Socially Acceptable

Every morning and throughout the day, Andrea, Jacquie and I always ask each other, "Does anyone have to work tomorrow?" and of course, the answer is always no because we are all teachers and for the rest of our lives, throughout the summer, none of us have to work the next day.

If we are being a bit obnoxious on the street (which I never am of course, its mostly the other girls) one of us usually says "I can't wait to get back to New York" as if to give the impression that we are American and not Canadian. Ha.

None of us have to work tomorrow as we are going to Camden market which is apparently a fantastic market ("you dont even know" is what they tell me..) so im pretty pumped for that because of course, i feel as though i havent spent enough money in England so i'd like to spend more. Everything here is normal priced, if you lived in a country that was also on the pound, however, because I am using Canadian money, everything is twice as expensive. So, for example, a starbucks coffee is 2.65pounds which is normally priced, however, if you make the conversion the coffee actually costs more than 5$ Canadian so its pretty expensive.

I can't wait to get back to New York.

Being French

--bbb is so right.

I love being French.

There is something so amazing about sitting in a cafe with friends (or brother) and people watching or reading a good book. There is something so amazing about sitting in a park drinking wine, people watching and reading a book. There is also something so amazing about sitting beside the eiffel tower on a beautiful afternoon.

It's pretty great.

This summer I have had many opportunities to 'be french.' Even if I'm not in France, I am always looking for ways to be French. In England, Jacquie, Andrea and I all still sit on the same side of the table facing the street so we can people watch. This is something that they definitely do in France.
The other day we were eating an incredible english breakfast (complete with a cooked mushroom) and I turned the chairs around so we could face the street. That's about as French as you can get.

I swear the Queen is following me

I was at buckingham palace the other day (ha, how many people can say that right now?) and the Queen was in residence. They always fly a flag whenever she is in residence and so it is pretty easy to tell considering the flay is pretty big. Today, Jacquie and Andrea and I went on a tour to see Windsor Castle, the Roman Baths in Bath and the Stonehenge. The Queen was in residence at Windsor Castle and so I think she is following me.

She uses the Windsor castle apparently as her weekend/summer home. It was absolutely fantastic and impressive. My summer home is not nearly as extravagant and i certainly don't have as many people touring my house. Windsor castle is the oldest castle with occupants in it in Europe. Pretty amazing stuff.

my time is up on the internet and so i am forced to write more later.

I am spending the weekend in London and then heading to Ireland to visit --bbb on what will be my last week in Europe. After this, I am forced to get a real job.

number one

Mandy talks a lot about being french. It was all she could talk about while she was in Cork.

I can't wait to get to Paris and be french she'd say, spending all day being french is something i could totally do for just about forever.

And so we spent a great deal of time doing just that. We sat in cafe's and ordered espresso's and then moved about the city at a slow walking pace and found another cafe and ordered another cafe. Being French is so much easier on the head than being Irish, which is something I've been having a great deal more difficulty with of late (I started to digest what that means but it was getting too long and very much off topic. we'll save that one for another day). My point is that I much more enjoy being French because it involves books and coffee and observation and learning a new language.

Mandy and I were french and loving it. I was using the little fracais that I knew and she was smiling at every chance she got to speak to anyone in french.

My four year plan (which mandy was around for my laying out) now includes a stint spent in France. Perhaps not Paris as I don't think I'd have the money to live the extravagant life, but very much so France.

We'll talk more about that four year plan later which means i'll have to make a big list of things I need to do.

1. appologise to mandy for taking up one of her days on the blog post cycle. (done)
2. write about four year plan, being irish, and that whole entire list I put in yesterdays post. (TBA)
3. find a job for the fall as I will be dreadfully out of money.

Happy Birthday Leanne

Happy Birthday Leanne!!

and --b, you arent allowed to post on even days, you broke your own rule.

right now, i am in London, England settling in quite nicely> Jacquie, Andrea and I have been touring around all day and enjoying the sights.. and the food.

mandy

happy birthday sis

I am going to pre-empt mandy and put up a birthday post for leanne.

a very special birthday wish
to the little sis
who i miss
like a fish
does an ocean abyss

happy birthday



don't forget to watch the little guy, not the big guy.

welcome back cotter

i get that song in my head every once in a while. it makes me smile and chuckle and wonder how i missed that john travolta had a role in a television series when he was much younger.

i am back in cork, mandy is happily in London. She has sent me an update that she's on her way back to Cork (much the same way as a magnet finds the keys your four-year-old cousin buried in the backyard sand pit Cork is able to pull people back to it that have stayed longer than a week) in a weeks time (Monday week, as they say in Ireland).

that song was in my head as I sat down with my cup of tea and browsed the archives to find a couple of comments i had forgotten to reply to (a big thanks, by the way, to Shabu and Grant! Mandy and I love the comments). Perhaps it was my subconscience subtly bringing to mind my reluctance to record events of the past weeks, or perhaps it was the window i had open in youtube with the theme song to Cotter playing we'll never know; regardless, the song was in my head to stay. So, armed with no idea where this post is going to go, i have sat myself down and started clicking away.

i could talk about how mandy and i and jackie and andrea spent three days in Paris being, as mandy puts it, French. I could talk about the funny man who kicked us out of a restaurant because, as far as we could tell, we wanted to sit at a table, or i could talk about the Canadian family we met at a kabab place how turned out to be from St. Mary's (or at least the Mrs was from there. Dad, if you could, look up the name Van Fleet. That spelling is mine, not hers, and they now live in Brampton), or i could tell you about the wonderful friends we made and the places we slept.

I could and I can and I will but you will have to wait.

fireworked

what was fireworks two nights ago turned out to be a night on a terrace at a university where mandy had some friends staying last winter. we dropped by to see if they had any beds for the next night. sadly, the afternoon porter said, we do not. but i will let you pop up stairs to use the internet and search for other accommodation's.

we thanked him kindly and he smiled and said it wasn't a problem. he had a french accent and spoke french and all this was translated to me as we trotted up the stairs.

our internet search yielded very little; but what can one expect, really? gmail and myface don't post hostel availability. we just about settled into a proper search when James tapped mandy on the shoulder and sat down with his guitar. he solved our problem by offering his floor for as long as we needed it and invited us out to share some songs and wine and stories from north america.

we sat long into the night, that is until our friend the afternoon porter came to check on his little investment. we apologized and smiled and he warily returned it. you can imagine his worry when the two strangers he had given a passcard to had turned up missing and presumed wandering the halls. lucky for him we were nice people in the company of other nice people.

the fireworks were last night and included a song set from the famous James Blunt. He told us we were beautiful and that he was watching us breathing for the last time. Rather creepy as we don't know him all that well but I suppose that's karma returning the favour of us overstaying the Afternoon Porters welcome the day before.

Landed

Salut Maman, Salut Papa!

Moi e mandy arrive a Paris tu jour a say manufique!

Mandy will correct that sooner, rather than later.

So, we have landed and we're getting settled and sorting out where we're staying. we have a hostel booked and we've just got to find it.

tonight there are fireworks to see at the tour d'eiffel which we will go see; there are cafe's at the cafe which we will go drink; and there is french to be so we are going to be it.

i am learning multo frenchazie dopo arrive a paris. however, i am speaking tropo italiano and languaging up my mixes.

a biento,

the Gaelic Football Game

--b and I and others went to watch a Gaelic football game in Cork last Sunday. The game was the province final and county Cork was playing county Kerry. Gaelic Football is like soccer, football, and rugby with a couple of new rules. It is only played in Ireland. The game starts off with everyone singing the national anthem but everyone turns toward the score boards on either side of the field to sing. We got a standing spot behind one of the goals and that ended up being where the hard core fans where.
Cork was the underdog coming into the game and it was clear in the first half that Kerry was beating them. They were definitely outplaying them.
At the starting of the second half, Cork stepped it up a notch and scored a goal and started to make a comeback. The crowd was going crazy. Everyone was screaming and yelling and cheering. Cork eventually tied it up and then started winning and creating a gap in their favour. Cork ended up winning the game. It was so fantastic.
It poured all morning before the game and as soon as the game started, the rain stopped and at half time, it started pouring again and rained the entire half time and stopped raining during the second half and started raining and poured the rest of the day after the game. We were all soaked and my clothes took two days to dry.

the bus to Cork

I bought a student ticket to Cork. Even though I am not a student anymore, I managed to convince the guy working the ticket office that I was one and saved myself 4 euro. What a steal. I walked over to the spot where the bus was leaving for Cork and there was a bus there, door open but no bus driver. I asked a guy standing outside if this was the bus to Cork and he said it was. So, I got on the bus but no one was on it. I decided that I was pretty early (by a half hour) and that I would just wait until other people started to get on the bus. After a while, I noticed a line (a queue is what it is called here) forming outside of the bus. I decided that I couldn’t get off the bus now because then everyone would see me get off the bus and would know that I did not understand proper bus-getting-on etiquette. So, I stayed on the bus. After a while, a bus driver came on, noticed me there and I said that I was already on the bus. He then proceeded to ask me if I was going to Limerick, and I said no. He said that the bus I was on was going to Limerick and suggested every so nicely that I should get off the bus because the bus going to Cork was going to pull up in a couple of minutes. I was a little embarrassed.
I got off the bus and of course, there was an even bigger queue who all got to watch me get off and then watch the bus pull away. They all knew that I didn’t understand proper bus-getting-on etiquette.

Ridiculous.

Ireland

I got to Ireland two days ago to visit --b. I was up at 6am to catch my flight, arrived at the Dublin airport at 10am, got to the town centre around 1130 and took the bus to Cork and arrived at 5pm. It was a long day of travelling and it was finally good to put down my bags and to see my brother who I haven’t seen for over 10 months. As soon as I got here, we went out for a cheap pint. Apparently this one pub has happy hour all afternoon so we went there to chat and meet up with one of --b’s roommates Matty who he has known since university.
It’s really nice to be a little bit settled again and to see a familiar face again. Sean and I were travelling a lot and I find that moving around so much is sometimes hard on the system so it’s nice to relax a little bit in a house and catch up on my sleep. Also, because I toured around Ireland last year (I rented a car with 3 other Canadian girls—craziest thing i’ve ever done) I don’t feel pressured at all to tour around this time because I’ve seen everything I want to see in Ireland and so I can just relax and check out all the pubs and all different kinds of beer.

Venice

We stayed in Venice for 2 days and were lost pretty much the whole time. Venice is full of bridges and streets that aren’t named and canals that all look the same. There are tons of tourists and no vehicles so it creates a sense of calmness throughout the town. One day, we set out to see St Mark’s square. We gave ourselves all day to find this square. We knew where it was on our map and somehow we still ended up spending most of our time lost. However, we stopped for lunch for a couple of hours because we got into the wine. We started looking at the map more seriously and decided that the map was wrong, that we were actually in the right place and going in the right direction. I even said outloud “I think this map is wrong” and didn’t give it a second thought. The map was wrong and bridges that were supposed to be in the spots where we were according to the map weren’t there in real life.. neither of us considered that we were on the wrong island but chalked it up to the map being wrong. After a little while of nothing making sense, we finally asked a couple where we were and they told us we had somehow made it to a completely different island and that was why nothing was making sense. That was why on the map it said there were bridges and in real life there weren’t any because we were on the wrong island. After that, Sean and I finally got on the right island, saw St. Mark’s square. What a ridiculous day.
Venice is absolutely gorgeous. The canals and the bridges are beautiful. The buildings are so old. Venice is also completely different then Florence so its good when you are travelling to see both cities because you get to compare them both.

Canada Day

a big old happy canada day everybody! i've been at work quite a bit lately, not mention getting ready for the arrival of my second guest. of course, few of you know that i, rather matty and i have had a first guest so perhaps i should explain that.

bid dan came to visit. there are more stories, that will be told in a day or so (and for salutmaman time that means perhaps a week, but likely longer) and you will enjoy them very much. he was with us for about five days i think.

moving onwards today is the day that mandy will be arriving in cork. Currently she is en route from Dublin where she landed earlier this morning and is likely to get in around half four. She msg'd me and said perhaps two-thirty but, if she's anything like the common sparro-

african or european?
shut up you. what does it even matter?
well, i'm not sure really. but i feel you should be specific about references you leave. do you think anyone really got that one from 1993 you left in the last post?

right so. if she's anything like the common sparrow she'd never be able to carry her luggage that far and in the time needed to make the ten o'clock bus to Cork. The one at noon would work much better with her schedule.

you mean to tell me she's going to carry her luggage with her talons all the way fr-
don't you have a "best of monty python" to be filming?
was that today?

happy canada day everyone!

Florence

The past couple of weeks, Sean and I have been travelling and visiting Paris, Venice and Florence. We spent a week in Paris and then a week in Italy, spending 2 days in Venice and then 4 days in Florence. While we were in Florence, we did a couple of tours, one being a wine tour and the other being a hike. The wine tour was of an area in Italy called the Chianti. It is between Florence and La Sienna and is really pretty. Sean and I learned how to properly drink and smell wine. We also visited a cute little town up on a hill in the Chianti where we had a great view of Tuscany and the Chianti area.
The hike that we did was in an area called Cinque Terre. It is on the east coast of Italy and is absolutely gorgeous. This hike is through 5 little towns that are built on cliffs near the water. Sean and I did the whole hike and were really tired at the end of it. It is a 9km hike but half of the time you are climbing sharp inclines. It was absolutely gorgeous. We woke up at 6am and got home around 12:30am so it was a long day but well worth it.
One day, we spent touring around Florence and went to see Michelangelo’s David (which was amazing) the statue is huge. We also climbed the duomo (which is the dome of the cathedrale in Florence). There were 463 stairs or something like that and we were up pretty high. We also walked around the city a little bit and enjoying the little piazzas that you randomly come across.

happy birthday

bradley, happy birthday buddy.. see you in a week.

oh my beardness

so, i was browsing some friends photo's and found this doozy. i had forgotten how ridiculous it looked. somewhat of a change from the me that is typing today.

those in the photo are, from left to right, an american girl whom i don't remember and have no way of finding out who she is. her, for lack of a better word through lack of understanding the situation, friend and her were in town, Palermo, Sicily, because her friend was a singer in a band that consisted of just him and an orchestra and some opera music which was performed in an opera theater. in fact, come to think of it, I don't think he was a band at all.

his voice made me think of some archvillan in some comic book series who could knock down entire villages just by hitting a low g note. he was not a particularly
evil looking person, in fact he resembled a very tall and thin version of a stork; a stork that wore a suit and had a people face arms for wings and legs for legs. also, he looked more like human version of Lurch Adams than a stork. He sang in Italian and rocked the house and then left us, never to meet again.

to her left, our right, is Jodi the folk singer. to her left is her best friend Rachel whom neither new the either would be in Sicily, let alone Palermo, let alone the same restaurant one evening in May. I was there and wasn't really too sure what all the screaming and crying and shouting and hugging was all about until the two of them settled down. Jodi was the first to settle because she was the only one to not have had an emotional spike comparable to when Tim Murphy was blown back off the T-Rex fence in the Jurassic Park. She explained that she had been at a village close the city with family on the past week and so or hadn't speak english, at all. I forgave her and she continued, her english coming back in leaps and bounds.

By this time, however, Rachel had come back to us and could form words again. sentences where a bit much just yet, but at least her communication was recognizable. The two had tried and tried to make their plans compatible but had abandoned all hope when the whole project appeared futile. Yet, only when they had given up completely had their plans worked out better than they ever could have.

Next to Rachel in the photo is the one girl who's name i can't remember. I feel even more terrible about it because she is the one who entertained me the most. She was traveling with Rachel and was friends with Jodi as well. The three of them went to school in Wash DC, USA and had been studying (I think Jodi did too) in Florence for the past four months. The four of us spent an afternoon at a small village somewhere just outside of Palermo and took some great photo's together. She-who-cannot-be-named was able to ascertain my love of taking photo's of other photographers without my talking about it. This might have been because i was also either asking the to take photo's for me (you see, my camera had broke a month previous) or because i kept grabbing for their camera and asking them after. Never the less, i need to find out her name. I feel a bit like Tom Tucker (anchorman for the Quahog Channel 5 News) asking for that girl he met last night at the sky lounge. I assure you this is not the case, I just feel bad that I remember everyone else in the photo.

Next is Valentina, from Sicily, Italy. Her mother is an America from Boston I believe, which means she loves to here stories from North America. She hosted Jodi for the one day she stayed in Palermo. Valentina is also a friend of a guy I stayed with near Verona with Grayson; you might remember that day better as the day i hitched from one place to another.

the last, and not least, is ... well, that's me and all my bearded glory. i kept it for a week or so once i got back to Ireland but it soon came off when people at work told me just how much older it made me look. there are some photo's of my last night at the pub before i left for italy, one particularly when i am up on a stool giving a farewell speech(it wasn't so much as speech as it was a photo opp). With myself standing next to the computer on which said photo is shown one of the regulars, one who came in to the pub one night completely locked and out of his mind drunk and I had refused because I didn't recognize him as he had recently shaved his beard, told me that it added ten years.

Not that age makes that much of deal to me, and not that i feel like i am thirty-five, thirty-six tomorrow, but I did go home a shave the old boy off.

I do miss him though, Finn at work told me I looked tougher with it.

edit: jodi was studying in London, England; not Florence, Italy.
edit: Carolina. she-who-could-not-be-named has been re-named Carolina, thanks to Rachel. Thank you very much.
edit: also, she had a really cool shirt.

paris

it is so great to get back into paris.

i met sean at the airport on tues morn and we have been touring around paris and being french since then. we have perfected sitting in cafes, drinking by the seine and seeing the eiffel tower. tomorrow we are going to venice for the day and then going to florence for a few days.

your francophone, mandy

the wonderful

so as much as buying un-gum made for a bad day, the rest of sweden had nothing to do with the negative. that particular day cannot be reprsented by the post i left on it, in fact that story is the only bad thing that happened and in all seriousness (oh my goodness, you know i am being serious now since i've made a point of saying it) it really wasn't all that negative anyways.

i imagine i intended it to be a humorous anticdote, which you likely understood and didn't need me to spell it out for you.

hmmm. I do believe that that is the case and next time I will give you, the reader, more credit and not have to walk you through my thoughts.

with that thought cleared up, lets move on to another one: the graduation.

i don't know about you, but i've been to a graduation or two. Four actually, and that's just the one's for myself where I somehow managed to convince the powers that be that I deserved credit from them for having attended.

The first was preschool where I majored in finger painting in all prime colours. I never used this degree in elementary school, but it did give me a chance to explore my creative side. I don't remember much of the ceremony and i think it was because my buddy ryan had slipped something into my bottle.

The second was from grade eight. I was awarded the "Most Christian-Like Student" award, or rather would have had someone remembered that it was an award and given it to me. I was given a nice envelope though, and in it was a nice certificate which looked nice on my wall.

The third was high school and the forth was university. Both big, welcome surprises.

The point is that the four ceremonies were very similar and traditional and exactly what you'd expect, or at least exactly what I would have expected a graduation to be because what happens at them is pretty much what happens at all grads everywhere. Parents come, teachers talk, awards are given, ties are worn, hats are tossed and photos are taken.

Standard, right?

So Victoria, our Swedish friend, has this little brother. His name is Christian and he is in a heavy metal band (which we went to see and who were rather good). The reason myself, matty, nolan, sara and chris packed up our bags and flew to Sweden for 5 days was because we were invited to the graduation.

Wow, I thought. "A graduation, how cool. I love those things", I said out loud to Matty, "all those people wearing nice clothes and giving speeches and throwing hats. But I don't have a tie to wear or an award to give. I suppose I could bring my award from elementary school and give it to her brother, but I don't think i'd have enough room in my carry-on for it."

"You're pretty dumb, and I don't think he'd get the joke" replied Matty "and I don't think you have to worry about the tie-to-wear bit because i asked Vic the very same thing and she told me not to worry about it because it's not that sort of ceremony."

He was right. Instead of square topped hats they had sailor caps and instead of speeches they had a parade. Instead of certificates they had a giant photo of themself as a baby and instead of parents taking photo's they had parents and family and friends and grandmothers and tourists taking photo's. On their sailor cap was written their name and year of graduation.

The parade wound it's way through the city centre and ended up in a park. As the graduates walked on by they were singing and jumping and bombarded by well wishers with hugs and kisses and gifts of roses and stuffed bears and tiny champagne bottles that hung round their necks on blue and yellow lanyards.

When the parade had disappeared round the corner momma and papa brodenson, victoria's parents, took off down the street parallel to the route, and not alone either. every other parent that had been near us was bustling along to get to the best spot to see their graduate again.

the parade gathered at it's end in a park where bustling parents and family and friends and tourists searched through the sea of Swedes for the big baby picture that their graduate was carrying. Christian was with the rest of his band sharing a laugh with his friends Sir Eric, second guitar in the band, and Spider Pig, a fellow Swedish graduate. I knew these where their names because this is what was stitched into their Sailor Cap along with 2008, the year of their graduation.

We went back to the Brodenson household afterward and ate sandwhich cake and juggled for the little cousins.

Christian enjoyed his "most Christian like student" award I gave him or rather he would have had I have given it to him not to mention had thought of it when I was in Sweden and not just now seated at my computer.

the good, the bad and the expensive

i am in stockholm, sweden and i've been here for three days. this is the last day of my sweden visit and i fly to Dublin this evening. I am likely working again tomorrow night which is good because they pay me.

it is also good because sweden is so damn expensive.

just yesterday i was leaving the hostel to meet up with some friends of a friend. I went to pick up a pack of gum because the onions i had microwaved were lingering. not only is that embarrassing and uncomfortable when in a group, it was a terrible reminder of how little research i did into the hostel i was staying at. A bitter taste that shouted:

hey, why didn't you check if they had a stove top on site before you went out and bought pasta, chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, rosemary and olive oil?

I ignored myself and went about my way. Shops are all over the place and i went into the first one and waited in line. It was boring and at that moment I wanted so much more to be bored while on the subway to meet the friends of a friend. But here i was bored in line with a bad taste in my mouth not wanting to ease my boredom with conversation because that would be embarrassing and uncomfortable for all.

blah blah blah said the attendant. It will be helpful to know that I looked Swedish
I handed him the Extra pack I had plucked from the front display. I smiled.
blah blah he said again and I handed him 20 krons and he handed me my change.
"Tack" said I, to maintain the charade. Thanks.

As I walked out the door to search for the nearest subway entrance I opened my gum and popped a piece in my mouth. I noticed two things: he had only given my 5 krons back and I had not bought gum. Apparently Extra also makes a black liquorish candy and puts it in the same packet.

I enjoy black liquorish, but not when I was expecting gum. The bad taste prevailed and I had spent too much to get it.

every trip has it's low points. one low point over nine months isn't so bad.