This time last year

So on this day last year I boarded a plane to Boston. I actually think it was about this time I was sitting in the airport writing my first blog entry. But now there's other international students going to BC, possibly writing their own blog and thinking all the same things I thought when I was going over there. So I wrote an email to the students going to Boston College from Maynooth and as I was writing it, I became very nostalgic about the whole year, and I think this email really tells you a lot about my year so I figured I'd share it with all of you! Some of it is basic where to get stuff kind of advice and other stuff is about BC and the general culture of Boston. Here it is:


"First of all, you are going to have the best year of your life. I can't even put it into words how much fun I had and how insanely jealous I am that you're going there soon! Here's a few things that might be useful to you when you arrive there first-

I.D
If you are over 21, the only non-American ID bars in Boston will accept is a Passport. However you can get a Massachusetts Liquor licence from the DMV. They're open for strange hours, I think 10am-4pm so you're going to have to go before classes start because you won''t have any time to spare during the semester. I think it costs about $25 and it's worth it so you don't have to worry about losing your passport.

Classes
Because you can take classes that are outside your degree, by all means go for it. But be careful. I took Elementary Italian (I'm a Media and English student) because I figured that it would be a great chance to learn a new language, and anyway, how hard can 'Elementary' be? As it turned out, very. First of all, the book alone was $200 and the online quizzes worth 10% were $70. Seeing as I didn't want to spend that, I spent the semester using an old edition from the library. I was on the back foot already, but on top of that, the workload was crazy. Apparently it's the same for all the languages, so if you're going to do a language, be ready to work at it.

One thing I only realised in second semester was that you really can pick and choose classes to suit your timetable. Classes in BC run either Monday, Wednesday for one hour, Tuesday, Thursday for and hour and 15 or once a week for 2 and a half hours. Make sure you make use of the time at the start of the year where you can sample as many classes as you like to see if the class will suit you both academically and time-wise. Get the course syllabus and look through the assignments and go talk to the professor about the course. They're usually really nice and always willing to talk about the course. If you are interested in doing any media courses email me about them because I did a few of them so I'll be able to answer questions if you have any.

Also, go to class. There's usually marks for participation and attendance. Most of the classes had a rule that if you missed more than 3 classes, the professor could fail you. The once a week classes usually said that you could only miss one. So choose your missed classes carefully, you only get 3. Get used to having a golden week pretty much every week for a year. It's an experience.

Football games.
Get season tickets. You will seriously regret it if you don't. Even if you're not into sports that much, it's more about the atmosphere and college spirit... and singing. So much singing. I think the season ticket is $120ish and that gets you entry for all the home games, so I think it's about 8 or 9 games and everybody goes. The games are usually on around midday on Saturdays, which means getting up early to start 'tailgating' which is possibly the best experience you'll ever have. People pull up their cars in the carpark, open the back, have barbeques and beers. Other people have houseparties, especially in the Mods, which are the senior houses in the middle of campus. You have to be 21 to get in there on gameday. If you're not 21, make a friend in the mods and stay there the night before. You should have at least one Mod pregame while in BC, it's really worth sleeping on a lumpy couch for. The main thing you will notice about BC is the school spirit. Get a superfan shirt, all the students wear them on game day for football, basketball and ice hockey. Get into the spirit of it and go with it. We even have a fight song, it's called 'For Boston' you'll know the words by the end of the year. The phrase "Eagles on the Warpath" won't sound as silly on gameday when it's being screamed at you from all sides in Alumni Stadium.

Bars
Mary-Ann's (Clevland Circle)
Possibly the worse smelling, most cramped, awful place you will ever buy warm beer in, but honestly, one of the best bars you will ever visit. Looks closed down, but is a solid bet any Tuesday, Friday or Saturday night. Usually have to get there early to avoid a que. Every Tuesday is Senior Tuesday, I missed two in second semester, two nights I regret deeply. I'm not sure if it's an organised thing by MA's or if it's just a tradition, either way, if someone asks if you're a senior, just say that it's your last year in BC, so technically, yes. But beer is cheap, rum is even cheaper. Go nuts.

Cityside (Cleveland Circle)
A bit classier than MA's, but still fun. Great for watching games in during the day and they do good food as well. More expensive but they do sell cans pretty cheap so it's still affordable. Show Champions league games so there's usually a few of the internationals floating around and the odd American if Man Utd are playing.

Roggies (Cleveland Circle)
Happy hour with cheap wings and beer during the week until 7ish. They do trivia during the week which is always fun. Really fun for Sports, people get really into the games when they're on here so it has a good atmosphere. The most important thing about Roggies is the Pizza. Served until 3ish in the morning, it makes for a great, cheap replacement for Garlic chips. I think it was $2 for a slice that is huge. Good memories of post-pub banter in here.

An Tua Nua (Fenway)
Nightclub kinda place to get your boogie on. You can get the T there and taxi back, usually about 20ish dollars including tip, so fill a taxi and it's fine. $1 beers until 11, so take advantage of that. Usually gets pretty full so go early to avoid que. $5 cover charge usually, unless you make friends with the Irish Manager who sneaks you in. They did a few promotions involving Jagerbombs, would love to tell you more about those promos but I'm a bit hazy...

Food.
Obviously I can't list all of the places, but I'll give you a quick run down of my favourite places:

1: Chipotle (Cleveland Circle and everywhere): Huge Burritos! So incredibly good that they're one of the main reasons I want to go back to the states. Pretty cheap for the size of the burrito you get.
2. Eagles Deli (Cleveland Circle), Unreal burgers, search for Man Vs Food Eagles Deli on youtube. They have a challenge burger that is insane, I can't remember the exact specs, but I do know it comes with a pound of fries. They do real person burgers as well, the fries are unreal as well
3: Applebees (Cleveland Circle and everywhere) They do a two for $20 meal where for $20 you get a starter to share and then get a main course each. They do $4 cocktails as well. Really nice sit down place where we went for our last night in Boston but you don't have to pay through the nose.
4. Fire and Ice (In the City) I think it's Mondays they do $10 dollar all you can eat. It's a really cool place where all the food is uncooked so you bring it to these chefs that cook it infront of you on a huge circular metal thing. Good fun and all you can eat.
5. Fins (Cleveland CIrcle) Really good sushi, but it's a bit expensive.
6. Dunkin' Donuts (Everywhere, literally every 10 minutes from eachother) Amazing, unreal and fantastic. Doughnuts are for breakfast, just fyi. Coffee is ok, but really cheap. Doughnuts are a dollar. If you wanna be all cool and local, ask for a medium regular, which will get you a coffee with cream and sugar. Great hangover food.

Tipping
Americans tip for everything. Bars, taxi, haircuts... The rule is between 18 and 20 per cent of the total bill. The reason for this is that if you work in a bar in the States, you usually get $2 or $3 an hour so they live on tips. It sucks, but you have to do it, especially at the start of the night. If you don't tip well at the start of the night, you're gonna find it hard to get a drink again.



Touristy things
Walk the freedom trail. It's a trail around boston in the footpath that takes you around a load of historic sites in the city, goes through the Italian quarter and up to Bunker hill. There's loads of little guide books you can get that will give you loads of info on the trail as you walk around, do it while it's warm!
Go to the Science museum, it's great craic. It's all interactive and I spent a whole day in there with one of my friends. It is mostly kids, but tell me you don't want to test how many yards per second you can run!

Just to get you ready for the Boston accent, my roommate was from Charlestown in Boston, the real Irish area of boston (watch the movie 'The Town' before you go) we made a video for his secret santa thing we organised. Have a look if you feel like having a bit of a giggle, it is a bit R rated at times and is probably not funny to anyone but us, but it will show you how a real Bostonian speaks. http://youtu.be/pNU7P9KvHWA

Sports
In Boston you support The New England Patriots (The Pats) in Football, The Celtics in Basketball, The Bruins in Ice Hockey and The Red Sox in Baseball. People in Boston are fanatical about their support for their teams. When I arrived a friend of my roommate told me to support those 4 teams and to hate the The Knicks (Basketball), The Jets (football) and most importantly, The Yankees (Baseball). These 3 teams have 2 things in common; 1: They're from New York and 2: I hate them. Jump on the bandwagon, embrace being a Bostonian. But do go see the teams play, especially the Red Sox, BC is really close to Fenway and it's so much fun. The idea of a baseball game is to go with friends, have a Fenway Frank, have a beer and every so often have a look at the game. They are long, usually about 4 hours, but it's more about just hanging out with your friends, enjoying the atmosphere and singing Sweet Caroline (Seriously).


WInter.
It gets cold. Ungodly cold. Cold to the point of "I'm pretty sure I don't have a nose anymore." Snow arrived in late December and was just about gone by Paddy's day (also, get used to Americans calling it St. Patty's Day, it's dumb, but it kinda makes sense when you think logically), you do get used to it though and you have the chance to build a snowman that lasts for literally months, funny appendages and all. Lads, you should invest in a pair of boots for the snow. I got a pair of Timberland-eske boots in Boston for $40 and wore them everyday for several months, including going to Mary-Ann's. Girls lived in Ugg boots and wellies. It's perfectly acceptable to wear wellies around campus during the snow or even if it's just raining. Infact, the only unacceptable thing about wellies is calling them wellies, they go by 'Rain boots' over there. Although the look of confusion you get when you ask about wellies is worth the jokes about your silly Irish words.

Internship Visa
I only found out about this when it was too late, but you can get an extension on your visa if you manage to land a job that relates to your degree. Ask your professors, especially if you're doing any kind of media/communications/journalism because the professors are all involved in working with places like The Globe newspaper or WZBZ radio. BC also holds internship fairs where you can see all the internships there are available. Wear business-y clothes and bring loads of CVs. While you're there get business cards and contact emails and don't forget to Irish it up, they love us in Boston, use it.

Clubs and Organisations
Join one. SImple as that. I played on the Ultimate Frisbee team over there and I made some of my best friends on that team. So many internationals go and only make friends with other internationals, but you're in America, go hang out with Americans. That said, the internationals are always great fun and I have great friends from all over the world now, so just find a balance!

Working
I worked in Hillside Cafe on campus and I'm so glad I did! It was great fun and the people that work in there are mostly students so you get to meet more people that you wouldn't have met. I worked between 10 and 15 hours a week, which gave me about 90-120 dollars a week to play with and it was very do-able. If you keep organised about getting your work done, you can very easily get a job on campus. There's a few jobs in the dining halls and Bookstores. I know a few people worked catering where they could just pick up shifts as they felt like it. You can also work for 'Bull Gang' which is pretty much setting up barriers and getting the venues ready for football, ice hockey and basketball games. The hours for that are pretty strange because it's usually after games which can be late. You can also get work in the Plex, which is the gym on campus. They always look for referees for Intramural games as well, so there's plenty of places to get work if you want one.

So that's all I can think of for the moment, I have to say that writing this has made me very nostalgic for Boston and especially BC. You're going to have the best year of your life, and just know that every single one of the internationals that were in BC last year are insanely jealous of you. I don't know if the international office told you about this, but I wrote a blog while I was there and you can see it here http://conor-leavinghome.blogspot.com/ For some reason the posts come up with the most recent first, so the first entry is at the bottom. Go and have the best year you can, enjoy America and if you have any more questions feel free to email me on crohuir@gmail.com.

Eagles,
Conor"

I’m leaving you Boston. But it’s not you… it’s my visa

Something people have asked me a lot here is why I chose Boston College for my study abroad year, and I’d love to tell them that I’ve always wanted to come here, that I’ve always wanted to see the Sox hit a home run over the Monstah in Fenway, eat a chowder in Quincy or sightsee around Harvard. But the truth is that the idea of coming to Boston was never something that crossed my mind. But now leaving it kills me.

It seems fitting that I write my last blog the airport in Boston, seeing as I wrote my first one in Dublin Airport. I can tell you that the feeling of being at the departures gate this time is quite different to how I felt leaving Dublin. In Dublin I was anxious, worried, and honestly, pretty scared. Now, the only thing I’m anxious about is that I won’t be able to come back here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to go home, but I’m in a strange state of looking forward to going home, but dreading leaving. Boston is more than just a city on the east coast of the US; it’s become my home. When I say home, I don’t just mean the literal place I lived in for the year, I was part of Boston, part of something more than a year studying in a different place. I didn’t just live here, I experienced here.

The last few weeks have been rough, people have been leaving in drips until the group of internationals has dwindled to only a handful. This group of people are the best you could hope for, hailing from all over the world and each bringing something different to the table; be the Ladsy Aussies, Café Irish, The Doods, The 2000 lock-breakers and of course, the oft bewildered Americans.

I’m also saying goodbye to the BC Ultimate team after we were knocked out of regionals one game away from a shot at going to the National Championships. This team was such an important part of my year and so many people on the team went out of their way to make sure I felt welcome and part of the team from the beginning. We had our end of the year bash right in the middle of finals, which was a welcome release from the stress of studying and assignments to hang out and say goodbye to everyone. Of course the most important part of the night was awards, where I won the award for “Best Minority.” Cheers lads.

On the plus side, I’m going to be home for the Carrick Festival. Usually Festival isn’t something that would excite me, but now that I’m going to be home in time to see everyone at it and have a much needed few scoops with the lads.

That said, I know when I get home I’ll be pining for everything I’ve left behind, for Dunkins, for beef jerky, for the Patriots, for 2000, for the Mods, for Mary Ann’s, for the Celtics, for IA’s and IS’s, for the shuttle bus, for the Ultimate bros, for roommates, for Fenway, for Chipotle, for the green line, for the Sox, for beer pong, but most of all, For Boston. Keep singing that proud refrain.

March Madness

What a month! To be honest, the term March Madness doesn’t come close to describing all that happened. The great American tradition of covering college sports is continued this month, with both the College Hockey and Basketball playoffs on T.V. and in the paper constantly.

I’ve noticed that there is more interaction with sports here than at home; people don’t just watch games, they analyse them in the hope that their bracket will come up trumps for gloating rights with their friends, especially when their college is involved. Brackets are pretty much like the posters you get before the World Cup, with all the teams in the competition written on it and the route they must take to get to the final. But instead of filling in the results as they happen, you try to predict who will get through all the way to the Final Four and ultimately predict the winner. I turned on ESPN to see Barrack Obama showing the county his bracket for both the men’s and women’s basketball playoffs. I’m not sure if people do brackets for hockey, but basketball brackets are a big deal here. Just sitting on the bus, you hear people talking about the strengths of their bracket for one reason or the other, usually naming people that I have never heard of but would get to know over the course of March, especially UConn’s Kemba Walker, who is the superstar of college basketball this year. He’s putting himself up for the NBA draft, looking for a professional team to take him on… and he’s the same age as me.

Seeing as BC’s basketball team didn’t make it to the playoffs, all the focus was on our hockey team. In fact, the hockey team here means so much to BC that a home basketball game that was changed to an away game because of a hockey practice. I guess BC aren’t trying to work on their basketball credibility.

Our hockey team went into the playoffs on a high after winning the Beanpot (annual competition between BC, BU, Harvard and Northeastern) and as reigning national champions. It’s fair to say that we were feeling pretty good about seeing another national title coming our way. Coming up to our game we had won our eight previous games, and our game started well, and we went one up after 19 seconds. After that, well, we don’t really want to talk about what happened after that. There was one saving grace that would come at the start of April and that was that at least Notre Dame didn’t win. I don’t know who beat them, or who ultimately won, but I know Notre Dame didn’t, and isn’t that all that really matters when it boils down to it?

I think the BC bookstore is a good place to look to understand what’s going on at that particular time of the year; during football season, the football jerseys and BC Football apparel was at the front of the shop, when we came back in second semester, that gear had been replaced by a multitude of basketball and hockey clothing, and coming up to March a new stand appeared. It was easily the most noticeable thing in the whole shop, a place where everything is maroon, gold or black. It stood defiantly, in all of its bright green glory, displaying hoodys and shirts with “BOSTON COLLEGE” screaming across the chest, just above a large, white shamrock. Yes, this a the reminder that St. Patrick’s Day was fast approaching and with that, the idea that being Irish isn’t measured by where you are from, but by how much green you can wear and how loudly you can protest that you love Guinness.

Many of the student organisations around campus were doing Irish-themed events, covering the walls of every campus building to advertise them and I have no problem with this. However, there was the slight problem of shortening the name Patrick by many an American. “But Conor” you cry. “We do that over here. Sure doesn’t everyone call it St. Paddy’s day?” Why yes, impatient and slightly annoying blog reader, we do. However, the problem isn’t with shortening it to Paddy, but to Patty. I kid you not when I say this, every single poster had invitations to come spend St. Patty’s day with them. One of my friends asked me what I was doing for “Patty’s” day, so I obviously had to correct him. He then proceeded to shout something about ‘MERICA and how I’m only an Irish Mick anyway, showing that the only thing Americans love more than the Irish is double standards.

Seeing as Paddy’s day fell on a Thursday this year, it meant that the parade was on the following Sunday, which was strange enough in itself, but the fact that I wasn’t at the parade in Carrick was even stranger. We got together a group of internationals to head down to the parade in Southie. (South Boston) For many of them it was their first Paddy’s Day parade ever! They had no idea what to expect, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I knew what to expect from it either, surely not every parade outside of Dublin has tractors pulling musicians, scouts marching and men dressed up like llama-type things. Well, once we arrived into Southie (after teaching Ireland’s Call to everyone who would listen to us on the T) what did we see marching by but the Brookline Boy Scouts, Troop 6. Just when I was beginning to feel right at home, a tractor pulling along a band called “The Gobshites” drove by playing trad music, sitting on bales of hay. At this stage I was about to ask if anyone was going to the Fiddlers later, but I managed to hold myself back. Not because I was in Boston, but because I knew that the Fiddlers would be 15 quid in and wasn’t Charlie’s free?

The whole day ended up feeling a lot like a normal Paddy’s Day, so it was fun to have it with all the internationals, and that feeling of being treated like royalty when people found out that I was Irish, was even more pronounced than usual. More good times.

It's finally starting to get warmer here, that said, a few days after I took this photo, I woke up to another blizzard, but Boston keeps giving us glimpses of how nice it can be.

Also, here's a link to video that my Dad made of the parade in Carrickmacross, my home town, just so you can see what it looks like!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHHPKm9_oA0

Going on Spring Break... So college

Lower Dining Hall is full of tanned happy faces, far too tanned to be Boston in March. They all sit around chatting, swapping stories acting like they haven’t seen each other in years, or haven’t just been looking at their newest photo album on Facebook with some clever title. It’s all because they’ve been on Spring Break, the quintessential American college experience, as Hollywood would have us believe. What I’ve found is that students here seem to divide up their spring break into 3 main categories:

Trip type 1: This is the break that a lot of freshmen take. They go back to Mammy and Daddy, back to meals that aren’t one of the dining hall’s fistful of options and of course back to see high school friends to tell them stories of college and why it’s better than their friend’s college. It’s not only Freshmen that take this trip, most people in BC study abroad in their junior (3^rd) year so a lot of sophomores (2^nd years) will go home, or work for the break to save for their semester abroad. This usually leads to several bitter status updates and jealous comments on photo albums of people in sunnier climes.

Trip type 2: The service trip. Students in BC love to volunteer, especially if it’s in a warm place that has a drinking age of 18. For example my housemate, Juan, went to the Dominican Republic to teach in an orphanage there. Trips like this are so common in college that on campus the Dominican Republic is referred to as “The DR” It has to be said that students in BC really are the volunteering kind, not just seasonally and when it suits them. So many people have equal, if not more hours volunteering as they do in classes. Apparently doing volunteer work helps student’s application to graduate school, but there’s also a culture of volunteering at BC that I have never experienced before, and certainly makes me feel very inadequate among all these Boston College do-gooders, in the very best sense of the word.

Trip type 3: The oh-so-college trip to Mardi Gras/ Cancun/ West Coast. These are the trips that movies are made of, the kind that American students dream about and the kind parents don’t ever want to hear about. The traditional trip to Mardi gras trip is a road trip, leaving on the last day of classes and driving roughly 2,500 km to get to New Orleans for Mardi gras on Tuesday. Fun fact that I just learned; Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, which is the American equivalent of Pancake Tuesday, falling just before Ash Wednesday and encouraging people to eat far too much of something that is not good for you at all. That over there is a photo of some of the other International students that went to Mardi gras, they rented 2 RVs and drove the whole way there, can't say I'm not a little bit jealous!

But of course these are only the main categories of trip, for example, I did none of these things but instead went to an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Georgia called High Tide. For those of you who may not know, I’ve been playing Ultimate since first year in Maynooth and going from that small team I’m now playing on the BC team which has an A and a B team with about 50 players over both teams. Our team, in keeping with the Boston College sports teams is called The Eagles and hence we have some pretty epic uniforms and training gear all in the maroon and gold of BC.

So anyway, High Tide is a tournament that Boston College men’s and women’s teams come to compete in… Kinda. See the tournament has a 4 day format beginning on the Monday with what’s called a ‘Hat Tournament’ basically everyone enters and gets assigned a team with total strangers by having their name pulled out of a hat. It’s really laid back and nobody cares about getting too far in the competition, although the prize was a High Tide hat this year, so the stakes were high. I ended up injuring myself in the first game after getting a block on the disc, so I pretty much just sat on the sideline in the warmth of the Georgia sun watching my team play. The other three days of the tournament were played with the BC team, but because it was Spring Break, most teams weren’t too interested in playing high intensity Ultimate so the general unspoken rule of the competition was “Don’t be a prick” seeing as Ultimate is self refereed, this meant “don’t call every foul, let’s just play Ultimate” Which kind of harks back to the original idea of Ultimate that nobody intentionally fouls another player or knowingly breaks the rules. Yes, it’s all very hippyish, but it’s part of it. Against one team, we played a game that included upside down points, where every throw had to be one with the disc upside down, one shirtless Vs shortless point and finally a 20 on 20 full game.

Unfortunately not all of the teams got the memo about it being a “just for fun” tournament, and some teams came to win the tournament. This being American Ultimate, those games were full of bad spirit, travel calls and chants of “We’re on Spring Break, IT’S NOT THAT SERIOUS!” Because for our team, it was more about the 18 hour road trip down, the hanging out on the beach by our villas, eating southern food (like Chicken and Waffles, not separate, like in one bite. Seriously) and generally having a laugh and relaxing. I think this shows in my photos of the trip, which are all from the road trip, the beach and the villa, with none from the tournament whatsoever.

On our road trip down the people who had been on the trip before were telling us about this place called South of the Border. They were talking about it as the most amazing place on the route and some even claimed that it was the only reason they came on the trip. It’s on the Border between North and South Carolina but the signs for it appearing on the highway pretty much the whole way through North Carolina. Needless to say I was unbelievably excited by the idea of this magical wonderland and when we arrived, I was honestly speechless. I have never been in a place where I felt equal measures of wonder and horror. Twenty-foot tall statues of Mexican giants stood beside strange luminous yellow gorillas and what looked like an abandoned amusement park. Because we had been driving through the night, we were there at 8am, so nothing was open and this gave the place an eerily quiet and neglected look, which, I’m assured looks only slightly better at night under the shine of the millions of large light up signs. I can only imagine how terrifying the multitudes of animals look in the cover of darkness, seeing as stumbling upon pink rhinos, mutilated horses and buffalo-cheetah crosses was scary enough in the light of day.

There was so much in this trip that I’ve missed out on, so I’m going to try and give a brief list of things that we did on our way that I simply don’t have time to write about, but I really wish I did! * Ahem * Ate Philly Cheese Steaks in Philly, visited the car park in Columbia High school where the first official game of Ultimate was played, ate chicken and waffles with ranch dressing and maple syrup, asked locals directions while putting on the worst southern accent possible, the (failed) quest for me to get into my first Wal-Mart, twitter feeds about bros on spring break, me personally driving from Washington DC, through Philadelphia and on to New York, No beers Vassar, DARTY! (Day party, as Christine explained to me) bonfire on the beach, Four Loko (with caffeine), Waffle House, Dairy Queen, 5 hour energy and of course that great feeling basking in the sun. Good times.

Back in Bahston dood!

Snow is falling,

All around us,

And it won’t bloody leave.

I had initially began this particular blog entry by talking about how, even though it hadn’t snowed in weeks, the roads were flanked with snow that had frozen solid and offers many opportunities for shenanigans on the way back from Mary Ann’s bar on a Tuesday night.

However, as I sat down to write this entry, the view from my window reveals millions of snowflakes driving towards the streets of Boston to take the place of their brethren who have been shoveled, salted and ploughed off the roads since their arrival. Of course we know that anything more than a light dusting of the white stuff in Ireland can cause everything to shut down for at least a few days, Boston is ready for the snow. If this snow sticks tonight (there is a chance that it won’t, seeing as it rain quite heavily today) then tomorrow there will be trucks with ploughs mounted on the front clearing the roads and throwing so much salt, you’d swear they were trying to keep them from going off. But because these ploughs are attached to the front of regular trucks, the people driving them are regular people, and as regular people often do, they can get into slight fender benders once in a while. The problem with a small collision is that they have the aforementioned enormous plough on the front, so having a small crash with a snowplough is similar to the saying that the Egyptians are having a slight disagreement with their government. I say this because a friend of mine was in a car over the Christmas break and their car was hit by a snowplough while they were on their way home after a day out. Luckily none of them were hurt, but apparently the guy who hit them got out, looked at their car, looked at his and then laughingly made a comment about how his car wasn’t even scratched. He then promptly hopped back into his unscathed truck and headed off on his merry way. Even though this seems like and extraordinary incident, when I told Jay about the crash, he told me that a friend of his was hit twice in one week by a snowplough. It seems that this is an altogether regular occurrence, or more likely, the people I have surrounded myself with are terrible drivers who insist on playing chicken with snowploughs.

The beginning of this semester has been so framed by the snow that I have come to accept it, and even embrace it. The main advantage of having snow outside is that you are aware that it is cold out, before the break it had begun to fall below 0 Celsius but it looked beautiful outside. There was nearly always the vast blue sky, punctuated only by the yellow blob of sun and maybe a few lonely clouds, but once you stepped outside, you were reminded that it was winter. When I look outside now, I still see the clear sky and the seemingly warm sun, but the white blanket that spreads out to the horizon deceives it. When I step outside now, all my senses know that it’s going to be cold, especially when we can hear the strong Boston wind attempting to smash through our windows on the 12^th floor.

Obviously, because it is so desperately cold outside, I am spending a lot more of my time indoors and I realised that I have been focusing on the Boston that exists beyond the doors of my apartment. While I was thinking about this, I realised that this is the first time I have lived with a group of lads. In my first year in Maynooth, I lived in the legendary Rye Hall with Louise, Catherine and Andrew. In second year I lived with Eleanor and Maura in the only dodgy estate in Maynooth- Old Greenfield. The differences between each of the three have been huge. When I lived with girls, places like the bathroom tended to be cleaner, now, when people come over to our place, I imagine that many choose to hover instead of sitting on the throne. There is always beer to be found in our apartment but rarely in the fridge. We once found a Budweiser can hidden in a pop tart box in our kitchen. It then mysteriously vanished a few days later. I can only hope that someone at a party in our place had a thought process that went:

I’m hungry.

Ooh Poptarts!

Aw no poptarts.

OOH BEER!

Again, I am only speculating, but I really hope it went something like that.

And just in case we you think this is a once off thing, we currently have another can of Budweiser in our bathroom. The really strange thing is that none of us drink Budweiser; we have a strict Natty Ice, Busch Light and PBR diet in this apartment

The most exciting thing about this week is that it’s my last week before Spring Break, and to quote the guys organising the trip to Brunswick, Georgia for a weeklong Ultimate Frisbee tournament “SPRING BREEEAAAAAAAK! COLLLEEEEEEEEGE! So hopefully I’ll have another entry about that when I get back. My first and last Spring Break better live up to all MTV made it out to, or at least I can get to play a lot of Ultimate in a place where snow is as rare a Jets fan in Boston.



By the way, not a bad view from my bedroom window!

Ode to a Turkey

I’m back in Ireland for the first time since August, and I can’t quite believe it. Everything that I have become used to is on the other side of the Atlantic. I was extremely lucky to even get home this Christmas with the ridiculous amounts of snow that we had in Dublin. I was constantly told by people in Boston that there would be copious amounts of snow coming in the winter and every day I was on the look out for it. It did get colder, and I discovered the joys of wearing pajamas under jeans, which is probably the single greatest thing I have learned since coming to the States. The cold also taught me to embrace Fahrenheit in place of Celsius because saying that it is 32 degrees outside is far more agreeable than saying that it is 0 degrees outside and makes getting up for my 9 am Italian class that much easier. Of course most people in Ireland assumed that Boston, because it was not Ireland, was of course warmer than home. I don’t know why we seem to do this, but even if I tell people that it has been below zero most days since halfway through November, I would always get the same response: Ah yea, but it’s a dry cold. Because no matter where you are in the world, we always seem to assume that the weather is better if you’re not in Ireland. But it might interest you to know that the Irish climate is more similar to that of Greece than the climate in America. Economically speaking of course. (oooh topical humour)

However on the day I was to leave Boston, I walked into my apartment on what was just a regular cold and windy day to pack to go home (Yes Mum, I left my packing until the last day) and I looked out the window twenty minutes later to see what can only be described as a blizzard, coating everything in a bright white powder. Now, because I am an absolute idiot, I didn’t think to take any pictures of the snow, so the pictures that are included in this blog have been stolen from friends’ Facebook pages. I do intend to take more pictures next semester, because apart from the first few weeks my camera has sat idly on my windowsill gathering dust. When I say that I will be taking more pictures, what I mean is that I will be giving my camera to the girls when we go out or do anything, because it is a scientific fact that girls are more snap happy, so I’ll be entrusting my camera to them so I can have my memories recorded for me and they can have fun with a shiny camera, everybody wins.

But I am halfway through my year in Boston, and next semester is going to be a strange semester. A lot of the international students that made up a large part of my group of friends over here were only studying in Boston for one semester, so the small group of us that are coming back for a second semester are going to miss the group that have gone. However this just means that once this year is over, we’re going to have to go visit them to make up for a lost semester. Now all we need is for Ryanair to open a flight to Australia and we can all have a reunion there. I’m sure I could find a few people that might just agree with that, trip Down Under anyone?

Probably the thing I was looking forward to the most since deciding to come to the States was Thanksgiving. We’ve all seen Thanksgiving through films and TV shows but I really didn’t know it was such a big thing. People asked me if I was going home for Thanksgiving, even if they knew I was Irish. I don’t think this is a case of them being stupid but rather that the idea of growing up without Thanksgiving is inconceivable to them. I suppose it’s similar to Christmas in the importance they place on it, but it seems to be almost a nicer version; you don’t buy presents, you don’t have to deal with weeks of ads telling you that you should feel Christmassy, but rather, the whole emphasis of the day is to spend it with your family… and to eat ridiculous amounts of food. I was very fortunate to be invited to have Thanksgiving with Jay’s family in Charlestown and I have to say that I was a little bit terrified by the sheer amount of food. There were a lot of people, but no more than I would be used to at Christmas day, probably 12 or 14 people, but just so much food. I, of course, didn’t bring my camera so I have no physical record of the day but I think the fact that they had seven plates of seven different types of cookies is as good an indicator as you’ll get to describe how many different types of deserts there were. As for Jay’s family, I couldn’t have felt more welcome by everyone there. When we arrived in the house in Charlestown, we had a beer, watched football and generally had a laugh. You know when they show Thanksgiving on TV, they always go around the table and say what they’re thankful for? Well there was none of that here, that’s a West Coast touchy-feely kind of Thanksgiving, whereas Bostonians are a bit more understated than the rest of America it seems.

For the first time since I was in 6^th year, I had exams before Christmas unlike Maynooth where we have them when we come back in January. It’s a nice feeling now, writing this and not thinking about when I should start studying or when I should be leaving home to get back up to the library, but instead I can relax, leaving all of last semester’s subjects in December where they belong. Even apart from the time exams were on, they were a very different experience from exams in Maynooth. The lowest percentage exam I’ve ever had in Maynooth was 45% and the majority of the exams I’ve done are worth 90% but the highest percentage exam I had in Boston College was worth 25%. The main difference in studying in the States and at home is how the work is distributed throughout the year. Instead of having very stressful big essays and big final exams, which cause a lot of stress for a short period of time, colleges in America give lots of short assignments, which instead of getting rid of these periods of high stress instead just means that students here are at the same level of constant stress for the whole term. It might be a quiz worth 5% in the next class, or a 1 page response paper to an article we had to read, but there is always something to do. So when exams came around people were breathing a sigh of relief that the mountain of constant work wasn’t knocking at the door anymore. I found that I had more free time during the exams than at any other time of the year. As well as that, because of the continuous assessment throughout the year, we knew that we couldn’t fail the subjects. However, the regular students in BC were all putting themselves under the same level of stress as they would normally be subjected to. This ethos of putting yourself under a huge amount of stress seems to be encouraged by Boston College as the library remains open 24 hours a day during the exam period and free coffee is given out in one of the dining halls. Just in case you’re worried, I didn’t let myself get caught up in the hysteria and went Christmas shopping right in the middle of my exams. I haven’t changed that much yet…

I have to admit that this year is the first time in a long time I was genuinely excited for Christmas. Of course I enjoyed Christmas Day with my family and having time to rest, but I’ve never understood people who count down the days to Christmas once Halloween is over. I think it has something to do with when Christmas is brought upon us, with it seeming to come earlier and earlier every year and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard irate callers giving out to Joe Duffy about hearing Christmas music in Superquinn’s in October. For once, I can agree with the people who usually ring in about how they hate their neighbour’s cat that mews all night. But in the States the positioning of Thanksgiving in the last Thursday of November means that Christmas isn’t mentioned until after it, so Christmas is contained in December. This means that once Thanksgiving is over, Bostonians embrace Christmas with an incredibly contagious energy and it’s easy to get swept along with it because you know that the carols, Christmas ads, everyone wondering when the snow will come and the general feel good energy that comes with the Christmas Spirit will only be around for a few weeks so it won’t be long and drawn out like it is at home. It also helped taking part in 2 Secret Santas. One with the Irish internationals at BC, and one with the Ultimate team here. Colourful attire was encouraged at the Ultimate party. I think I look well.

On top of that, there seems to be a kind of embracing of most kinds of excitement. It’s easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the people around you, whatever it is they’re excited about. I found that I would look forward to going to the BC Football games at the weekend, and I felt very aggrieved when it was an away game and I didn’t get my fix of live Football. And yes, I have begun to call it simply “football” because calling it “American Football” while in America is just like going out to eat “Chinese food” when in China. Even though I do enjoy the game, it’s the atmosphere that makes it. Imagine standing for four hours in the student section of a packed 42,000 seater stadium, chanting along with the band’s songs and watching these giants playing football, and then imagine seeing those giants everyday, walking around campus or even sitting beside you in class. It must be odd for them to go from class on a Friday afternoon and then to play with 42,000 people watching. I think I once played in a game that had about 42 people watching.

Sadly Football season is over, but that means that it’s the turn of Ice Hockey and Basketball. We have a 17,000 seater venue for Hockey and there’s a lot of excitement about our hockey team, seeing as BC won the national title last year and we recently walked over local rivals Boston University twice in one week, so you could say that we’re pretty good. When we have a basketball game, the ice gets covered over with a basketball court and the place we win hockey games becomes the place where we lose basketball games. But when you go to a game here, it’s not just a sporting event, it’s almost like a small festival. There’s a band, cheerleaders, Baldwin the Eagle and of course the chants coming from the student section. My personal favourite is when BC score in Hockey we chant “You suck. At life. And Goalkeeping. It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault! Seeing as I played in goals for years, it does make me feel quite bad to be chanting at them, but hey, they didn’t go to BC so clearly it’s ok. All these chants are driven by the band, and in football season there’s a huge 180 strong band that play all 4 hours of the game and do a halftime show as well. Now that we’ve moved to the indoor season, we’ve got a smaller band called the pep band. Seeing as us Internationals are encouraged to take part in all things BC, two of the Irish girls, Ciara and Lucy (middle and left respectively) have joined the pep band and can be found at games, exuding pep and not quite knowing all the words to BC’s fight song “For Boston” (their words, not mine!) But Lucy has her own blog, so if you’re interested in following her and her band geek ways, you can do so here http://beantown2010.blogspot.com/

Well I only have one week left at home so I’ve been running around seeing people, playing some ultimate, meeting friends for scoops and I even had a nice walk around the library in Maynooth to see all the stressed people, which I’m not sure they appreciated quite as much as I did. Anyway, I’m going to go and enjoy my last few days in Ireland, one more visit up to Maynooth and then a last night out in Carrick for the lovely La’s 21^st birthday!

However there is good news on the snow front. Seeing as I missed most of the big snow in Ireland, I’m not yet sick of it so I’m very excited to say that Massachusetts recently declared a state of emergency because of heavy snowfall. I know I’m going to get very sick of it very quickly, but until then, snow angels and snowmen with funny add ons shall be made.

Finally, every year, Dad paints the window in our sitting room. Each year we have a different theme and he thought that this year the theme had to be an American one, so he painted the Boston College logo and a the New England Patriot. Not a bad view behind it either

I'm Irish too! Straight out of Charlestown...

After a lengthy discussion with Mike from Cork about how the urinals in Ireland and indeed all over Europe are more rounded than the ones in America are, he came out with the line “Ah sure, either way, you’re a peein. (Geddit? European? Geddit? Gas…)

(Mc Laughlin, M.J. (2010) The Eagle’s Nest, Part. 1 Section. VI, Langerhouse publishing, Cork, Co. Cork. (My God, I love Cork))

As I’m pretty much settled in over here I’m struggling of things to talk about in this blog because I’ve become so used to everything here that it seems normal and mundane to me now, even though it fascinated me or confused me when I first got here. One thing I do still really enjoy my walk to college everyday which takes me about 5 minutes along Commonwealth Avenue to the entrance of BC. While I walk I’m not looking at the T when it flies by, nor am I looking at the pretty buildings all alongside the road, but I walk along the side of the street where the cemetery is. I know this sounds quite morbid, but it’s the headstones in there that fascinate me. The headstones at home are all kind of familiar, the same names popping up all the time, every so often a name will not be Martin, McEvoy or Farrell and then, sure, aren’t they a blow in? But the names are so fantastically mixed here, so much so that the names Zanik, Sheridan, O Sullivan, Dubnikov and even a Phelan all in a row. It’s something that I think we tend to ridicule about Americans, the fact that they all cling onto their heritage, especially in Boston where they cling to their Irish roots like a needy ex that just can’t let go. We’ve all done it, we’ve all made jokes about the Americans who break down their heritage into fractions like, “I’m 12.5% Italian, 20% German and 93% Irish.” Now, I’m not going to lie, I was right among those making the jokes about it, but since I’ve come here I started to really like that about America. Everybody is American, but they’re also not letting their heritage go, and if I’m honest, the Boston Irish are more Irish than the Irish. They know traditional folk songs, they know the history of Ireland and they drink Guinness, and when I say traditional songs, I don’t just mean Thin Lizzy’s version of Whiskey in the Jar. So I ask what’s wrong with Americans holding onto where their roots are? It’s honestly one of my favourite things about America, when I meet someone and they tell me that they’re Irish too, and they’re from Cork or Galway, or even one girl I met who told me that her family came from Offaly. I told her I was very sorry, but it’s good that she can admit it. It made me wonder if Americans will ever see themselves as just American, not Irish-American or Italian American or whatever- American, but I really hope they don’t.

Now, back to the issue of cultural differences and all that jazz! Ok, so I know that when you sneeze, sometimes a friend or a relation will say, “bless you” afterwards. Sometimes! Here anybody and everybody will say it to you! This isn’t a bad thing, but the people here do it with such frequency and speed, it’s sometimes more frightening than a sneeze that catches you off guard. If you sneeze in class, at least 4 people all seemingly vying to win the race to speak the magical words will shout it out to from across the room, down the length of the bus and probably over an intercom system if it was nearby. Just recently I was in the library (The actual library!) and I was sitting in what I can only describe as a wooden paneled cell where all possible stimuli is cut off. Sitting in my little box, I am surrounded by several other boxes all containing students who have confined themselves to the wooden prison in hopes of getting work done. For no apparent reason and with no warning whatsoever, a sneeze sneaks up on me and comes shooting out. Now, because I’m in the middle of several well-meaning students, I was barraged by at least 6 people calling out “bless you!” I was so taken aback by the response to my sneeze I said “bugger!” a lot louder than I intended to and fair few giggles were directed my way along with one person looking over the partition and asking me “Do you have an accent right now?” Which incidentally has become my favourite phrase here, like, it’s not just inquiring about whether or not I have a non- American accent, but rather whether I have it “right now” just incase I do have a foreign accent, but I sometimes like to leave it at home.

I don’t think that Boston has really lived up to the stereotypes as much as I thought it would, but in some respects I have felt very stereotypically American, like ordering pizza, having a beer and watching Football (and yes, I have given up calling it ‘American Football’) and I love it. It really is the little things that make a difference, and the biggest difference here is that pizza doesn’t come with garlic mayo. They may have the art of Pizza making down to an art, but when it comes to dipping crusts, or even the glory of folding a slice in half lengthways and dunking it into the garlic mayo, they are still in their infancy. On the topic of pizza, we now have a great relationship with the general manager of our local Dominos because when you order Dominos online, you can see who is making your pizza and subsequently who is delivering it. Quite regularly we were told that Tamer was making our pizza, and so we decided to write compliments to Tamer in the comments box on the Dominos site. We assumed that these comments would go into some kind of computer system and never actually be read. However, it turns out that those comments appear in the Dominos that you are ordering from, so they saw these comments were being read by Tamer himself. So one day, we ordered a pizza and it told us that Tamer was making our Pizza. We celebrated as usual, but then we saw it change to “Tamer has left the store with your order.” We went mental. Actually mental. When we calmed down, we decided that we should write him a song and so we changed the lyrics to Jack Johnson’s Sitting, Waiting, Wishing to a song all about Tamer. Long story short, we now have a direct line to Tamer and he sorts us out with all kinds of extras.

Moral of the story: Be nice to pizza people, they can pull strings, and probably mozzerella ones.