendous journey by boat, for weeks, probably eating possibly rancid food and living in squalor, with nothing and nowhere to go, I'm sure.
Makes me wonder if they thought they had made a big mistake.

I read The Gravedigger's Daughter which is about a German family who emigrated to the states in the 1930s and the prejudice they endure about being Jews and, paradoxically, being looked down upon for Nazism. Anyway, the whole immigrant issue is fascinating to me. The fact that I could've ended up in Ireland, too, blows my mind. But I'm not only Irish, so I suppose I wouldn't have been born at all, since I'm such a mixture of the meetings of fellow immigrants, all milling about Chicago and building a new foundation.


The majority of my weekend was spent in County Kerry, or with the family in Cahersiveen, a cute, small town in the Ring of Kerry. I keep thinking about how I'll have to translate my trip into Spanish for my coworkers, tomorrow, and I'm curious to see their reactions. They were worried I was going off half-cocked and maybe my family wasn't sure if they wanted me there, but I can safely assure them I was prepared by my Great Aunt Liz's advice and her stories about Ireland and our family there. They really were fantastic, very accommodating, unwilling to take a quid from me, it seemed, which racked me with guilt. I spent 10 euro as a donation to Mary Daly's Special Olympics fund and I gave 20 p to the church to light a candle, a family tradition, and then I put some loose change in the collection basket and later in a cancer hospice care collection.

Mary Daly -- I can't say enough about her kindness, bubbly personality and active lifestyle. She is bursting with activity and life and is up for a good card game, chat, meal or hike at any given moment. She cooked for us (Cabbage and "bacon," which looked to me more like a ham and pork hybrid, to me -- the tenderness of good pork and a slight salty flavor of ham -- my favorite...it wasn't fried). She made tea and coffee (in a French press, too!) and also had tea biscuits. She has an infectious smile, too. She has had a very full life with a good deal of green pastures with the ocassional flood -- one would imagine that would be the case, what with 9 children. Oh, and 14 grandchildren. And the occasional visitor from the USA -- descendents of her own aunt, Bridget Moriarity.

Enjoy these videos -- more are on the way. Keep in mind, this is raw footage. I'll be putting up an edited video ASAP.





....Now I'm back to the grind. Here's some stuff I have coming up to do presentations about and so forth, and there will be comprehension exercises. We'll be chugging forth with present simple irregulars (barely right now, more in the future). Also, I like asking questions that will generate a negative response, because the kids have to think about it slightly more. And I don't take monosyllabic answers for it, they have to conjugate the verb and make sure the person is correct. Also, I have one student read the question then another respond. I have plenty of opportunities to fine tune (sometimes overhaul) pronunciation problems, which are generally predictable at this stage. My students really need to get to the point where they relinquish their idea that English is a phonetic language, because it isn't even a relative of the completely phonetic Spanish language.

woooooooooooooooooooooooo....!

Today was un día fantástico, hooray...

Tomorrow I'm going to Ireland, and today I got a call from my Gianna, the lady whose house I lived in while I studied abroad two years ago, in Florence. I saw the Italian country code pop up on my phone and my eyes got huge, in anticipation of a) having to speak Italian in the next breath and b) thinking about Gianna being on the other end. The first thing she said after "pronto" (which is what Italians say when they answer the phone -- it means "ready") was "non posso credere che sto parlando con Megan!" or, "I can't believe I'm talking to May-gahn!" It was pretty funny, but then I got kinda nervous, since my Italian speaking skills have gone straight down the crapper. After a couple seconds, I told her it was almost "quasi impossibile" for me to speak Italian, but then she insisted, claiming that my emails are so well-written, so I MUST be able to speak Italian. Ack. Note: writing in another language is a thousand times easier than speaking it, seeing how you can look up conjugation and vocabulary instead of thinking about those things on the spot.

Anyway....(stream of consciousness writing, sorry)...She told me I had to visit her, so we decided I'll go see her April 30th - May 4th. Yay! Another note: still impressed that I was able to piece together several coherent (though horribly grammatically incorrect) Italian phrases together on the phone.

Now the daunting task of brushing up on Italian during the next 8ish weeks so I'll be able to hold a semi-decent conversazione. Actually, Gianna does in fact speak English pretty well, but if the phone call was any indication, apparently I'm expected to speak Italian. Mehhhh.

Good times...now I have to finish packing for Ireland to see my fourth cousins. That's right. My dad figured it out. And according to Wikipedia's article on consanguinity, that means these people and I share a Great³-grandparent. I have no idea who this common relative is (errr, was), anyway, other than the fact that the people who I'm visiting are descendents of my maternal great, great grandmother's brother. Or, my great, great uncle. My great, great Irish grandmother decided to get outta Ireland, for whatever reason. I'd kind of like to know those circumstances, it'd be interesting to hear, I'm sure. Anyway, if you go back another generation from that lady, there is the common grandparent with the people I'll be seeing. Thinking about family trees kind of makes my brain explode...

OK gonna go face plant in my pillows.
One last thing: I'm psyched to hear these Irish accents, tomorrow.

stuff I've worked on lately