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That's right, a good craic. It's NOT a typo. The Irish use it to say "good time", and it's pronounced CRACK. Haha. This weekend was bank holiday weekend, which means no work for the people of Ireland on Monday! I can consider myself now a "resident of Ireland", at least temporarily. Even though I'm clearly a yank with my whiny midwest accent...I stick out badly. "Yeaaahh, can I get you some cawfee?" Oh well.
Saturday I took a James Joyce tour around the city. It was the "Dubliners" tour, which means a guide walked us around to sites in Dublin that are significant in Joyce's book as well as sites that were significant in his lifetime. I thought it was interesting, I love Dubliners, it's basically the only book by Joyce that I can comprehend decently. Our tour guide was from the states and working on her PhD at Trinity College on James Joyce and his works. I mean, an entire PhD, that means 3 years of intense study plus a dissertation on ONE author. I asked her what she planned to do after with it and she said she wants to teach Joyce. I guess that basically sums up
Me at Trinity College
Trinity is in city center. It was built in 1592 (i think) as the solely protestant college in Dublin. James Joyce hated it. It has old classic cobblestone university beauty, not like state. how layered and complicated his works were. There is an entire society in Dublin that obsesses about the man, it's kind of crazy, they put me to shame. She took us to his old high school but it is actually called secondary school called Belvedere college. Then we went to a few different places like a hotel and another building that he wrote some of his short stories after. I went with Katy and Troy, two Americanos here, and then two women from Galway. It was a bonding experience as we walked through the city on one of the most beautiful days with also the most intense sun yet to come here. IT WAS BRILLIANT!
Then later I went to go see Sex and the City!! It was amazing. GO see it!! I'm a huge fan of the show (obvi, I think like 90% of girls are). I've seen every episode at least 4 times...and actually had to break from the show for awhile because I used to watch it so much. Sad, maybe, but who cares. Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives...never got into them. Grey's is especially annoying (I know kate is cringing as she reads this). Sorry, but
McDreamy is not that great. He looks like a skinny washed up creep to me, and the entire show revolves around their pointless drama. No thanks. Now, I will sound incredibly hypocritical because many might argue that SATC is the EXACT SAME THING, but guess what? It's not. I won't get into why here, but we can discuss the complexities of these shows at a later time. So, the movie? I very rarely cry at movies being the cold bitch that I am, but this movie made me laugh and cry at least 6 different times. When I come back I'm renting it with everyone who will watch with me. If you're lucky I'll make you a cosmo. One of the funniest lines was: Miranda-"Is it just me or is Valentine's Day on STEROIDS this year?" HAHAHAHAHAH
Sunday I went to Howth. Howth is a little cutesy towne on the peninsula the extends into the Irish sea. Not cutesy in a yuppie sort of way though, just in a nice not too commericial sort of way. It's about an hour bus ride from Dublin, and it was breathtaking. We had some issues finding the right bus. If you've ever
been to Ireland you know that it's best to figure out where you're going ahead of time. Asking for directions here is a joke. EVERYTHING is just "5 minutes down the road". Not take a right a this street, look for this landmark, it takes some getting used to. So yeah. We finally made it and a group of us just chilled out and listened to music on the way there and took in the scenery.
When we got off the bus we wanted to go see a cliffside...so we hiked up a hill that wasn't too steep and when we finally reached the top, so to speak, it was grand. It was green rolling hills, beautiful wildflowers, and then as you descend down to the coast you see the cliffside that drops off to water. It wasn't too rocky, it was fairly calm water, unlike what I hear the west of Ireland is like. I decided to forge my way down as close as I could get to the shoreline, the whole group came too. At one point I slipped and fell down, so that wasnt good, but I got up and it was fine. We sat out
on the cliff and played around. Took pictures like whoa. Had a discussion about how we feel about taking random scenery shots verses shots with people in them with scenery. I made the case that you need to have people in your pictures for them to mean anything later, because otherwise that would be a postcard and while it's pretty, you have no reference point of it later. Others disagreed, and then we got over it.
Time for sleep/dreams after a good craic of a weekend...cheers mate.
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