Recap of the past week

Since I last blogged we've done a few new things. Dublin actually has an Oktoberfest for a few weeks here. It's basically like the real Oktoberfest in Munich, but much smaller. It was fun- the beer was really strong and I tried a sausage which was awesome. I was only there for a little during the day, but apparently things got crazy at night. Later that day my friend Liesel came in, so we walked around the city a little so I could show her the sights. We went out that night to a pub and club and had a few bulmers. I'm not sure if I've explained Bulmers yet- it's called a cider and is kind of like alcoholic apple juice but doesn't really taste like apple. They also have a berry flavor and some others. It's delicious. Here's a picture of us at the Porterhouse (I look a little gross but oh well):

The next day we went to the guiness factory. I had already been there once before but the place is so huge, like 7 floors, that we saw a lot of things I missed the first time. We also took a lesson in learning how to pour the perfect pint. Our instructor was a young guy who liked his job wayyyy too much- he was flirting with all the girls in the group which was kind of awkward. Anyways, it was actually harder than I imagined to pour a pint of guiness correctly, but here is a picture of me trying:

We had lunch at the factory then headed home so Liesel could catch her plane.

This week was pretty standard- just classes and whatnot. On wednesday we went to a speaker at the national library of ireland. The topic was slavery in Ireland, and unfortunately did not really hold anyone's attention. It was mostly elderly people there who were really eager to listen, but bringing a bunch of college kids to a talk directed to old irishmen isnt very thrilling. The speaker was very knowledgable, but I didn't really follow what he was talking about.

Last night's event, however, was definitely better. We went to a play called B for Baby at the Abbey theatre. We had absolutly no idea what this play was about, which could be a good thing, because we didn't have any expectations. The plot was pretty weird- it was about two special needs people, and a woman who takes care of them but who really wants a baby. The woman "uses" the special needs man to "give herself" a baby (i'm trying not to be too explicit). you can see where I'm going with this- it was pretty weird and sad, but entertaining nonetheless.

This weekend will be a lot of free time, possibly including some halloween shopping. My parents come sunday, then next weekend we are doing some travelling!

Classes

So we've had two full weeks of real DBS classes already. I'll go through what I'm taking in a second, but let me preface this by saying DBS is VERY different from Elon. In the US it would be comparable to Kaplan (DBS is actually an affiliate of kaplan), or ITT tech. There's a lot more adults and immigrant in my classes, rather than irish kids my age. There definitely are some, but for example, my finance class has a 40 year old man in it, and his 25 year old girlfriend. Everything is just set up differently. The teachers seem to be pretty good however, so I don't mean to shed a negative light on it too much- it's just an adjustment from the Elon experience I've had. Here's my classes and a description of each:

Poverty and Exclusion- this class seems to interest me the most. We focus on issues of poverty, what constitutes poverty, etc. The people in my class however are interesting.....there are a lot of young irish girls who intimidate me, but there is also a pregnant woman who is due in 2 weeks. I'll definitely blog asap if her water breaks during class. This will be a good class, but some of the students are older and like to talk way too much. In fact, it surprises me how much kids talk while the professor is teaching.

Urban Studies- the exact same people in my poverty class are in this class. The teacher is different though, and can barely speak english. I have no doubt she knows the subject well, but she cant explain it at all. The other day the class started getting very angry with her, and it turned into world war 3. I understand and agree with the other students' frustrations with the teacher, but they were pretty much yelling at her. This would never happen back at home. crazy. I thought I would like this class if it had an urban regeneration type of focus, but right now we are studying the history of cities, which is pretty dull. Hopefully it will get better and look at more current issues.

Finance- the men in this class smell terrible. I literally could not breathe the other day it smelled so bad. I know europeans generally don't shower or do laundry as much as we do at home, but it's reallyyy bad. This class is basically all foreigners but the teacher is decent. It is funny though that this is a year long class, so I will actually only be there for the first couple chapters of the course. I'm glad I won't have to take this class at Elon since it is supposed to be hard, but I may have to do some outside reading on what finance actually is since I won't be learning much of the subject.

Marketing- this class is HUGE. This is my class with the most irish students in it. The teacher is pretty good and very relaxed about abroad students missing class to travel. It gets boring sometimes but I think I'll pick up some good info and the teacher makes it easy to follow along and whatnot.

Baby Guiness

I would like to go on a short rant about the best drink ever created: baby guiness. It is a shot of heaven. I don't mean to sound anything like an alcoholic- if it didn't have alcohol in it, I would take many of them one after another simply because it tastes so good.

The baby guiness is a shot of Kahlua and Baileys. You pour about 2/3 of the shot glass with kahlua, then pour bailys on top of that- being careful not to mix the two. The result is literaly a baby guiness. it is great. heres a video on how to make them:

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-make-a-Baby-Guinness-1448

and a picture of a few of us with baby guinesses at midnight on jordan's birthday!

Galway

This past weekend we went to Galway. Galway is located in the west of Ireland, about 2 and a half hours from Dublin. The west is a little different from Dublin in that more people speak the language of Irish, and have a different accent than Dubliners. We got on the bus at 9am thursday morning and met our adorable bus driver, Bart. Bart is from Galway originally so he was able to give us a lot of history and stories throughout the weekend. The drive look a really short time since there was no traffic, so we were at Galway before noon. Since we could not check into the hotel until 3, we had some time to walk around the city center. It is a pretty small city, but packed with people- both tourists and locals. We went to an awesome place for fish and chips and walked into some shops before it was time to go. Thursday night was pretty uneventful- we were all pretty tired from going out on wednesday so Dawn and I booked our Lady Gaga tickets, the I went to bed.

Friday morning we got up early again, then headed to the bus. The first stop was in the middle of nowhere- Bart wanted to take us on a hike that was once used as a pilgrimage trail and led to a church that St. Patrick once visited. This hike turned out to be painful- the trail was a steep incline of rocks, and when we were almost towards the top it started downpouring hail. It was terrible. There was nowhere to hide and I got completely soaked. It was not ideal. Anyway, there were some good views, heres a picture:

It was nice to see the country side, but not my favorite hike.

We loaded the bus again and headed to our other destination of the day- Kylemore Abbey in Connemara. On our way, Bart pointed out a leprechaun house on the side of the road! I was very happy to see this. Anyway-This was a gorgeous abbey that has been used as a girls boarding school in recent years, though it is stopping operation next year. We had lunch here and were able to walk around for a bit. Pictures below are the outside of the abbey, and dawn and me with the lake in the background.

After this, we headed back to the hotel for dinner. A quick note about the hotel- in each room, there are two beds. Except one bed is a queen size and one is a twin. I don't understand. I know some european hotels are like this, but why? do they assume one person is a lot bigger than the other? its weird. Anyway, friday night we went to a pub in city center to hear some traditional irish music. We didn't stay out late but it was really fun because in Dublin we usually only go to clubs or larger places.

Saturday morning was another early start. We headed out to take a ferry to the Aran Islands, which are 3 islands off the coast. The one we went to is the largest, called Inish Mor. The ferry was packed and was about a 40 minutes ride. Luckily, the waters weren't too choppy and noone got to sick. Once on the island, we loaded into 2 vans to take us around. Our first stop was the site of what used to be a church and burial ground. The second, and main stop, was Dun Aonghasa fort. This is an old for set up very high that was once believed to be used as defense. However, they recently believe it was used more for ceremonial purposes rather than warfare. The views from the fort were amazing! The cliffs are such a high, abrupt stop that you can only go close to the edge if you are laying on your stomach. Picture:

After seeing the fort, we headed back into town for lunch and killed time before leaving. We then took the ferry back to the bus, and bus back to the hotel for dinner. After dinner we went into town again and went into a couple pubs. Sunday was just the bus ride back and saying goodbye to bart.

All in all it was a good but exhausting weekend. I'll blog in the next couple days about my classes. This weekend Liesel is coming for a night! then mom and dad come the weekend after. crazy!

Kilkenny!

So this weekend was our first real trip outside of Dublin. A group of us booked a hostel in Kilkenny for 2 nights since we heard the city was a great place to visit. We had a great time and everything went pretty smoothly. Friday morning we took a 2 hour train ride there. Kilkenny is south of Dublin, about halfway to Cork. We got off the train and went to find our hostel called Lanigans- this was my first hostel experience, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. It ended up that our hostel was in a great location, but wasn't so great in condition. The lady who checked us in looked completely miserable with her life, and it is up for debate if she really speaks English. There were 7 of us in a room that was pretty crammed, and the doors didnt exactly lock when you shut them- so on a couple of occasions strange men who were also staying in the hostel came in to say hello. Anyways, it was fine.

The first touristy thing we did was go to Kilkenny castel, which was awesome. Here's a picture:

After the castle, we walked around the town a little more and got ready to go out. The nightlife was pretty wild. The boys in the room next to us were from Waterford, which is in the south of Ireland. We went to 2 pubs listening to live music and basically going crazy. I never expected a band of men in a random pub in Kilkenny to play Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, but it was great. There was a promotion for Bulmers (an alcoholic cider) going on at one bar, which everyone was happy about. It was fun to experience a nightlife with the majority of the people being Irish, since in Dublin there are often a lot of tourists at the bars we have gone to so far.

Saturday was more walking around, and pretty low key. The town is really nice and has over 250 pubs, so we were ready for round 2 on saturday night. We had a delicious meal of Tapas for dinner, then hung out a little before heading out for a pub crawl. I'm pretty sure we walked into about 8 pubs that night. Each had a different feel, especially the one we ended up enjoying the most. We went to a pub called the Field both nights, but saturday night it was PACKED. I felt like I was in a moshpit. The men were pretty creepy that night, but everyone is very willing to buy you a pint. Irish men also have a strange habit of picking us girls up (literally, in the air) when they greet us. It makes for good stories. This place was so packed that even the miserable hostel lady was there. We saw her dancing by herself in a corner, which was hilarious.

This morning we got up, checked out of the hostel, and went to breakfast. We had some delicious bagels and coffee then got on the train to come home.

Overall, it was a tiring but fun weekend. I'll have more pictures to come in the next few days. Tomorrow we start real classes, and we head to the west this weekend!

la di da

so I've been trying to write at least once a week so here's an update. Last weekend we went to the MGMT concert, which was awesome. They sounded fantastic live. We had a pretty standard friday- didn't do too much and went to the pub at night. On saturday we went to the Dublin Castle to see what it was like. It seemed pretty cool but we had to wait a long time for a tour so we didn't bother. Instead, we walked to the national irish museum, which is actually very close to our building. It used to be a barracks and is now a HUGE museum. There was way too much to see in one day.
Yesterday and today we just had class, but today we took a trip ti the Leinster House, which is where the Irish parliament sits. We got to see the rooms the senate and house use for legislation, and even met a senator who talked to us for a little. The president of the Labour Party also passed our tour.
Nothing else is very new, just experiencing going to different restaurantes and whatnot. This weekend we go to kilkenny! This is the first trip my friends and I have planned on our own, so we'll see how it goes.

fun is for sharing

the name of this post is a random advertisement we saw. thus, an example of how things here are different and sometimes just dont make sense.

nothing too exciting has happened in the past few days. last friday, we took a trip down to the docklands which is an area in the east of dublin. it was flourishing a few years ago as developers came and invested in it, but since Ireland is having terrible economic troubles, all the projects that were underwar have been deserted. It was interesting to hear how the collapse of the Anglo-Irish bank has left the country in a very tough economic position.

This weekend we went to both the Jameson whiskey distillery and the Guiness brewery. Both of these were lots of fun, and had delicious drinks for us at the end of the tours. Yesterday was another field trip, this time to the Glencree center for peace and reconcilliation. It was a very long day, but we learned a lot more about the conflict in Northern Ireland and the violence that took place in the 70s and 80s. I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I'll try to post some in a few days. Tomorrow is the MGMT concert, which I am very excited for. That's all for now!