Flooded With Adventure

Between spectacular weather events, class field trips, and trad session outings to Blarney, much has happened in the past week.

Some of you have heard that Ireland has experienced a bit of flooding recently. With high tides, high winds, and high amounts of rain, that is very true. Cork is essentially an island in the middle of a river, and it was no exception:

Tuesday evening at quarter to six pm, I began my lengthy trek to the Western Gateway building for a late 6-8 pm Irish history class. Normally, I encounter at least a few other visiting students along my journey, but it was not so this day. I plodded across the bridge on my own, the wind blowing my foot into my leg every time I picked it up. An interesting development. Then I arrived in class. Only about half the usual number of students were there and my professor had an American accent. What? Now, wymana had just woken up from a long nap and was feeling very disoriented and knew that she had very evidently missed some important message:

Officials predicted flooding for 9 pm that evening at high tide. Get yourselves some canned food and your valuables off the ground, my professor suggested. Be safe, stay away from the bridges. But he was totally relaxed. Hm, I thought. My apartment is literally 6 meters away from a rushing stream, on the ground floor. But our professor is relaxed, and everybody else seems relaxed...therefore I should be relaxed. Jump on the bandwagon, missy. I walked back to my apartment wondering if I should make my Bottom-Shelf Food Stash a Top-Shelf Food Stash. Digestive biscuits dunked in flood water would make for a very tragic tea date indeed. According to a roomate, our apartment complex flooded back in 2010 and had to be evacuated.

My apartment wasn't affected, although downtown Cork got hit fairly hard. Oliver Plunkett Street, one of Cork's main shopping streets, was completely submerged. The next morning, I heard about shopping kayakers. Kayakers visiting the ATM. Kayakers purchasing a pint. The Irish know their priorities.

In general, people seemed super relaxed about it. Que sera, sera.

This is a fairly good depiction:

http://www.thejournal.ie/cork-kayakers-floods-1300564-Feb2014/

And a few more pictures:

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/cork-city-and-towns-hit-by-heavy-flooding-621770.html