Dooblin
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2011
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2
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Trip End
May 28, 2011
Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
Sunday, January 2, 2011
arrived safely and relatively smoothly in dublin and at my new home for a few days
the abbey court hostel
o'connel bridge
29 bachelor's walk
dublin 1
on my plane flight from atlanta to dublin i was sitting next to a super friendly, sweet girl who was also leaving to study abroad. she is from florida and going to be studying in a special program in spain for those who want to start ngo's. she wants to make one to help end sex slavery and human trafficking, especially for women in thailand where she had done missionary work. sitting next to such a nice person who shared so much in common with me really comforted me and really confirmed for me i had been making the right decisions about studying abroad.
my time at the abbey court hostel was my first hostel experience and was not bad at all, which could just be a consequence of me living with girls from my program in it though. i was a tad nervous because of others stories or maybe even just legends about hostels ha.
that night i went with my hostel roomies, a friend from fordham i made at the airport, colleen andrews, plus some others from arcadia out to a pub to get dinner and then listen to live music. it was fun! the pub called "the quays" (pronounced the keys) was in the temple bar. everyone i have met so far is so friendly and nice, both those in my program and the irish we encountered! i am so grateful for having such an easy transition and no problem at all making friends.
only real problem i have had so far was a hundo was confiscated from me when exchanging money because it was counterfeit!
3 january
i had orientation today from 9 till 1 pm at the davenport hotel. it was standard boring orientation, but i did learn some important information during it. after, the orientation i went with friends from the program on a hop on-hop off bus tour that arcadia payed for. for some of it i sat in the open air portion. not the smartest decision, because although it was sunny in dublin it was still freezing! thank god, we got me that nice jcrew coat mom! i got to see a lot of dublin, including their park which is 2x larger than central park! can you imagine that?! also, i got off at the guinness storehouse and jameson distillery...can you tell im traveling with college students haha. the guinness storehouse was really cool inside though--really interestingly designed. also, at the top of it there was a bar with 360 degree views of the city. it was breathtaking and was good for getting more ideas about dublin's architecture. the jameson distillery was more old-fashioned, but pretty. absolutely, hilarious in both was how athur guinness and john jameson were painted at their places. like not even just creators of alcohol, but geniuses and HUGE contributors to mankind. very dramatic. i found that so funny i almost died of loling during the jameson distillery video with my friend and i was worried we were going to get kicked out. the last time i laughed that hard was when jen ali told me the story of her school assembly.
after, we went on a long search for this mexican restaraunt boojum that we were told about but had no luck. of course, i would talk everyone into searching for it haha. my love for mexican food will never fade!
4 january
more orientation today. learned some differences between american and irish education today and cultural things in orientation, like that the irish are generally very private people; pubs and the live music there are a huge part of the culture and that people will be there all times of day--even children will be there with there the families, especially on sunday (lots of irish dont go to church on sundays anymore but still go to pubs as a group after); their biggest meal of the day is lunch; politics are talked about a lot; and you want to be "slagged" here. "slag" is a slang word for getting teased. you want to get slagged because if you have been it means the person likes you (they dont bother slagging people they dont like). you are supposed to slag them back to show that youre fun too and arent offended. americans get made of fun by the irish for getting easily offended. another common term here is "craic", pronounced crack. it means fun or a good time. so people will say things like "where is the good craic?", "whats the craic", "it was good craic". i think they made sure to teach us this so we dont think the irish are talking about the drug! also, that hurling and gaelic football are huge sports here and a lot of college students join societies/clubs here. hurling seems like a really intense sport. chase google it!
from orientation we walked by some of the more modern parts of dublin and then made our way to the car warehouse store to get pay as you go phones. since we all got ones on the same network we can text for free. thank god i can text again haha. wish i could text you all at home though! from there, colleen, jon, ben, and i finally found boojum! jon and i had basically made it our mission to eat there. so happy we did though, because it was delicious, organic mexican food and probably the last i will have for a very long time.
after dinner, we went to the abbey theatre and saw the play arrah na pogue. i was super jet-lagged so embarrassingly enough was not awake for the whole thing (pulled a daddy dirk), but from what i did see it was good and was a love story that was also tied with themes of anti-british rebels during like the early 1900s. a large group of us all went to a pub after and heard more great music, including one of my new favorite songs 'galway girl'. i wish more places in the states had live bands.
5 january
left for galway! slept for the entire bus ride basically. i hope i get over my jet-lag soon! it only took about two hours to drive from dublin to galway. isnt that crazy that it takes that short time to drive the width of the whole country?! ireland is only about as big as maine.
