Carna and Connemara

http://picasaweb.google.com/jbrauck/CarnaAndConnemara?authkey=RQzvsHlgG1I&feat=directlink
I feel bad writing so much on this blog!! And I won't feel bad if you guys don't read it, haha! PS- it's snowing dippin' dots outside! First and porb last snow in Ireland! This weekend, we had our first Rutgers excursion to towns called Carna and Connemara, right outside of Galway City. It was a 3 hour train ride there, but once we got there, it was fine. The bus ride from the train station in Galway to the small towns was an hour+ of bump after bump. It was not a fun bus ride. And with no street lights, we felt a little lost. We arrived to our B&B's, met our house mum Sally and then headed back on the bus to go to the Carna Bay Hotel (Ostan Cuan Carna, in Gaelic) for dinner and a trad (short for traditional) night of music and dancing! We met some of the townspeople, one being named Joe-John, who I made quite the connection with! This 80+ year old man just thought I was the shiz, it was too funny. He was smiling at me, telling me how great a dancer I was! We did a trad line dance and another man spun me around like in the Titanic! It was SO much fun. We heard trad "sean-nos" music and singing, done by Joe-John and friends. Sean-nos sort of sounds like Indian music. It was pretty cool to hear. I have videos of it, that I'll post at the bottom of this blog. I learned how to dance that night, and it was just such a great time. Unlike the girlies in italia right now, I'm not raving about the food. Let's just say it was a pretty damn white plate of food (turkey and taters). The next morning, we met Micheal Gibbons, a leading archeologist. He took us hiking up the boggy mountains of Connemara. A bog is bascially a hole in the ground filled with water and covered in moss. So if you step on it, you won't sink in, unless you run across it (the force would break the surface) Some bogs are 50 meters deep while some are not so deep. Micheal told us that recently, a kid drowned in one, and he was really experienced with bogs. But he couldn't swim, so his dog came back to the house without the boy. But the photos are breathtakingly beautiful. Again, I was taken-a-back by the utter beauty of this country. It was moving how places like this could exist, especially in this crazy day in age. It's 2009 and these mountains are still as beautiful as the day they were made. We learned that the tombs on the mountain buried some of the worst people (according to Catholic Law). The tombstone's headstone was pointing north, which was not a good prognosis for that person's chances of making it to heaven. Because Jerusalem is to the East, it was customary to bury the good with their heads facing east so that Jesus could judge them when he came back. All children were buried to the north-south because they had original sin (not baptized). Interesting stuff. Saturday night, we went to a dance competition in memory of Coilin Sheain Dharach, a great Ros Muc (a town) sean-nos dancer! (videos posted!) Then we went to the Tigh Clarke pub in Ros Muc to mingle with the locals and listen to more sean-nos music!
Overall, a great weekend. Check out the picasa album for pics! LOVE