{"id":5020,"date":"2013-02-15T09:43:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T17:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldblogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=5020"},"modified":"2013-02-15T09:43:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T17:43:41","slug":"traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2013\/02\/15\/traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a week where I participated in several Irish traditions. \u00a0It’s a lot of fun to figure out what traditions exist in a particular place, and following them is equally entertaining at times. \u00a0They occasionally make no sense to us, but then we probably have some pretty weird traditions ourselves in the States. \u00a0No wearing white after Labor Day? \u00a0What’s with that?<\/p>\n

First of all, I took a trip to Cork, and from there I took a bus out to Blarney and kissed the Blarney Stone!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo credit for this one goes to Carly McCann, as my face was otherwise occupied. \u00a0It left me rather flustered…<\/p>\n

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but I gained the Gift of Gab, as they say! \u00a0There were a lot of handy signs around Blarney Castle that helped differentiate ‘blarney’ from ‘baloney.’ \u00a0Here’s one:<\/p>\n

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It wasn’t very scary to kiss the Stone, I must admit. \u00a0They used to hang you over the edge of the castle by your heels and you had to kiss it that way, but now they have handrails and a spotter, and there are bars underneath the stone so it’d be rather difficult to fall. \u00a0It is still pretty high up, though.<\/p>\n

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That’s Blarney Castle, and the Stone is all the way at the top. \u00a0The stairs got very narrow sometimes. \u00a0I had a backpack with me and I started getting pretty claustrophobic. \u00a0That was the only worrying thing about the adventure!<\/p>\n

Second of all, this week was Pancake Tuesday, known in the States as Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. \u00a0But pancakes!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Clearly, these are not pancakes as we Americans would understand them. \u00a0They’re more crepes than pancakes. \u00a0The mix said ‘Pancake,’ though, which led to my favorite pun of the night, “These pancakes are full of crepe.” \u00a0Thank you, I thought I was hilarious.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tradition arose because people had to use up all of their eggs and butter, all ‘luxuries,’ before Lent. \u00a0I guess people don’t get to eat anything fun over Lent, so they’d use all their extra goods up making pancakes the day before Ash Wednesday!<\/span><\/p>\n

That isn’t actually my pancake, by the way. \u00a0My friend Julia made a prettier pancake than I did. \u00a0Mine just had a lot of lemon curd in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It was still delicious, though. \u00a0We had pancakes and listened to Macklemore, and that became our own little tradition for the next few days; we ate pancakes for dinner, lunch, and breakfast, and we listened to ‘Thrift Shop.’<\/span><\/p>\n

The third tradition I followed this week was a bit morbid. \u00a0I’m in a class on Gothic Irish Literature (Bram Stoker<\/a> was Irish, did you know?) and we met up Friday afternoon to see the crypts at St. Michan’s Church (‘Michan’ is pronounced like ‘Michael’ but with an ‘n’ instead of an ‘el’–it’s not ‘Meekan’). \u00a0Sadly, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of the crypts themselves, but here are the vaults we climbed down inside:<\/span><\/p>\n

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(this one’s extra spooky because our tour guide was emerging as I took the photo)<\/span><\/p>\n

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This is probably one of the coolest things I’ve done in Dublin. \u00a0There were lights on down there, it was fairly roomy even though we were a big group, and there were mummies! \u00a0Dublin mummies, two women and two men. \u00a0One of the men was a Crusader, over 800 years old, and I participated in my third traditional practice when\u00a0I TOUCHED HIS HAND.<\/strong> It felt like petrified wood and it’s supposed to bring good luck. \u00a0I can’t stop thinking “I TOUCHED A MUMMY,” though. \u00a0A once-in-a-lifetime experience, that. \u00a0Just like with blood pudding<\/a>, as long as I didn’t think about what I was doing, I wasn’t going to freak out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our tour guide was fantastic, too, and he may now remember me as “that quantum physics expert from Washington,” which is just a wonderful (incorrect) impression to make on someone. \u00a0He knew some good history. \u00a0Some of the crypts are still ‘active,’ which means that members of a certain family can be buried there if they want. \u00a0Theobald Wolfe Tone’s death mask is in one of the crypts, too, which strangely was not advertised considering how much they love Wolfe Tone<\/a> in this town.<\/span><\/p>\n

So it was an exciting week for me! \u00a0Blarney, pancakes, and mummies, oh my! \u00a0You can have a lot of fun (and some great stories to tell) if you join in on local traditions!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a week where I participated in several Irish traditions. \u00a0It’s a lot of fun to figure out what traditions exist in a particular place, and following them is equally entertaining at times. \u00a0They occasionally make no sense to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hannah-fattor-14-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}