One Week Later

Well, the whole travel blog thing hasn't been as resounding a success as I had perhaps hoped, but I feel that I am not wholly to blame. We don't have internet access at home, and it took us until last Tuesday to get access at school, so it fell by the wayside in favor of hand-writing. However, I will now attempt to catch up a bit. The info below and to follow will be semi-condensed, but in a fun way, and chunked by where I was at the time.

Last week was a lot of settling in. I arrived Sunday on schedule and took a cab to my house. Suzanne (housemom) is very nice, a childminder who does laundry every day since she's home. That's good for me, since I only brought a week's worth of clothes. We can't shower in the morning or past 10pm, so basically we shower in the afternoon and use a lot of deodorant/body spray to make up the difference. Not the end of the world. Cereal, toast and juice for breakfast every day, and the dinners we've eaten at home have been good. We've eaten dinner downtown more often than I'd expected, since last week we had to go down basically every day for something or other for the program. Beds are comfy, we're both (Keith and I) mostly over our allergy/cold period, and it's only a 10 minute walk or so to campus. We come in early and sit on the internets for awhile every day.

Sunday we met for dinner at a pub, then had to find our way home with no map. We did so with a little help from a local who was very helpful.

Classes are odd, but good. We're basically in class for 2.5 hours every day, then usually something in the afternoon. Our first day, last Monday, was the Book of Kells and the Long Room at Trinity. It was cool, but we didn't get to see much of the book itself - they put out 2 pages every day along with other relevant documents. Most of the exhibit is about the process, history, and culture of the book. The Long Room is basically a library, century-old books on giant stacks. Long and nifty, no photos allowed at either unfortunately. I got a SIM card for my phone, and a few others have phones that work in one way or another so most of the pairs can keep in contact and plan, as well as call our professors if things go wrong, such as with our bus passes which were not bus passes. We got the passes the next day, but still a bit of a shock. Anyway, we (Keith, Kelsie, Hannah and I) walked to Stephens Green, shopped a bit, ate at home and went to Autobahn pub with Kelsie and Hannah.

Side note - for brevity, I will describe some people as part of specific roommate pairings; Kelsie and Hannah are 'the ladies,' Matt and Hany are 'the boys', Kris and Sam are 'the younguns', and . . . well, Diana and Winny will be described separately since we mostly encounter Diana. If pressed, I will call them 'the girls.'

Tuesday was a long one; caught the bus after lunch and walked to Henry Street, down Mary Street to the old Jameson Distillery (will take the tour in the near future), then to St. Patricks down a street we were advised to get off of by a concerned local, pointing us to a main road. St. Patricks was neat - Jonathan Swift's grave, a chair William of Orange sat in, etc. Walked past Christchurch and ate at a hipster type place, then on to the Literary Pub Crawl; began with a bit from Waiting for Godot. The actors were quite good, doing a few pieces and giving a lot of information on the pubs, the writers, etc. Pubs we visited were The Duke, O'Neills, The Stand, and David Byrnes'.

Wednesday we showered and napped after class, then went down to The Abbey Theatre to see the premier of a play, 'Bookworms.' Good show, front-row-center seats. The Youngun's weren't impressed, but they've apparently never been to an awkward dinner party. Thursday after calss we watched a film, 'When Brendan Met Trudy' - excellent movie, see it if you can. We ate, then took the bus to City Center and walked to the hostel where Dustin was staying. We headed out to find a pub, and ran into Dr.s Renk and Chown, who invited us to join them for dinner. They ate, we had some pints (Dustin had wine), then he walked with us to the Circle Theatre to see Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia;' it was pretty good, but really long and hot. No automated message at the start, a guy in a tux came out and did the emergency exits/no smoking/ no photos thing. That was neat. By the end we were rushing to catch a bus back, since they stop running at like 11:30 (and aren't that reliable sometimes in general).

Friday was a private screening of two films at the Irish Film Institute, 'Hush A Bye Baby' and 'Nora;' both pretty good. Afterwards, seven of us rushed to catch a train to Belfast: Myself, Keith, Matt, Hany, Kris, Sam and Diana. Arrived just fine, got to our hostel and checked in without them discovering our group was technically over their limit of 6 by cleverly booking in two shifts online. Reminds me I still owe Matt for the room and train tickets. Kelsie and Hannah didn't come, in part because their hosts were having a party they were going to. Winny also didn't come, for her own reasons. Train was fine, rode backwards with nobody next to me so I had some room. Train was delayed by some signal issues, but since the sun is up until like 10pm here it didn't cause problems.