As descriptive as the title seems I will go a bit more in detail. Today started off as any good Catholic's Sunday morning... being woken up by Patrick Duffey (a member of the House) and being told that we are going to Mass in 10 minutes :-). (Apparently everyone in the house thought that the other folks had gotten me up, but it all worked out in the end.) We walked down to the parish with plenty of time and had a brief rehearsal with the folk group and then sang Mass with them. At some point I will take a moment and remember the moments in the Mass that stuck out to me as being different than what I am used to.
After Mass we walked back to the House (its about a 15 minute walk) and had a little lunch and then hurried on down to a Hurling Match (Curling just made a better post title) at Wexford Stadium between Wexford and Dublin. I had never even seen a Hurling match in my life, but going to one in person and surrounded by local (avid) fans taught me a few things. 1) the odd shaped Hurling club (called a "hurley") is actually perfectly shaped to achieve its goal 2) It's no wonder that the Irish are better at math than Americans (see picture of scoreboard below) 3) Vulgarity is no big deal if used perfectly fluently and pronounced "folk" instead of the typical way 4) People who are good at Irish sports are very in shape normal humans whereas people who are good at American sports are abnormal humans who are freakishly in shape 5) and last but not least, the number one requirement to be good at Hurling is a complete disregard for your well being.
After the match and a relaxing afternoon we gathered around the dinner table for some home-made veggie burgers (currently the House of Brigid is primarily vegetarian) and sweet potato fries. We had a few great conversations and a few great laughs and then joined in the family room for evening prayer as a community. After that we never really left the family room :-) (I'm still there). We decided that in order to use the first scene of the Lion King for a retreat it was necessary to rewatch the entire movie and then thanks to technology we are watching the wrap-up of Selection Sunday on the interwebs. All-in-all it was a pretty great day full of words that begin with "C" and most of all I would say that the life here, both in Ireland and in Teach Bhride specifically, is contagious.
After Mass we walked back to the House (its about a 15 minute walk) and had a little lunch and then hurried on down to a Hurling Match (Curling just made a better post title) at Wexford Stadium between Wexford and Dublin. I had never even seen a Hurling match in my life, but going to one in person and surrounded by local (avid) fans taught me a few things. 1) the odd shaped Hurling club (called a "hurley") is actually perfectly shaped to achieve its goal 2) It's no wonder that the Irish are better at math than Americans (see picture of scoreboard below) 3) Vulgarity is no big deal if used perfectly fluently and pronounced "folk" instead of the typical way 4) People who are good at Irish sports are very in shape normal humans whereas people who are good at American sports are abnormal humans who are freakishly in shape 5) and last but not least, the number one requirement to be good at Hurling is a complete disregard for your well being.
After the match and a relaxing afternoon we gathered around the dinner table for some home-made veggie burgers (currently the House of Brigid is primarily vegetarian) and sweet potato fries. We had a few great conversations and a few great laughs and then joined in the family room for evening prayer as a community. After that we never really left the family room :-) (I'm still there). We decided that in order to use the first scene of the Lion King for a retreat it was necessary to rewatch the entire movie and then thanks to technology we are watching the wrap-up of Selection Sunday on the interwebs. All-in-all it was a pretty great day full of words that begin with "C" and most of all I would say that the life here, both in Ireland and in Teach Bhride specifically, is contagious.
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