17/07:
Listened to the second half of the All-Ireland Hurling Final in Irish (35 min). Watched the first half with some friends, so it had to be in English.
I also ended up binging the rest of Annála Beaga. I was only 80-some odd pages away from finishing it, and the stories were getting shorter and shorter towards the end, so the dopamine hits just kept coming. Ended up finishing it today. Will either pick up something new in Irish, or slowly work my way through
An Béal Beo, which is a rich collection of what in Irish they call
saibhreas, or richness. Haven't decided yet and will have a gander around the UCD library.
18/07:
Picked up a book by Pádraic Óg Ó Conaire. Unlike his more famous cousin, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Pádraic Óg was a native speaker of Irish (the other Pádraic moved to the Gaeltacht at 7ish and left at 16ish; he had good Irish, but wasn't a full-native as I understand and made grammatical mistakes based on English). I picked up the 1939 edition of one of his works,
Éan Cuideáin to read. Already on the first sentence, some nice dialectal stuff shining through, which is exactly what I was after. I decided to do this instead of
An Béal Beo in case I did move to France or Conamara, where I won't necessarily have access to the sheer number of Irish books I do while at UCD (though if Conamara I can get some via ILL through the national library system, if they don't have them in their own library). Thus I can keep the store of books I own and have with me here in Ireland for later, if need be.
Episode 4 of Passion Medievistes (15 minutes). Was good, can understood reasonably well without transcript as long as I stay focused. Hard to do in the heat that Ireland was experiencing, however.
19/07:
Nothing
20/07:
Listened to episodes 21/22 of Baile an Droichid (30). Fair enough to understand, but I'm slacking off. Need to get back on it.
21/07:
Finished off the first series of Baile an Droichid (30 min). It was fun, I'm enjoying the radio drama so will keep at it. Listened to an episode of Passion Medievistes (15 min)
22/07:
Irish language conversation circle, but nothing else really
23/07:
Episode of PM (20 min).
Weekly Recap and ThoughtsFrench Listening: 50
French Reading: 58
Irish Reading: 105
Irish Listening: 95
Histore du livre: Annála Beaga ó Iorrus Aithneach: Éan Cuideáin: Apart from (Irish) reading, this has been a very underwhelming week. I'm going to attribute it to a few things. First, I burnt myself out of Irish reading last Sunday when I power-rushed through
Annála Beaga. Been hard to get back into reading after that, but especially Irish reading as I'm not as interested in
Éan Cuideáin. But I'll keep going, as the quality of the Irish is great, and it's nice and Connemara-y.
For listening, it was just the heat wave. The first three days were miserable, and I just basically sat in my room and sweated all day. It probably would've been better to get out and move, as it was cooler outside than inside thanks to a breeze and lack of air circulation indoors (colder climate, usually not needed), but I just couldn't be bothered it was so hot.
I've also been stressed out over housing. I've had no luck in Dublin, so will likely be moving to Connemara for at least a month, possibly longer as I wait for visa issues to settle, etc. It'll be nice, though I am worried about losing the social connections. I'll stay in touch with people here and see them when I make it to Dublin, but rural areas in Ireland are reasonably insular, and I'm not one to just talk to random people at a pub. The conversation circle in Dublin helped a lot, but there's none of that in Connemara, sadly, as they don't need it. So I guess we'll see what'll happen. But the stress over this has just made it difficult to listen, even walking and listening. It is what it is, though, this country is a huge mess with regards to housing overall. Frustrating, too.
Next week should hopefully be better. I'll be moving, but in that regard I'll either be on the train or bus (probably train, quicker and more comfortable) so will have time to read and such while traveling. Which is a boon. I need to really get these two books done, as they're both UCD library books and given I'll be moving out of Dublin soon it's probably best to return them, even if I don't have to and could, theoretically, make the trip in if needed to return them at some later point.