Cork! :)

23 June 2012

On our way to Cork, we stopped for a couple of hours so that we could go jaunting. Don’t worry, I had never heard of it either. But it’s a lot more fun to say with a British accent. Haha. It’s just a fancy word for going for a carriage ride. We drove through a national forest, and it was really pretty. And our driver, Mark, was super funny. He told us that summertime is his favorite day of the year. Haha. And at one point, we saw a grave just off the road, so we asked him about it. He said it was a tragic fishing accident, and we kind of laughed, but then we were afraid he was actually serious. So we asked him if he was. He said, “Yeah, she was my first wife. She tripped over the rock into the lake. I was going to jump in to save her, but my phone rang right at that moment.” We were dying! He was awesome.

At the end of the ride, we had gotten to Ross Castle. We just looked around for a while and took some pictures. Then we went over to the Muckross House (and when I say house, I mean mansion). The grounds around the house were absolutely beautiful! I would not mind living there. I think the tour guide said that the family had something like 10,000 acres of land. It was a ridiculous amount.

On the grounds of the Muckross house

The house itself was really cool too. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us take pictures, so I don’t have anything to show for it. But it was a pretty cool place. Apparently, the couple who lived there spent seven years preparing for the queen of England to come visit them. Seven years! That’s crazy.

Years later, the house was purchased by the Guinness family—the same one that the drink is named after. So that’s a fun fact.

Muckross House

After leaving the Muckross House, we went to Cork. When we drove into Cork, I didn’t think I would like it as well as I liked Dingle. It was more of a city, while Dingle was a small town. In the States, that would usually mean that Dingle would be easygoing and friendly and that Cork would be busy and unfriendly. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After checking in at the hotel, a bunch of us started walking around the city. We found an awesome souvenir shop, where I found a Guinness spoon! Guinness is HUGE in Ireland, so I just had to buy it!

Once we had done our souvenir shopping, Palmer, Kylee, and I kept walking, looking for something to do. We found a shopping center, and there were a lot of people just hanging out outside. Well we decided that we wanted to talk to some of them, so we approached some people about our age and asked if they could tell us some of the local slang (being linguistics students gives us the perfect excuse to talk to locals!). We ended up talking to them for about an hour, and they were so awesome! They were all really nice and fun. They taught us some new vocabulary and told us about themselves. Apparently, people from Cork use like just as much as young Americans do. It’s something that identifies them as being from Cork. I never would have guessed that! (Later, when I went to Dublin, I found out it's not a Cork thing. It's a generation thing, just like in the States.) We also talked to them a little bit about the Church. I was surprised that they had actually heard of Mormons before, but it was cool to explain a couple of things to them. They weren’t interested in investigating, but they definitely respected our beliefs, which was great.

Our new Irish friends!

They also told us that the guys were in a band and invited us to go listen to them play in a pub later that night. Palmer, Kylee, and I decided to go check out a cathedral before, and the guys showed us where it was. While we were over there, we ran into Molly and Shayla. So the five of us went to listen to our new Irish friends play in their band, and they were good! We were impressed.

After they finished playing, one of the guys, Mick, asked us where we were staying. We’ve made it a rule to not ever tell anyone, just to be safe. So we told him we didn’t know what it was called. So he asked, “Well, are you going to get home okay? Maybe you should get a taxi.” That’s one thing I’ve noticed. Any time that people ask us where we’re staying, it’s not to be creepy or anything; they’re genuinely concerned, and they want to make sure that we’ll make it back okay. I think that’s awesome!

24 June 2012


The next day was Sunday, which meant we got to go to church in Cork. We invited our new friends to come, but they didn’t get the message in time. Church was cool. I’m pretty sure we about tripled their congregation. Haha. But I talked to a girl after Sacrament meeting, and she told me that they actually have about 200 people in their ward but people don’t really come unless they live in town or really close (a lot of people live farther away).

When we were leaving church, we saw some pass along cards and a number for the Cork missionaries, so we grabbed some cards and wrote down the number. Just in case.

After church, we went outside the city to Blarney Castle. And yes, I kissed the stone! It was kind of gross, but I had to do it, you know? It was weird because you have to lie down on your back (with a guy supporting you with his arms) and then tip your head back and kiss the stone upside down.

Palmer and me in front of Blarney Castle

Outside the castle, there was a cave that you could walk into. I had to hunch over the whole time, and it was really muddy inside, but it was really cool. And it goes back quite a ways, but it eventually comes to a dead end. Apparently, the cave was an escape route, and it used to go all the way to Cork and to Dublin. Pretty impressive.

After Blarney Castle, we went to a town called Cobh. It’s the last place that the Titanic docked from. There’s also an awesome cathedral there, and we got to sit in on mass for a few minutes. That was really neat. Only, it was sad because Palmer, Kylee, Molly, Shayla, and I were planning on going to mass in Cork with our new friends. But since we went to Cobh later than planned, we didn’t make it back in time. But we did randomly run into one of the girls, Taam. We couldn’t believe the coincidence! She was there with her grandma, so we talked to her for a few minutes and explained the situation to her. So hopefully, our friends don’t hate us for ditching them!

Later that night, the five of us wandered around town some more. We were thinking about going and looking some more at the cathedral, even though we had missed mass. On our way there, some guys stopped us and started talking to us. Turns out they were Welsh! One of them had a really cool Welsh name: Delfryn (the f is pronounced like a v, and the r is rolled like in Spanish). He and his friend John Paul asked if they could buy us drinks, so we told them that we don’t drink because we’re LDS. They were astounded. More so than anyone else we’ve talked to. But we let them buy us lemonades, and we talked about Welsh and language in general for a while. They told us that being in Ireland and being around the Irish accent, they could tell where the American accent came from. Interesting, right? It makes sense since there were so many Irish immigrants, but I had never thought about it.

We eventually came back to the subject of the Church, and we talked about it for quite a while. It was way cool. John Paul was asking some deep questions. He wanted to know whether or not we would ever marry someone who was not a member and our reasons for that. He wanted to know whether a member who had broken the law of chastity would be an outcast. We had some really interesting conversations. When we left, we gave them pass along cards. I’m not so sure that Delfryn will do anything about it, but I think that John Paul might actually do a little bit of digging.

Oh, and while we were talking, Delfryn pointed at me and said something like, “You! I can tell that you’re dedicated to your religion because of the look you get on your face every time we ask a question.” Maybe I shouldn’t be so overeager, but I thought that was a pretty good compliment!

Less than fifteen minutes after we said goodbye to Delfryn and John Paul, we were stopped on the street by another guy, Steven. We had just been talking and laughing, and someone said the word awesome. So Steven came over to us and said something like, “Oh was it awesome? Where are you from?” We told him where we were from, and he told me that he thought I was Amish! I’m not sure why. We think it’s just because I look super innocent. Plus, Steven spent some time in Boston and encountered a lot of Amish people who had left their communities. So he told me that as a rebel Amish, Cork was the right place for me because they’re the rebels.

While we were talking to Steven, we showed him some of the slang words that we had gotten from the group we had met the night before. He made sure to tell us which ones are probably not the best for us to be saying. So that was helpful! Haha.

Steven also told us that he had gone to Boston to be on a hurling team there. Hurling is a sport that is huge in Ireland. I had never heard of it before, but it looks like a mix of hockey and lacrosse. Steven had broken his foot while playing earlier, and he was walking around on it! He had shoes on and didn’t have crutches on. Crazy! But he didn’t want to go to the hospital since the health care over here isn’t exactly ideal.

When we told Steven that we had to go home, he did the same thing that Mick had done the night before. He asked where we were staying and asked whether we would make it home okay. Don’t worry, we didn’t tell him the name of the hotel either.

When I came home for the night, I got to Skype my entire family! It was so fun to see my nephews, even though they were just confused why Aunt Jessi was on a computer screen. Haha. Oh, and I had to Skype in the hallway by the lobby because I didn’t get internet in my room. And while I was down there, some drunk guy kept walking through and asking my family if they wanted a pint of Guinness. I told him that they were in the States and that it would be pretty difficult for them to join him, but like I said, he was drunk, and I don’t think he knew what was going on. Three times he did that!

Anyway, we had to leave Cork the next morning. I was really sad to leave because I had met some really awesome people, and I had a lot of fun there! But life goes on, and at least I have some pretty amazing memories!

*Side note: Everybody says that Cork English is supposed to be super hard to understand, but none of us had a problem with it. But the girls we met told us that they can’t understand Scottish English because they speak so fast…so that should be an adventure!