Riverdance!!!

Yesterday was amazing! I woke up and went to class, which was probably more boring than any other class ever. We watched a film version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, and it was awful. Just absolutely terrible. But later that day I went and got a ticket to Riverdance!!!!  The show was at 7:30, and we all bought the cheapest tickets, which were 25 euro, and the absolute last row in the entire theater. But once it was 7:25, and there were quite a few rows ahead of us with nobody in them, the ushers came up to us and told us we could move up to any other seat in the upper circle, so we got to sit in 40 euro seats, even though we only bought 25 euro seats. I would have been really mad if I was one of those people who paid 40 euro though. The show was amazing! The main guy and girl in the show were both fantastic, and it did deviate a bit from the original, but it was still really good. By the time it was over it was already 9:30, so we headed back to trinity to get ready to go out that night. We only went to two different places that night, we started at the Quays on Abbey Street, and then moved on to another bar down the street with a bit of a younger crowd. Today I finally did some laundry, and tonight we’re going to a play on campus, so I’ll have more about that tomorrow. Cheers!

 Yay pictures!! I couldn't take any during the show, but here are some of the theater:

It was called The Gaiety Theatre

This was the view from our original seats. See those seats about 5 rows
down? That's where we actually sat :)

That was a really pretty chandelier that lit the whole room. I liked it,
so I took a picture of it

Translations

So today, we had class in the morning, which was ok. After wards, me, Sarah, both Karens, Jill and Caitlin all watched the new episode of True Blood. ‘Twas pretty awesome. Once that was over we all went to Spar (kind of like a Wawa) to get lunch. At 7:00 we left for the Abbey Theatre, where we saw the play Translations. The play was…. slow to get started. The actors were all good enough, but the plot was boring. It centered around a group of townspeople living in Ireland, who host a couple of British soldiers who are there to Anglicize the names of places in Ireland. The play is mostly about language, and the miscommunication that can occur when two people who speak different languages (in this case, Gaelic and English) try to communicate. The ending was very abrupt, and I’m still not quite sure what happened to some of the characters, but I guess I didn’t hate it. I’m spending tonight studying for my midterm tomorrow, so no drinking at the pub for me tonight. Wish me luck!

Lazy Sunday

Today was rather uneventful. I slept in, which was absolutely glorious. My roommate, Casey, got back from London today, and she said she had a great time. They went to the Globe Theater, and saw Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, and all the typical touristy things. I went out on my own into Dublin to grab a sandwich for lunch, and I also looked around for a jersey of some sort to buy. I wanted a hurling shirt, but all I could find were soccer jerseys. I happened to wander into a bookstore called Hodges Figgis, and they had a copy of Harry Potter in Irish!! It’s called Harry Potter agus an Orchloch (Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone). This brings my 1^st HP book count to 7 J After that, I did some reading, some writing, and watched one of my favorite movies, The Sound of Music. Then I went at got dinner at a place called Spar with Nick and Casey, and now here I am, writing this. Tomorrow I should be seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity, and we’re also going to a play at the Abbey Theatre called Translations. More one that tomorrow. Cheers!

Cork

Greetings!! I'm sort of going to skip over the last week, because nothing really all that important happened. Well, we went to Tara, but my camera was dead, so I don't have any good pics from that yet (I'll steal some later) for this post, I'm going to write about my trip to Cork! We had a free weekend this weekend, so a bunch of us hopped on a 4 hour bus ride to the wonderful city of Cork! I stayed in a hostel with about 6 other people, and it was so small!

This was our room at the hostel we stayed in. It was tiny.

We mostly just walked around town, getting a feel for the city. we ate lunch/dinner at this bar called The Old Oak, which was really good (and really cheap). We ended up back there later that night for drinks. basically our first day was not all that interesting. The next day however...

We also happened to see Bellatrix Lestrange walking down the street.

was one of my favorite days in Ireland so far. We woke up around 9 in the hostel, and met up with Cara, Karen, Caitlin and Jill at a place called Wholey Grain for breakfast. From there we went to a tourist place on Grande Parade Street and got info on how to go see the Blarney Stone. We hopped on a Bus Eirrann bus and took the 15 minute ride to Blarney castle. It was beautiful!! Seriously, it was amazing. The climb up to the top of the castle where the stone is was extremely treacherous, the stairs were very narrow and steep. Once we got to the top, we all kissed it and will hopefully have some good luck for the rest of the trip.

The scary and dangerous stairs. the only thing to hold onto was that rope in the middle.

View from the top

Sarah kissing the stone

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

Me with a mandrake (Mandragora) plant (in my Harry Potter shirt!!!)

 After that we took the bus back to Cork and headed to a hurling match. Hurling is ridiculous!! I don’t know all of the rules, but it seems like it’s a lot like field hockey, but in the air instead of on the ground. Guys run around with these hurling paddles, I think they’re called, and basically hit this ball that is kind of like a baseball down this field. To score, there is two options: you can either hit it between these two goal posts (picture a field goal) and that gets you one point, or you can hit it into a soccer net which is directly beneath the goal posts and that gets you 3 points. Right now, that’s all I know about the game, other than that I wish it was more popular in America.

By the end of the match, it was almost 5:00, and Kelia, Sarah and I were going to catch our bus at 7, so we headed back to our hostel to pick up our stuff. We were extremely tired and hungry, (All I had eaten today was a croissant at breakfast) so we stopped at a subway to get sandwiches to eat on the bus. The bus took another 4 hours to get home, and now I’m really tired, so I’m headed to bed. Night all!

Ok. I have not posted once since arriving in Dublin. And I am very sorry about that. So instead of super deatailed day-by-day posts, I'm going to sort of generalize all that I've done so far. We got here last Wednesday, and went straight to our dorms. They are SWEET! Everyone has their own room again, but there's two rooms to each apartment. My roommate is Casey, who is pretty cool.

This is what you see when you walk in the door.

This is our kitchen

And this is our living room

This is mine and Casey's room. (Mine's on the right)

My room

We've been going out most nights, drinking at the pubs, but it's a little difficult to find the best bars in such a big city. A lot of us went to a store called Tesco for some groceries, because it's getting a little bit pricey to keep eating out all the time.  I didn't really do all that much the first few nights, because I had a lot of work to do. Thursday was Bloomsday!! Bloom is a character in James Joyce's story, Ulysses. And they decided to dedicate an entire day to him. It was kind of a big deal, but much less so than Welsch led us to believe. We went to a James Joyce museum that morning, and later we went to St. Stephens Park, where there were people reading from Ulysses and singing and all that jazz. 

Nick with a cow. We're not quite sure what the cow meant.

The lord Mayor of Dublin reading from Ulysses. Pretty awesome.

A view from a bridge in St Stephens Park

The center of St Stephens 

 We've been going out most nights, drinking at the pubs, but it's a little difficult to find the best bars in such a big city. A lot of us went to a store called Tesco for some groceries, because it's getting a little bit pricey to keep eating out all the time.  I didn't really do all that much the first few nights, because I had a lot of work to do.On Friday, a few of us went to the Leprechaun Museum. It was really really interesting. Our guide told us a lot of stories about Leprechauns and faeries and other mythological Irish creatures.

Nick on the Giant's chair

Stehpanie and Me on the Giant's chair

A pot of gold we all sat around listening to Leprechaun stories

Casey and Rebecca on the Giant's chair

And then, of course, we went to the bar that night. Thus far, Dublin was not exactly living up to my expectaitons. Everything was more expensive, and the crowds that were going out were generally older than us. On Saturday, we headed to the Guiness Storehouse. It was awesome!! It's 7 stories high, and on the 4th floor everyone got a taste test of Guiness, and on the 7th floor, everyone got a free glass. The 7th floor was really cool, because it had a 360 degree view of the city.

So that took up most of our Saturday. And that is also going to be the end of this post for now. I'm going to post the rest of this week later today, I promise. Slainte!