An Seachtaine Seo Caite – The Last Week

This past week has been very interesting/odd. It started with my writing this on Sunday night:

Bím an-ghnóthach le déanaí. Scríobh mé aiste do mo rang seandálaíochta, agus bhí scrúdú do Na dTeangacha Ceilteach (rang eile) agam Dé hAoine. Agus táim ag foghlaim do mo scrúdú Gaeilge. Mar sin, táim ag scríobh blog post as gaeilge… tá sé an-dheacair! Agus táim ag éisteacht le CSPAN agus an vóta ar athchóiriú cúraim sláinte.

Tá pictiúir an oiread sin go raibh gá dom a chur suas! Agus tá eachtraí ann an oiread sin go raibh gá dom a scríobh faoi.

(Ack I can’t do it anymore – I don’t know how to write about health care reform/US government in Irish, and the vote is currently going on… Dems have 203 votes ATM – EEEEEK)

(Translation: I am very busy of late. I wrote a paper for my archaeology class, and I had an exam for The Celtic Languages (another class) on Friday. And I am studying for my Irish exam. So, I am writing a blog post in Irish…. It is really hard! And I am listening to CSPAN and the vote on health care reform.

I have so many pictures that I need to put up! And there are so many adventures that I need to write about.)

That last sentence remains completely true! But I never did finish writing my blog post as gaeilge. It was incredibly difficult, particularly as I got more and more excited about the health care vote, especially since I really don’t have the vocabulary in Irish to discuss health care/politics. By the time the House did vote it was about 2:45 am here. I had both the CNN and CSPAN video feeds up – I would watch one until it appeared that it was lagging quite a bit, then I would move to the other, and back and forth. I also had the NY Times live blog up. The most interesting/entertaining thing I was following though was the #hcr twitter feed. By the time the House voted, #hcr was trending, and every 15 seconds or so twitter would tell me that there were over a thousand new tweets for #hcr. I mostly just skimmed through them, catching the general ideas floating around the world at that moment. There were a few tweets that I saw that were very well worded/that made a very good point that I RTed or replied to, and then I got replies back and it started to seem like rather than just watching the flow of information I was part of it. So that was cool. And it was a really exciting way to watch the vote happen. Since the vote was done electronically, everyone was just watching the numbers. So you would see a couple hundred tweets saying “206!!” or “9 to go!” or something like that – everyone was counting down.

So of course I stayed up until about 4 am watching it, and then had to wake up at 8 am for class. When I did wake up I had a really bad sore throat. I kind of thought it was just one of those morning things, right when you get up, like. But as the day went on it apparent that that was not the case, and I spent most of the afternoon in bed. And basically I’ve spent the whole week sick/trying to get better. Finally I went to the health center and got antibiotics. I’ve only taken one days worth (of seven), but already I’m feeling better. Way less congested. My ears have finally un-clogged! And my throat doesn’t hurt nearly as much. So hopefully I will be completely better soon.

I had my Irish oral exam on Thursday and my written final on Friday. Each of these is worth 45% of my total grade. It was really not fun studying for them/taking them while I was not feeling well. However, considering that I wasn’t feeling well I think they actually both went quite well! The oral in particular was quite scary. I forgot how hard and scary oral exams are. The last one I really remember was in 8th grade Spanish. I think I probably had an oral in 9th and 10th grade, but it definitely didn’t stick in my mind. I do remember having to do presentations for both those classes though… And last year in Spanish we had to do class presentations, but no oral either. While the class presentations were quite difficult and scary, the oral has a certain special scariness. I think I remember my 8th grade oral so much because I was at the a somewhat similar state of language ability as I am now – ie I can say some things, but I am not at all comfortable. My language abilities are entirely based on translating from English in my head, which means I have to consider every single word I say.

In any case, my Irish oral had 4 parts: reading a passage, answering questions based on a brochure, describing a picture, and answering questions from my teacher. You were given a few minutes to look at the passage, the brochure, and the picture before the exam started. You were asked questions/were conversing with your own teacher, while the other teacher (there are two Intermediate classes) listened and graded you. In all, it was about 15 minutes of me talking/answering questions. Afterwards, I was actually pretty proud of myself. I definitely did mess up some – nerves and getting flustered and not remembering all the words/grammar (there was a point where I completely blanked out on how to form the present tense. It was the last thing we learned – past tense is easier to learn in Irish – and I was so used to the past tense by that point in the exam that I just kind of went “uhhh” for a minute). But I actually managed to talk for 15 minutes in this crazy and unfamiliar language. I don’t think I realized that I knew enough to actually be able to do that.

That’s one of the things that’s really hard about learning Irish – there really aren’t a ton of opportunities to speak it/practice it. I mean, there are definitely way more here in Ireland than anywhere else. And I do hear it spoken sometimes. But everyone is bilingual. So there’s never an instance where you **have** to use Irish. Even when I went to the Dingle Gaeltacht (something which I still need to blog about) – it is an Irish-speaking area, but tourism is so big there that everyone speaks and knows English, and they don’t really expect newcomers to know Irish, and it’s really scary and intimidating to start a conversation in Irish with someone who’s fluent in it. Anyway, basically what this means is that I haven’t had much chance to have extended conversations with fluent speakers in Irish.

So yeah, the oral was quite difficult, and I definitely didn’t do perfectly on it, but I did realize that I do know a bit of Irish. Same was true about the written exam. We had been writing small compositions all semester, but this was the first time I had to do it without having my notes/a dictionary in front of me. I think I wrote 4 or 5 paragraphs in Irish on the written final. So again I think I had a realization of “hey, maybe I know a little bit more of this than I think I do.” One of the hardest parts about it was getting the spelling right. Blargh, Irish spelling and pronunciation are so difficult. For example, there’s a term that means “great” that is pronounced “air oww-ss.” It’s spelled “ar fheabhas.” This was also why we had to read a passage in Irish for the oral – to test our pronunciation. Mine is definitely much, much better than it was at the beginning of the semester – I’ve got the pronunciation of the consonants down pretty well, but the vowels still give me some trouble.

Anyway, after the final on Friday I went out for coffee with some friends from the class. It was a kind of “goodbye”/”we’re done” coffee celebration. Because that’s the really crazy thing – classes are done. Last week was the final week of classes. I will not have any more classes until next September. I do have 3 exams in May, but no more classes. So this coffee really was kind of a goodbye. Lots of things last week had a feeling of ending, of finality. Which is so weird! Because I feel like I’ve only just gotten here, like I’m just getting settled in. And in a sense, that’s true too. I may be done with classes, but I’m only halfway through my time abroad – I don’t return to NY until mid-June. On the other hand, tonight was the last time I will see one of my flatmates. The 3 of us + 2 of our friends who live down the hall all went out for Chinese as a kind of final gathering/final celebration. Tomorrow 3 of them head out on a trip, and one of them will be returning to the US right after that.

In 1 day I leave on my epic month long European traveling adventure. So amidst all the work and studying I’ve been doing, travel plans and preparations have been occupying my mind completely. I still can’t really believe that a)I’m going to be traveling by myself for a month, and b) that it’s finally time to do this – I’ve been planning this trip for a year. And now it’s almost time…. Wow.

I actually still have a lot of stuff I need to do to prepare tomorrow. I leave early Wednesday morning – I have a flight to London, and then in the afternoon I will take a train to Paris. There were other things I wanted to say in this blog post about this last week, but I can’t remember what… ah well. For now, that will have to be all. I hope to make another blog post before I leave, but we’ll see whether that actually happens.

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