When I Die, Dublin Shall Be Written Into My Heart

(Sorry it's late - I wrote this on the plane ride home)

Dear Readers,
So my four month study abroad adventure has come to its end. What does that mean?

To be honest - I'm really not sure. I do want to point out that I said my study abroad adventure has ended, and not "my journey" or "my experience here", because I believe both of those have just begun...
What I mean to say is that my experience was.... how can you describe it in one word? Incredible? Fantastic? Life-Changing? Unbelievable? Unforgettable? Fun? All of the above.. It was a chance of a lifetime - I can't thank enough the people in my life who made it possible for me to go. It WAS life changing, but I can't tell you how yet. I don't know what about me has changed and I don't think I will know for a little while - or maybe even until I go back and see what my perception of Dublin, Ireland, and Europe is now. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month or a year, I can sit down and look at myself and explain how my study abroad experience made me a better person - I know that it has, I just don't know if I can put it in words yet. I guess I could try...
I know I'm more independent. I know now that living in a city is a struggle for me. I've learned my boundaries/barriers when it comes to being away from family and how much of that I can take. I've learned that I can take care of myself in foreign countries for four months and that I can interact and have fun with people of a foreign culture and enjoy both our similarities and our differences. I know that I have learned a deep respect for aspects of both the cultures I have visited, and for my own. I know that thanks to the school and our faculty, I have made connections with people in my career in the UK. I know that I did it - and a lot of people won't, or can't understand what I mean... but I know my fellow study-abroaders can.

The hardest part of leaving for me was the streets. I realize that sounds funny, but even if I didn't like living in Dublin and have realized that I'm not a city girl - I grew accustom to wandering its streets day and night. The city and the lifestyle had become a normal part of my routine life... and to think that I will never see those streets, at least in the way they are now, again is something I cannot quite fathom yet. I must say, I didn't take the architecture there for granted, even if seeing it became routine for me There were still some nights when I would stop and look up at the church spires framed against the Dublin sky and wonder how I could live any place where I couldn't see something as beautiful as that on my way home.
I will say also that I did struggle during my time there. It was difficult to juggle living in a foreign country, living in an apartment for the first time, taking classes, and traveling to other countries for four months. It was a struggle to manage the time difference to talk to my family and friends. It was a struggle to place myself out of my comfort zone. It was hard - probably the hardest thing *I've* ever had to do. But it was worth it.

So yes, Readers, I'm excited to get home. I'm excited to step on America soil once more, to see my family, to celebrate the holidays. But I do mourn the ending of my study abroad experience here. It is a semester that I will *never* forget.

If any students or parents of a student are reading this right now and have hesitations about studying abroad - I know what you're going through. I was there once. I remember the panic I felt when it came to finances, paperwork, security, and all the other concerns that fly through your head when you or your son or daughter is thinking about taking this step. I was there once, but I took that step, I began that journey, and I hope I have been able to show you how it has changed me. And now I urge you... no... I dare you to take the same step I did. I promise you you won't regret it.

I'll be making one last post sometime next week to talk about what it's like being home after being abroad for so long (it'll be as much of a surprise for me to see what I'll write as it will be for you!), but if you have >any< questions at all about my experiences - please don't hesitate to email me at heather.ryder@mymail.champlain.edu. (Just please make sure you include in the Subject something that tells me you have questions about my abroad experience such as "Questions about Studying Abroad" etc. so it doesn't get tossed in my spam folder!)


Happy Holidays every one - and I hope to hear from some of you after (or before =) ) all the celebrations

~Heather~

Stonehenge

Dear Readers,
So I finally got back to Stonehenge! My Welsh friend from my last trip to Wales came with me and we had an absolute blast. Salisbury is an amazing city with so many old buildings and monuments to see. We actually got a tour through Salisbury and the surrounding plains up to Stonehenge and then back through Amesbury. It was an interesting tour, though I'm not a fan of bus tours since you can't stop and take pictures.
Was I thought it was going to be? No. Was it amazing? Yes. I wish I could have run around amongst the stones. It would have been cool to have gotten a closer look and imagined myself back in the neolithic times when the site was in use for whatever purpose it was created for. It was incredible to stand in front of a monument that took hundreds of thousands of man hours to create, with a purpose we can only fathom at.
I spent several days relaxing in Wales and immersing myself in the culture. I spent time with my Welsh friend and his family and getting to know some of the customs/sayings/culture of the Welsh, plus some Scottish and English that are in their backgrounds. It was nice to have one on one chat times with people for hours on end about differences in our cultures. Anyone who tells you there are no differences between American English and British English is insane - according to my Welsh friend and family, there are very distinct differences between the Welsh, English, and Scottish English languages, and American's speak a whole other "Strange" English. I would agree, though obviously in my opinion their language is the strange one. We spent hours laughing about how "funny" the other person says certain words.
I came to study abroad to learn about other cultures - its strange that I connected so well with a Welsh family rather than an Irish one, but it was interesting to sit down and have a conversation where half the time I had to say "what do you mean by.... (this word, phrase, etc.). Despite the language barriers though, I had an incredible time, and can't wait to go back for trip #3 at some point in my future!
Well the end of the year is wrapping up and I have a ton of stuff to do! Check in next week for a wrap-up blog on leaving Dublin and my experience here!

A City No Longer Divided

The last place my companions and I visited on our ten day Thanksgiving break was Berlin, Germany. Wow. What more can you say?

What do you think of when you think of Germany? World War II, Hitler, Jews, the Holocaust, Gas Chambers, Berlin, the Berlin Wall, West Berlin, East Berlin, genocide... Am I on the right track? With Germany such a big part of the World history, it's hard not to think of these things when you think of Germany. So what is it like when you actually visit Germany?

In Berlin, it's very obvious that the history of the city shadows over the city and the people. The first thing I noticed that the only colors being worn by people on the street was black, black, and more black. In a bright sky blue raincoat, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

One of the first things my companions and I saw was the bombed out church shown to the right. As our tour guide the next later said to us "The people of the city has left it the way it is on purpose. For them it is a constant reminder of what happens when you steep the world in the worst war it has ever seen."

That sentence pretty much sums up the feeling of Berlin as a city.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. Berlin and its people were already celebrating Christmas when we arrived, and our first day there we got swept up in the Christmas celebration at one of the many Christmas markets throughout the city. We spent the day trying German eggnog, rum, cotton candy, and exploring the local crafts.

The second day, we got up early to go on the Famous Walk in English - done by a tour company who does 5 or 6 tours (including Cold War Spies, Concentration Camps, Pub Crawls etc.). Our tour guide, Kenny, was a Scottish man who had been living in Berlin for ten years, but still had the amazing Scottish accent! The tour costs 10 euro for students under the age of 26 plus a two euro travel card (it costs 12 euro for people over the age of 26) and lasts for 4 hours. It was the best money I've spent so far.

The tour was absolutely incredible. We started with Museum Island and the history of Berlin from 800 years ago and moved all the way up through the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie. I stood in the deathstrip. I stood in front of the remains of the Berlin Wall (seen below).

And even more powerful, I stood in the parking lot that is now the only marking for where Hitler's Bunker once stood. We heard the story of his suicide, the events that followed and the investigation that started years later to prove that he really was killed that day.
I heard the story of how the Bunker, 50ft below the surface, was dynamited twice and then the remaining room was filled in with soil and the entrance buried.... so that the location could never become a Shrine for Neo-Nazis.

I'm heart ached as we went by the huge monument of 2,411(?) concrete stones that stood in memory of the Jews killed during World War II (Seen above).

It was the most incredible experience of my life.

If you're planning on visiting Europe, go to Berlin, take the tour, learn our history. Remember, and teach your children to Remember, like the Berliners do, what happened in those terrible years. After that visit, I can -never- forget what happened that allowed us to enter those dark times.

Romans and Gelato

Over Thanksgiving break, I was able to stand in ruins of the ancient Roman empire. Perhaps it was just my love for ancient cultures, but I cannot truly explain the feeling that came over me when I stood in the Colosseum and realized that I stood where tens of thousands had before me to watch men and animals to fight to the death. I cannot explain the feeling that came over me when I stood in the Roman Forums and looking at incredible buildings remaining intact from over one thousand years ago. Where do you think those people thought their culture would be two thousands years from now? Where do you think we will be two thousand years from now? What of our culture could survive the eons?
Our first day of exploring there we went to Vatican City. After hours of meandering through other ancient (and modern - bleh!) art, we finally made it to the Sistine Chapel. You're not allowed to take pictures or video in the room, but in this instance, it wasn't about the pictures. Throughout my travels in Europe, I've always been about taking pictures to take home for my family so that they can see what I have seen, but with the Sistine Chapel, it is just not the same. I've seen Da Vinci's Sistine Chapel before in books, but it is nothing compared to standing underneath it in its fully glory and wondering how on earth one man did this.
At one point, I was sitting there looking up with Pat and mentioned "Once you've seen this, what more is there? How can there be anything else?" and an American woman on the other side of Pat leaned forward and said "I was just thinking the same thing".
I'm a sucker for ancient history, so for me, Rome was absolutely incredible.

Think about our culture today. What, if anything, do you think will last from our century for thousands of years?

Watch in the next 24 hours for a blog on my experience in Berlin, Germany!

~Heather~

Hola de Madrid

Hey There All!

So I've decided to do my vacation trip in a series of three blogs, one for each place I visited, because there is NO way all three could be covered in a single piece of writing.
My first adventure took me to Madrid, Spain. My companions and I arrived around 11a.m. local time (the rest of Europe is an hour ahead of the U.K. and Ireland) and caught a taxi to our hostel (you don't want to know how much that cost, normally we travel by train or underground). The first thing we quickly learned was that majority of Spanish either don't know English, or choose not to speak it, so my four years of Spanish in highschool was strongly tested.
Our hotel/hostel was on the fifth floor (without an elevator) but the owner and his housekeeper were ridiculously nice - though neither spoke English at all really and it was hard to communicate with them. However, the owner, an older gentleman, did manage to give me directions to the Tourist Centre where we could pick up maps, and also in great detail that I couldn't really translate, warned me about pickpocketers.
Our first day in Madrid we went to visit the Almudena Cathedral, which is right next to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). The architecture of the Cathedral was absolutely amazing, and we were able to go up to the top dome and outside on balconies to look over the city. On our way up, the pathway led us out on a balcony that looked out at the Palacio Real, which we went into our next day in Madrid.
Both the cathedral and the palace were incredible works of art, though you couldn't take picture inside the Palace =( My favorite part, however, was the Royal Gardens out back. It looked just like the royal gardens you'd imagine from a fantasy novel.
Our first night in Madrid, I remembered the hard way that Madrid is a night city, and most of its residents are up until 3 or 4 in the morning. We were street side in our hostel, in the very center of the city. Oops!
On our second night, we ate at an absolutely horrible restaurant on the corner up from our hostel. The only reason I mention this is because while we were sitting outside at the "restaurant", a protest came through. It was nothing like the protests in the U.K. or in America. The majority of the marchers were made up of people around our ages (low to high 20's)), protesting facism in the country.
Spain has a pretty violent history on facism, so this protest didn't surprise me much. However, the black flag of Anarchy that they waved did. The protest was followed by six vans of riot police. I don't know if that's protocol in Spain for riots, or if they were concerned about something happening. We certainly were - after our meal we were actually traveling the same way as the protesters, towards the center of the city to see if all the decorations were lit up since it was around 8pm at this point. On the outskirts of the protesters were young Spanish men and women with black clothes and a silver armband on their left arm. Each and every one of them had black cloth over their face below their eyes, most likely to protect their identities should something happen, and many of them wore backpacks.
At one point during our walk, one of the young men in the attire (we guessed that these were probably the leaders of the march) met my eyes as I watched the crowd. He pulled down his mask, nodded at me, then put it back on and continued on.
I wish I knew what that meant. It was the strangest experience. To me, it felt like a symbol of trust and mutual understanding. I was his age and in a dark hoodie and, at least inside, I understand the history of Facism in the country and felt for those in the march today. Maybe he saw that, maybe he didn't. I'll never know, but that's not a memory I'll soon forget.

Our last day in Madrid we spent at the Madrid Zoo! I know, not a very culture-eqsue thing to do, but one of my traveling companions really wanted to go, and we had a blast. The zoo was actually outside of the main parts of the city and our map didn't go that far, so we actually kind of wandered around hoping we would find it - and we did! It was maybe an eight minute walk from the bus stop.

All in all, Madrid was a beautiful city, though it is definitely a better place for night owls. Do I want to go back some day? Definitely. The people were nice, considering my [possibly] horribly broken Spanish.

And lastly - I just wanted to make a quick shout out to my incredible highschool spanish teacher, Amber. Without you, I wouldn't have survived my three days in Madrid! Thank you!

Come back in a day or two for my second Thanksgiving Break Blog - Rome!

~Heather~

Newgrange and Bru Na Boine

This last Friday the Early Irish History Class traveled to Newgrange and Loughcrew. We were unable to visit Knowth, which is the coolest of the three sites (that is, Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth, the three largest Neolithic cemetaries in Europe) as the excavation of the site has just recently been completed and the site has not yet gone through the same preservation techniques that Newgrange has. Because of this, Knowth is closed from Halloween weekend on to preserve it from the cold weather.

So what is Newgrange? Newgrange (what you see above) is a humongous man-made

mound that features a passage tomb inside (The passage ways inside make a "t" shape). It is built with hundreds, if not thousands of large stones placed on top of each other that are slowly moved inward to create a peaked roof (see picture below for the inside of a DIFFERENT passage tomb). The stone was then covered with layers of turf to protect the rocks from elements, and possibly to make it blend in with the landscape/hide it. As thousands of years went by, the soil layer got higher and many of these passage tombs/mounds were hidden. This one was stumbled upon by accident.

Inside, each of the dead end cubby-like areas in the "t" shape had a large bowl (one of these was still featured in the Newgrange site but no pictures are allowed inside) which, when excavated, was filled with the cremated remains of what they estimate was around 100 bodies.

(Most passage tombs don't have these grates on top. This is also a picture from the passage tomb at Loughcrew, not Newgrange, but it gives you an idea as to how they were built).

Loughcrew is a series of passage tombs, many of them collapsed. However, one of them still remains intact.

Many of these passage tombs are also covered in rock art, carvings that were handmade. Here are some examples of rock art from Loughcrew!

Off to Spain, Italy, and Berlin!!!

Ancient Crypts, Mummified Dead... and a Little Bit of Normalcy

Yes, I do realize that the words featured in my title should not go together.

The question of the day is: Have you ever smelled eight hundred year old dead?

This weekend, eight of us traveled with Tom and his wife to St Michan's, a nearby church just across the liffey. The church was built on top of six 900 year old crypts, two of which are open to to the public. In the first crypt, we saw family "plots" piled high with coffins. Because the families could still be buried in these plots today, they are still considered sacred places and can neither be lit nor can the coffins be opened (and, of course, you can't take pictures).
However (there is ALWAYS a catch), over the 900 years that have passed, many of the sarcophagi located on the bottom of the piles have collapsed. This allowed the church to extract the mummified remains of the dead inside, and four of the least damaged corpses are now on display. Since the crypt is underground and built with limestone, the temperature stays constant, therefore preserving the bodies.

Also in the first crypt, there are two sarcophagi containing the bodies of two rebel brothers (a.ka. the Sheare Brothers) who tried to imitate the French Revolution here in Ireland to break from British rule, as well as the death mask of Wolfe Tone - who tried to do the same thing. The neat thing about these two rebels is that the church owns the original documentation from their execution note which was written after the brothers had been captured at a meeting of doomed rebel leaders who had a spy amongst their ranks.
The document is very legible, and visitors can clearly make out the death sentence for the rebels which went something like this:

*WARNING: The following is not suitable for children*

"...shall be hanged, not until they are dead, but rather, whilst they are still alive, they are to be eviscerated and, whilst still alive their insides are to be burned in front of their faces...."
They were hanged, eviscerated, had their entrails burned, and then their heads were chopped off and they were drawn and quartered before being thrown in their coffins....0.o wow



In the second crypt were the four mummies, three in the front and one in the back. The mummy in the back was the most special of the four as the way he was buried (with his thigh bones crossed) suggested he was a crusader, and the corpse dates back almost 800 years. Many people who read this may know that the burial symbol to mark you as a crusader would be to cross skeletons at their ankles. This is indeed the case, but because this man was so tall, his legs had been chopped off at the knees and placed underneath him. His broken pointer finger on his right hand was longer than my longest finger, and it had been broken off below the knuckle. The man had to have been at least six and a half feet tall - a giant in medieval times.
The big tourist attraction to St. Michan's is that you are allowed to touch the corpse of the dead Crusader - shaking the hand of a crusader was supposed to bring good luck, but today they suggest rubbing the crusaders finger to protect the skeleton from damage.

Did I do it? Yes
Did I wash my hands after? Heck yes!

Pictures were not allowed to be taken in the tombs, but they have been allowed in the past (or people snuck pictures) and you can view the crypts I entered here:
http://atlasobscura.com/places/st-michans-church-dt
Note: These are not my pictures and I have no rights to them.
These pictures show the crypt *exactly* how I saw it. Note: If you watch the videos available on the site, they're a little touristy, but the first man that speaks is the Caretaker - who acted as our tour guide. He was *absolutely* *incredible*. If you have time in Dublin, go to St. Michan's! It's only a E2.50 entrance fee, but I would easily pay three times that.

And lastly - a sense of Normalcy has returned to my life. For those of you who are writers you know (or perhaps, should know!) that November marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month, a self-challenge that pushes writers to set aside time for their long-forgotten novels and write 50,000 words in a month. I participate in the competition every year, and going back to my writing has reconnected me with the idea of home. On saturday, I met up with a bunch of local Dubliners who are also participating and had an incredible chat with them about novel ideas, plots, characters, twists, and other such crazy writer stuff.

For those of you who like statistics, in order to accomplish 50,000 words in the month of November, a writer must write 1,667 words a day. However, since I'm traveling for 9 days at the end of the month and probably won't have time to write, I must accomplish a minimum of 2,380 a day. It's going to be crazy, hectic, and chaotic - but that's normal - hence a sense of normality returning to me! This weekend, I broke 20,000 words!

For anyone who wants to participate (jumping in 9 days late just means nine days less of procrastinating)
NaNoWriMo

And for those who asked, here's an excerpt from my new novel - The Awakened:


On December 21st, 2012, Earth was not destroyed. And the human race breathed a sigh of relief.

But it was never meant to end.
It was meant... to change.
It came as a trickle at first. For the fifteen percent of the population that survived the weight of that day, at 2:47 pm Greenwich time, the dam in their minds broke and with it came an incredible sense of relief and freedom. They felt revitalized, refreshed, renewed, and different. Like flowers in the winter, their minds had felt closed and dark, cut off from some unknown knowledge, but now a light shone through and they blossomed with unrefined talent.
They had become the Awakened.


^---Copyrighted 2009 - Heather Ryder

Cheers!