This is my one hundredth blog on Blogger. To celebrate, I'm going on vacation. In a little over an hour, I'll say goodbye to Galway until Sunday. First stop on our trip is Lisbon in Portugal. We'll be there tonight and all of Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday night we're taking an overnight bus to Madrid and we'll arrive there by 6:30 a.m. We'll be spending all of Thursday in Madrid and then on Friday morning we're flying to Barcelona, where we'll be stationed for the remainder of our journey. On Sunday morning, we fly back to Shannon.
I'm very excited about this. I've already had to use a little Spanish (on the phone...it was very stressful) and I pretended to look up some Portuguese, but I didn't get very far. Luckily, one whole day will be in English for us, thanks to a 9-hour bus tour.
This will also be the longest time I've gone without posting in the blog. I will have many exciting updates upon my return, I promise. Estoy muy emocionada. ¡Adios!
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Knock-Knock jokes are too easy...
Last Thursday, NUIG had Open Day and my only class for the day was canceled. Laura and I decided to make a pilgrimage to Knock in County Mayo to see what it was all about.
In 1879, Mary appeared to fifteen people in Knock and remained there for two hours. She had St. John on her left and St. Joseph on her right. There was a lamb on an altar behind the three as well. After the event, word traveled fairly quickly and soon people from all over Ireland started coming to see the spot where it had happened. A shrine was built there to commemorate the event and to revere and show respect to Mary. Many miracles have been attributed to water or soil taken from the grounds.
This is the inside of the Church of Apparition. To the left, you can see the depiction of the apparition as all fifteen witnesses described it. St. John is holding a book and appears to be teaching while St. Joseph is simply looking respectfully at Mary.
One of the best things about Knock is the tacky Christian paraphenalia one can buy. The popular thing to buy is little bottles to fill up with Holy water from the fonts. I also saw hundreds of rosaries, religious statues, thousands of medals of all different saints, and all sorts of things of that nature. Above, you can see me pictured with a very large set of rosary beads. I plan to take one like that to my next novena.
The most popular part of Knock by far is the holy water fonts. There are a bunch of them lined up, each with a different picture. Some of them are obviously scenes from the Bible, others are apparently random. I used one with a deer on it and one with some oranges. My roommate tells me the pictures mean things, like certain ones have been known to cure certain kinds of ailments, so who knows what I'm protected against now. Maybe lyme disease or scurvy or something.
In 1879, Mary appeared to fifteen people in Knock and remained there for two hours. She had St. John on her left and St. Joseph on her right. There was a lamb on an altar behind the three as well. After the event, word traveled fairly quickly and soon people from all over Ireland started coming to see the spot where it had happened. A shrine was built there to commemorate the event and to revere and show respect to Mary. Many miracles have been attributed to water or soil taken from the grounds.
This is the inside of the Church of Apparition. To the left, you can see the depiction of the apparition as all fifteen witnesses described it. St. John is holding a book and appears to be teaching while St. Joseph is simply looking respectfully at Mary.
One of the best things about Knock is the tacky Christian paraphenalia one can buy. The popular thing to buy is little bottles to fill up with Holy water from the fonts. I also saw hundreds of rosaries, religious statues, thousands of medals of all different saints, and all sorts of things of that nature. Above, you can see me pictured with a very large set of rosary beads. I plan to take one like that to my next novena.
The most popular part of Knock by far is the holy water fonts. There are a bunch of them lined up, each with a different picture. Some of them are obviously scenes from the Bible, others are apparently random. I used one with a deer on it and one with some oranges. My roommate tells me the pictures mean things, like certain ones have been known to cure certain kinds of ailments, so who knows what I'm protected against now. Maybe lyme disease or scurvy or something.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Away
As I will be in Dublin this weekend and as I am not taking my trusty laptop, I will not make any more posts on the blog until Sunday or Monday. I'll take lots of pictures! Slan agat!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
