Well, life is certainly settling in now. It's been a quiet week with me working, Sam tutoring and organizing, and the girls doing schoolwork. The weather has been gorgeous, and we did squeeze in couple fun local events this past Saturday: the Clonmel Applefest, and the Tipperary hurling championships!
The Applefest was a small cute event with some food trucks and craft stations, where the girls learned plaster casting and willow weaving.
Hurling is Ireland's national sport, and one of the main points of uniting pride for the country (along with the Irish language, Guinness, and Anglophobia - these are my observations, not an official list). I won't explain all the rules here, but it's a combination of soccer, lacrosse, golf, and football, using what's essentially a ping pong paddle on the end of a yardstick meter stick, played on a field almost twice the area of a soccer field. It is amateur only (all the players have other full time jobs) and the teams represent towns and counties based on residence. There are some subtle rules about contact fouls, but the main flow of play is quite easy to follow. The NFL game this past weekend was at Croke Park, which is the largest hurling stadium, in Dublin. But we were at the local stadium in County Tipperary
With the large Irish diaspora, it's not surprising hurling is available in the US, too. For example:
https://www.twincitieshurling.com/
https://www.facebook.com/michiganhurling/
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| Your standard community gathering |
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| Celebrating the harvest |
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| Fun decorations |
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| You press shapes and patterns and textures into the clay (which is the mold) and then you pour plaster over it, which generates a raised surface in the plaster. |
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| Learning to weave willow reeds/branches into shapes. The girls made fish. |
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| Lots of bending and wrapping into your desired shape. |
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| The finished products (the plaster disks are still in their paper forms, but they are very thin). If you zoom in on the plaster, you might get a sense of relief. That's an art joke, sorry. |
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| Porta-johns from Minneapolis, if you were wondering. |
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| Beautiful day. Listening to U2 blaring at a hurling match in Ireland is something special. |
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| Yes, we were sitting behind the two most Irish gentlemen in Ireland. |
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| 3 points if you get it past the keeper into the net. 1 point if you bat it through the uprights from any distance. Everyone goes for 1 point unless there is a serious defensive lapse, and they are pretty accurate with their long range swings. |
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| If it goes out of bounds, it's a "sideline cut" played from the ground. He is still shooting it at the uprights from 65 meters away (midfield). |
Slight downers this week: Sam's been feeling a little under the
weather, and I sliced my index finger chopping veggies, which has made
typing a little challenging.
PS: Happy Birthday Alison!
