After that, they cooked the apartment dinner, which I can only simply describe as 'Chicken Curry Casserole'. I really loved it and it was incredibly filling because it was stocked with carrots, curry, potatoes, onions, and I think maybe another ingredient too.
A close-up of it is shown in the picture below.
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| Chicken Curry Casserole |
Next, I went to the Bleeding Horse to meet up with others from my program to watch the Super Bowl.
I was genuinely surprised by the amount of Irish people that were interested in the game and, for those wondering about what team they rooted the most for, it was the 49ers.
Also, throughout the game, one of the other Americans in my program, Brandon, explained to everyone the basic rules of the game and the overall objective as well. However, he and I both realized that, although we grew up with it, this game is very complicated to explain due to the variety of rules and 'hidden rules' of the game.
Nevertheless, everyone had a great time and, more so, enjoyed being able to hang out with one another on a Sunday night.
My inner sportswriter wants to go in so much detail about the game but I will keep it brief for everyone's sanity.
I really enjoyed the game and I personally think that the game would have remained a blowout without the delay. That was probably the best that I have seen Baltimore's offense play in years and this has to be the best four game stretch of Joe Flacco's career. He looked great out there and commanded the game beautifully.
Until the delay, the defense played just as well with Ed Reed even getting an INT for the first time in a long time.
However, despite that, I really liked the fight that the 49ers exhibited throughout the game. They drove deep into Baltimore's territory a couple of times in the first half but just couldn't convert either chance into touchdowns.
Also, regardless of the reason, the 49ers played amazing in the second half and were 7 yards away from being Super Bowl champions.
On a side note, I have to say that it was very weird watching the game and not being able to see any commercials from the U.S. Therefore, I have no idea what amazing/terrible commercials were produced this year but it was also comforting because I just socialized with others around me during that time.
Also, Beyonce's halftime show was, in my opinion, really well done. I'm sure there were a few things that could have used more work but I never heard a bar here stay silent until the halftime show came on.
Honestly, during that whole show, most of the men just stared at the screen in awestruck. I had a difficult time figuring out what was more fun to watch: their reactions or the show haha.
The only terrible thing about watching the Super Bowl here though is that I didn't get home until very late and ended up sleeping around 5:30 AM on a school night. However, looking back, I would do it every time.
As for today, I had my Irish Cultural Studies class and... it was mind-blowing the amount of information that we were trying to learn today. We went from learning about a summarized history of Ireland to attempting to learn Irish words by the end of the class.
Some Irish words are not bad to learn.
For example:
Ard is Irish for height.
Ballimore is Irish for Big Town
Carraig is Irish for Rock
However, if you look at the picture below, these are some of the larger words/phrases shown to us today. I have looked at it a couple of times and still can't imagine fully how the professor actually said the words.
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| Irish Words |
Also, a brilliant twist to the class is that he asked us where we were from and if we knew what the place meant.
So I said that I was from Palm Beach, which is straight-forward, but that a town near me is called Boca Raton, or the mouse's mouth.
A couple of others were:
Valencia - Derived from Latin for Brave
Beijing - Capital City of the North
One last thing that I found interesting to note is that he joked about how different cultures pronounced words in other languages.
For example, he said that a French student came up to him asking for a sheet of paper and pronounced it as 's%*t of paper'. Another one was instead of saying beach, the person said 'b*%&h'.
Thinking of the last example, I could only imagine the horror if one of them were in a relationship with an American and said the following:
"My trip was so amazing. Last night, I stayed outside and laid down on a b^*&h. It was so relaxing and wonderful."
However, the professor did end that topic with saying that he accidentally said in German to a guy waiting on the same bus at the bus stop 'Gay Day eh?' and prompted the guy to walk away from him so the language confusion happens to all of us.
As for tonight, an Irish friend in the program, Aine, cooked a wonderful dinner for the rest of us that was really delicious.
The dish consisted of: smoked salmon wrapped in tortilla with cheese, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, peppers, and chicken wrapped in rasher and stuffing.
To top it all off, she made a crumble pie with a lemon flavor to it that was delightful, too.
Another cool thing is that we learned that Guinness has a nitrogen ball inside of each one that causes the fizz when you open it. Since we are very curious students, we opened up the can and did find the nitrogen ball inside of the Guinness as shown in the below picture.
The only thing that we could think of for its use is for the ball to be initially connected to the can top. After it is opened, the ball drops and causes an overflowing fizz on its fall through the can.
I'm really enjoying the group of friends that I have made here. We are also in the talks of making trips around Ireland and possibly going to Scotland.
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| Aine's dinner creation |
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| Nitrogen ball inside of Guinness can |
I'm really enjoying the group of friends that I have made here. We are also in the talks of making trips around Ireland and possibly going to Scotland.
This should be grand to see what occurs over the next few months but, until then, I think I'm going to catch up on sleep from last night. Have a great night everyone!
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