Cork experienced pretty serious flooding just before Christmas. In this flood, many buildings were pretty badly damaged, including the Mardyke Arena (the gym). On Monday, the gym was opened for the first time in two months! Of course I had to check it out. I went swimming today. It seemed as though half of Cork City was in that pool! Not really though. There are classes for little kids everyday from 3:30-5:30. Half the pool was blocked off for the lessons, so everyone was swimming in just half the pool. I never thought these words would come out of my mouth (or fingers), but Hunter spoiled me. I’m used to going down to the pool in just my towel and flip-flops, and being the only person in the pool. I also know most of the lifeguards, so I can stop and chat for however long I want to. Today was absolutely insane. I swam for 45min, and most of the time there were 4 people in my lane. Which meant I really couldn’t stop for any sort of break, because then we would all crash. We were all going at almost the same pace, which made me feel really good about myself since I don’t have goggles and was doing the froggy stroke (sometimes called the breast stroke). I then had the genus idea to get out of the pool when I felt really tired, which was 4:00. This may not mean all that much to you, but that third of the clock signified the end of the lesson, and the beginning of the next one. The room instantly filled with screaming eight year olds and their parents. There are group changing rooms, female/baby changing rooms, male/baby changing rooms, and individual changing stalls. The stalls all filled very quickly, or had strollers stuck in them to save them. The group changing room was jam packed with children, and the female/baby room was filled with mothers and their children. This may be my conservative American upbringing, but I found that I was very uncomfortable with the thought of changing in front of eight year old boys. Other than being totally weirded out by my first real gym experience, it was really nice to swim again.
Chinese New Year
To usher in the new year, I went to a celebration called “Peacock and Swan”, performed by students from Shanghai. It was a really interesting performance. First there were speeches by the Lord Mayor, Chinese ambassador to Ireland, and President of UCC, the college I am attending here. The speech by the ambassador was really funny, because both the Lord Mayor and the President of UCC are Mr. Murphy. So the poor Chinese guy had to say Murphy 5 times in one sentence. I have no idea why he said the name so many times. I went with my friend Andrew and Spencer (Corrie’s cousin from Switzerland). There were two MCs, one from the university in Shanghai and one from UCC. The Chinese girl mostly spoke in English, and the Irish guy mostly spoke in Chinese. That was really cool. It was also a common theme within the performance. There was a lot of singing and dancing, and then a bunch of Irish kids performed a song in Chinese. Then all the Chinese faculty and PHD students from UCC sang The Red River Valley in Chinese, which was really weird, because I thought that Woody Guthrie wrote that, and it was in Chinese. Then there were some pretty bad jokes about the Chinese work ethic, and how they are on their way to early morning library study sessions while the Irish are going home to bed. The president also mentioned that every Chinese student at UCC was in the top 10% in their discipline, which I find hard to believe. There are totally slacker Asians out there. The second half of the show was mostly solo performances. I really like the Erhu. Then a Chinese guy came out and sang Danny Boy really beautifully. I liked watching people in the audiences reactions. The guy in front of my was aghast. He was not ready to believe that a Chinese guy could sing this Irish song, but he was pretty soon convince otherwise. Next was the Dragon Boat melody. The singer came out and attempted to explain the basic plot of the song in English. She did pretty well at first, but then she began speaking really quickly, and not didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. And poor Spencer, who speaks English really well, but he’s still not super comfortable with it, just burst out laughing. He was so confused.
