Musings

It is amazing what food can do.

I am sitting in Louisburgh Ireland, in a cottage by the sea, and with one sip of mint tea, I am transported to a dock on lake Manitowish.

Last summer, as I do most every summer, I spent some time at the family cabin in Manatowish Waters Wisconsin.  For me, it is as close as it comes to heaven on earth.  That could be for a number of reasons:  I have years of great memories of the place, it is in a picturesque location, and yet the one thing that really makes it stand out to me are the people whom I have spent time with there.

Oh yeah, last year, that’s right.  I was at the cabin with my immediate family, as well as many of my family who are not genealogically related to me.  One of the members of the “adopted family” had brought a box of peppermint tea, and a bar of dark chocolate that she was sharing with the rest of us as we sat around the fire playing cribbage and sharing stories.

To my surprise, I unintentionally picked out the same tea from a supermarket in Galway this weekend.  I have had a cup of this tea twice now and both times have brought me back to last summer.  I am now sipping on a third cup as I write this.

I like to have things that remind me of home, things that can bring me to a happy place when I am away.  I think I just found one of those things.

Looking back on what I have written so far on this post I realized something.

I am so so lucky. 

Ok i didn't just realize this, I just thought that I should throw it out there.

Part of my luck is due to the fact that I was born into a lot of privilege, but the part that I am most thankful for is that throughout my whole life I have been surrounded with wonderful people who love and support me.  There are too many of these people to name here, but chances are that if you are reading this than you are one of them, and I am so lucky to have you in my life.

I’m sorry if this post was a little bit scattered.

But what the heck lets stick with it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Maya Angelou that I somewhat ironically remember well.

People will forget what you said

People will forget what you did

But people will never forget how you made them feel.

Stay excellent,

Willie

Travel Preperations

As promised, here are the pictures of the rocky beach.

These pictures are taken at high enough tide where I could not walk around in the rocky area.

Now to change topic completely, I want to talk about preparation for a trip abroad.

But I am not going to talk about what to pack, that is boring.  If you want advice on what to pack look here, here or here

What I want to talk about is mental preparation for a trip abroad.

Personally, I feel like this is an often overlooked and yet very important aspect of travel.  So, I have come up with a few pieces of advice for your next foreign escapade.

1. Know something about U.S. foreign policy.  I know it sounds boring, but foreigners really enjoy talking about politics of the United States.  If you know less than they do, then not only do you look stupid but it also feeds into the stereotype of the “Ignorant American Tourist.”  You really should be informed about the politics of the U.S. even if you are not planning on being abroad.

2. Write a Bucket List for your travels.  When I say write, I mean actually on a piece of paper; writing down goals makes them more concrete.  If you actually have a tangible list, you are far more likely to complete it.  I am by no means a lists person, but I have to admit that I enjoy crossing things off my “Ireland Bucket List.”

3. Learn something.  For me this is inevitable as I am taking classes, but even if you are taking a three week vacation, it is worth it to learn something new, be it a hobby, game, or a skill.

4. Be able to vent.  If you are on a trip that last longer than a week, chances are you will get annoyed with something or someone.  It is ok to be unhappy on vacation, but the sooner you vent these frustrations, the sooner you can go back to having fun.

5. Write.  I for one have a mediocre memory for events, and let’s face it no one can remember everything.  Keeping a journal or a blog is a great way to reflect on and record the adventures you have.

6. Stay positive!  Attitude is 90ish percent of the battle if not more.

Well, that is all I have for you.

I hope your day is groovy,

Willie

Adventure on the Rocks

Four days ago there was a light rain, and because I had gotten no exercise, and because I felt adventurous, I decided to go exploring on the rocky end of the beach.

A few days prior I had seen a rather large rocky section of the beach from a distance, and as I have an inclination to climb anything that I can, I decided to go back and have a look.

The tide was very high by the time I got to the rocky section.  This along with the fact that it was raining led me to the decission that that day was not the day to climb.  Despite this decision, I did go poking around a little bit.

I found myself standing on a ledge about five feet off the ground near a little inlet.  Then all of a sudden, I see a wave come crashing out of what seemed to be the rock it’s self.  After a second I realized that there was a tunnel through the rock!

Fast-forward two days and I am back at the same place at low tide.

It was as I had imagined it.  There was a tunnel about ten feet tall and six feet wide that led through the cliff.  The tunnel is somewhat of a passage to another side of the beach.  On the side you enter from there are a lot of pebbles, and there is a river emptying into the sea. On the other side there are huge rock cliffs that surrounded me as I clambered over massive boulders.

I have gone back there twice since then and I have yet to bring my camera.  I plan on going tomorrow to take some pictures of the spot because it is really something worth seeing.  When I do get the pictures I will post them up here.

Speaking of pictures, here is a picture of the group of us that played rugby on Pallentines day.

It looks on here like we tore up the lawn but we really didn't I promise...

Stay excellent,

Willie

Pallentines Day

Today is February 14^th which means a lot to some people.  Personally, I find myself on the other end of the spectrum, closer to the end that says Hallmark invented Valentine’s Day to sell cards.  So, in an effort to stick it to the man, and because I am at present a few thousand miles from my significant other, I have decided to celebrate Pallentines day. 

What is Pallentines Day?

It is a day when you hang out with all of your palls and do things that make you happy.

On my Pallentines day I woke up, looked out the window, and what did I see?

Snow!

At first I was a little crestfallen, but after breakfast was done and the snow had not given up I heard a knock on the door, and two girls from another cottage came in and asked if we wanted to have a snowball fight.

My roommate and I jumped at the opportunity, and after getting dressed up, we were outside throwing slushy snowballs at one another.  After about 15 minutes of this, three guys came outside and brought their rugby ball.

We split up ourselves up into two teams, named Team Ramrod and the Riders of Johan.  We spent about an hour running into each other, falling into the four inch deep pools of slush, and Laughing like crazy.

So between that and my own personal ice cream cake, I think that today is going to be a great Pallentines day.

So as always, any questions, comments, or snide remarks are encouraged.

Have a beautiful day,

Willie

Culinary Adventures

I love to cook.

However, I have very little experience actually cooking.  I have watched a lot of people who know how to cook and I have learned what I can from those people.

In coming to Ireland I decided to just go for it and cook whenever possible.  I thought I would share a few of my successes and failures with you.

Day 1: we made pasta with tomato sauce. 

The pasta is easy.  Or so I thought…  There were two important things that I forgot. 1: you have to stir noodles or they clump together. 2: pasta doubles in size when cooked.  To be honest it could have gone worse, the first day of noodles were great.  It was the leftovers that were pretty much one solid mass.  Cooking noodles really is pretty easy, you just can’t totally forget about them, as I did.

The sauce is the fun part, so here is what you do.  You start with oil (I used olive oil but vegetable oil works too) on low heat(3 out of 10 was the setting that worked for me) and chopped up garlic (I use about half a bulb but I love garlic so you can change that by your preference).  After say five-ish minutes, you add chopped onion, I used a little over half of a baseball sized onion.  You let that simmer (stirring it occasionally) and as you are doing that you cut up 3 tomatoes.  The tomatoes should be cut up fairly well, no bigger than a piece you would put on a salad.  After adding the tomatoes, you can pump the heat up (not too hot, medium hot-ish is good I went 7 out of 10.) You stir that a lot as it cooks.  Then I added a little sauce from a jar (just for color… I think.)

If there is a message to be gained from this story it is this: don’t get so caught up in the new exciting things that you forget the fundamentals that you rely on.

As usual, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Living vs Traveling

About a month before I took the hop across the pond, I was talking to a friend of mine about what it meant to “live” somewhere.  He studied abroad in London, and after he got back to the states he was told that studying abroad did not “count as living there.”   He and I both disagreed, but that raised an interesting question: when does it change from “I traveled in Ireland” to “I lived in Ireland?” 

There are any number of metrics that could be used to distinguish the difference between living and traveling.  He was of the opinion that if you pay rent in a place, then you have lived there.  Since then I have asked a few people and have gotten mixed answers, I heard anything from knowing the names of 5 locals to cooking your own food.

I did an exchange program in Germany in high school and looking back on it I don’t think that I really lived there.  Honestly that is just a feeling.  When I compare that to being in Ireland, it feels a lot more like I am living here now than I was then.  That may be because I will be here three months as opposed to three weeks, it may be because I never went off exploring by myself. 

This is clearly a complex and subjective question that is very difficult to judge… blah blah blah. The bottom line is we all have different ways of knowing when we have lived in a place.

So what’s my metric?

Toilet Paper.  It plays a vital but often overlooked role in everyday life.  If you travel somewhere you are generally provided with it, but when you live in your own place, you have to fend for yourself.   

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day,

Willie

PS Did you catch the pun?

Here We Go

I had originally intended my first blog post to be something about travel.  I have done a considerable amount of travel in my life and I believe that I have something to offer others in the way of stories and advice.  However, I am going to save that for another post.

Today started as I imagine many days here in Louisburgh will start, I rolled out of bed and walked to class.  After class I was on my way back to the cottages when a group of us stopped to talk to a man named Barry whom we had met a few days ago.  As we were about to go our separate ways he asked if I would like to go look at the damage that the storm had done to the coastline.

Having no other plans and wanting to get to know Barry a little bit better, I, along with two classmates, decided to go with Barry for to see what the beaches looked like.

We met Barry at his house for tea at quarter to 2.  We sat in his living room for a little while talking about what we wanted to do and see while abroad.  Before long we set off.

Driving into the first beach I could see that there had been some serious damage done.  Both sides of the road that we were driving on had fields of standing sea water in them that had not been there before the storm.

When we got to the beach, the parking lot was barely there.  The storm had thrown boulders the size of watermelons into fields used for farming; it had swept away storage units used to hold football and surfing equipment.  There were mounds of what Barry called “sea rods” (a brown form of sea weed that grows on the bottom of the ocean) three feet high and stretching all the way down the beach.

We drove along the cost for the next hour stopping at half a dozen beaches that the storm had torn up.  There were a number of places where we could not pass because there was too much damage to the road, or because the road had been completely flooded.

I have always had a love for big bodies of water.  I grew up 100 feet from Lake Superior, and much of my childhood was spent in the sun playing on the beach that was our back yard.  When I first saw the ocean it was on the coast of Oregon and I was enamored.  I remember my brother sister and I played on the rocky beach together whenever we could manage it during that trip.  Coming to Ireland, I was excited to live so close to the ocean, but today really put it into perspective for me.  The sea is equally beautiful and powerful.

Well I can’t end my first blog on that note so I’ll do a little explaining.  I will be posting here about twice a week while I am studying abroad here in Louisburgh Ireland.  I would love any feedback and/or suggestions that you may have for future blog posts.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day

Willie