Drummylicious Visit

This past weekend, I had the wonderful joy of hosting a visit from my fabulous friend, Caitlin, who came from London. There was plenty of craic to go around, which was good because I finally have work now at UCD, and I needed a nice weekend. I actually had to turn in two essays this past week, and I've got two more due this week. Let me take a brief moment to just share some things my professors have taught me about essay-writing here:

• You are not supposed to plagiarize.
• You are supposed to have a thesis statement, topic sentences, and quotes from the text as evidence of your point.
• Essays will be accepted until two weeks after the due date has passed (at a loss of half a grade a day).

I do not consider myself to be a snob, or a particularly judgmental human being, but HONESTLY. Back at Penn, if you hand in you essay two HOURS after the deadline, good luck trying to get a professor to accept it. No, no, wait. two MINUTES with some profs I've had. Two weeks? REALLY? Don't even get me started on the thesis thing.

Ok, English major rant over. Back to my weekend.

So on Friday night, Caitlin met my friends and we all happily feasted at the apartment. I then gave her some cultural education (by this I mean taught her Irish slang and made her listen to what in my opinion should be the Irish National Anthem. Here's the link, but don't listen if you're in public unless you have headphones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8). After I finished mentally preparing Caitlin, we all went out in a group to Purty Kitchen, a poorly named nightclub. It was a bit dead since a lot of Irish people went home to their non-Dublin counties to vote (I hope since the elections are over people will take down the posters of the politician who looks like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons...), but we were rolling 11 playas deep, so we brought the party anyway.

On Saturday, Caitlin and I took the bus into city center and then walked like 23985739451934 miles to the Guinness Storehouse, which despite being an iconic Dublin landmark, is way off in a shady ugly area of the city. It was grand though, I now know a lot more than I really need to know about Guinness. I must, however, share my favorite fun fact. Arthur Guinness, the founder of the brewery, fought off cops with a pickax to defend his somewhat illegally obtained water supply (which is not, like people say, from the River Liffey, but from the Wicklow Mountain springs). Apparently it worked out pretty well for him...

Though the nicest part of the storehouse is actually the Gravity Bar at the very top. No, it's not what you think, I don't say that because of the beer, but because it shows a 360 degree panoramic view of Dublin. It just so happened that the sun shone ALL DAY, so it was absolutely magnificent.

Anyway, after enjoying our tour/Guinness drinking, we walked around the city a bit. I gave Caitlin some more cultural orientation by taking her to Supermac's, which is the Irish version of McDonald's. They really like to advertise the fact that their beef is 100% Irish. Like, they REALLY want you to know it's not that crap with mad cow disease.

When we finally admitted defeat to exhaustion, we returned to UCD for another home-cooked dinner. And then went out to Porterhouse, a reputable pub. Unfortunately, grenades were exploding everywhere (if you don't understand, watch the Jersey Shore and EDUCATE yourself), and the house beer (which was cheapest) was quite foul. And I can put up with a lot of rubbish, believe me. Luckily, we still had a nice large crowd so all was not lost. We got home, ate an unnecessary amount of food, and went to bed.

Great weekend, now back to work =( Good thing spring break is THIS COMING WEEKEND!!!