Accordions, Visas, and Bog Bodies!

So, does everyone remember the scene in Titanic where Jack and Rose go dancing to Irish music at some crazy party on the ship? We’ll last weekend I got to hear an amazing live traditional Irish band perform that song. My friends and I went to this pub called “O’Neil’s” that is a very traditional Irish pub and provides delicious food and entertainment. I shared a dinner of Chicken Cordon Blue and still had some mashed potatoes left over (they love their potatoes here). The band was extremely talented. It was made up of three men; an accordion player, a flutist, and a guitarist. I particularly liked the Irish flute the best. I love that all of the shows here are in small, intimate settings. We were in a room about the size of a large living room with the band on one end and a few tables surrounding a small dance floor.

As for classes here, I couldn’t be much happier! I only have classes Monday through Wednesday (and yes, that means I have four day weekends) and all my classes are really interesting. In my Irish Culture Through the Arts class, we go on mini field trips every week to the many museums and art galleries around Dublin. The first week we went to the National Museum of Ireland to look at bodies found in bogs that dated back to 500 B.C., though quite disgusting it was really interesting to see. Second week we went on a tour of an old Georgian home, which had been maintained and redone to look like how the original owners kept it.

This past week has been my busiest yet. I already feel a lot healthier just because I end up walking about five miles a day to get around the city. On Friday morning, everyone had to go through immigration and get a student visa. This included waiting in line to get a ticket, then waiting two hours until your ticket number was called, then handing over your passport, and THEN waiting three hours until you got your passport back and your new visa. It was quite the experience.

My roommate and I have been very busy trying to plan vacations. If everything works out, we should be going to London, Barcelona, Italy, and Greece. There are so many things to plan and prepare ourselves for before we venture off anywhere. I’ve been researching the best hostels and museums and beaches and concerts, it’s a lot more work than I thought, but I know it will be worth it. I can’t wait!

First days in the new city...

After long days of stressful packing and checklists, I arrived in Boston for my flight to Dublin three hours early and got through security in less than five minutes. The plane ride went a lot faster than I thought; I watched three movies on our personal TV screens and ate a fairly decent airplane meal. We got through customs quickly and met Stephen Robinson who paid for a cab to bring us to the apartment building. Our taxi driver was really friendly but, once we got to the apartments, we found out that he charged us way more than he should of because he knew we were Americans. We’ll know for next time I suppose.

Since I couldn’t sleep on the plane, I took a two hour nap at the apartment and got up in time to go on my first walk in Dublin. Claire brought us to a Breakfast/Lunch Café that served sandwiches and strange vegetable pies. I spent $14 USD on a ham sandwich and an apple juice, ouch. You definitely can’t eat out everyday when you’re on a budget. It snowed all day and Dublin doesn’t seem to know that salt melts snow, so they just leave it there and cancel buses and close off roads hoping it will melt. There is now an inch of ice coating the streets and sidewalks, making it very difficult to walk. There are so many shops and bars lining every street, I keep trying to make mental notes of where I want to go but there are too many! I get lost so easily so I’m really trying to get to know where things are here. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it in a few weeks.

The first day of orientation we met some of the faculty and had a scavenger hunt around Dublin. It was pretty fun even though it was freezing out. We had to get things like “a picture of a man wearing a tweed hat holding a pint of Guinness.” Sounded like a very strange request but the first bar we looked in we found a man with a tweed hat and asked him if we could buy him a pint just to take his picture, he thought we were odd but agreed anyway. Everyone we’ve met so far has been really friendly and talkative. That night the faculty took us out to this restaurant/pub in the Temple Bar area (very touristy). The Professors that we met were extremely funny and genuinely nice people. I couldn’t be more excited for classes; they all sound amazing.