On the school system...
Okay, how school goes in
Ireland is this: elementary school (but it's never called that, it's always
called primary school) is for six years. Instead of saying "first
grade", they say "first class" (as in, Misty is in third class), "second
class" and so on. Then they have secondary school for six more years,
which is split up into the junior cycle and the senior cycle. The
junior cycle is 1st year through 3rd year (which is the equivalent of 7th
grade through 9th grade, like junior high), and at the end of 3rd year
there's an exam called the Junior Certificate (but only big nerds call
it that, it's known as the Junior Cert to most). It's not a really
important exam, but they study for it for ages even so. It's more
like preparation for the Leaving Cert(ificate), which is at the end of
6th year and that's the REALLY important one, that you need to take in
order to graduate, that your future employers even look at (seriously).
So the senior cycle is from 4th through 6th year. 4th year is an
optional "transition year" in most schools, and if you get into 4th year
you're supposedly "lucky" (although Dani and Anala could tell you otherwise),
'cos 4th year is supposed to be a "doss" year where you go on trips and
do fun projects and junk. Supposedly. College is different
too, because you have to pick a major before you can even THINK of taking
a college course. Which I think is dumb, because who can pick at
that age what they want to do with the rest of their life? But this
isn't about my opinion (gotta keep reminding myself that). The actual
school day is different too; at the school I went to it started with an
assembly at 8:50 and ended at 3:40. And in school you don't go around
to different classes, you stay in the same classroom with the same people
all day and the teachers have to come to _you._
Attitudes toward drinking
Eheheh. I'm sure at
some point in your life you've heard one of those "drunk Irishman" jokes,
and I'd like to tell you it's just a stereotype, but that wouldn't be entirely
true. Yes, the Irish have a very relaxed attitude toward drinking...extremely
relaxed. Usually when a kid is 12 or so he/she and his/her friends
will start experimenting with drink. Either they'll take some of
their parents', or they'll ask their older siblings to buy drink for them,
or they'll order some from the off-licences (liquor stores). They
get served at the off-licences, god knows why, and they get away with it.
See, in America if a kid as young as 12 were caught drinking, even a little
bit, even if they weren't drunk, they'd get arrested and sent to rehab
(even if they weren't alcoholics). But in Ireland it's so widespread
that the gardai (police) figure that selective enforcement is worse than
no enforcement at all, so if they catch a kid drinking they either just
give them a warning, confiscate the drink, or don't do anything at all.
They don't even call the kid's parents. By the time the kid is, say,
the age of the Astros, they'd be going out to pubs and clubs and getting
drunk on a regular basis, maybe two or three times a week. And it's
no big deal to them, they don't event think there's anything wrong with
drinking (in moderation), and they don't even realize the long-term effects
of drinking (so when I write about the Astros going to pubs and stuff,
it doesn't mean they're delinquent alcoholic children, it's just normal).
When I was in school in Ireland, the teachers and the students' parents
knew that the students drank, and the teachers and students would even
discuss what kind of drink they liked! I'm totally serious, once
I overheard a classmate of mine and a teacher debating whether they liked
red or white wine better. It sounds like a joke, but it's not.
The legal drinking age is 18, but is that ever enforced? Eh.
No. Fortunately drink driving isn't a problem, because young drinkers
can't drive, they just take buses or taxis to and from the pubs.
Speaking of driving, the
legal age for your learner's permit (called a provisional license over
there) is 17, I believe. You can start learning then, although the
test to get your full license is extremely hard, so it usually takes another
year or two to earn that. And if you only have your provisional,
you have to wear a big red L sticker on your car, for "learner" (or "loser",
as one of my friends says).
Oh, and not to mention smoking.
I was one of two people in my class who didn't smoke (although it was a
class of about 12 people, still...). And the teachers and their parents
knew they smoked, and although they encouraged them to quit, the smokers
didn't get in trouble unless they were actually caught smoking or holding
a cigarette (in which case they only got a 10 pound fine). Whereas
if in America the teachers knew a student smoked, it would be all over
the school like wildfire (excuse the pun) and they'd probably force the
kid to enroll in a program to help them quit even if they didn't want to
quit. But in Ireland they just couldn't be arsed. It's just
the culture.
Other stuff
Like Lilia said in one of
the episodes, where you're from is important. She would know this,
being from Offaly, a not-so-desirable county in the West. The more
lower-class places to be from are Ballymun, Kerry, Clare, Tipperary, Offaly,
Laois, Dundalk...well, according to the Dubliners, basically anyplace besides
Dublin is a bad place to be from. Or the north of Dublin, which is
considered a more lower-class area than the south. Although I'm sure
some people from "the country" (what Dubliners refer to as any non-Dublin
place) wish Dublin would feck off and drift 30 miles east to where it belongs
(to Britain, in other words). There isn't serious prejudice, though,
like a Dubliner won't say to a Kerryman, "Hey, you're from Kerry?
I'm gonna kick your ass, man!" Well, he might, but he'd only be taking
the piss. There aren't any hate crimes, though.
Speaking of hate crimes...did
you know that most people in Ireland don't even know what that phrase means?
Nope. I guess they'd call it an "ethnic crime", because those do
exist, but there aren't as many. And you'd NEVER hear of school violence
like in the States. Also...did you know that the gardai don't even
carry guns unless they know they're going to be up against an armed criminal?
They don't have to, there's so little gun violence there. It's great,
actually. The downside (for me, anyway) is that it's a big ol' Catholic
country, and most of the good schools are private Catholic ones.
You always see priests and nuns (actually wearing their habits, too) walking
along the street and in the supermarket. And you know, homosexuality
wasn't even legal until 1993? Yeah. Sucky, huh? I don't
know what they did to homosexuals before then, maybe fined them or something.
Probably carried the same penalty as underage drinking: nothing, but it's
still considered illegal anyway.
The Astros' Irish photos
Okae...this is just photos
of Ireland that I happened to have for whatever reason, that I've edited
to put pictures of the senshi in. Heh. Okay, here's the senshi's
"scrapbook", which I'm going to let them narrate...
Anala: Here's me at Giant's
Causeway...the photo itself is a little spotty, but we can blame Bord
Failte for that since that's where this photo came from.
Hunter: That's not the only
thing that's spotty...
Anala: TEME...! (chases
after Hunter)
Lilia: Giant's Causeway
is cool, though. And it's a natural geographical formation!
Amazing, isn't it?
Aisling: This
next picture doesn't have any of us in it, but it's of the Powerscourt
Gardens, where we had a couple of our battles.
Dani: Yeah, this is where
the battle of Vega and I versus Oscurio took place.
Viola: (pops up in SD form
with a book on Greek mythology and glasses fogged over like Hououji Fuu
when she goes SD) That fountain in the middle of the pond is of Poseidon,
the god of the sea, or Neptune to the Romans.
Dani: Erm, yeah...HEY!
There's a pic of me! This one is in
Powerscourt Gardens too.
Ciara: *snickers* Yeah,
it was originally a pic of _Willow_ in Powerscourt Gardens, but she edited
herself out and put a pic of Zephyr instead, which you can probably tell
because she didn't do too good a job of it.
Hunter: And that's all the
pics for now, at least until Willow will stop being lazy and scan some
more.
Willow: TEME...! (follows
Anala in chasing Hunter)