Better

Today I got up, ate breakfast, went to get some cash and then tagged along with some classmates to Phoenix Park. It's such a large park (one of the largest in Europe supposedly) and all very beautiful. This is the kind of nature experience I needed. It was a nice break from the city landscape. We took a bus over there and then started wandering the park. It just seemed the perfect place to sit and read, write post cards, a song, a poem, anything. It was really nice. It was bright and sunny out and the grass was plentiful. There are a few really nice spots I've come across. St. Stephen's Green, which I haven't gotten a chance to go back to (maybe tomorrow), the Garden of Remembrance and Phoenix Park are all beautiful. If you ever go to Dublin, make sure you hit up these places. My roommate was also raving about this "Secret Garden" place tucked up beside St. Stephen's Green. I might like to go, if I have time. Anyway, at Phoenix Park I just sat enjoying the day, writing a couple post cards while one of my classmates was singing and playing his guitar as we sat on the grass beside the Wellington Monument. Then we moved on to a foresty area and another classmate was climbing trees. Then we went to this really old looking building which turned out to be the Magazine Fort, according to our map, but it didn't have any plaques or anything, just plants and graffiti. We even saw some deer. Then we went back to the hotel and later in the evening we went to the Abbey Theatre and saw "The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant." It was alright. I couldn't hear very well. Then I went back to the hotel and uploaded pictures from Phoenix Park on facebook. Now it's about 1 am, and I am going to sleep.

Being myself

Today I made up a bit for not doing much of anything yesterday. I went to the Writers' Museum with a few people early before most people had even woken up, because our official class meeting time wasn't until 12:30. I got up around 8:30, ate breakfast, and discovered that some people were going to the Writers' Museum, so I tagged along. It's pretty close to the hotel, and it was only 6.3 euro for students and included a little audio guide. It made me want to read a lot more, and it also made me realize that more Irish writers than I realized are being tought in "British lit" classes with no distinction. I think they should have "Irish lit" classes. Chapman claims to be preparing students to be "global citizens," but the university keeps narrowing its literary curriculum. At 12:30 we met in the lobby and walked down to the river. We had class discussion there and then went on a Liffey River cruise. Then we went to lunch, but I wasn't that hungry. I had eaten a big breakfast and ate an apple on the cruise. It was already pretty late when we got lunch at the Queen of Tarts and I wanted to save room for dinner, so I just had a muffin to tide me over. We had dinner at the Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Ireland, for "food, folklore and faeries." Good thing I'd saved room. It was a full 3 course meal. I had a delicious salad with chicken, grilled vegetables with rice, and chocolate cake, along with tea and water. We just got back to the hotel around 11.

As for "being myself," I mean that I get very emotional and feel frustrated that I can't "enjoy" things as easily or as simply as others. The "folklore" guy spoke with an accent and at times rather quickly, and I never really cought all of what other people were laughing at. This wasn't a singular occurence, however. It happens all the time, and it's been bugging me throughout the trip. I feel left out. I feel like I got a bum deal in life. It sucks. Maybe it was because my hearing aid battery went out at one point. I had spares, but it was still frustrating. I always feel like I'm such a burden if I ask for special treatment or anything, though I'm probably more of a burden when I get emotional and sit around and mope until I get some sympathy. Honestly, I feel sorry for myself and I feel like most people would rather just let me pout in a corner than deal with me. I would feel that way if I were someone else.

Relaxing Day

I didn't do much of anything today. Some people were going to a Catholic mass really early, but that's obviously not my kind of thing. Then we had class in the Garden of Remembrance again. I love that place. It's so pretty! Then we all went to lunch. I think the name of the place was "In Cahoots Cafe." I had a panini, which was kind of a weird combination. It had chicken, barbeque sauce, mozarella and grilled peppers. I think the odd part was the barbeque sauce. After lunch, which was kind of late, I headed back to the hotel and took a nap. Then I woke up and realized it was already around 7:00. Tomorrow we're going on the Liffey River cruise and later to "food, folklore and faeries" at the Brazen Head. A lot has been happening over the past couple days... to the guys. A few days ago one of them was playing his guitar in St. Stephen's Green and some businessmen on an office break heard him and had him play at a party that night. Then yesterday the guys' laptops were stolen from the hotel room, which was scary. The professor talked to us about it today saying that this is the city. These things do happen. We gave each other some tips on keeping our stuff safe and the professor said that if we felt unsafe to talk to her. We all had to get our keys changed today. In addition, one of those guys is really sick and hasn't been out of bed all day. People have been bugging me about whether I'm eating enough or getting enough protein because I've been living primarily off of croissants, little pieces of cheese and fruit from breakfast with the occasional sandwich, and because we're doing so much walking. Also, some people are getting sick and they want to make sure I keep my strength up I suppose. I'm fine, really. I'm just being cheap. A lot of the money I have was already spent before I left the States, and my job situation once I return is a little iffy, so even though I'm traveling and it should be time to splurge I'm being a bit conservative with my money. Then again, I'm typically conservative with my money.

Joyce, Yeats and Wilde... and lots of random pictures

I'm posting pictures on facebook, just in case you're wondering. I'm too lazy to figure out how to upload them again on here. Today we started with Joyce tours. The first one was given by a girl who totally looked Irish... and sounded American. Turns out she's from Alaska, go figure. She showed us some spots mentioned in stories from Dubliners. Then we met up with another tour guide who showed us spots mentioned in Ulysses. It was very interesting. I tried to take pictures of the plaques on the ground marking places mentioned in Ulysses, but I don't think many of them turned out well. The sun light and shadows were kind of weird because it was mid-day and the inscriptions of text would have been hard to read anyway. After the Joyce tour we split up and went to lunch. After that we split up again and some of us went to Trinity College for the exhibit on the Book of Kells (no photography allowed because the texts are so old). That was pretty interesting, and I got a Trinity t-shirt at the gift shop. Then we walked through the campus. There were a couple of games of what looked like cricket going on as we passed. Then we went to Archbishop Ryan Park for the Wilde statue sitting on a rock there, or as I read somewhere on the internet, what Dubliners have affectionately dubbed "the fag on a crag." My roommate and I were cracking up at that. I was online trying to figure out what another (unmarked) group of statues we saw there was all about. It turns out that the group of statues in question is called "The Victims" and is a memorial for (the sites were vague and differed) "torture victims" or "victims of war." What war I could not find, and it said that the actual form of the statue was up for interpretation. It was certainly eerie, whatever it was meant to be. Then we went to Oscar Wilde's house and Yeats' house and took pictures of plaques outside. You couldn't actually take a tour or anything. The group split once again after that and the remaining three of us grabbed some subway and walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow it has been decided that whoever wants to go to Catholic mass can meet at 8:45 in the hotel lobby but the rest of us who aren't Catholic and would like to sleep will meet everybody else in St. Stephen's Green by the Emmet statue at 11.

Exploration

So today was a "free day." During the first half of the day I ate breakfast, bought some alkaline batteries because my charger died, and went back to the hotel to upload pictures, the blog from yesterday, etc. During the second half I ate a power bar for "lunch" and went out on my own. I wandered around for a good 4 hours. Sure it was pretty much stuff we'd passed or gone through a half dozen times already, but I was exploring it on my own! Anyway, I went up and down O'Connell St. and went off into some of the little shopping areas. After a while of wandering aimlessly down O'Connell I found myself all the way by the river. Once I'd gone that far I started to make my way back, popping in and out of little shopping areas. At first I was wandering around aimlessly, but then I stopped to ask a couple of ladies where the fashion stores like Next and things were. Now I know that they are on Henry St. So I spent a great deal of time in that shopping area. For the most part, when I walked around I tried to fit in like a real Dubliner. The reason I was wandering aimlessly was that I was walking quickly and going with the flow of people rather than taking my time and looking like a tourist. I really tried to go incognito for a while... Then there were statues and guys performing in front of department stores and girls making sand sculptures to take pictures of, so I got out my camera. Also, when I went into the stores I asked the salespeople what size I should be looking for. I'm so obviously from America. They essentially said that I should try to look for the smallest thing available and try on everything. I only ended up trying things on in one store, and I didn't buy anything. On my way back to the hotel it finally started raining, after all that internet weather telling me it was going to. It was refreshing and annoying all at once. It was barely sprinkling or drizzling. It was getting my glasses all wet, but it was refreshing because I was so hot from walking all over the place. I stopped at "SuperMac's" on the way back to grab something to eat and got a 350 ml (12 oz) bottle of coke for a euro at a Londi's. That is I think it was a Londi's. I don't remember which store I actually got it at, but I'd been good all week and thought I deserved just one coke. With SuperMac's I was expecting a carbon copy of McDonald's (though there are those, too, as well as Burger Kings, which are both way overpriced... "euro saver menu 6 chicken nuggets for 2 euros?" [yeah, right, that's like 5 bucks American, a whole meal at In n Out!] and there are ads for Burger King everywhere claiming they have really cheap food... hah). Anyway, I got some chicken nuggets and fries at Supermac's. The restaurant itself essentially looked like it was meant to accommodate tourists with children who wouldn't eat anything besides Americanized fastfood. There were meals with burgers and fries, chicken in various fried forms, pizza, sandwiches, etc. I brought my food back to the hotel and ate it. One of my roommates got back not too long after I did. I've just been sitting here updating and iming with Daniel. I miss him. Anyway, I'll probably go to bed soon since it just actually got dark (10:30).

Long but exciting day

So apparently in all the confusion of my roommate's phone adapter blowing up I just saved this blog instead of posting it...

Today was pretty interesting, and I'm begininning to get the notion from my classmates that the real way to experience Dublin actually is to get drunk and talk to a Dubliner, haha. So, I started the day by going off with a couple classmates and getting some money. Then we walked to the Kilmainham Gaol (the jail). While I couldn't hear everything because I was often pushed back into a corner away from the tour guide, what I did hear was interesting. He pointed out the actual spot where Connolly was executed. After the jail, we ate and then there was the pub crawl. We started at The Duke and went to three other pubs. The guides were very entertaining. We ended up at Davy Byrnes, where I had Bailey's and milk. Chapter 8 of Ulysses is set there. Most everybody was drinking Guiness at the first couple pubs. I didn't decide to drink until the last one. I stayed with the last four people and we walked back to the hotel. When the majority of the group left people kept asking me if I'd be ok staying and walking home. I wanted to have my drink at leisure and I hadn't stayed out late any night so far, so I thought I'd be adventurous and stay out. We got back at about midnight. The way back was interesting. There was a girl in front of a store going on about Michael Jackson and when we heard about it we were like "omg" and the girl was like "Finally, somebody cares! You're American, yeah?" It's really weird having something that "big" happen in our own country while we're so far away. Well, I guess celebrities die every day, but you know. Come to think of it, MJ was a nutter, and he was probably already half dead from all the plastic surgery. Then there was a Dubliner guy that Vanessa was asking about the Michael Jackson issue and they got into a big long conversation about the hot spots and night life. We had a feeling he would have liked her to join him, wherever he was going off to party. It was kind of funny. He walked along with us for what I thought was a really long distance, but maybe I had no concept. When we had gone to the gaol it was pretty much the opposite end of the city from our hotel That felt like way too much walking. I thought maybe the liqeur made the walk home seem less bad. Then I realized that we had taken the bus from the jail area to the Duke for the pub crawl. Anyway, I'm exhausted... To sleep!

First "Official" Day

Today was the first "official" day of class, so I'll start trying to make this a little less whiney and a bit more... scholarly observational? Anyway, after breakfast we went to the Garden of Remembrance and read poetry from our little blue Dublin books and talked about the story of the Children of Lir and the statue representing them in the garden. The garden itself was to commemorate the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising and those who gave their lives for Irish independance. This is exactly how I'd picture a travel course, sitting in gorgeous gardens, reading poetry about the city. It couldn't be more perfect. Dublin is said to be a city of poets and the poems we read really seem to capture the spirit of the city. The "Description of Dublin," although it refers to the city in the 18th century, with its "streets unpleasant in all weather" and "beggars of all ranks, age and condition," could still be fairly acurate today. The streets are really old, like they haven't been kept very well, and there are a decent amount of homeless people sitting on the ground. The city is definitely busy. We walked all around the city today with our tour guide. It was exhausting. I remember walking a lot in London a few years ago, and of course the cities have been compared, but Dublin is smaller. There is no need for anything like "the tube" as far as size is concerned. There is definitely plenty of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, but most of the vehicular traffic is tour buses, and buses and taxis from the airport to hotels. It appears that modern Dublin capitalizes on its disturbed past through tourism with exhibitions on everything from the vikings to the twentieth century revolution. There's probably more that could be said about today, but I'm getting tired.

Unadventurous

I still feel like I'm being too much of a wimp. I'm pretty disappointed in myself considering how much I've been looking forward to this trip. Here I am in my room again, been here for two hours and the sun is just starting to set. I'm afraid to get lost anywhere and have to ask directions and then not be able to understand someone's accent. People get irritated when you make them repeat themselves too many times. I don't really know any of my classmates that well, even though I've had classes with most of the undergrads before. Of course I would say that they don't like me, but I can't say that because they don't know me. Tomorrow is our first "official" day of planned activities. Today was a "free day" but we came up with something to do as a group. I set my phone alarm for 8:30 to make sure I got breakfast. I had a roll, a croissant, cheese and butter with those, some grapes, a banana, some hot chocolate, (which was kind of weird, coming from a machine with various buttons for "cappucino", "cafe au le," "choco" etc.), some tea, a tiny bit of orange juice, and about three glasses of water (they were really small water glasses). We walked to Dvblinia, which is an exhibit next to Christ Church Cathedral on the vikings. It was fairly interesting. It was a long walk to get there. I ate another croissant I had tucked away in my backpack with a piece of cheese while we waited for people outside. I wasn't very hungry when, about a half an hour later, we all walked to go have lunch. Half the group split and went somewhere else. The half I stayed with was the calm group; the professor, my roommates and the grad students, although one of my roommates went out really late with some of the rest of them last night to a club at Temple Bar or something and didn't get back until like 2:30 am, which was annoying. Anyway, I skipped lunch, but then right after lunch, we went to "The Queen of Tarts" for dessert. I had a piece of Bailey's chocolate chip cheesecake (mmm), which I wouldn't have had the money for if I'd eaten lunch. Haven't eaten anything since then, but I figure I'll just go to sleep when it gets dark and eat another big breakfast. Guess that's it for now.

Wandering

So today I did not set an alarm. Justine told me to call her if I needed anything, wanted her to bring me croissants or anything, whatever. However, I ended up sleeping until about 10 (a total of about 11 hours of sleep last night). I opened my eyes to discover that there was someone in my room! It was only one of my roommates who'd just arrived, though. She called Justine and I told her to ask her to bring me some croissants, but it was 10:30, and breakfast ends at 10, apparently. Oh well, tomorrow breakfast is free (well, included in the cost of the trip). So I finally got up and out of my jammies and went down stairs to talk to Justine and whoever else was there. Then I started to wander around a bit outside, but I'm a wimp and didn't want to wander too far, so I started to head back when I ran into one of my classmates. She had some things she wanted to look for, and I needed some eye drops because something exploded in my little carry-on ziplock (I'm thinking the glasses cleaner) and I didn't want to use contaminated eye drops. So we wandered around a whole lot more. At 5 we walked to this "Little Ceasar's" restaurant, led by our tour guide for, I think, Wednesday (who didn't seem to like us very much, shhh) and then people went their separate ways; to go find chocolate, pubs, or back to the hotel. I wasn't feeling well, so I went back to the hotel with Justine and a few others. Tomorrow is a "free day" but we're planning on going to "Dublinia" around 12:30.

Arrival

Okay, so I'm sitting here in the hotel in Dublin, really worn out, can't take my melatonin and go to sleep quite yet because it's not completely dark. You knew it was coming. That's right. My complaints about the actual "travel" involved in traveling. So at first I was really nervous about traveling international on my own. Daniel spent the day with me and tried to make sure I was as calm as possible when I boarded my first flight. I was. I really was. Honestly, it didn't seem as bad as the last time I flew international, but that was my first time. So then I was sitting at the gate in LAX when I heard an announcement that boarding would be delayed. Great, I originally had an hour between landing and boarding in Frankfurt. How much time would I have now? Apparently about 5 minutes. I was such a nervous wreck in Frankfurt, it's not even funny. I had to push through the security line and explain the situation, and if any of you know me, you know I'm not good at being aggressive. People started asking me if I was ok. I wouldn't be surprised if they assumed I was an unacompanied minor. I lucked out that the flights were with the same airline and the gates were pretty close (B26 and B33) but the numbering didn't make much sense. So the people at the gate sent me down some stairs to a bus. This made absolutely no sense to me! I figured the whole "walking up the ladder on the runway" thing was just a Hollywood convention these days. I didn't remember people actually doing that anymore. So I sat on the bus and was still panicky. I was texting my parents like crazy, at 35 cents a text. :P I finally got on the plane and I was ok. Then we got to Dublin, and I got $40 converted to 23 Euros or thereabout. The cab driver wanted 30! He claimed it was because it was a busy Sunday afternoon, but Justine said she'd had to pay 30 yesterday. So I finally made it to the hotel, texted Mom and Dad, took a nice, long, bath, got in my pajamas, and here I am. It's a good thing this place has free internet, or I'd have one more thing to complain about. :P Adventures begin tomorow (or just sleeping and eating and relaxing until dinner with everybody around 5). I still need to change the time on my computer and phone because they didn't automatically convert. I expected the phone to, not the laptop. Anyway, to sleep!

Departure in less than 72 hours!

So I've set up a blog so all y'all back home can read about my exciting adventures in Dublin and London. I'm bringing my laptop and camera, so I promise I will *try to remember to take lots of pictures and update this blog at least every other day while I'm gone... hopefully... unless I just have too much fun and fall asleep the second I get back to my room, or the internet doesn't work out quite like I'd hoped.