Friday, July 03, 2009

Baile na Coiribe

Student housing is located in a place called Corrib Village (Baile na Coiribe in Irish) on the edge of campus. There are dozens of buildings like this one, each group with a courtyard and painted in its very own pastel shade. These are available for self-catering over the summer. I've heard so many different languages while walking around through the village.


The walk up to the back gate is bordered by dense forest. You can see why the gates are closed at 11 pm and why you might not want to find yourself here alone at dark.


La Cuisine:


When I take a shower, this is what I see. I can look at the River Corrib and whoever happens to be walking by on the river path.


My room is small so I decided I could store my giganto suitcase here:


The river path heads north about a mile before it ends at a game field. Along the way there are put-in points for boats. I've gone for runs along this course and usually there are rowing teams out along with some people in a motorboat following behind, screaming at them with a bullhorn.

Tomorrow is the first field trip, to Coole Park, once the home of William Butler Yeats, and Thoor Ballylee, the tower home that Yeats bought and restored in order to live there from 1919 - 1929.



Under my window ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face,
Then darkening through 'dark' Raftery's 'cellar' drop,
Run underground, rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.
What's water but the generated soul?'



----- W.B. Yeats 'Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931'

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