It was the first weekend after classes started and the workload was already starting to pile up...so I went to Cork. Max was driving down for a friends 21st birthday, and I had many friends to visit, so I jumped at the opportunity and rode shotgun all the way through the Irish countryside on one fine Saturday morning. It really did, in some places, look like the movies: absolutely green everywhere and you could see for miles. We didn't have to pass through any cities on the motor-way which was really nice so we saw all green, all the time. On a side note, I saw something very peculiar in almost all of the fields: colored sheep. But these weren't just black or white, many of the wooly mammals had a red or green stripe on their back. Now this was either a way of marking one's sheep, which would just be as easy with a collar, or they were all victims of the rising phenomena of sheep graffiti. My money is on the latter.
While I am extremely happy to be in Dublin, Cork is an amazing city. The weather was great the whole time we were there (something to be savored in Ireland). It has the perfect mix of modern culture and historic tradition. The campus of the university has a really nice castle plopped down right in the middle. Apparently if you walk through the main archway in the castle, and over the school's crest, you will either get pregnant or fail your exams at the end of term. Now considering that its bad luck to believe in superstitions, I went for it. I think I have a leg up on the curse though, because I will obviously not be getting pregnant and we don't have exams this term...just term papers. So take that century old legend!
Apparently it was also one of my friends' friend's birthday too. I felt bad crashing the party considering I didn't know the guy at all...but I wasn't the only stranger there. But, for those of you counting, this is the second person I have met at their own birthday. So for Gavin's 20th, Jessie and I made him a Guinness birthday cake. We had already had a few drinks by the time we started baking it, so we weren't holding high expectations. With that being said, we used a devil's food cake mix and the metric system. Let me just say, the metric system is obnoxious, especially when your recipe is in the system that we use back home. Making the cake was easy.
Step 1. Open bag. Empty Contents. (Betty Crocker must think we're brain dead)
Step 2. Add eggs.
Step 3. Add water and oil.
Step 4. Add Guinness.
The fourth and final step was a creative adjustment Jessie and I made at the last minute. Originally it was just going to be a chocolate cake with Guinness frosting, but why not?! The frosting, however, was a whole battle in its own. Jessie's recipe was in ounces. All we knew it was a 2 to 1 ratio of sugar to butter. So we dumped everything in the bowl and started to whisk. We think we had the right proportions, but we just went by taste. In goes the orange zest...and it was a lot of orange zest. So we diluted the orange power blast with some Guinness. Then some more Guinness. And finally, a little more Guinness. In the end, it actually turned out great. Jessie said that she has to show us a real Guinness cake, but there's nothing wrong with this one!! Kerry soon got the call that Gavin was on his way, and everyone started to hide...which made no sense at all cause he knew we were all there. Any-who, after a few rounds of drinking games we went out to the bars for Gavin's twentieth.
The following morning I found myself at Eddie Rockets with all my Cork buddies. I didn't randomly wake up there, but nothing of interest happened up until that point. Now Eddie Rockets...is the exact same thing as Johnny Rockets; just a different name. After splitting a crazy student deal with Kerry, which amounted to a burger, fries and drink for five euro (really good!), we walked back to their place. Max was also ready to hit the road and hit the road we did. The drive back was just as nice as the ride down, especially because there was no rain at all. Max made great time on the motor-way making it back to Howth just in time for dinner!
Well ought to be getting to bed now. Hope to talk to you all soon!
FMS
sheep graffiti. its a growing problem.
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