This week has brought many new Irish experiences. Nothing new with classes, but societies and clubs started meeting this week. On Wednesday night I went to the Christian Union meeting where we had some worship and fellowship with the other members of the society. They also showed a video of different churches in the area so we could kind of get a feel for them and find out where they were. A couple of girls from the Concordia group and I are going to check one out on Sunday, so I'll let you know how that goes. Last night was the writers society. Becca and I went to that meeting and we played a word/writing game at the beginning that was similar to a free-write exercise. Then different people in the group read either some poetry or a short story they were working on and then the group gave them comments and feedback and such. Overall it was pretty cool. I liked the atmosphere of the place. And they gave us tea and biscuits! So I think we'll be going back :)
The highlight of my week, though, was probably Wednesday night after the Christian Union. The International Student Society paired with the Traditional Irish Music Society for a night at Kelly's. The Trad Soc played music in the corner which was awesome but then some International students and other Irish people who frequent Kelly's pub were there as well. We met up with a couple of Marie's Irish friends from orchestra. They won the VIP attendees for the night :) We ended up talking to these Irish guys for the entire night! We asked them about American stereotypes and perceptions and were quite enlightened. One of the biggest American traits is speaking up in class. One of the guys said that that is a way you can tell when an international student is in the class. When the lecturer asks a question, he said most Irish students will look around, scratch their heads, check the time, etc. But the American students are usually pretty quick to pipe up and answer the question or give their opinion, Don't worry guys, I defended us! I told him that in America, we're encouraged to share our opinions and answer questions because we want to stand out and establish ourselves as intelligent or capable students or something like that. Whatever I said was quite eloquent though because they were pretty impressed :) We also learned some Irish language! I leaned about three sentences but I only remember two of them now... "Dee-ah-gwich" (spelled phonetically of course, I have no idea how to spell it in Irish) means "hello". "Liz iss anom dohm" means "My name is Liz". And that's all I remember :)
We also learned some Irish slang as well! The first one that is essential to know is craic (pronounced like crack). No, it is not the drug! Craic means good fun or a good time. A common greeting is "what's the craic?" meaning "what's up" or "what's good". If you want to say that you are having an exceptionally great time you can say "The craic is ninety". Or if you are having a terrible time you can be sarcastic and say "yeah... the craic is ninety". Its a vercital term :) We also leaned "class". If something is class it's really cool or really great. I haven't mastered the usage of that one yet... I'll let you know when I figure it out. "Shifting" is slang for making out, which apparently happens a lot at clubs. Other commonly used words are grand and sound. Like our version of good or fine. Like if someone asks "How're ya gettin' on?" (which is a common greeting that threw me off for a while) you can say "I'm grand" or "sound". But if someone says "How're ya gettin on" or "what's the craic" in passing, if you're both walking opposite directions, you're not expected to respond... One of the Irish guys told me that you just keep asking how the other person is in as many ways as you can until you pass them. So start when you're closer rather than further away otherwise it might get awkward...
The most interesting revelation of the night was when Marie and I realized the Irish use the word "like" like Canadians use "eh". It's hysterical. They use it in regular sentences, like we do, but they also just throw it on the end of random sentences. "It was really cold out, like." "We went down to Limerick, like, for some good craic". Especially the guys we were talking to on Wednesday use it profusely. It was quite entertaining.
That's all for now! Have a lovely day :)
final sidenote: apparently Americans are notorious for using the words "lovely" and "awesome" way too much. Check yourself :)
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