I DID THINGS.

Before I begin narrating my fabulous weekend, I will do a quick run through of people who I hang out with, so I can make my life easier and just refer to them by name in my writing. Here it goes:

• Joe - American study abroad student from California. Studies at Haverford back home.
• Fiona - Swiss study abroad student. A little older...though by that I mean she's only 23.
• Katie - American study abroad student from NY. Studies at Boston College...and we hardly ever see her.
• Guy - Irish student. Senior at UCD. Loves China.
• Emma - Irish student. Freshman at UCD. Works as a nurse. Always happy.
• Lauren - American study abroad student from Wisconsin. Studies at Bryn Mawr College.
• Rick - American study abroad student from Connecticut. Studies at Temple. Loves music. Bakes awesome cookies.

The first 5 are my roommates, and the last two are other people that hang out with us. Ok, back to the story.

So Friday night, the roomies and I spent hours eating an ungodly amount of Chinese food. If you are wondering (like Momatron), yes they have Chinese food here. It is pretty much the same as back home. Now, be embarrassed for asking.

Then Saturday, being well-fed and regenerated by a glorious night of sleep, I met up with Rick to go on a day trip to Howth. Howth (rhymes with growth, not mouth) is a little fishing town 25 minutes north of Dublin on the Dart train. It was grand.

Basically we spent hours walking along a hiking trail through the cliffs. Yes, cliffs. As in those green rocky projections sticking out of oceans that you see in movies filmed in Ireland. It was UNREAL. I'm definitely going back when it gets warmer to take a boat around the area. Again, lacking the amount of talent it takes to describe the landscape, you can check out my pictures on facebook, and I will soon be putting all of them on Snapfish (so don't worry).

After a breathtaking walk (both in the "everything is gorgeous" sense and the "omg I can't walk another step" sense), we decided to hit up an eating establishment for some sustenance. And, as Howth is well known for its quality fresh fish, we both ordered a HUGE plate of fish and chips...and some calamari as an appetizer. All of which was well worth the 810101380283 calories.

Of course, following a 5 hour venture with a gigantic meal resulted in a food coma when I got back home. Which was grand.

Erasmus and Family Dinner

Update since my last blog...which is difficult because my internet goes in and out every couple of hours.

Classes so far seem great. One in particular, called "The Narrative Art" is about Irish folklore. All we did this week was listen to our professor tell us stories. I hope I'm not jinxing myself, but I may have hit the jackpot with this one.

In other news, here at UCD, there is an international students society (just like most other schools) called the Erasmus Student Network. They host events on and off-campus so that we can all meet each other and talk about how sad we get when we miss our professors' jokes on account of their heavy accents and rapid rate of speech. Anyway, on Wednesday night (which is apparently the Irish equivalent of "Thirsty Thursday" back home), they held an event at a nice(ish) but kinda lame(ish) club called Dicey's. It wasn't bad. We got a private bus to go there, and a private room to check our coats...other than that there wasn't anything special about this event...haha.

The night was okay(ish). The place had this outdoor space in the middle of it called "The Garden", which was kind of like a courtyard I guess, where there were two bars, a dance floor, and plenty of room to smoke (Irish people smoke A LOT). Unfortunately, after passing the majority of the evening in this section, I came home STINKING. I know. Even outside, the sheer quantity of cigarette odor found its way into my freshly washed hair and clothes. Yucky.

Anyway, on Thursday I only had two classes, so I was able to get all my work done during the day. It was AMAZING. I wish I could live like that back at Penn (where working until 1am is early, 12am is nice, and 11pm is UNHEARD OF). Thursday evening was fabulous. My roommates and I had another family dinner. I brought America to dinner...we made Juicy Lucys. For those who have not heard of this DELICIOUS invention, it's simply a hamburger with cheese stuffed in the middle, so that it oozes out when you bite into it (and makes you look exceedingly unattractive). We, of course, also had to add cheese on top of them. But only to glue down the fried onions and mushrooms. Priorities matter.

Oh no this is becoming a food blog again. Sorry.

Stay tuned, I'll (hopefully) be adding in my weekend adventures on Sunday night!

Black Monday and Get Your Ass to Class Tuesday

So Monday was the first official day of classes at UCD. I only had one (at 9am...) because I still had to register for two more classes to have a full course load here (which is 6 classes. GAH). My first class was just a "tutorial" (we would call it a recitation back home) for my Modern American Literature class, which is in a HUGE lecture hall for about 200 something students. It's STRANGE.

Anyway, directly after that I had to go to the international coordinator's office so that she could finish my registration.

I got there at 9:50am. The line ahead of me was HIDEOUS.

I waited until 1:00pm...and then she went on an hour long lunch break.

I finally got my turn at 3:30ish pm. And left at 4:00pm. It was NOT a nice day.

So I got back to my room and ate some dinner, and while talking to my Irish flatmate, found out that it was "Black Monday." At UCD, this means that the second the students get out of class, they go to the student bar (yes...there's a bar on the campus. They also sell wine at the campus convenience store) and get black-out drunk. And then go out to real bars and presumably black out even more.

Although I would typically be all over embracing these native traditions, I chose to stay in and hang out with my Irish roomie (who is a senior, and therefore finds less novelty in Black Friday "activities") and his friends who came over. We drank beer and watched "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" As they say in Ireland, it was GRAND.

When my other roomies got in around 10ish, they joined us. Apparently the festivities at the student bar were getting to embarrassment and/or barbarian level. I hear that the floor was covered in beer by 9pm, and that people were puking into their beer glasses by 10pm...(what a shame I missed the fun)

So today (Tuesday), I went to a few more classes. My first was European Art, which should be fun, since I like Europe and art. I also had my lecture for 20th Century Drama, and I'm pretty excited for that because the reading list looks great.

After buying the necessary books for homework, I got back home and had a family dinner with one of my flatmates and a girl who lives in the apartment below us. It took us like 40 minutes to prepare this meal...which was only pasta, meat sauce, and sauteed vegetables (we blame the burners. It literally takes 20 minutes for water to boil on our stove). Luckily, everything turned out well so dinner was also GRAND.

I love saying that.

UCD

This post will include Thursday, Friday, and Saturday since I didn't do very much.

Thursday

In the morning, I got to University College Dublin nice and early, and met up with some other study abroad students to wait for the campus tour that was scheduled at 10am.

But nobody ever came to take us on the tour =(

So we all had to wait an hour and a half to go to an orientation meeting. So from 11:30am-3:10pm, I attended various information sessions (which unfortunately didn't inform me of much more than what I had already received in e-mails before getting here).

Later on though, I met up with Momatron and Gigi again in the city center (I keep wanting to call it Center City...oh Philly!) and we went to the other famous theater, The Abbey Theater to see a play in the evening. "Arrah-na-Pogue" was (as its title sounds) very Irish, and was excellent! That is saying a lot because it was a romantic comedy...and you know how I feel about those. Anyway, unlike Hollywood's most embarrassing genre, this play was witty, with some playful jabs at Britain, and the scenery was very impressive. It made me feel very cultured.

Friday

After saying goodbye to mom & grandma, I came back to UCD to finally finish moving in. Once I did, I took a four hour nap (I wasn't lying when I said I haven't done much). I met almost all of my "flatmates" and they all seem friendly.

Saturday

I slept in, started my day off with the breakfast of champions (a banana with peanut butter, and Ramen noodles...though my roomie did put an egg in it, so it was totally a real meal), and went on my first grocery shopping expedition. I took the bus back into the city center, and actually spent a reasonable amount of money on food! Hurray for not starving =D

Going Down South

Today we went on a Wicklow day tour to see the countryside to the south of Dublin. I had to add our tour guide/bus driver Stephen to my "loves of my life" list because he was nerdy-looking, witty, and hilarious, and disgustingly Irish. He took us down the coast line, past Howth (which apparently has the best fresh sea food in Dublin), past the Irish version of Hollywood (Bono and Enya live there...), and out to the Glendalough area (which means "valley of two rivers" in Gaelic, to anyone who may doubt my purely academic reasons for coming here ;]).

So I will let the pictures do most of the landscape describing because that is honestly not my strength as a writer, and I could not by any means do justice to the places I've seen. I will however mention some of the interesting things that Stephen (love of my life) told us.

• The open land is uninhabited because it is made up of peat bog, which is 90% water and therefore not exactly the most stable base for a house



• Dead bodies of warriors killed 2,000 ago were preserved with hair, nails, and skin were discovered in the bogs only a few decades ago (sorry, I find slightly morbid things fascinating)



• Guiness Lake was named as such because it's in the shape of a pint glass, and the Irish added a buttload of sand on one of the banks to make it look like the foam head (I love alcoholics)



• Pretty much every movie with beautiful landscape scenes was filmed in this area (Stephen mentioned more recent ones like Braveheart, Excalibur, P.S. I Love You, and Leap Year)

In addition to all the breath-taking places I saw, today was a very Irish food day too (I swear I'm not trying to make this a food blog, but this is ME + EATING we're talking about). During our trip, we took a lunch break at a pub in Glendalough, where we ate Irish Stew (beef, beef, beef, beef, carrots, carrots, onion) and dranks some more Guiness. OH, and the lovely Stephen provided us with some shots of Jameson Whiskey (which I actually LOVED, despite my previous feelings concerning whiskey...especially the kind packaged in single serve plastic pouches). And finally, when we got back to the Dublin city center, mother and I went to Breshoff's to eat the "alledgedly" (that's Stephen's favorite word) best fish & chips in the city. I can say in all honesty that I would gladly eat beer battered deep fried cod and fries every day if I wouldn't die of a heart attack in a week.

Basically, day three = GREAT SUCCESS.

***ALSO**** If you want to see more pictures, I'm putting them all up on Facebook so check them out!!!

Recovered and Ready to Go

After a long night of sleeping, randomly waking up, and being confused as to my whereabouts, I started the day with a "traditional Irish breakfast" (yes that's actually what these people call it), which can be translated into "meat plate."

Eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, white "pudding", black "pudding, baked beans, toast, a grilled tomato, and tea. -------------------->

After demolishing this meal (if you know me, you shouldn't doubt that I am very capable of doing this), I went to see my dorm and then went shopping across the Liffey with mom and grandma. Would you believe it? The sun shined the whole day. Meaning we were able to shop all day. We had our post-adventure dinner at Mssrs Maguire, a bar in which I lost my Guiness virginity. It washed down my "100% Irish beef" cheeseburger and side of "chips" beautifully. I felt so IRISH.

We ended the day by going to the famous (and pretty small, surprisingly) Gate Theater to see Jane Eyre. It was a brilliant adaptation of the book and the acting was AMAZING. Like, the young girl who played Jane as a child would shake her head in disgust at our Disney Channel people. I'm definitely not a theater junkie but the performance honestly blew my mind.

In short...DAY 2 FOR THE WIN.

The Journey/Day 1

Hellooooooo Dublin! I'm here and I've accepted that I won't have a good hair day EVER while I'm here. In the words of Patches quoting Al Pacino in that ridiculous movie: "Ooooh rah."

Anyway, after waiting in the delightfully festive and welcoming JFK airport for, oh about 5 fun-filled hours, and sitting on the spacious Aer Lingus plane with no crying babies whatsoever (haha uh huh yeah right), I stepped out and took my first breath of Irish air. It was DELICIOUS. No really, like Kyle's water. It was damp, cool, and smelled WONDERFUL (aka the complete opposite of the undoubtedly contaminated farty air plane air).

AND the sun shone for me. Just try to tell me that was a coincidence.

So after getting only 2 hours of sleep and running around doing official study abroad things, I'm obviously grumpy and tired, so please don't judge me for my grouchy complaining and lack of decent writing. I promise I'll do better.

Here are today's important/fun/Welch observations:

• During the taxi ride from the air port to the hotel, we passed 2 MacDo's & 1 BK in two blocks. I'M HOME.


• Irish people are the absolute winners at being friendly, approachable, and helpful.


• The size of the tv in our room is honestly hilarious. I don't mean that in the snobby "I expected better than this" kinda way. I mean, like when you walk into an American hotel, everything can be mediocre, cramped, and dingy, but you can count on having at LEAST a 30'' wide tv screen. This one...well...my laptop may be bigger than it...AGAIN. I'M HOME.


• I will lose about 20 lbs living at UCD because ALL the buildings are legitimately 900000 miles apart. Like seriously. <---(*hint*that's for you Pete)

Again, I promise tomorrow's post won't be this lazy. Love you all & miss you already!

The Warm Up (to the real blogging)

So, as I promised, I will be documenting my foreign shenanigans by blogging...which is not something I would typically do, but it's the easiest way for me to avoid retelling all my stories via skype & e-mail. And I am generally a fan of doing less work.

Also, by “warm up” I mean I’m still in the US. Which means that this won’t be exciting or particularly witty yet (here’s hoping that these allegedly witty Dubliners will give me some skills). So I will use this time to give EVERYONE shout outs, to make up for the lack of formal goodbyes to some folks and just because I like shouting people out and giving ‘em some love. Here it goes:

To Momatron - Thanks for letting me leave the country! Good luck living with Dan and Caroline without me =p

To Patches - Remember to shave your face, child.

To Caroline - Please continue to watch the Jersey Shore. Just because I’ll be away doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate your frighteningly accurate impersonations of “the Situation” creepin in night clubs.

To Pop & Gigi - Stay golden.

To T.G. - Stay stylish.

To Padre - I promise not to eat a live goldfish.

To Uncle G & your beautiful clan - I promise I’m not dead and I WILL see you EVENTUALLY.

To Cousin Friend & Marisol - This may be premature, but CONGRATULATIONS.

To the Cuskley clan - I’ll bring back MANY pictures of the homeland =]

To The Sewing Circle - Please don’t forget the Shamrock Shake tradition just because I’m not home.

To my beautiful Penn ladies - I challenge you all to TRY to fb stalk me as much as I’ll stalk you all =p

To Peteyyyyy - Give pookie a hug for me! <3

To everyone else I should shout out (but I won’t because I’m a lazy ass American) - PEACE.