The Island of the White Cow

Well, after much research, tears, and paper cuts, we got down to the bottom of the island's meaning. Inish means island and the rest is actually Bo Finne, as two separate words. One of those words means white, the other cow. It's hard to tell with Gaelic though.

The weekend was fantastic. Very tiring, but very relaxing... like most vacations. I must say though I am happy to be holed up in my bedroom without contact from any outside classmates. This weekend also reminded me of how lucky I got with being assigned to my roommates.

We left for Inishbofin Saturday morning, met on campus and then took a bus to Cleggan. Cleggan is a small, port village. It's the only port that gets you to Inishbofin. The ferry ride was about 40 minutes, although it seemed faster. We were so very lucky that the weather was perfect... about 75 and sunny.

We got to the Bof at about 3 pm and as usual, chaos ensued in the form of dis-organization. We weren't told any information; any information we did learn, we found out for ourselves. We just followed a mass of people to one of the two island hotels. Our profs were already snug in their rooms. And the poor woman who owned the hotel just essentially threw room keys at us and we fought for them in a mud pit. No, not really. Diana and I were in one room, and Carrie and Katie were paired up one room away. The rooms were nice, nothing spectacular, but the views were amazing and the water pressure and temperature was divine.

Friday afternoon we went to a beach and mostly laid out, as the temp. outside was still warm, but the ocean water was a cold-hearted snake. This little hidden beach we found was incredible and well worth the trek through sheep poop to get there. By the way, sheep were everywhere on this island. Everywhere... Alive and dead... Some belonging to people and some free range.










Here's a sheep just chilling at the beach.

As you may have noticed in previous posts, I've liked to discuss how awful Irish food is. But this weekend made up for it. The dinner the first night was some kind of beef in Guinness and it was fantastic. The dessert was something called sticky toffee pudding and it was the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. The Irish breakfast came complete with white and black pudding... If you don't know black pudding, or blood pudding is the left over parts of sausage combined with oats and pig's blood. White pudding is the same, minus the blood and plus some milk. I know... Not even close to being pudding... And very disgusting.

Here's a pic:

Friday night I was dealing with some WI so I went to bed early.
Saturday afternoon we had a workshop, some lunch. Then me and maybe a quarter of the students went on a hike that was supposed to be an hour, but ended up being about four because we got lost. When we started stumbling across sheep skeletons, I started getting nervous. I am not going to lie. (see skeletons below)

It was awful and great at the same time... great because my three roommates weren't there... Carrie and Katie were having pseudo lesbian time and Diana was staring death in the face in our hotel room... So I was able to get to know the few normal people in our group. (The one kid that I hate... blowbag.. brought his mountain bike, fell down a hill and scraped up his ugly face... Karma is a bitch, huh?)

Anyways, we made it to the blowhole... so overrated and to these cliffs that took us two hours to get to. My feet were decomposing as we walked. I swear... We walked through a bog. One girl got her foot caught in the bog and thought she was going to go under. She pulled her foot out but the shoe got stuck, so she had to pull that out... It was like Rooney in Ferris Bueller! And we went to an old abbey and to a crusty old cemetery... My favorite.

Saturday dinner was magnificent, as well. Turkey and potatoes and veggies. It was like Christmas. Well, thanksgiving... And the dessert was something from another heavenly realm. It had strawberry and rhubarb and cheesecake and sponge cake and whip cream.. All mixed together. After dinner we had a reading and I read a poem about my dad and Katie cried, so I didn't need to :) After the reading, me, Katie and Carrie had a couple drinks at the hotel pub and tried to get into the pants... I mean the mind of our guest reader named Michael. We had to talk to a lot of the people we'd usually rather not. They bombarded us with their stupidity, but I think a lot of it is how much younger they are. Don't get me wrong... Some are still retarded.

I spent the night in Katie and Carrie's room worried to catch the syphilis that was breeding itself in the infirmary of my real hotel room. I'm sorry, I meant stomach flu. Poor Diana, I didn't want to keep going in and out and bothering her, now did I want to catch it. So it was good for both parties involved. But Carrie, Katie, and I had a good time entertaining ourselves with stories of Paddy. We have an idea for a music video for her... Instead of "Hard our here for a Pimp" it could be "hard out here for a gimp" and Paddy could be on Inishbofin singing it with gold chains and a gold hip. It all started with me saying I was going to read the lyrics to that song as my poem at the reading..

Today we caught the ferry back around lunchtime, then took the bus back. The bus was kind enough to drop us off at our apartments, rather than the school... On the way there we had to haul all our crap to campus for no reason.

Katie and I laid out when we returned and tried to even out our tans... It was over 80 here today! Then we walked into town, grabbed a bit... I got a vanilla waffle cone from McDonald's off the Euro menu and we shared a pint. All in all, a fantastic weekend.

I am so tired and not looking forward to class, not looking forward to looking at the same people I've been with all weekend. I'll have more pics up through webshots.

Have a good one!