My Last Day in Ireland

Tursday, te Tird of Feb. (FN1)

It was super sad.  I honestly could have come back to the US at this point and been perfectly satisfied with the trip.  However, I am looking forward to Israel.  Who knows what waits there!

Daniel had painted me a little picture to say goodbye and it is awesome.  I’ll have to figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t get messed up in transit.  Seth and I took care of the boys while Viki was at school and Jessica was in Cork.  Interesting side note: everyone kept talking about how tough the driving test was in Ireland (and England) so I looked it up.  It’s almost twice as hard to pass the driving exam here as it is to pass the bar exam in Alabama.  (53.4% pass rate for drivers exam in Ireland vs. 77% pass rate on Alabama bar exam.)  One of those two countries is doing something wrong.

Seth and I left in the early afternoon and drove to Cobh (pronounced Cove) to sightsee.  Cobh was the primary point of departure for Irish emigrants leaving for Elis Island so it was really cool to see it.  I feel quite confident that someone who contributed to my gene pool passed through Cobh.  It’s also the last port at which the Titanic docked before sinking and the Lusitania was torpedoed 30 miles off-shore to start The Great War (WWI) so the place was chock full of history.  (Now I know why they built that look-out shack on the cliffs.  U-boats were a big threat.)  We went to a museum, a cathedral and saw some of the other sights.  Including a small castle that Seth said had recently been for sale (complete with huge “FOR SALE” sign across the front).

FN1 The date in the post title is a tribute to the Cork accent which pronounces everything with a hard T sound.  No “th” allowed.  Seth becomes Set.  Thursday becomes Tursday.  It’s awesome.

The Lost Day

Wednesday, the 2^nd of Feb.

I apparently forgot to send myself an email of what I did this day and I can’t find any pictures I took today.  So I can’t remember what happened that day, other than Viki taking fiendish delight in beating me over and over again at Monopoly Deal.  The game is a blast.  It's basically Monopoly as a card game that takes 20 minutes instead of 20 hours.  Highly recommended.

Oh and how could I forget Seth confidently leading us into the wrong house for prayer group!  Apparently punctuality is not an Irish priority so we decided to arrive a couple minutes late to fit in.  Well even when we got there late there was no one else there so Seth knocks.  Waits.  Knocks again.  Finally he just walks in.  Next thing I know there’s a little scream from inside and I see one of the church women sitting on the stairs with her hand over her mouth laughing.  Turns out the prayer group wasn’t at their house but the house across the street (another family in the church).  It was hilarious.

Prayer group that night was amazing. There were people there from all over the world and it is so humbling to realize you’re a part of something that’s so big.

Prayer group, and being in Ireland in general, made me realize how important my witness is and how the tremendous value of each moment I have with someone.  I can’t really explain why I realized it and felt that way.  My best guess is that I was meeting all these new people knowing that I might not ever get to see them again (though I certainly plan/hope to go back).  Contrast that with home where I fully expect to see each of my friends and family members again, hopefully a lot.  The reality is however that each moment is a moment we won’t get back.  A chance to either uplift and encourage, or tear down and discourage.  It doesn’t have to be stuffy, I mean, I think a hearty laugh is healthy and spiritual, but I’m resolving to be more intentional with my interactions in the future.

Oh, and Seth told me that there’s a castle in the middle of a field that’s been abandoned and you used to be able to climb on it but the farmer who owns the field recently put up “no trespassing” signs because it’s really dangerous to climb since it’s falling apart.  I am sure it would be tons of fun to climb.

Made Breakfast Today

Tuesday, the 1^st of Feb.

I don’t mean to imply that I actually prepared breakfast, rather I was present for breakfast.  And I am DEFINITELY glad I didn’t miss it because breakfast was real, legit, HOT CROSS BUNS!  Wahoo!  And they were darn good.

After breakfast Seth and I left to do our daily sightseeing.  We drove to Lismore which is a village nearby.  It is home of Lismore Castle, the estate of Lord Burlington.  It’s actually his summer home.  Believe it or not, his family owns the rights to the entire river by virtue of royal deed.  That means his family makes piles of money and does literally nothing.  Wow.  I had no idea this kind of stuff wasn’t relegated to the history books.  (Then again, I do come from the country of Paris Hilton…)  Anyways, Lismore Castle was un.REAL. 

It’s huge and right on the shore of the Black Water River which runs all the way from Lismore (and even further north) down to the coast and Youghal.  This is actually the summer home of Lord Burlington.  I would love to have that for my summer home.  Cool bit of history: it’s the former home of Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Boyle (of Boyle’s Law fame).  Though you can’t tell from the pictures the castle is built in a hollow square with a massive courtyard in the middle.  Apparently it was remodeled sometime “recently” and the lord in charge of it wanted a “quasi-feudal, ultra regal” design.  I think he got it.

Next we venture over to The Towers, or The Follies as the locals call ‘em.  Apparently this woman was so jealous of her sister-in-law’s house that she nagged her husband to build a huge and very impressive home.  So grand were her dreams that only the gates and entrance way were actually completed. The actual gate complex had a ton of rooms and working iron gates that still swung open and shut.

This is the gate.

And here's the entrance way.

The entrance way was built over a river, but it wasn’t enough that they built huge structures that would pass for castles.  They had to pave the river.  So the river bed under the entrance way for about 15 meters downstream is cobblestoned.  It’s actually quite pretty and makes the rushing of the waters sound even more sublime. 

However, all that just sits there in the middle of the woods with no house and it just goes to show you that 200 years later, we don’t remember what a cool house they had, only that they were greedy idiots.  Incidentally, the Potato Famine was one of the big reasons they never finished it.  They were so determined to finish it that they refused to work with their tenant-farmers as the crops failed and instead booted them off the land for sheep instead.  As a result the tenants tried to kill him.  Contrast that with the landlord next door who cut the rents and did everything he could to help his tenants avoid starvation.  I really hope that I’m that kind of person.

After The Follies we drove to see The Vee which is between Waterford and Tippary.  The drive itself was gorgeous!  Narrow hedges at times and rugged mountains at others.

By the time we arrived, I was already over-whelmed with the beauty of the country.  Once we did arrive it was easy to see where The Vee got its name [DSCF9483].  The local legend is that the lake on the side of the Vee has no bottom.  I want to go back with modern scuba gear to test that theory.

We didn’t actually even stop at The Vee itself because Seth said the better view was down the road. 

Boy was he right!  It was incredibly gorgeous.  Breathtaking actually.  We sat there for a while and just enjoyed the view in silence.  One interesting thing is that you can’t see a single road in that entire picture.  That’s because the roads are between the high hedges/fences you can see a couple pictures up.  It makes for extremely picturesque countryside but Seth swears the driving is more dangerous because your visibility is limited.  Oh well, since I’m a tourist I’ll take the views.

On the drive home we saw some sheep in the road and the coolest road markings ever.  At the top of a steep hill it read “Caution” then “Slow” with another “Slow” for emphasis and then in case you didn’t get it came this beauty:

Yes, that’s right.  It does say “SLOWER”.  Haha the Irish don’t take traffic laws very seriously (despite their ridiculously tough drivers license exam).  For example, they have three markings that mean “no parking.”  One means “please don’t park here,” another means “don’t park here,” and the third means “Ok, seriously, we really mean it, do NOT park here.”  Haha isn’t that great?  They just need to hire the tow truck companies from Auburn and bam, problem solved.

We ate lunch at home and hung out with the kids until school was out.  We picked up Viki and Ilyas from school and then Seth, Ilyas and I went to tour the Ballyantray Estate to celebrate Ilyas’ birthday which was the day before.  This was one heck of an estate.  It had a Knights Templar Preceptory on it.  The Knights Templar were probably the first international corporation (sort of a precursor to the Hudson’s Bay Trading Company or East India Trading Company) and they are credited with inventing modern banking (don’t be confused with the Medici’s who invented the modern system of accounting used in banking, the good ole debits and credits).  The Templars would let you deposit your money at any one of their Precptories and in exchange they would give you a letter of credit you could take to any other and retrieve your money.  How cool is that? 

I couldn’t get any pictures that did justice to the massive fortress built hundreds and hundreds of years ago but here are a couple to give a hint:

The complex was massive and sprawling.  The main tower itself is easily over a hundred feet tall.  I got a few levels up into it before I decided it wasn’t too safe to continue in hiking boots.  It used to have a circular staircase that went all the way up but most of the stones have fallen out now.  I think it’s easily climbable because there’s still basically a stairway but now it’s just a small lip around the wall so you’d have to shimmy your way up.  The tower, or keep, was where the entire complex of buildings would retreat when danger threatened.  I would definitely hesitate to attack it.

You could see the actual Ballyantray home across the river.

Sorry for the oversize, but that was the only way to actually be able to see the house.

From the Precptory we hiked over to Molana Abbey which was fairly close to the Ballyantray home.  The Abbey was founded in 501 AD, that’s stinking old.  The buildings we saw were probably constructed significantly later than that, likely around 1500.  Still, that’s really old.

Seth being goofy.

Still being goofy.

My turn to be goofy.

Strike a pose!

Here’s the heart of the old Abbey.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to worship here when the roof was still intact.

We were leaving as the sun was setting over the marshes and it was stunning.
We saw some ring-necked pheasants and a river otter but I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to capture them.

Jessica had prepared a birthday feast for Ilyas when we arrived home.  It was amazing, complete with napkins in the goblets.  Everyone laughed at me when I poured myself a full glass of Mi Wadi and took a sip.  Apparently it’s a “blackberry currant squash” with the “squash” being the key part.  “Squash” means “concentrate” and you’re supposed to dilute it a LOT and I was drinking it straight.  Finding out I was supposed to dilute it was a big relief because straight it tasted like kool-aid on crack.   Viki especially thought it was funny that this grown man didn’t know how to fix his own drink.

After dinner we left for Bible study at the Mulvay’s in the neighboring village of Ardmore.  The Bible study was on giving and it was really good.  Seth did a good job of reminding us that we give because Christ has given so much to us.  Simon and Paul had some really great insights as well and I enjoyed listening to the discussion as a visitor from “across the pond.”  After the study we sat around and talked cars with Mr. Mulvay for a long while.  I think he knows every mechanic in County Cork.  It was awesome.

We finally made it home around 10:30 and hit the hay.  I have no idea how Seth keeps up this pace on a regular basis.

Woah, Sleep!

Monday the 31^st of Jan.

I accidentally slept in until 11am.  Mind you, this was no small feat since my bedroom was the living room and the kids got up at 6am.  I was exhausted and Seth and Jessica were incredible and kept the kids really quiet so I slept like a baby. 

Once I finally woke up, Seth and I packed a lunch and headed out to Declan’s Hermitage. Saint Declan came over from England and his servant forgot to pack his prized bell.  He prayed that God would restore it to him and legend has it that they spotted the bell floating on a rock.  The followed the rock until it stopped in Ardmore where they set up camp.  If my camera battery hadn’t died I could show you pictures of the rock, I’m not sure what really happened but it definitely looks out of place.

The hermitage itself was unbelievable. So picturesque.  It was this bright green hillside beside the ocean with the white and gray stone structures jutting out of the land.  Flowing through the middle of the hermitage was a spring that supposedly has healing properties.  (As I’m typing this I have my iTunes set on random and the End Credits from Braveheart just came on.  How apropos!)

Next we hiked along these incredible cliffs. It was just amazing to walk with the waves crashing below you, the clouds above you and nothing but green beside you. 

Here’s a couple of shots where I tried to capture the sky.

Metering the ground.

Metering the sky.

We finally got to a point where there was ocean on both sides.  The bay on our left and the Atlantic on our right.  It was gorgeous.  The wind was really howlng at this point and it got kind of cold but thankfully there were structures to duck into.  One was a small shack built to look for German U-boats and the other was an older castle, probably built to look for Viking or Norman raiders.  We climbed all in and over both and it was a blast.

This is a little further down the trail looking back at the point. 
You can see the castle on the left side.

Even the paths we were hiking were pretty.  So green!  Even in February!  Unfortunately, shortly after taking that photo my camera battery died so the remainder of the day will be photo-less. 

We finished the loop and hiked down into town to see the church there and to find the stone where the bell had supposedly rested.  Once those two objectives were accomplished we took our picnic back to the Hermitage to eat.

On the way home we stopped at Moby Dick’s for a pint of Guinness.  I’ll be darned but it really does taste better here.  I don’t like it at all in the States but I actually enjoyed it here.  Moby Dick’s is named thusly because it’s where they filmed the old movie of the same name.  Once we got home we had a really wonderful dinner and just chilled out.  I love relaxing and feeling like a local and not a tourist.

I’m in Ireland!

Sunday, the 30^th of Jan.

The church Seth, Jessica and family attend, Youghal Baptist Church, is really great.  I met people from Ireland, Romania, Hungary, Canada and the US.  This particular Sunday was “kids church” where the children stay in the service instead of leaving for children’s church but Pastor Mervyn did a great job of making it accessible to the kids while still keeping some meat in there for the adults.  He preached from 2 Kings 7:3-20, especially verse 9:  “We are not doing right.  This day is a day of good news!”  The basic tenet of his message was that should be our response to the Gospel.  It is such good news that we should feel guilty and fear punishment if we keep it to ourselves.  It’s not very cool to right now in the church to talk about guilt and punishment but studying law has given me a good perspective on both.  They are both necessary evils.  No one would want to live in a society where people felt no guilt for doing wrong or where that wrong went unpunished. They key is feeling guilty for the proper reasons and I think Pastor Mervyn nailed it.

The church meets in a traditional Irish dance school overlooking the bay.  It’s a gorgeous setting.  The name of the school, Bru na Si (pronounced “she”) means house of the dancing fairies.  I thought of my friend Mary Martha and how she used to do Irish dancing.  Made me really want to take lessons.

After church the whole congregation had a pot-luck lunch.  Yum!  Then we took the kids home for nap-time.  While they slept, Seth and I went out and explored the town.  The whole town is really kind of quaint and very pretty.  The outskirts of the town have a suburban feel that Americans would recognize but the downtown is where the action’s at.  It’s a lot of narrow roads, houses all in a row, and cool shops with living quarters above them, surrounded by beautiful countrysides. 

Look!  I found a lawyer!

The old church, the first one in the village is the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary, Youghal.  In a territorial feud between the Anglican and Catholic churches the Catholics built a new Saint Mary which is called simply “Saint Mary.”  (To make it more confusing, Collegiate was Catholic when built.)

The church had a fortress nearby to keep intruders at bay since the church at the time controlled almost all the money and land marauders would often head straight to the church.

The church itself was inspiring.  It was built in 1220!  Can you believe that?  That’s around 800 years ago!  And it’s still standing!  It has towering wooden-beamed ceilings, beautiful stain-glass windows and magnificent stone floors. 

I could not get over the fact that I was walking under a ceiling erected eight centuries ago.

The wings had some creepy grave sites.

The cemetery behind the church was really fascinating as well.  There were gravesites that were centuries old, as well as a mass grave for all the victims of the Potato Famine.  There was even a coffin-shaped hole in the old city walls which ran behind the church.  Seth explained that they used to keep a coffin there for anyone who couldn’t afford a proper burial.  They would put the person in the coffin take them to a paupers grave and dump them out before returning the coffin to the wall, but at least this way the person got the appearances of a decent burial.

Sir Walter Raleigh lived here for a while, back when Youghal was one of the largest ports in the region, bigger even than London.  Seth showed me his old house, which was in a sad state of disrepair because the old lady who owns it won’t let the village maintain it.  What a shame.

The whole town was full of really short doorways and some of the tombs in the church were less than four feet in length leading both of us to surmise that people did not used to be as tall.

Yep, that’s the towering giant that I am.  All 5’9” of me.

After touring we went home, ate a traditional dinner of fish and chips, played DDR on the Wii (Viki and Jessica are UNREAL at that game) and then watched Waking Ned Devine, which was a great movie about Irish culture that was really funny.  Apparently every Sunday night the Lewis family plays DDR and watches a movie while eating popcorn covered in Ranch powder.  Sounds like a great tradition to me.  I was delighted to be invited to join the tradition.

On to Ireland!

Saturday, the 29^th of Jan.

Today is one of my designated travel days as I am headed to the Republican of Ireland.  (FN1) We had planned to get up early and go visit some of the parks but everyone slept in, which was fine by me.  I spent the day re-packing my bags so that I could get everything I needed for a week into the one carry-on that RyanAir allows (no personal item, just one bag).

Everything went fine until I got to the train station.  I got there a little early so I decided to call home since I hadn’t talked to my parents the entire trip.  I figured a “hey, I’m alive” phone call was in order.  Well, I’m standing at the right platform for my train to Stansted airport but the train arrives early.  I get on it, it starts to pull away and immediately I realize I’m on the wrong train going the opposite direction.  As a result I had to take a cab to the airport, which stunk.  It also meant that instead of arriving comfortably early to the airport I arrived 8 minutes before the gate was supposed to close.

By the grace of God, and my wily traveler skills (hah), I made it onto the flight but I was quite a sight.  Stansted is a very long airport.  Instead of having lots of terminals that are spokes off a hub, Stansted is all one, long, long, long terminal (think Detroit if you’ve ever flown out of Northwest’s terminal there).  It’s hard for me to tell for sure since I was running through at full-sprint, but I think it was over half a mile long.  Of course my gate was the very last one.  So I’m sprinting through the airport hauling my carry-on (which probably weighed 30 pounds and was awkward to carry) and wearing a sweatshirt and jacket because it was 2 or 3° Celsius outside (around 38 F).  By the time I made it onto the plane I was sweating, but I didn’t care because I just wanted to be on that flight.  It was a RyanAir flight which meant that I purchased the ticket for £6 (about $10) but if I had to change my flight it would be £45 ($72) so I didn’t want to miss that flight.

The flight itself was really interesting.  RyanAir obviously doesn’t make its money from ticket sales (in fact, until this year they sold all their flights for a pence [penny]) so they make it up other ways (like that huge change fee).  The flight had a carnival atmosphere with the attendants hawking everything from vacation packages to lottery tickets.  It was great.  I slept through most of it though.

Seth picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the missions conference his church was helping to host in Cork.  It was really cool to meet people from all over Ireland right away.  They kept saying, “well you can probably tell I’m not from around here” but I had no clue.  By the end of the week I could tell certain accents apart, but not then. (FN2)  The pastor who spoke used the Will Smith classic Independence Day as one of his sermon illustrations which I thought was hilarious.  (Essentially his point was that it was very American to make a movie where our president saves the entire world himself. Haha.)  It was really sobering to hear stories from the missionaries gathered about the persecution the churches were under in the countries where they ministered.  It’s hard to believe that torture still occurs for someone’s beliefs, but it does. 

I think the coolest part of the conference was realizing that I’ve seen the body of Christ in four countries on three continents in the last month and I’m about to add one more country and continent!  It really does remind you of how big and awesome God is when you see the work he is doing all over the world.

After the conference we loaded everyone up in the van and started driving back to Youghal which was 45 minutes away.  During the van ride I made the comment, “wow, I love the winding back-country roads!” And the entire car burst out laughing.  Turns out we were on the major highway in the county.  Whoops.

When I got to Seth and Jessica’s they had a warm coal fire burning in the fireplace and I made my bed beside it and slept like a baby.  I felt so cool to be sleeping by a coal fire in Ireland.

FN1 Ireland.  The Emerald Isle is divided into two parts: Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom (all parts) and Great Britain (the part of the UK that’s in the British Isles).  Southern Ireland, which is about 2/3 of the isle, is a separate country, the Republic of Ireland.  It is a member of the EU and has its own government.  There are no border controls between northern and southern Ireland, but there are between England and Ireland.  (In fact, in some places the boundary between northern and southern Ireland is not even marked at all.)

FN2 Accents.  Northern Ireland has the thickest accents.  Lot of brogue and is probably what you think of when you think of an Irish accent.  The middle seems to have the softest accents while the south, especially County Cork has its own distinct accent.