Oct 4th

This morning the group departed and hauled to Cahir and Butler Castle for tours. Butler Castle formly was occupied by a (oddly) Catholic Norman family, surrendered to the hated Oliver Cromwell saving the complex from destruction.

Around 5:30pm we settled in at our hostel in Kilkenny. I immediately inquired about the church situation. The woman in charge of the hostel pointed me to the 13th century Black Abbey Dominican Church down an eerie side street.

I informed everyone and we marched over to the church to check on times. The parking lot overflowed with Euro cars as we walked passed it. We looked at our watches which read 6:07 and almost turned around assuming mass started at 6:00 or earlier. We confronted the sign to see if a later mass time was available and saw mass is held miraculously at 6:10 on Saturdays.

FYI, it’s called the “Black” Abbey church because the Monks who celebrated mass there wore black and white robes back in the day. Also, the church used to be shaped like a cross, but no other than Cromwell destroyed half of the structure leaving only an “L” shape. Outside the church, coffins of Norman Knights (which date back further than our country’s history) line the parking lot doubling as curbs.

After mass the group of us church goers checked out a local pizzeria, sat down, opened up the menus, spotted the prices, and awkwardly slipped out of the place. We downgraded to Uncle Sam’s Pizza, saving us a couple Euro, but giving us a little more cholesterol to line our arteries.

The group of us ventured to a local pub for a quick pint before calling it a night. I sat down and held my 5 Euro out waiting for the bar tender to notice me. Joe thankfully approached me before the bar tender and notified me a pint cost €4.80! A couple others and I passed on the pint and returned to the hostel to attempt to watch the VP debate. In the room with WiFi, a Canadian student in her 20s and an Italian man in his 30s captured our attention leaving Palin and boring Biden unwatched.

We fumbled around in Spanglish with the Italian and chatted in English with the Canadian. The weird thing was I understood the Italian more. What I mean is the Canadian lady couldn’t really relate to us. The girl told us nobody cares about politics in Canada and the ones who do waste their time, because nothing will change anyways. She thought Hilary was on her way to being the president in the U.S. and needed me to tell her about Canada’s form of government. I tried to let her redeem herself by asking if she thought Canada should form two separate countries with a French speaking/cultural area and an English speaking/cultural area. She laughed at me and mockingly, but also seriously, told me she’d talked to her friends from France and they didn’t want the land back. I tried not to burst into tears of laughter and politely asked her if the English wanted to reclaim the rest of Canada and the 13 Colonies? A confused look formed on her face. She continued by saying, “It’s ridiculous that some of the dumb French Canadians want their own country…”, and mockingly questioned, “Is reading a sign in English with small words in French underneath really that offensive to them that they need to separate?” I looked at her with a fake confused look and asked, “Huh, I thought they wanted to restore and maintain their culture…much like the Irish do here in the English speaking Ireland?” Then I said, “My girlfriend’s mom is French Canadian, grew up speaking French, moved to the States, learned to speak English, and recently became a citizen. I wonder what she’d say about the ‘dumb’ French Canadians who want to separate.” (After hearing this she might change her mind about it.) Oops, I said too much and rudely killed the conversation before she spewed anymore ignorance… I couldn’t play along anymore. She’d gone from humorous to offensive.

At that point an awkward silenced filled the air between us. Dang, I’d done this so many times before, provoked someone, played dumb, then waited until they offended me, and mocked them to the point of shutting them up. With the silence, I decided to take the opportunity to call Jinette on Skype, but about 5 minutes in to our conversation the woman running the hostel told me the fireside lounge (with the only internet access) closed in a minute. I cut Jinette off, packed my laptop, and made my way to bed.