Iconoclast Melody

Sooo now I’m in Edinburgh after a day of traveling hell yesterday. Once I got to Edinburgh at like 8 PM, it took me about an hour and a half of walking around trying to find my hostel before I finally found it and was forced into the realization that it was literally 30 feet from where my bus into the city had dropped me off 90 minutes earlier…I couldn’t be upset about it though cause I was just happy to finally be here.

This hostel is amazing. I got here, took one look around and immediately extended the amount of time that I was planning on spending here. The hostel is run by a group of about 30 younger adults (like 19-24 yrs) who each just work for like 6 or 8 hours a week keeping the place clean and running the desk. Then all the money that they make on the hostel goes towards running it stuff. So essentially, they all just work 6 to 8 hours a week and it pays for their personal rent. Plus they end up with an AWESOME place to live. They’re all kinda bohemian and the whole place has a very mideival/hippy feel. It’s awesome. Plus the views from here are just awesome. Few pictures of the hostel:
The view out of one of the windows in my room.
This is the view of the window that is right beside my bed. Like if I wake up on the right side of my body, when I open my eyes, this is what I’ll see.

This is a poor picture of the main common area in this hostel. It’s really large with lots of big couches and tables and all that good stuff.

OK so if I’m completely honest, Ireland was a let down for me. Maybe my expectations were too high but I just wasn’t impressed. Honestly it just didn’t seem like anything special to me. Just my personal opinion. I mean it did have some pretty ountryside…but that’s about it.

Edinburgh, on the other hand, is BLOWING ME AWAY! Like I have every intention of forcing Laura to come back here and check it out while she’s here with me. The whole time I’m here, I just can’t help but think about how much both my mom and Laura would be loving it. It is amazing and, contrary to Ireland, this is a place that tempts me to uproot from the US and move here. Today I went to Edinburgh castle which I didn’t really get any good pictures of just because I hate pictures with a ton of tourists in them and it was pretty full of people. Even with all the people in it though, it was so so awesome. It was one of those castles that is just massive and basically houses an entire city inside of it. It is also the home of: 1. The Scottish War Museum – which was really awesome and I will talk about more in a minute. 2. The Scottish War Memorial – which was basically a memorial with the names of everyone known who has ever died in a Scottish battle. They go back like 1000 years, and if you had Scottish ancestors who had died, you could find their names in the books. They also had an equivalent to the US’s tomb of the unknown soldier which was intriguing. 3. The dungeons – which were insane!! It would have SUCKED to be a prisoner back in the day. Like you would literally never see the sun. And it is just freezing down there and oh my gosh. It would really suck. And then 4. There was a museum holding the Honours of Scotland (the Crown Jewels) which I will also talk about more in a second.

So the War Museum: it was really cool and really emphasizes how much history Scotland has and how important they have been strategically in a lot of wars. It was cool to see the progression of their country as a power throughout the years and then to see it just suddenly die when Britain took them over and they became British. Very interesting and, like I said, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom in there and about how much more time she would have spent than me; looking at every little thing and reading all the things on the walls. Hah She’d have loved it.

I also kinda had a moment in there. There were a couple of groups of little school kids taking tours of the castle. One group of them was in this museum while I was and I caught up with them right as they hit the big “weapons” part of the museum. I just thought it was SO interesting to see the difference in the reactions of the girls compared to the reactions of the boys. The girls seemed to have no great reaction to the WALLS of awesome weapons in there. The boys, on the other hand, were immediately ENAMORED and obsessed with the weapons. They pretty much erupted with joy looking at all of them and thought they were just sooo cool. It kinda made me think a little bit and I think my conclusion is this: Men were created to battle. I think that, as we grow up, society today says that war is just a horrible horrible thing and should be avoided at all costs. However, as I think was apparent in these young boys, we are born with something in us that WANTS to fight and I think a lot of us lose that over the years. Now I’m sure this just sounds extremely reminiscent of something in Wild at Heart or something. But for me today it was really moving. Now of course I do not want to just go pick a fight for the sake of fighting because I still believe that if something can be solved peaceably, it should be. I would always prefer not to have to fight. But at a time when my government is slowly (I believe) taking away the rights of it’s people, I think there could potentially be a point where men may have to decide whether these rights are something we wish to fight for. And really I just think it’s something that is true in all areas of life and jumps right over into the spiritual realm. I think I have a lot of friends who just despise war because it is war and have kinda convinced me almost that war is never necessary. I really just disagree. I think that God has given men the desire to be willing to fight for the things they care about and I don’t want to lose that gift. I want to care enough about some things that I really would be willing to physically fight for them if need be. Now, don’t get me wrong though, I still think war sucks and I desperately hope that war is never a necessary part of my life. I am simply saying that when you, as a guy, look at the different things that are in or are a part of your life, the realization that there are some of them that you would REALLY FIGHT for, is really cool and is a gift I believe. And I really believe that the political and social desires for peace and for eradicating war from our world have transferred over into the way that we think spiritually. I think there are also spiritual truths and spiritual “rocks” in my life that I want to be willing to “fight” for. And I think it’s funny that I just put “” around the spiritual warfare. Hah cause honestly, it’s the one that really matters and not the other. Spiritual warfare is where the battle is that matters. Anyways, so there’s my thoughts on that…

OK, so the crown jewels of Scotland consist of a scepter, a sword, and a crown. If this museum was set up where you would just walk in and they would all be sitting there in a glass case, it would not be that exciting. However, this museum delays your actual sighting of the jewels a really long time. From the second you walk in, you begin on a journey of where the crown jewels have been from the beginning. It is so cool to see it because they know the names of the people that have put work and time into the jewels and they just has such a history. Throughout the journey, you really get a bit of an understanding for what these items mean to the Scottish people and to the Scottish heritage. By the time you get to the end and actually get to see the jewels, it really is moving. And the sword was HUGE too. They were just beautiful and had a special beauty to them that definitely came from the journey I had just taken through their history.

So anyways, I walked down the main historical street in Edinburgh today after the castle. The castle sits atop large cliffs at the west end of the mile and then there is a Scottish palace at the east end. The entire mile long strip is just steeped in history and I have to guess that most of the buildings are at least a few hundred years old. It was awesome and this was the part where I really couldn’t stop thinking about bringing laura here.

Just off the way a bit was a Starbucks. Now keep in mind that this is a very busy part of Edinburgh. So this was a pretty big starbucks and it had quite a bit of business when I saw it. This may sound like a typical Starbucks sighting but it was NOT! The reason it was special was because, directly next door, there was another coffee shop called “The Chocolate Soup” (which is a dominate name I think) and it was HARD CORE outselling the Starbucks. Like this coffee shop is pretty gutsie to go in right next door to a Starbucks but they’re actually doing it! I just thought it was really rare to see another coffee shop in a big city that was outselling a Starbucks. I liked it. I went to the Chocolate Soup and got some coffee just cause.

So I think it’s really funny here in Scotland because here, if there is a trash can, it doesn’t say trash on it. It says “Litter”. Then there are always other bins that have the little recycle sign nearby which is where most people throw trash. It think it’s a funny idea because it’s almost like they are implying that refusing to recycle something is essentially just littering somewhere else (such as a landfill). Very interesting thought. But anyways, they appear to recycle just about everything.

Another thing: today I saw a couple that had 4 kids. They were in front of me at the little restaurant that I ate lunch at. I was watching them as the mother asked her four kids what they would like to eat, heard them all state their orders, then turned and gave each of their four orders perfectly and then placed her own order as well. I realized that, to have four kids, you have to be smart. I mean meal orders is just one of the many times that you have to be keeping track of 5 people at once. A mom with 5 kids has to keep track of 5 schedules! So I’ve decided that, whether this means having a dominate memory, or just coming up with a really solid system for keeping everything organized, parents with four kids ARE smart.

Ok so I just got up and bought candy bar from a vending machine. I swear, every single time that I ever buy something out of a vending machine there is a split second where my stomach drops out cause I have that moment where I doubt that the little corkscrew will not spin around QUITE enough and my candy will be left hanging on the edge. And I think this fear is strengthened by the fact that it happens all too frequently.

So I was talking with a few Spanish girls and a Dutch guy last night and one of the Spanish girls asked me whether I’d ever had “some drink name”. I was like, “I don’t even know what that means.” So she made me taste what she was drinking. It was red wine mixed with Pepsi. Oh my gosh it was like delectable heaven. I just couldn’t believe that it was really pop mixed with wine. Like that just sounds gross doesn’t it? I’ll answer that. Yes it does. But don’t let that fool you. It’s good.

Ok so I didn’t take many photos today cause I’m definitely planning on making laura come here and so I figure she’ll dominate this place photographically and that it will end up looking like a much more photogenic city than it would if I were to take a bunch. But here are the few that I did take:

Sweet cathedral on the royal mile. I went inside but "no pictures please!" It was really awesome inside though.
Something...
Another church on the royal mile. Also went inside. Also "please no pictures". Also too bad cause it was gorgeous.
View from somewhere in the castle.
This is the front of the war memorial in the Edinburgh castle.
As is this...
View from another place in the castle.
AAAND...you guessed it. Yet another view from in the castle.

So whereas I felt like Ireland could be done justice with photos, I do not believe that Scotland could possibly be captured effectively. However, we'll see what kind of magic Laura can work when she gets here.

Ok well this post is already a beast in length so I think I'll stop for now. Plus, I'm wasting good daylight and there is more I need to see today!!

I'm not a hundred percent sure who all reads this, but I'm pretty sure that I'm safe saying that I LOVE YOU ALL AND MISS YOU! However, if there happens to be some random creeper on here, that does not apply to you...sorry...

Rod!! er..ick.

Kinda a delay here...

Well, I have departed from the beautiful city of Galway. I am currently sitting in the airport in Shannon, Ireland. I wish I could tell you a little bit about Shannon, yet even though I have been here now for about 7 hours, I have seen nothing more of it than just the interior of the airport.

I had a very weird night last night. I met some real characters last night. Who should I even start with? Ok, I guess we’ll go with the most normal one first. There was an Aussie girl named Georgie who was part of the group I hung out with most of yesterday. She is from Perth and since she graduated highschool, she’s just been traveling all over by herself, getting different jobs along the way since then. She’s now 21 so she’s been doing it for over 3 years and she’s been a lot of places. The most notable thing about Georgie is that she speaks more quickly than anyone I have ever even heard of. It is nuts. And she doesn’t slur words together or anything! Like you can definitely understand what she’s saying but comprehending it quickly enough to make sense of it might be a different matter sometimes. But she was real fun though and she used all the awesome Aussie slang that we all know sounds awesome. Then the other girl who hung out with us all day’s name was Megan. Now I’ve met hippies before for sure. But this girl makes a lot of them look like just huge posers. I have never really been around a girl who doesn’t shave her armpits or legs. I’m not gonna lie, it was really disgusting. And she like didn’t even worry about it! She would wear sleeveless shirts all the time and you could totally just see the hair coming out even when her arms were down. And it was weird because she was actually kind of attractive besides the hair. But seriously there is no way that I could be initially attracted to a girl with that much pit hair and those furry legs. Regardless though, she was a really cool person and she was fun to hang out with. Her dancing made me look like I’m scared of what people think. Like she looked straight-up wild when she danced.

Next in the group was a guy from Melbourne. I can’t remember his name even though I definitely should…oh well. But he was a real tight guy too. He thought it was like the craziest thing in the world though that I was a virgin. I don’t even really remember how it came up…oh I think they were talking about weed or something and I was like, “well I’ve actually never done pot.” Then they were all really really surprised about that and the Aussie guy was like, “dude that’s just crazy! That’s like still being a virgin or something”. And I was like, “well actually, I’m that too!’ Then it was just over and he couldn’t believe it. It was cool though cause I got to explain to all of them why I choose to wait for sex and I got to tell them about how I just really believe that Jesus was really the son of God and how I really believe the things that the Bible says and so that’s just what I’ve chosen to try to live my life by. So it was pretty cool. It was kind of cool though because their reaction to just that decision that I’ve all but taken for granted at this point (as in I just don’t even think twice about it now), was just disbelief. It kinda helped me realize that living life as a radical Christian doesn’t have to be something like going to the jungles and learning how to hunt with frog poison with an unreached tribe. Just simply following the commands of Jesus in the Bible and making your day to day decisions based on His will IS RADICAL. The world can’t understand that and they can’t get their head around it! I feel like a lot of the time, I feel this need to have other Christians consider me radical. But I think that’s just one of those things where I’m comparing myself to others when I really shouldn’t. Jesus knows what he asked me to do and my doing that instead of living completely for myself as the world does, IS radical. SO anyways, that was a cool convo with those cats.

THEN, at about 6 in the evening or so, this group of like 12 college students from a school called Grace Christian in Illinois or Indiana came into the common room where the four of us were hanging out. They were the most confusing group of kids ever. Like you could totally pick out the ones who were just the big time partiers and then there were definitely a few who you could tell were going to seminary or something and then there were just the ones who you couldn’t figure out at all. But they were real fun to talk to for a while and they ended up going out for some music with us last night. There was one girl though who was seriously freaking me out. Like when they checked into their hostel, earlier in the day, she had made eye contact with me and gave the obvious smile. SO then when they came into the room we were all in later, she gave me the smile again and sat down across from me. Then they were asking the four of us how we knew each other, and we were like, “well, the three of us are in the same room and then this melbourne guy we just met randomly at a café.” And this girl said (and I quote), “man, I wish there were just random hot guys staying in MY room.” And she was looking straight at me when she said it. Now, I’m pretty much trying to stay away from girls who are trying to hook up on this trip cause just being alone over here could be dangerous and I just don’t want to put myself in the situation to be an idiot. So then, she asks me what my room number is! And so I told her cause I wasn’t really sure how to dodge that one. Then a little later, she went to the bathroom and came back and she was like, “hey, I saw where your room was…” And at this point, I’m just like how in the world is no one calling this girl out for being so creepy? Then she whips out her camera and takes a picture of me…are you kidding? OK ok so here’s the cap to the story. SHE’S ENGAGED! I saw the ring on her finger and so when I started to feel awkward, I asked her about it and she was like, yeah, I’m getting married in November. What the heck? Anyways though, she kept trying to talk to me and stuff the rest of the night and it was weird and then when they all left to go to bed, she came and gave me a hug and said goodbye. It was thoroughly weird and I’ve not felt that uncomfortable in a while.

So yeah, you might be wondering why I’ve been sitting in an airport for the last 7 hours and my plane still doesn’t leave for another 3? Well, I ended up going to bed at about 2 last night and I woke up at 4 and I just couldn’t sleep. Like 8 of the other 11 people in my room were snoring and I just couldn’t do it even though I was really tired. So I got up, took a shower, packed, and checked out. I then walked to the bus station and bought a ticket for a bus coming here that left at 6 AM and then I walked around the city for a while before my bus came. It is crazy how many people were out at like 4:30-5:30. Like they were all just still out from the night before. And it was really weird to walk around because it didn’t feel like the middle of the night. When I came outside, the sun was already up. The sun is only below the horizon between like 9:45 and 4. It’s crazy how long the days are. But yeah so I ran into some very weird people out that late. One group of 3 guys came up to me and were being just really friendly and asking where I was from and stuff (obviously drunk) and then one of them just reached in the side of my bag and grabbed my Pringles, popped off the top, and started eating them!! Haha I almost just laughed cause he definitely didn’t even realize that was weird. But anyways, that is why I have been in this airport so long. I would walk out into Shannon some but it’s raining really hard. So I’ve pushed a couple benches together, bought some food, and have watched like 6 episodes of the office and tried to sleep. I am soooo tired. When I get to my hostel tonight in Edinburgh, I know I’m just going to crash. Here’s a picture of my little hangout for these 10 hours though:
Those benches are NOT comfortable.

And I forgot to finish this while I was still in the airport so this is coming a little late. But here are a few more pictures from Galway as well:

Just a view out on the main canal headed for the ocean.
Something pretty...
A church that I hid inside for about 45 min cause it was pouring rain.
Further up the canal. The water could get pretty intense in places and there were a lot of kayakers going down it.

So sorry that this got posted a little late, but hey, here it is now.

Rodsies

If it's a summer day, not a cloud in sight, it feels like it might rain

I just witnessed a moment that was one of those where somehow, it’s only awkward for those NOT involved. This one is special though because usually when those moments happen, I think in my head that it would just be so much less awkward if I was the one involved and in control of making the situation awkward for others. Cause that is actually a position that I do like to be in very much. This one however, I am extremely happy not to have been involved. And it was just weird really. So here’s what happened: I just walked into this living room where I was just planning on doing exactly what I’m doing right now (minus one awkward feeling). There were about 10 people in the room when I came in, but only 2 of these are important. One guy and one girl. Then, another girl walks in the room who obviously knows these two because they all give some version of “heeeeey!” when they see each other. The new girl then walks over to the first girl and does the normal cheek-kisses. Then the guy makes some comment about how he didn’t get any kisses when he saw her that morning. Then she says “sorry, I just don’t kiss everyone.” The guy then proceeds to stand up and come over to her and go for the cheek kisses…but no wait! He went for a double kiss on the mouth! Bold move for sure. Then it starts to get good. The other girl then says “I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed by a gay guy.” So the guy comes over and gives her just one long kiss!! THEN, the girl who was kissed first made some comment about how she was jealous of him! So SHE went and kissed the other girl!! It was ridiculous! And you could tell that everyone else in the room was just feeling more and more awkward about it as each part of the story unfolded. I am now the only one left in the room with these three. Everyone else left within 5 min or so. So I’m just staring straight at my computer screen and nowhere else. And needless to say, I’m very happy to not have been involved.

So one interesting thing to note about Ireland is that when you order food somewhere, they reserve the right to change up the ingredients from what is listed as much as they want. Such as, I just went to a café with a guy and we both ordered the exact same sandwich, and it was made by the exact same person, yet he ended up with: a different sauce, different veggies on the sandwich, a different flavor of potato chips, and mashed peas instead of corn on the cob. And that is not the only instance of that either. It’s really very confusing. Good thing I don’t care TOO much what I get cause it could be a serious problem.

I find it very interesting that I am only willing to purchase brands that I don’t know if there are no options with brands that I do know. Like I can walk up to a section of the store filled with drink options and I will walk away with a Coke almost every time. There may be 30 different options present and there is a good chance that I would like some of them much more than coke (I don’t even like coke much! I’d get pepsi if they had it..). But still, I will go for the coke every time just cause it’s something I know. Same with candy. I always walk up to the candy counter and it’s like I really want to get some candy but there just aren’t any brands that I’ve heard of on the shelf so I end up walking away with my tooth unsatisfied. And I hate to have to do that to him because he really is my sweetest tooth. Hah cheesy. And actually, I shouldn’t say that I leave him unsatisfied. The one brand of candy that I know here is Haribo gummi bears and I have eaten a TON of them. Like I’m sure that everyone in my room with me is thinking I’m a huge FFA (future fat american) cause they can all just see me over there in my bunk every night watching an episode of the office, and they can all hear the work that I’m doing on the fantastic gummi ursus.

So to end that last paragraph, I used the word ursus instead of bears. That word is the general scientific name for the bears. Thus, I used it. However, I find myself wondering why I do things like that. Like I didn’t just know that. I took the time to get on google, search for “scientific bear name” and find what I was looking for. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense except that, at the same time, it does.

So I went by this coffee shop yesterday afternoon that is owned by some friends of my aunt and uncle’s. It was called An Tobar Nua which means “on the canal”. I was planning on just walking in, stating that I was related to the great Bunker and Penny Sessions, and having something awesome happen after that. Instead, I went in, ordered some food, sat down, ate it, played on my computer for about a hour, then got up to leave. As I was walking out, I decided I definitely needed to see if the owners were here. So I started a convo with the girl behind the counter and ended up, in a roundabout way, finding out that they are actually not in Ireland right now anyways. They are in the States. It was mildly anticlimactic. It was a really really cool coffee shop though. It felt like an american coffee shop. And if you’re wondering what the difference is between an american and a European coffee shop, it’s all about the space. For some reason, Europeans just don’t need as much personal space as Americans. It’s like they can be all up on each other and it’s no big deal. Americans, on the other hand, like to have quite a bit of space to call their own albeit temporarily. I definitely fit the mold in this area. It’s just weird. Like if you go to a restaurant with just two people, they may sit you at a 4 person table with another group of 2. And you’re not expected to eat with the two you don’t know or talk to them or anything. You’re just expected to coexist and be ok with eating your pizza while someone you don’t know is quite literally, all up on your business. It is kinda cool be feel free to get all up in someone else’s business though. I run a tight system of double standards.

Picture Christian, he’s walking through a bookstore, semi-looking for the book by James Joyce called “Dubliners” and also perfectly fine with finding a better alternative. As he’s walking past aisles of books, he glances at the title of a book. Wait, what was that title? (Double-take, pace has not slowed though) He walks about 2 steps past the aisle, comes to a dead stop, and thinks in his head “nooooo…I didn’t just see that did I?” When he cannot 100% confirm that he saw it, he chooses to turn around and go back to the aisle. He did see that. Wow. That is the most ridiculously titled book he’s ever seen. He doesn’t even look inside of it because he doesn’t even WANT to know what it is about. He simply takes a picture of the cover so that later on, when his future self is doubting the existence of the book, he can prove it to him that he really did see it.

Ah, I really want to add a picture here…I cant think what I should add a picture of though…hmmm…maybe I’ll just take a picture of myself real quick and put it up to remind you guys what I look like…I think I’ll title this picture “Christian Trying/Failing to Look Cool”:

And now, since that picture screams “tool-shed full of tool-bags and tool-belts!”, here is a picture of me being me. I’ll title this one “That’s More Like It”:

Ok fine. Here's the picture of the cover of the book:
I probably played that up too much...but is that not a ridiculous book?! I think so.

So I am a little upset right now because I took an awesome video yesterday that I really wanted to show you guys except that I can’t because it is on my camera and I did not bring the cord to connect my camera to my computer. That actually is part of the reason that I haven’t taken many pictures. It’s like, if I can’t even show the pictures to people until like a month after I’ve lived them…I don’t know. It just seems like it would be annoying. Plus, people aren’t really going to be wanting to hear that much about my trip when I get back if they’ve read this blog cause I’m sure you’re getting way more than you asked for with this. Anyways though, the video was of this banjo player that was playing in the street here in Galway. He was insane on the banjo first of all. But then he was singing as well and his voice was pretty good as well. Then, on top of that, he was wearing tap shoes and he used his feet on the ground as precussion!! So in the video, he is dancing and playing the banjo and because he’s trying to make money, he’s being really theatrical and swinging his banjo all over the place. Remind me when I get back and I’ll show you the video. It was really impressive and reminded me of something that I would do in public if I had talent.

But there are a ton of musicians in the streets here. I really like it actually. I could just walk around and listen to street musicians all day I think. And some of them are stinkin good too. The good one’s always make me think of the movie “Once”. Cause there are some real artists out here that probably won’t ever make more than just the euros tossed into their hat, instrument case, or in one instance, their pants…haha this one guy had tucked the legs of this oversized pair of pants he was wearing into his socks and whenever someone wanted to give him money, he would grab the elastic waist and pull it out and people would toss money into his pants! Haha he was legit.

But then I see the other people who are trying to showcase their talents on the streets for money. There are some dancers who are cool. I can respect that. But the ones I just don’t understand and who I will NEVER give money to are the people who dress up in some outfit and pretend to be a statue. Like really? Ok even if that was a real talent, how boring of a life must that be? Just to stand there all the time and then be able to brag about how still you can be…no fun at all. Like this girl for instance that I saw today:
Oh wait. That's NOT a girl. That's a guy!! What the heck is he doing with his life? and he honestly wasn't really that good at being still. Plus, it rains like half of each day here (on and off all day) so they have to pick up and run inside multiple times throughout the day. Meaning that when it's raining, this guy has to go sit in a restaurant or something dressed like that until it stops. Crazy. I do have to give this next guy some credit though cause he was pretty stinkin good at it:
Ok that guy is actually a real statue. I did see that guy though and I thought he might be fake so I spent like 30 seconds getting close to it and in the end, I got the courage to touch it. I'm still not 100 percent that it is fake but i'm like 98%. The 2% that I'm not sure comes from the fact that its just in such a random place for a stationary statue...I don't know..I'll never be fully sure.

Today, we've had some great Irish weather (rain, cold, windy) so I decided to go for a walk and try to see something cool. Here are some pictures that I took on my walk:
This is the gate to a cool little cemetery that I found during my walk. I spent quite a while in here and had just a really sweet time with the Lord and some good fellowship with him. It was much needed and he definitely met me in a way that I needed. But these next few pictures are from the cemetary. And keep in mind, these are all just taken with my phone so quality isn't awesome. I took some with my camera as well but, as aforementioned, I cannot put those on my coputer til I get back to the states...



This was the biggest and coolest celtic cross. Almost all the graves had celtic crosses on them.
There were a few graves that were just big slabs of some kind of stone where the words were just barely and faintly etched into the top. This is one of those..



So anyways, that cemetery was a pretty cool place.

I feel like this little spot was made way cooler by how hard it was for me to get there. It's like a little walkway on top of a wall that was like...gosh it's just going to be too hard to explain. It was like a walkway that was up high but there were huge breaks in the wall so I had to actually climb up the wall to get here. Like it was basically two walls, like 10 feet apart from each other. And in between them is filled with dirt and now grows grass and these trees and stuff...if that makes any sense..
Just a fairly legit railway bridge.
Aston Martin Vanquish. Yeah, I touched it multiple times.
When I got out into the country a little bit, the walkways looked like this most of the time. It was really pretty!

So that's all the pictures I've got for the moment. Obviously I've decided to start taking some with my phone so hopefully they'll keep coming.

Ah this is just going to be a beast of a post. That's good. Ok so definitely one thing that is different about irish guys than the guys in the rest of the world is that, for some reason, they just love to walk around arm in arm with their friends and sing loudly in public places. Or really anytime. Like you could be looking around in a store and two guys in the back will I guess say something that reminds them of a song and they'll just break into it. It's actually exactly how I wish everybody was...but I don't know how well that would go over in the US. Who cares though actually! Dudes, be ready to sing with me in public places when I get back. Especially Danny. ;)

So the biggest decision that I still need to make today is whether or not to buy this hat that I really want. I'm not doing incredibly awesome on my budget (no suprise there) and this hat is like 30 euro...I really like it though. It's one of those oldschool hats that you would expect to see on either a newsie or on a golfer who wears knickers. I want it. Let's just be honest, I will probably buy it.

So I'm really interested to know whether people other than my parents have actually read through all this...actually, I wouldn't even be suprised it one of my parents didn't feel like reading through ALL of this. I mean I know it gets pretty lengthy. But hey if you do read it, you should let me know...yup yup.

There are people that I miss a lot right now.

I'm done. I should have stopped long ago but I didn't and there's no sense in...gosh. Whatever. I'm done for now though. Ok bye. Dang it. No i'm not done. I forgot that I wanted to recomend that everyone get's a CD by a band called Coconut Records. I've been into them for a while now but I'm listening to them right now and they're really tight. It's Jason Schwartzman's band (drummer from Phantom Planet and actor in like every Wes Anderson movie). They have two cd's and if you really are going to get one, get the one called "Nighttiming". And if my parents are the only ones reading this, then this was probably a worthless blurb cause I don't really feel like you'd like this band that much...hah maybe you would though. haha

Ok now I really am done.

Crash Bandicoot

Ramble! Where'd you go?

Before I get side-tracked with all that I want to get side-tracked with, here are the pictures that Trevor took of our James Joyce trek back in Dubsies:



Tons of this kind of stuff all over the place. I was into it.
We were walking right by a canal for a large part of our hike...thus the water in all of these...
You can see the next 20 minutes or so of our walk down the left side...
This is after we got to the coast and were actually on our way back. Those yellow flowers just lines like a solid 2 miles of the coast.
This was the "ocean" as we first saw it when we hit the coast. The tide was down at the moment but I guess whenever it comes in, this place just fills with water really quickly. That would have been cool to see. If you look really closely, you can see a black dot in the upper left of the picture that is a couple out there walking on it with their dog. So there's a little perspective...
Haha this was awesome. I wish you could see the surrounding area because this was in the middle of nowhere at all. But this little crappy mobile home had locked itself in there and that was just where they were living. We were taking pictures til the people inside looked out at us and made it awkward.
That's the last of them. Thanks Trevor Brown for taking those.

Now. I feel like during the last 24 hours, I have thought of so many things that I wanted to mention and now I keep drawing from the hat but every time, it's just a blank slip. I'm going to try one more time or else I'm just going to wait and do this later...blank. Sorry. I'll get back to this later today. Which honestly, is probably fine with you cause you'll be sleeping for another 6 hours or so (best case scenario).

Yer Boi

If you're looking out accross the atlantic from the US then yes, it's true. The grass actually is much greener on the other side.

The 5 pictures above were all taken by Trevor Brown. I wish i could take credit for them but i can't. They are all from around Dublin. The two pictures below are just things i got with my phone so they're nothing great. I wish i could capture how quaint and beautiful it is here much better than I have been able to. But i guess a taste is a taste.



In my head right now, I’m literally having a debate over whether or not I should add pictures to this blog. I don’t have very many at all but I did take a few with my phone today while I was out walking around…I just don’t feel like they will even come close to doing this place justice and so if I post both the pictures, and a large amount of verbal praise for the beauty of this place, you will be forced to question me. So who knows…I’ll decide by the time I finish up writing this.

You know how people always go places, take a bunch of pictures, come back home, get really excited to show you their pictures, and then finally convince you to sit through all of them? What is the disclaimer that is thrown out 95% of the time? “These pictures will not be able to do this justice.” To which you reply with an “I’m sure” or a “yeah of course”. Well I feel like Ireland might be one of those places that you actually could do justice to with photographs. Like if a really good photographer came here, I think that he or she might actually be able to capture this place in pictures. From a purely visual standpoint that is. The really incredible thing about this place is just the amount of GREEN!

So today I woke up early and caught a bus from Dublin to Galway (west coast of Ire). It was about a 3-hour bus-ride and even though, from a third-person perspective, I’m sure it would have looked like a very tranquil, smooth bus-ride. However, if you could have been in my head during this bus-ride, it was anything but tranquil. So I’m sure you’re wondering why it was so stressful mentally but I think I’ll make you wait a minute to hear why. Instead, I’ll go into the views driving across Ireland. Ireland is beautiful in a way that is different from anywhere I’ve ever seen before. It is very close to flat most places. There is very little elevation change anywhere. It’s just small rolling hills. And the entire country seems to be sectioned into sheep pastures or something. Like its just squares of perfectly smooth, green grass each bordered by rows of small trees. Then there are random streams winding their way through the countryside. Each bringing with it some very quaint, shire-esque bridges. Then there are the little perfect houses; each sitting on the highest point of land on each plot like the watchmen of paradise. And of course, the oversized cotton-balls with legs are EVERYWHERE (I’m speaking of sheep). And now, though my current literary train of thought is just all over the place, I shall now explain why the bus-ride was stressful. It’s really a stupid reason and probably one of those things that only someone like Alex will really be able to understand fully. So there were only 4 people on the bus I was riding on and I’m going to guess that this bus has at least 50 seats (and no, I’m not saying alex could understand best just because it deals with a bus). So anyways, whenever there are only four people on a bus, and there are 50 seats, you expect that people will spread out and give each other some space. However, as we’re about to pull away from the stop in Dublin, a girl got on the bus and walked all the way back to my row (2 from the back) and sat, not just in my row, but in the seat next to me! I think she asked whether I minded but she was from Finland, so I couldn’t understand her REAL well. Anyways, after she sat down, I decided I should try to make friends so I made some small talk. Her English was not so good though so that didn’t last long. After about 15 minutes, she decided to try to sleep. Long story short, I ended up spending the next 2 hours and 45 minutes telling this girl not to worry about it each time she nodded off and ended up with her head on my shoulder for about 5 seconds before jolting to awareness. It was incredibly awkward but she just kept doing it!!! Like I’m not exaggerating, she put her head on my shoulder at least 20 times during the car ride. I was like, “are you kidding!” I mean I didn’t actually say that though. And every time she did it, she’d give this little laugh that at first was OK, but by the end, I found myself mocking the laugh in my head for the 3 minutes following each time she did it. Needless to say, I was happy when we got to her stop.

Well, I thought about just going ahead and posting this now, but I just read back through it and it is just kinda flat. SO I think I’ll wait til later when I can add more too it and maybe I’ll be in the mood to be more ridiculous.

**18 Hours later**

Wow. I’m getting behind now. And even though I have now two very big nights to tell you about, I must first make some meaningless observations about the room in which I am currently sitting. Ok so see if you can picture the wall décor that I am about to describe to you. O the wall directly opposite me, there are 8 red dots all in a horizontal line and decreasing in size from left to right. Each one has a clock in it with the local time of a different place in the world. There are three things about it that are bugging me. Firstly, I don’t understand why they made the dots decrease in size if they were going to put the same size clock in all of them. That just doesn’t make sense and it kinda looks weird because the dot furthest to the right is almost disappearing behind the local time in Tokyo. This brings me to my second observation. The local time in Tokyo is found on both the 4th and the 8th dots…that’s just kinda weird. I mean there are 24 time zones in the world (I believe) and here we have space for only 8. But instead of choosing 8 different ones, we have chosen Tokyo twice. Then, on top of that, the décor itself is 8 different red dots surrounded by white…each very reminiscent of it’s own personal Japanese flag. I dong know. It’s just confusing me. Then my last problem with this is that the 6th dot is larger than the 5th. It’s like they’re out of order. The 2nd is smaller than the 1st, the 3rd smaller than the 2nd, etc. All except the 6th. It’s kinda driving me nuts the more I talk about it though so I’ll move on.

In other news, I definitely watched almost all of Spiderman 3 with some people last night and Toby Maguire has got to be the cheesiest possible character in that movie. I mean when spiderman starts moving his hips in a pelvic thrust motion repetitively, you know that you have moved from the genre of “awesome comic book movie with superhero that I secretly (and I guess now openly) reeeeeally desire to share superpowers with” to the genre of “what the heck is happening and why am I still sitting here? /SLASH/ haha this is kinda funny actually…”

So two nights ago, I was on my last night in Dublin. And it was a great one. At, I believe, around 7 or so, I set off with Trevor and Jean (the tight couple I met there from N. Carolina. And I don’t think they’ll read through this, but on the offchance that they do, I’m not going to go into details of why they’re so awesome because that would be awkward. But we’ll just say that they’re tight and that as far as couples go, I’ve never met one that was as easy to hang out with. And they obviously loved each other a lot and understood each other really well. Ok I’m done) where was i? Oh yes, I set off with Trevor and Jean on a journey. Trevor is a creative writing major back in college and so he’s into cool books and stuff. Anyways, he had read a book of short stories that take place in Dublin written by the one and only James Joyce. Joyce apparently liked to be very cartographically accurate and so he put maps in the book to go along with the stories. So Trevor had one of these short stories that took these two children out into this field on the coast of Dublin and so we were going to try to walk the path. Well, turns out that Dublin is very different in 2009 than it was in 1920 and so there is a lot more going on around the shipyards in Dublin than there used to be. Anyways so we weren’t really able to walk the exact path but we did end up finding the field we think. Even if it wasn’t really the field though, the hike was AWESOME! I feel like we really got out of the touristy area and saw some of what the real Dublin is like. And once we got to the coast, it was beautiful. Trevor took a ton of pictures so when he puts them up, I’ll put some of them on here so you can see some of our trek. I think we probably walked somewhere between 7 and 10 miles total and it was great. Totally loved it.. And then that night, I just went back to that pub that was playing the good music the previous night and hung out for just a bit before going back home. Great night.

Now to last night. Last night I went to a pub here in Galway that was playing some traditional irish music and I was totally planning on just staying for a little while and then heading to bed early, but I met these two American girls in there and I ended up going around with them to a few different pubs looking for a good place to get our irish dance on. Their names were Ashlee and Alycia and the reason they were so fun to hang out with was because they weren’t like every other american girl here who just wants to meet guys who are down to have a random fling for the night. They were actually just fun to hang out with for the night and they weren’t getting wasted or anything. Plus they danced like my friends back home do and didn’t seem to care much that everyone was watching. So it was a real fun night. It’s weird though how you can spend an entire evening hanging out and just having fun with some people and then at the end of the night, you say bye and you’re pretty much positive it’s literally the last time you’ll talk to them. It’s just kinda weird but is kinda a pattern on this trip just cause people are always moving on to other places (including myself).

Ways to tell if a girl is an american:
1. If it takes her more than 20 minutes to finish a beer, she’s got to be american.
2. If she makes a little sour face after every sip of the beer, she’s definitely an american.
3. If she’s wearing flip-flops when she goes out at night, she’s an american.
4. If, when the irish music starts playing, she moves her hips first instead of her feet first, there’s a good chance she’s american.
5. And if she’s not wearing a lot of make-up when she goes out, she’s an american.

How to tell if a guy in a pub is american:
1. If he’s part of a group of people, and you watch them for more than 5 min, you will see that the american guys are all looking around the room and trying to find the cutest girls that look the most drunk. Then after about 7 minutes of searching, they will each try to place themselves near the girls they have chosen, “accidentally” bump into them, and use that to start a conversation. Americans, in general, are annoying and just trying to make out with a girl each night.
2. If he his not part of a group (he is alone), the american guy will be leaning against a wall, beer in hand, trying his best to put of the cool guy, John Wayne vibe. I think his hope is that a girl will just come talk to him if he looks cool enough or something. Regardless, it doesn’t work. But that american guy is very easy to pick out.

I have decided that the best way to meet people is to just go up to them and start a conversation. I’ve found that most people are also interested in meeting people and that, even though this is contrary to my former thought process, the start of a conversation does not have to make sense. You just have o say something, anything, that breaks the ice. Then you exchange names, origins, etc etc etc and now you’re friends. It’s actually very easy.

And I really like it that for some reason, which makes no sense to me, people think I am british. I don’t think I’m trying to talk differently or anything either. I am just glad though that I don’t sound like I’m from Oklahoma. Even the american girls I was kickin it with last night said they thought I sounded like I was from the UK. It made me way too happy.

OK this is waaaay too long. I’m going to stop without a closing.

Christian

OH and obviously, i decided to add pictures...

You are dancing to my little red book...

Once again I find myself sitting on this same couch, my feet suffering greatly but temporarily alleviated from pain by means of the coffee table perch they have commandeered. Once again I am typing on my laptop while listening to Ben Harper’s new cd and am currently listening to the song “Faithfully Remain”. There’s another chick flick on the TV turned on by some girls. Really, you could put this moment directly beside the similar moment from yesterday and you might not even be able to tell a difference. However, an entire day and night has gone by between the two moments. A good day and a good night.

I’ll work backwards. I just returned from the Irish Museum of Archeology with Phil. It was pretty cool. It had a bunch of things that they have found from the Viking era. It was pretty crazy. They had some sick combs that were carved out of slivers of deer antler. The prongs were so tiny I can’t believe you could make them without them breaking. And then they had a bunch of weapons and jewelry and masonry and all the stuff you would expect. The two coolest things that they had there were: first, they had a canoe-type boat from like 500-100 BC. It was carved out of a tree trunk and was about 35-40 ft long but only like a foot deep. For some reason, it was awesome. Then they had these guys whose bodies had been found in some marshland which had somehow preserved them incredibly well. Like it was actually really creepy. This one guy’s face was like perfect. Other than the fact that it looked hard, and his skin had turned to like a charred black color, he could have been alive still. And you could still see like the hairs on the back of his fingers and everything. It was crazy and kinda creep-tastic.

So directly before that, me, phil, and Daniel went to get some lunch and took a real long walk around Dublin and just took in some final sights. Originally, we were looking for an Irish lunch but after examining about 8 menus, we decided to avoid low-blowing our wallets and we just went to Burger King. Phil tells me that I almost got killed by a guy on a motorcycle when I was crossing the street. I was like, dude, the motorcycle dude is lucky I didn’t see him coming cause I would probably have instinctively punched his motorcycle in the face. Yeah.

I’m trying to think what we did all morning prior to lunch…oh yeah, I slept til like 2pm. We were up pretty late last night. The night started out with just hanging out with a bunch of people in the hostel. I think, in the end, our group consisted of a French-Canadian guy, 2 german guys, a german girl, an american guy, an american girl, and two guys from florida who think they’re irish. We just hung out for a long time at the hostel and then at around midnight, we went to a pub down the street that was playing some awesome traditional irish music. I mean it definitely felt very gimmicky and completely non-authentic, but it was still fun because the live band was good and they were playing great music for doing some folky dancing. Now let’s just say that there are two facts that, at this point, are 100% true. Fact 1: Christian Roderick does NOT know how to folk dance. Fact 2: at least 50 people are now FULLY aware of Fact 1. Hah it was really fun though. I do want to say that nobody was really dancing when we got there and I’m pretty sure that I get a lot of the credit for getting the dancing going. A group of like 30 year old girls from Wales were cool enough to join in on the dancing and it was a good time. Then they made us go to some other place to dance cause they said it was more fun. It ended up being like a real dance club. The girls got us in free somehow and I pretty much had a blast dancing “Christian-style” for a while and then we left at like 3 AM and came back to hang out at the hostel some more with everybody. All in all, it was a pretty fun night. I’m always down to get my dance on!

Prior to all that, Phil, Daniel, and I went to a restaurant that was serving “Real Irish Food”. The food was great and the live irish music was awesome and it was just an all-around good experience.

And that brings us right back to the mirror image of this current moment from yesterday.

Basically though, at the moment I am very happy with having found myself able to meet people and I’ve been happy with the people I’ve met as well. One of the German guys that I met yesterday reminded me sooo much of Andy it was ridiculous. He and I ended up getting into a really intense discussion about socialism/capitalism/obama/bush/etc. It was actually pretty fun though cause he wasn’t completely close-minded about anything and I hope he didn’t find me close-minded either. I think he helped me understand some of why he thinks the way he does and stuff. But really, when it really gets down to it, there is just this fundamental difference in thinking between american capitalists and European socialists. I really believe that if they could experience the freedom of capitalism, they would realize that it’s value greatly outweighs the negative aspects of it as a system. And the more I learn about how thoroughly socialism dominates every area of your life in Europe, the more scared I become about that happening in the United States. I hope to have some more conversations similar to this throughout my trip.

Well…I don’t know whether anyone even really reads this in it’s entirety (which is completely understandable considering that it’s all kinds of long), but if you do, thanks for caring that much. I’m having a lot of fun over here and I’m also just loving meeting all these people.

I’m out for now.

Rodsies

Phoebe what?

Results of speedwalking around Dublin for 3 hours:
1. Feet feel like they are currently walking around on hot gravel when, in reality, they are actually just perched atop the miniature coffee table sitting in front of this comfy couch I’m lounging on.
2. My shirt is not wet but is very damp. It has been “spraining” off and on all day here. IF you are not familiar with the term, here is an explanation: “spraining” is a term used to describe a very light rain. It is different from saying that it is sprinkling because when you say it is sprinkling, you usually mean that it is essentially misting heavily. However, when it is spraining, it is both misting (not heavily though) as well as raining sparsely (word?) . This is taking me much longer to explain than it should cause I’m trying to be all clever about the way I say it. Basically though, spraining is a mix between sprinkling and raining. It’s not just “raining” because the raindrops are fewer and further between. It is also not just sprinkling though because there are raindrops mixed in. Thus, spraining. Gosh.
3. My fingers are almost to the point of being numb from cold and my arm muscles feel very sluggish for the same reason. However, I am also sweating pretty heavily. There is a really cool, fairly strong wind that is ever present thus far in Dublin and when the sun is not out (as is the case today) it can be pretty cold. I, in all my brilliance, decided to just wear a t-shirt today and have ended up with cold arms and hands. But due to the intensity of my walking, I find myself sweating as well. It feels confusing but I like it…

Did I or did I not buy something really shady from a creepy lady in an alleyway that I accidentally wandered into? I did not.

I did, however, purchase 2 sweaters from a store, the name of which I shall not disclose. Regardless though, I now can actually dress appropriately for the weather here. I definitely brought not enough long-sleeved shirts. I just brought all t-shirts. Stupid.

So originally, the purpose of my long walk through Dublin was to meet up with Phil Rogers and Daniel at the Guinness Brewery for a tour. Phil and Dan showed up at my hostel this morning and are staying til tomorrow night so we’re kicking it. Unfortunately though, my head does not hold as good of a map as I thought it did and I never found the brewery. I did end up in a really cool part of Dublin though. I think I kinda got away from the touristy area and got to see where people really live and I got to see some actual irish people instead of just seeing the mix of people visiting Ireland that I had been seeing. So that was cool. Dublin is interesting. I can’t really get a read on it. Sometimes I’m really impressed with it’s cleanliness, and other times, I’m appalled by how filthy it is. Sometimes I meet irish people who are just the nicest, most helpful people I could ask for and other times, they are just short (verbally and in stature) and kinda mean.

In my hostel, I am in a room with 5 beds other than my own. Currently, 4 of them are in use. I am rooming with a guy from Ireland who lives about 45 minutes away and is just here for a week taking a class, a French-Canadian guy who is 18 years old and here looking for a job and a place to live (he’s kinda weird and awkward), and then a French couple who are obsessed with whispering very loudly. Like seriously, I think they could just talk half as loud as they are “whispering”. And there has got to be no language more annoying to hear whispered than French. And they keep inviting me to go do stuff with them cause they think I’m lonely and I keep having to come up with excuses when the truth is really that they don’t speak great English and it would be a really labored conversation which I’m not too into.

I did meet a couple of tight people from North Carolina. Jean and Trevor what what!? Yeah but they’re tight and we went out and got a couple of pints of Guinness last night which, as I was told so many times prior to testing it out for myself, actually is a lot better here than in the states. It’s still not my favorite, but it’s not bad. We’re in a really touristy area though so a pint ran us about 6 euro a piece!! That’s like $7.50!! Ridiculous…but totally worth it. I would talk more about the N. Carolinians but I feel like they may read this and that’s just weird.

As of right now I have yet to put my camera to good use. This does not mean that I have not taken any pictures though. I have taken one. You know those pictures that you always see on people’s cameras where you can tell they JUST took their camera out of their bag and they just want to shoot something so they take a picture of their friend when their friend isn’t even looking and so you end up with a picture of some person almost from behind with his mouth half open, looking like he either just pointed at something or is about to point at something and the lighting sucks, etc...well I took one of those of Phil. That is the only picture I’ve taken. It’s pretty good.

Oh yeah, so there are head shops all over the place with big marijuana leaves on the front and stuff so me and another dude walked into one just to check it out. They weren’t selling marijuana there (not that we were looking for any) but they had all the paraphernalia like US head shops. And of course they have all the counter-culture stuff like t-shirts with che Guevara on them and stuff. Anyways, I have been thoroughly confused about whether pot is legal here or not because I will randomly see people smoking it just out in the open but if it was legal, I would think they would be selling it in places like head shops. So anyways, during my walk today, I saw a guy who was smoking some and so I stopped him and asked him. I was like “dude, is marijuana legal here?” His answer was, “well…it’s not illegal…want some?” So I said no and he went on. But what the heck does that mean? Like what a noncommittal answer. I mean using my deductive reasoning I think that means that it is legal…but why wouldn’t he just say that? The point though is that I still have no idea what the laws are here regarding pot and I think I am more confused now than I was before. Awesome. I guess I really don’t care anyways. I was just wondering.

Another thing worth noting is that the new Ben Harper CD is legit. I got it just before I left and have been listening to it a lot. I’m actually listening to it at this exact moment. It’s bomb. Check it out. The song on right now is “Faithfully remain”. It’s a good one.

**Two hour time gap**
So now I’m definitely watching PS I love you. Not my movie choice. These two girls just came into the TV room and decided we needed to be really chicky flicky and so they’ve not turned it on and I’m engrossed. I believe their names were Rachel and Amanda…not positive though and who knows if I ever will be? Jesus does. He knows everything.

I have never been as happy as I hoped to be with a wine that has a screw-on top. This bottle wasn’t even dirt cheap or anything. It was like 15 dollars US. It just had a screw cap so it sucks. Ok fine it doesn’t completely suck. Maybe it’s like a 50% sucker. Yeah. That’s about right.

I feel incredibly gay watching this movie with people I don’t know. Why is it so different when I watch a movie with people I don’t know as compared to watching the same movie with people I do know? Like I could watch this movie with Becca or with Alex and I wouldn’t feel gay at all. But here, in this room with these two girls I don’t know, watching “Merrick” telling his wife how much he loves her, I feel crazy feminine. I don’t like it. I wonder if that’s how every girl in the room was feeling during gladiator yesterday…I don’t think so. I think that’s just cause its not a negative thing for girls to like guy things. Or maybe I’m just stupid in thinking that Gladiator is a guy movie…whatever. It’s whatever. It is whatever. It IS whatever.

*1 hour later*

Ok, so the actress that plays phoebe in Friends is also in PS I love you as one of the main girl’s friends. She’s freakin hilarious.

Christain

Outski