Saturday we (“we” meaning Vik, his two friends from Singapore Zhiying and Fang, and me) woke up at seven to go to the Rock of Cashel which was in County Tipperary, which was exciting because Tipperary is one of those county names that you always hear when talking about Ireland and it sounds so cute and I went there! The Rock of Cashel, which is also called Cashel of the Kings, is where the Kings of Munster chilled out for hundreds of years before those pesky Normans invaded. At some point it was given to the Church and they built a cathedral.
We got up at seven, left at eight-thirty, and got on the Bus Eirann coach to Cork at ten. It took three hours to get to Cashel, which we all used as naptime. Once we got there we stopped for sandwiches - I got a tuna melt! Gotta love Ireland. Then we walked up to the castle.
The way up
View of Cashel
Todd?
Zhiying and I
Inside the cathedral
Green!
This is known as the "Round Tower." Hmm.
Some headless bishop dude
Family fun
Me, FangTing, Vik and Zhiying
We had fun playing with Zhiying's really reflectiv sunglasses
We walked around a bit and watched a little audiovisual exhibit thing that they had, which was pretty boring. We wandered around a bit with the tour guide, who was much more interesting, but had to leave early to catch our bus back. Before doing that, though, we snuck through a fence to some big green fields and took some pictures.
View from afar
Some other little castle thing
Cows!
We took the three hour bus ride back and went grocery shopping. Fang made some noodles with curry sauce and tortellini with cream sauce for dinner. I finally got the internet to work on my laptop and made a horrible discovery.
There is something in Paris called Velib’. It is a bike rental service where you pick up a bike at any kiosk in the city and drop it off at any other one. I thought I should give it a try since I live there, and bikes are cool, and I’ve tried every oher form of transportation in the city, and everyone raves about it. So I tried it, but I couldn’t disengage the bike from the kiosk so I eventually just gave up. The thing is that they put a security charge in your bank account in case you steal the bike. Apparently they think I stole the bike (even though I never even removed it from the kiosk) and charged me 150E, which is most of the money I had for the rest of my trip. Also my phone had somehow gotten blocked, although I have since fixed it. I’m not sure what to do because the website isn’t being very helpful (there’s no section for “We think you stole our bike but we made a mistake” section because that would involve admitting a flaw in the system and the French would never do that) and I’m not in France at the moment. I might try calling them from Skype today but I really can’t afford to use my cell phone credit to call. Luckily the internet connection here is better than my own so hopefully Skype will work pretty well. Ugh.
Saturday night I was in the kitchen doing the dishes, trying to take my mind off the money issue because it was stressing me out, and there was an American guy in the kitchen talking to Fang. He was talking about his university and I asked him which university he was from in the US. He said BU! So we played the name game, and it turns out we do in fact know some of the same people - three to be exact. So we had fun talking about that and other things. Then we all went to a “party” at Vik’s friend’s place. It was pretty low-key, which I guess was disappointing to other people but was pretty much all I could handle anyway. It was mostly French people. I think I have spoken more French in Dublin than I would in the same amount of time in France. I should have studied in Dublin! Anyway, they told me my accent was good, which was nice. It’s always nice to hear stuff like that. Afterwards we came home and finally went to bed, them with plans to go on some cool day trip on Monday and me with plans to stay here and try to work out the money problem.
Things I have learned about Singapore:
-English is the official language, and most people’s first language. Many ethnic groups speak their own language as a second language, but not necessarily perfectly.
-Young people tend to speak “Singlish,” a strange combination of English and other languages. The word “damn” is used in almost every sentence to mean “very.”
-Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore.
-Singapore is very small.
-The adjective to describe someone from Singapore is Singaporean.
* “Cén fáth???” means “Why???” in Irish Gaelic.
No comments:
Post a Comment