A whirlwind weekend

I have not even touched my computer for the past three days and it feels amazing. This Sunday morning, or afternoon I suppose, is the first time I have had a chance to sit down with a cup of tea and just rest. I've been here a little over a week, but I've been so productive with seeing the sights that it feels like I've been here so much longer. All of the 40 people on the trip have become like a family, as cliché as it sounds. It's like freshman year of college when no one has any friends so you make them so quickly.

Friday a big group went to the Guinness Storehouse. We walked around the factory, seeing how they make the beer and learning about the history of Arthur Guinness' business. He actually signed the lease for the factory building for a period of 9,000 years. Who does that?! Someone drunk off of his own drink, apparently. Either way, I guess it's a good business move. I wasn't able to take too many pictures because it was really dark, but I got a few.

Here's the Irish equivalent of the pearly gates.

Then Casey, Colleen and I copied other Americans and took a picture by this red wheel. It's crazy how much Colleen and I look alike in pictures, except for the obvious height difference.

We made a pit stop at the café and I had the most amazing dessert of my life: a chocolate Guinness cupcake.

My favorite part of the storehouse was the floor of old advertisements. The famous toucan actually started out as a pelican and the campaign was that it could hold something like seven pints of Guinness on its beak.

Then we went to the highest point in Dublin, the Gravity Bar. Everyone gets a free pint of Guinness with admission, so we all enjoyed them while watching the sun set. My taste for the stuff has gotten a little better, meaning I could get through about half the glass as opposed to only a few sips before. I'm still nowhere near doing justice to my Irish roots, though.

Friday night was also eventful. Since there are so many of us, we can't all go out in one huge group. Nothing says "no admittance" like a group of 40 American students. I opted to leave with the second wave of people, but once we got wind of a seven Euro cover, we decided to follow Mike to a bar that was allegedly right outside our campus. After walking through two suburban neighborhoods and happening upon a muddy field, I was done with the adventure. A few of us turned around, but they ended up finding a place a while later. We sucked it up and paid the cover at McGowan's and it ended up being a good time.

Saturday's plans to head to the coast were ruined when some heavy duty fog rolled in early on in the morning. This stuff was not messing around. We opted for exploring the city instead of spending an hour on the train only to be swallowed in fog at the coast. Colleen and I are the designated tour guides and planners. The National Gallery of Ireland had free admission and a great collection of Irish, Italian, French, Spanish and Dutch art. Cameras weren't allowed so I took some illegal pictures.

Then we found an adorable little café, where I had an apple cinnamon crepe, with fresh strawberries and some tea.

Our sightseeing day ended with a trip to Dublin Castle. We didn't take a tour of the inside, but we were able to enjoy the outer walls. It's kind of a shame that the city has allowed for crappy 1970s architecture to be constructed in and around the castle as it somewhat ruined a few views, but I mean, it's a castle. It's awesome.

And I was obsessed with this gate.

Whew. Well now it's another foggy day, but we're spending it inside relaxing for the first time. No one feels like they can waste a moment not seeing the sights and taking advantage of living in Ireland, but the consensus was unanimous today. Pj's, blogging and tea.

Name change

Maybe it's because I'm finally recovering from jet lag, but I just noticed that my name on my DCU ID, as well as a folder, is misspelled. Instead of Kavanaugh, they both say Kavanagh. This is the traditional way to spell it and apparently my program director was not used to the post-Ellis Island "u" and left it out completely both times. It really doesn't bother me at all, makes me feel even more Irish.

The best part of today...

...was that I went for a run and didn't pass out! My sprained ankle has healed and I had the whole breathing thing down pat. After class I ran through this park which is right outside my building. I finished at about 4:27 p.m., came inside, stretched, ate hummus and tomato and basil crackers, and watched a kids' game show in Gaelic.

One of my suitemates, who had also gone for a run through the park, came back a little while later after he was locked in the park at 4:30 p.m. Apparently the park staff is eager to shut the gates, so good thing he was adept at fence jumping. And it's a really good thing I got out before then otherwise I'd still be there. Even four foot high chain link fences at track meets give me issues.

Other than that, it was a pretty standard class day. It's weird having the same classes on consecutive days because at BU, I would have a certain class every other day. So getting homework and having to have it read for the next day brings me back to the annoyance of high school. I've got some history to read for tomorrow, but I'm excited to read it since I had little knowledge of Irish history before coming here. Turns out the British just did not play well with others and all the Irish did for the most part is drum up groups of 100 drunk guys to storm gigantic English castles. Turns out Guiness isn't quite the drink of champions.

A cold and windy day

We woke up today to grey. The sky, the buildings, our professor's hair. It was as if forces joined together to collectively slap us in the face, to make us realize that taking classes is indeed the reason that we are here. Everyone moved just a little bit slower today, yawned a few times more than usual.

Lunch was a welcomed break. I successfully made a quesadilla all by myself. I chopped up some red and green peppers and came extremely close to chopping off my thumb in the process, but I was off by a few centimeters, thank God. Then I added them to the cheddar cheese and tortilla I had frying on the stove. It was quite delicious and really easy to make.

So far cooking has gone pretty well, the main problem being sharing a tiny kitchen with nine other people. Our stove's four burners are practically touching one another and we only have enough counter space for two people to be chopping and preparing their food. Plus, the dishes are always in the way. We're constantly washing and drying them, but with 10 people in one suite, a simple lunch means at least a plate, glass and some utensils for everyone. Not to mention that I used a frying pan and spatula, someone else was boiling water on a pot, and the list goes on. And with the lack of counter space, it's hard to do dishes with everyone crowding to just cook. I imagine we'll soon find our grooves and make it work, but until then I'll be resorting to my soccer days of elbow throwing and hip checks to make sure I don't go hungry.

Speaking of which, it's dinner time. Time to suit up and go to battle.

That's some good craic

Classes started today here at Dublin City University, and the first item on the agenda was teaching us American kids some helpful Gaelic words so that we know things like which bathroom, or I'm sorry, loo, to use when we're out. (Mná is ladies, Fir is gents.) Every Irish child takes both Gaelic and English in school, so all the signs are in both languages and they use Irish words in everyday speech. We also got a crash course in slang. Craic, pronounced "crack," is Irish for "fun."

Where's the craic?

We had great craic the other night.

Want to have some craic?

We had been hearing this in the clubs and pubs this past weekend and while we were pretty sure everyone in Ireland wasn't into hardcore drugs, we couldn't be sure. It was good to know that we were mistaken, though we still need to watch out for people wanting to have craic with crack.

Today was pretty uneventful besides starting classes and doing some grocery shopping. So instead of describing in detail the ham sandwich I ate for lunch, I'm going to list some things I've observed since coming here.

1. The eggs have feathers on them. Talk about fresh.

2. I haven't had time to bite my nails so they're actually growing a bit, ever so slowly.

3. Self tanning seems to be quite a popular trend here with the pale Irish girls. The reason I bring it up is because it's so blatantly obvious that the orange girl amongst those with near transparently white skin is using some artificial methods. Usually, these girls have also died their hair jet black, like they are auditioning for the next season of Jersey Shore. I don't understand tanning salons in the first place, but who's going to notice your pasty white skin when everyone has pasty white skin? And you assume they won't notice you were Oompa Loompa-fied overnight? Baffling.

4. The Irish love American television. Friends is on every night in our common room. The guys I live with clap to the theme song.

5. The milk is delicious. I can't stop drinking it.

Howth

Today, about half the group got together to take a bus to Howth, which is a small town on the East Coast. It was a picturesque little fishing village about an hour away, complete with sea lions and fish and chips. I have classes starting tomorrow, so this post is light on text, but enjoy the pictures of the sunset. I did have a video of the sea lion acting quite indifferent to our presence, but it won't load onto my computer for some reason. You probably would have been as bored as he was anyways. I kept waiting for him to do a flip or something. We even through bits of a scone at him to eat, but he rejected us flat out. We'll remember this the next time we invite him over for a mid afternoon snack.

These are a bit chronologically jumbled. Ireland is awesome, but even it can't make the sun set, then rise, then set, then rise again.

My feet are ready to break up with me

Today was a touristy day. A few of us donned our sneakers, backpacks and camera bags and decided to walk the 3-ish miles from our campus in Glasnevin to the center of Dublin. There are busses that run through this route, but we wanted to explore and save the 1.60 Euros it costs for a one way ride. Glasnevin is very much a suburb, but it's charming.

Armed with useless directions, since the Irish seem to be morally opposed to street signs, I pretty successfully navigated us to our destination, though it was definitely a group effort. The walk took longer than expected because we made several welcome detours, like stopping to test our our self-timer modes on our cameras.

We happened upon the National Botanical Gardens, a park open free for the public. Talk about green, the entire place was filled with all different kinds of plants and trees. It even just smelled green.

After much walking, we were all in need of an energy boost, so we popped in a little bakery for some cupcakes. I could not manage to snap a picture before I literally inhaled the thing, it was delicious. It was the most dense cake I have ever eaten, but it was beyond yummy, and the icing was so wonderfully sweet. Then we found another park, home to an intimate relationship between a bench and a tree.

By the time we got into the city, the sun had set and we didn't get to walk around as much as we intended, though we were proud of our expedition through the suburbs. I got a few nice pictures.

These are of the River Liffey:

This is the Bank of Ireland. The sky was so blue.

One of the girls in my group, Tara, had been to Dublin before and knew of Avoca, a Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie type store, with slightly overpriced knick-knacks and clothes. I found this adorable tea pot that I thought Eileen would love.

We took the bus back and Colleen and I cooked, or attempted to cook, a good dinner. The breaded chicken breasts with cheese ended up tasting fine, but the process was less than simple. We found bread crumbs and beat them into the chicken, then put the chicken on the stove. The problem arose when the bread crumbs started burning before the chicken had cooked through, so we decided to microwave the chicken instead, adding slices of Irish cheese on top. Considering our sub par methods, dinner ended up tasting pretty good, but we'll have to work out the kinks for next time.

Then tonight, we went out to the Temple Bar area and pub-hopped a bit. One had a live band that played song mashups like "Twist and Shout" with "La Bamba." The second pub had a live band that played some "Dancing in the Dark." None of them seem to play Irish songs, but an entire pub singing along to the American ones is really fun.

Tomorrow, a few of us are heading to the coast, so there will be plenty of pictures coming soon!