Wednesday, January 30, 2013

James Joyce's Pub

I thought I'd give you a better sense of our everyday with some pictures today. Mandy reminded me to make sure I take pictures of even everyday stuff so that we would remember.The time is already starting to speed by, so I can no longer wait to document the everyday.

I was going to take a few pictures across campus, but got caught in a downpour, so I waited until I was safely inside my office:


It is a lovely office. I can facetime and/or skype there for "free" (i.e. not soak up our rationed internet), so that's where I tend to call family (or at least those in the US willing to wake up between 5 and 7 a.m.!). My brother noted that the office looked like a cell block. It is empty (I brought only a couple of books) and the walls are made of cinder blocks. But it is in a new building and it has a window that overlooks a little park with a red sculpture!

This is a million times nicer than my windowless office at home whose back wall abuts the economics department office door that slams continuously, shaking my bookshelves, all day long.

The rain came and went all day long and I hardly got wet!

This was my short day, so I headed back to town at 1ish ("half one") to have lunch with Sheila. I picked her up at Starbucks. Here is the outside of the building. I included the same link here as I did on a previous post because one of the comments is about the fantastic old postal building that houses the coffee shop. Here it is from the front. It reminds me of the Bruggers Bagels in our Minneapolis neighborhood that occupies an old firehouse.


We are working our way through the restaurants in this little village. Today we decided to dine in a pub frequented by James Joyce, called Jack O'Rourkes.
 
I can't seem to avoid the man (I'm not sure anyone can avoid him while visiting Dublin), but I've always had this ambivalent feeling about him. A mentor of mine from college did her dissertation on him and I've always wanted to read Ulysses, however, despite the fact that Sheila's mom gave it to me for one birthday, I have yet to do so. I must have some sort of mind block because I love difficult writers* and don't generally shy away from their challenging texts. Maybe while sipping a pint in his pub, living a few blocks from one of his childhood homes (in 1892 his family moved to a large semi-detached house in Blackrock called Leoville at 23 Carysfort which now appears to be an office now for a few lawyers**), and teaching where he spent a few college years, I will finally get through it.***


Colleen Rourke Werle (an Annunciation mom-friend of ours) spent some time in Dublin after college working at SuperQuinns and has set us up with a good friend of hers! He's taking us to Howth on Sunday. We promised to enjoy a Carlsberg in her honor. Here's to you Colleen and thanks for the hook-up! We're psyched to meet someone new and see a bit more of the area.


(As an aside, check out those women in the background. You can't believe what these people eat for lunch! Granted, statistically, the Irish tend to weigh more relative to other Europeans, but NOT compared to Americans... The two women at the very back seemed to be sisters meeting for lunch. They had some kind of curry or lasagna in a bowl, french fries, a huge latte and a piece of chocolate pie. The older gal in the middle had a huge portion of "casserole" -- beef in delicious gravy with mashed potatoes. None of these women seemed to be heavy. Seriously. I've never seen an American woman eat like that at lunch. Sheila and I split an order of fish and chips which, along with the beer is a decidedly non-American lunch, but seemed reasonable alongside these hearty women.)

On the kid front, Maggie came home with this "maths" result:



 I wish I could be so casually good at something as she is at math. We are keeping up with the Annunciation math homework as they are working on a different subject here. She's doing basic geometry (as you can see above) here and we can't ignore the algebra they are getting back home. We spend about 20 minutes per day working through the Annunciation text. She seems to both come by it easily and despise it.

Johnny literally walked out of his shoes today (they fell apart) so we headed into the town after school and picked up some new tennies ("runners" here) and a set of Match Attax cards for 80p. He's jumped right in to collecting these cards with soccer ("football") dudes on them, claiming his favorite team is "Liverpool" (no idea where that came from. The only sport we usually have on television is ice hockey). We even learned the real game tonight (pictured below). This was far better than his made-up game in which he would simply play his "best" card (i.e. one with highest combined values for "attack" and "defense" thereby winning every single time). 



At school both kids are learning from a distinctly Irish perspective, while at home, as I said, I am increasingly becoming interested in Irish history (both ancient and modern). Maggie is learning about the Romans ("did you know that the Romans didn't colonize Ireland because it was too cold?" -- She's right. Here's the Wikipedia quote: "It is likely that the Romans saw a connection between these historical names and the Latin word hibernus meaning wintry. In any case, the Roman historian Tacitus, in his book Agricola (c. 98 AD), uses the name Hibernia.").

Johnny is learning some Gaelic but also about Irish explorers like Tom Crean. Nicknamed the "Irish Giant", Crean was an Antarctic explorer from Co. Kerry who through his bravery and endurance won three polar medals. Here he is:

Tom Crean, in full polar travelling gear.

Tom Crean with sled dog puppies, Feb 7, 1915.
For those of you anticipating a post from Sheila, I am urging her and I know ideas are brewing. Keep patient!


*My current favs are Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace.

 **If you look at this map of his old house we are literally around the corner on "Brookfield Terrace." For those of you interested in maps, you can see how close we are to the little village and the sea. Maggie's school is north on the map off of Sydney Avenue and Johnny's is southwest before you get to Newtownpark Avenue. You can't see the park that we ride through on the map, but you can see there are no roads there.

***I just bought the complete works of James Joyce on my Kindle for $1.49.

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