Wait, You Have To Be 21 To Get In...?

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So where did I leave off? Oh yes, Thursday night wasn’t anything too exciting. The four of us finally did some hardcore grocery shopping. I got some pasta, pre-made Hawaiian pizza, chicken, Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie (7 Euro but totally worth it!), butter, jam, bread, turkey, cheese, tea and honey (for my sore throat, of course!)...it was quite successful! We planned on taking the bus back since it is a pretty long walk with such heavy bags (that’s what I get for getting a huge bag of potatoes!) but the bus was taking too long so we took a taxi instead and figured it would be cheaper. It was probably only one euro cheaper but I honestly think it depends on the driver you get because I’ve heard people of getting all different rates when they take a cab, oh well. So I made my pizza and it was quite delicious and then we watched Grease in my room cause my roomies were out drinking (they left some Absinthe behind..that stuff is CRAZY)! I was surprised they owned Grease but, I mean, who doesn’t love American-made movies?

I was really excited to finally sleep in on Friday when I was woken up by someone wailing as if they were being stabbed to death. I then heard a bunch of doors opening and closing in my apartment and then I heard the sound of puking..talk about a lovely alarm system. I was SO MAD because they even told us at orientation to not keep up with the Irish since they’ve had a few extra years of drinking under their belts. So I thought to myself..”if they have so much experience, WHY CAN’T THEY HOLD DOWN THEIR ALCOHOL SO I CAN SLEEP IN?!?!” I finally was able to fall back asleep after bitching to Meg about it. I had to wake up at a decent hour though since we had to sign up for our history class that day. When I finally went out of my room into the apartment, everyone was gone except my one roommate. She said the girl was really sick and they had to take her to the hospital and it wasn’t from drinking. Apparently it was “that time of the month” (TMI I know) or she may have the flu or something. She had to get a bunch of blood work and x-rays done and by the time I got home Friday night my roommates already left to go home (they only live a half hour away and apparently all the Irish students go home on the weekends, lame..I know) so I have to wait until tonight to find out the FULL story.

Anyway, after signing up for our history class, we came back to our rooms, ate some lunch, and then decided to venture back into town to try and get our immigration business done. We walked ALL THE WAY to city hall (I have no idea how many miles, but it was SUPER far) and when we got there we discovered that QU didn’t give us medical insurance with coverage dates on our card, so basically they have to fax some stuff over and then, by the end of this week, we can go back and be all set to immigrate. Awesome, THANKS PATRICK! Well, at least I don’t have to go to the gym for a couple days now 😊 After that long walk, we figured we deserved a treat so we stopped at this awesome chocolate place, there was a Belgian chocolate one and another really cute café so I purchased some truffles and they were DELICIOUS!

We finally headed back to our apartments, got ready, and went with a group of our friends to the Old Oak. It’s a HUGE pub made out of, you guessed it, oak! The crowd was a bit old but it was really nice to just sit around a couple tables and chat about our various adventures. We left once we finished our first round and headed over to An Brog which smelled like B.O. and was playing really lame music and we finally ended up at The Wash. My friend’s boy from the other night met up with us and we left The Wash after a bit and tried to get into this other place and apparently it was 21? Basically they put that up to keep the drunk young college students out and to keep it an older crowd I guess. We then tried Bailey’s..another 21 and over place..and they let us in ‘cause we’re American. SWEET! Now the Irish understand that we are a good time 😊 As soon as we walked in some creepy 40-something year old fat man came up to me and was like “You’re GAAARRRGES (translation: Gorgeous)” and pinched my cheek and I was like, “uhh yea buddy bye” so we avoided the rest of that situation and headed upstairs. Bailey’s has 3 floors and is pretty legit. We made friends with a French guy who spoke very little English (sorry Virgicro, I tried to make you proud but all I could say was Hello, My name is Julia, Yes, and Good-bye) and an Irish guy who we all thought was quite flamboyant but was dancing with us by the end of the night? I guess he had one too many Guinnesses…:P

We got home too late, even though we said we were going to have an early night. It was fine though cause I slept in Saturday and, therefore, got about ten hours of much-needed sleep. Yesterday (Saturday) we were a bunch of bums and Meg came over and ate toast with me and drank tea. We then tried to watch Grey’s Anatomy online (biggest pain in the butt ever) and I watched Gossip Girl as well. We finally mustered up some energy to make a legit balanced dinner. I marinated the chicken in honey mustard and cooked it to perfection (it wasn’t dry, at all!) and Meg made some YUMMY mashed potatoes. We bought those packages of veggies that you can steam cook in the microwave and I was super proud of our 30 minute meal (not quite as good as Rachel Ray’s, but I didn’t hate it!). It’s amazing how yummy hard work is 😊 After eating a balanced dinner, we decided to pig out a little and ventured down to Centra (It’s like 7-11 over here, but better and more expensive—ugh!) to purchase chocolate cake, ice cream, cookies, and crisps (potato chips). The feast was fantastic! Meg then came over and fixed up my webcam so I’m ready to go on Skype!!! Apparently the connection kinda sucks to the U.S. so I’ll sound delayed to everyone I call 😞 It’s worth it though!

Today we were supposed to go to the Blarney Stone so we could kiss it and speak eloquently (apparently the locals piss on it so it would be more of a “Smooching noise” than an actual kiss) but it’s raining and windy so we decided to pass on the 45 minute walk to the bus station and the however many minute walk to the actual castle off the bus. I’m probably going to go back to bed since I was up kinda late last night watching First Daughter with Meg. Katie Holmes pisses me off with her puppy eyes but Marc Blucas is a stud so it was worth it<3

That’s all for now folks! Miss you all and I’ll be updating on my classes and such once I actually know which ones I’m taking 😊

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