Pionta Ghuinness, le do thoil!

I was going to wait to publish this post until I had all the pictures from the other people who were there, because my camera crapped out, but I decided to just post it. So later you'll get a really weird post with just a lot of pictures of me standing in front of things.

Thursday night Vik made curry and fried fish. It was yummy. He also brought out a bottle of Chartreuse, asking if I’d ever tried it. I hadn’t, so he poured us both a little. I had a tiny bit but couldn’t really handle it. It was good though. And green.

After that we went out into the city. We ran into Julianna and Romina (the girls from work) on the street. They were off to bed. We met Lexy and Morgan, the girls we had had lunch with, at a microbrewery called Messrs Maguire. I had never been to any place like that. It was really cool. I had the house beer. It was pretty good, though I am not a beer person. But when in Rome… (oh wait, that was three months ago). Afterwards we came back and went to sleep. Vik let me have the bed! He slept on the floor. I had had three hours of sleep the night before and had been awake for 22 hours, so I didn’t argue, but I am not going to let him sleep on the floor again.

We saw a place called Eddie Rocket's. I thought that was funny.


At the pub


Vik and myself


Friday morning I got up around nine and by eleven we were in the city center. Vik took me to St Stephen’s Green, and also to this cool little commemorative area to Oscar Wilde.

St. Stephen's Green


I love tulips!


James Joyce!


Oscar Wilde!




We're both pretty saucy.




These pillars had quotes from him written on them.




After that we went to the National Gallery, which is an art museum in Dublin. I checked out the highlights, including a large exhibition on Jack B. Yeats, which was very interesting. I also saw Picasso's "Still-Life With a Mandolin," Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ," and Vermeer's "Woman Writing a Letter."

After the National Gallery Vik walked me over to Trinity College and then went home.

Trinity College








I went in and saw the Book of Kells. A lot of fuss for a little book, but it is pretty spectacular. Afterwards I went upstairs to the “Long Room” which, as Vik said, is like being in the library at Hogwarts. Sadly, no photography allowed. Thank goodness for Google Image Search!





After Trinity College I booked it to Kilmaimham Gaol. It took me about half an hour to walk there.

On the way I passed Dublin Castle, which I skipped in order to be able to do both the jail and the Guinness Storehouse.



I also passed "Dublinia" which I chose not to experience.




I also passed this shop which I found amusing.



Finally I found my way to Kilmainham Gaol. It’s a prison where many of the leaders of the Easter Rising were kept, including Joseph Plunkett and Éamon de Valera. I took the tour, and it was very enjoyable. I can never say no to a jail-cum-museum!



This is the chapel where Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford were married, hours before his execution.




A cell. These were meant for one person but because of overcrowding they sometimes held up to ten men, women and children, all stuffed in together like sardines.


The Victorian-era part of the jail. They believed that light was essential to reform.


The mural that Grace Gifford painted on the inside of her cell while she was there for six months.


After Kilmainham I practically ran back to the Guinness Storehouse so I would get in before they close at five. While waiting in line, this woman started talking to me. She is a flight attendant from Lebanon, and her name is Rita. We were both traveling alone, so we did the self-guided tour together. My camera started giving me trouble, so Rita took a lot of pictures. I'll post them later. For now, here are the two pictures I did get:



A copy of the 9000-year lease signed by Arthur Guinness.


When we got to the top, we got our complimentary pints of Guinness and drank them while looking out over Dublin. We were sharing our table with two young men, one from Ontario and one from Sweden. We started talking to them (Rob and Mikael) and ended up really hitting it off. At six they told us we had to go, but we could take our pints with us. They meant we could take them down to the fifth floor bar and finish them there, but I guess we didn’t really understand that. When we got down to the coat check, the clerk was like, “You’re not supposed to have those down here but I don’t feel like opening up this door and taking them from you and taking them back upstairs, so whatever.” We ended up just walking right out with them. So now I have a souvenir pint glass stolen from the Guinness storehouse. We didn’t feel like walking around the streets of Dublin with opened containers of alcohol, so we just sat outside the Storehouse and drank them and laughed at the silly situation.

Rita wanted to go to the Temple Bar area, and we were all hungry, so we headed back towards the city center. We stopped at O’Neill’s to eat, a place that Vik told me about where you can get a dish and then as many sides as you want for no extra cost. I got the shepherd’s pie. Mmm. Afterwards we went over to the Temple Bar but quickly grew bored and I herded them back to Messrs Maguire, which is the microbrewery/pub that Vik had taken me to the night before. We just relaxed their in the comfy chairs until we couldn’t even keep our eyes open, and then they helped me find my bus stop and we bid our goodbyes. I’ll probably never see them again, but we did exchange email addresses.

I took the bus back to Vik’s and victoriously claimed the sleeping bag, for a hearty six hours of sleep. Hmmm.

* “Pionta Ghuinness, le do thoil!” means, “Pint of Guinness, please!” in Gaelic.

Fáilte!

Thursday was my first day in Dublin. Wednesday night I had gone to the apartment that Carolyn and her dad and Stephen were staying in in Paris. Mike (Carolyn’s dad) made courgettes and grilled pork chops in a shallot and red wine reduction. Mmmm. And we watched South Park while we ate it. A bit incongruous, but hey, whatever. So after going home and packing it was about midnight when I finally crashed. Three and a half hours of non-sleep later, I got back up and took a shower. I made myself a bowl of spaghetti, finished packing, and talked to Mary about apartment stuff. At 5:30 I headed out and took the Metro to Porte Maillot where I took the shuttle to Paris Beauvais Airport. I got there about 8 AM and actually ran into a few girls from work who were also going to Dublin. So I stuck with them through check-in and customs. When I got through security, I saw my Couchsurfer from the few nights before! Turns out she had missed her flight Wednesday morning but didn’t want to bother me because she knew I had my own flight to catch, so she stayed with someone else. She was on her way to Stockholm.

We eventually got on our plane, and when we arrived in Dublin I parted ways with the girls from work. I followed the careful directions of my Couchsurfing host, Vik, and went outside the airport and found the bus.



I got on bus 16A and took it for about forty minutes until I got to the city center, and then took bus 10 to UCD Belfield, which is where Vik lives and goes to school. He met me after I got off the bus and helped me bring my stuff up to his room. He is the most welcoming person I think I have ever met in my life. He even cleared out a shelf for me in his room! After I dropped off my stuff we went to meet some friends of his for lunch. It rained and hailed and was sunny all in about fifteen minutes. We met his friends and went into an Irish restaurant. I had potato and leek soup and bread and butter. It was delicious! I can’t wait to sample more Irish fare.

After lunch we tried to go to Dublin Castle, but it was randomly closed for the day.





I did have a Marilyn Beyer moment when I had to explain to a little old Italian lady that the castle was closed. Luckily I speak a little more Italian than my mother and managed to explain to the woman that the castle was closed and that it would reopen the next day at 10 AM. So we wandered around the area trying to find something to do, and randomly found the Irish Revenue Museum. It was pretty odd, a little exhibition dedicated to revenue workers.

They had an exhibit of various ways people try to smuggle drugs into the country


This is a special toilet that was made to help check people's poo for drugs.


We played "Spot the Tax"


There was a funky park outside


After that we went to the Chester Beatty Library and looked at the exhibition on world religions. Then Vik and I caught the bus back to campus. He went to play soccer and I took a shower and figured out how to use my power adapter and did not figure out how to connect to the internet. So then I wrote this, and eventually I will get a chance to post it, with some pictures!

*Fáilte means “welcome” in Irish Gaelic.

Quick update

I can't get the wifi here to work for my laptop so you won't get the full updates with photos until later, but I've been hangin around Dublin. Today I went to St. Stephen's Green, The National Gallery, Kilmainham Gaol, and the Guinness Storehouse. I accidentally stole a pint glass from the Guinness Storehouse. I met a Lebanese flight attendant named Rita in the line at Guinness and we did the tour together. We met some dudes from Canada and Sweden in the bar at the top and we all went out to get dinner and we went to Temple Bar and then to a pub/microbrewery. Good times were had with strangers. Tomorrow my host is taking me and his other two American friends who are staying here to the Rock of Cashel, which is supposed to be pretty cool.

That's what Amy Winehouse said

Wednesday night was the Luau party - the culmination of many hours of crazy endured by Julia, Erin and myself. In the end, we pulled it off somehow.

I arrived at six to find Julia making a massive batch of coleslaw. There were a few other tutors there who had signed up to help setup, so I took them down to the unheated basement and we started putting up our "luau" decorations, which means we cut up a couple grass skirts and taped them to a table.









Soon one of the student organizations came down to set up the bar, and someone from Activ came down and told me that Vincent was looking for me. I went up to the courtyard and this half-French half-Californian dude told me that he needed me to cut up all of the onions, wash the tomatoes and lettuce, and cut the tomatoes. I do so love delegating. I got Ashley and Romina and Mariana to do the washing. I cut the onions and Erin cut the tomatoes. I spent a good portion of the beginning of the party delegating tasks while slicing onions. It was pretty funny.

By the time I was done slicing enough onions for a small army, I was freezing. I walked over to the barbecue to get warm and I asked them if I could do anything to help. They handed me the flippy thing and left me to my own devices. So I barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers for 200 people for the rest of the night. It was really fun, but I think I burned all of my fingers and my hair still smells like hamburgers.

"But I don't even know how to use a George Foreman!"


"I am the king of the grill."


Me and all the barbecue dudes


Left to right: Guy with weird glass ball, Julia, Erin, Frenchifornia (Vincent), our boss Emery.


This is funny cause Vincent is actually taller than Emery.


We pulled it together




"BFFs from life," as Erin says.


All in all we had a good time and the party went off without a hitch. After cleaning up a lot of the food area, I finally went home around 11, having decided that at this point I could let someone else do some of the work. Julia ended up getting stranded on this side of Paris and sleeping on my floor.

This weekend is gonna be pretty low-key for me, seeing as I feel like my throat has been hit by a truck. Good times.

"Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing / It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry..."

So, what's been going on lately?

School next year

Let's see... I was "enthusiastically" accepted into the linguistics 4+1 Masters program at Tulane (which reminds me, I need to send a graduate application to the SLA....). I am still crazily planning this party for the school I work at. That happens tomorrow. I had a huge assignment, basically a take-home exam, due today that I spent most of the night working on and didn't finish. My professor gave the whole class an extension until Friday so hopefully that will be enough time. Mary and I are still searching for an apartment (and I am searching for a summer subletter... anyone planning on doing relief work in New Orleans this summer? Want to live in my bedroom-to-be?). I registered for classes. My tentative schedule for next semester is:

ANTH 329: The Nature of Language
ANTH 331: Introduction to Historical Linguistics
ASTR 100 : Descriptive Astronomy (yeah yeah, I haven't kept up with my science requirements, quelle surprise)
FREN 595: Senior Seminar - "Ici et Ailleurs" (I don't exactly know what this means yet, but it ought to be good)
FREN 621: History of French Language
ITAL 203: Intermediate Italian

That courseload looks insane after two semesters in a row of taking only four courses per semester. I probably won't be able to handle taking ALL of them. I'd like to take History of Language with Poe, but if I can get my Grammaire et Histoire de la Langue class from last semester to transfer as FREN 621, I might not, just in order to lessen my courseload. But I need to take at least one 600-level linguistics class next semester, and FREN 621 qualifies. Good times. And astronomy? We'll see how that goes. It can't be worse than Physical Geology, and I managed to finagle an A- in that class, though to this day I don't understand how.

Musical escapades



Last Tuesday night I went to see the Dropkick Murphys at le Bataclan. Carolyn took the train in from Rennes and she and Vaune and I went to the concert. I made myself a Boston shirt and I wore my Red Sox hat.



You have to admit, it's pretty impressive given my complete inability to draw, and the difficulty of drawing with marker on ribbed cloth.



Boston chic


We got there pretty early and made friends with the roadies who loved us because we are from the Boston area. The first band (called Deadly Sins) came on and the singer was like, "We're from Boston," and Carolyn and I screamed like crazy, and she asked us if we were from Boston and we said yes and then she loved us from then on, even though we're from the suburbs. Because of course, as she said, "We're all f***in' family!"

The first band, Deadly Sins




Then the second band came on. It was Against Me! who are apparently pretty well-known, but it's not really the kind of music I listen to. I liked them though. At that point I just kind of felt like taking a break until it was Dropkicks time.

Against Me!




By the time the Dropkicks came on, the place was packed. We were right right up at the front because we'd gotten there so early. I was right up against the metal thing that separates the audience from the stage. People started moshing and getting crazy and I ended up just kind of squished up against the metal thing unable to move. People started surging up and it was really painful, I kept getting elbowed in the head and kicked and stuff. I know that's normal for a concert like that, but it's not the kind of concert I usually go to. Crowd-surfers kept getting confused because I was shorter than the mass of guys around me, so they didn't see me and would kind of sit on my head as they got pulled over the barrier. The most priceless moment was when I realized that person involuntarily squashed up against me from behind was, in fact, NOT Carolyn. When I looked behind me and saw that, I had a kind of stricken look on my face. I think one of the stage roadies must have seen it, because he came down and asked me if I would like to go sit upstairs on the balconies. I must have looked pretty pathetic down there - I know I had a look of pain on my face and also I just looked pretty scared of all those big guys. But I told him, "No, I'm from Boston. I can handle it." There was no way I was going to give up my awesome spot. Also there was this dude next to me who I have since named Samuel who was very respectful and cool and we kind of took care of each other, teaming up to keep people from killing us. If it weren't for him I would probably have taken that guy up on his offer to pull me out of there.

Vaune rocking out


Best friends since age 12, representing Boston at a Dropkicks concert in Paris. It doesn't get better than this.


I'm so glad I stayed up front. For one of their last songs, the band had all the girls in the place come up onstage. At this point I had kind of started to channel my brother and was rockin out. I got up onstage and when Ken Casey (one of the singers, and the only original member still in the band) came around and sang to all the girls, he put his hand on the top of my head and kind of shook my hat around and I stuck out my tongue. The second time he came around he TOOK MY HAT AND PUT IT ON HIS HEAD AND SANG THE REST OF THE SONG WITH MY HAT ON HIS HEAD. And then he threw it back to me. And I caught it. That was by far the coolest concert-going moment of my life.

As the girls were being shuffled offstage Vaune and I took this picture. You can't really tell - BUT THIS IS A PICTURE OF US ONSTAGE WITH THE DROPKICK MURPHYS RIGHT AFTER KEN CASEY WORE MY HAT. This is legendary.


Afterwards we stumbled back home, exhausted, bruised, dehydrated and, in Vaune's words, drenched in "the sweat of a thousand Gauls." To help you understand, this is what my shirt looked like at the end of the night:



People

I saw Gigi (= Madame Girondel, my high school French teacher, family friend, and all-around extraordinary lady) on Friday. I pulled myself out of bed at 7 AM and managed to meet her and the LHS exchange students at the Musée d'Orsay at 9. I'm really glad I went, because I managed to sneak in free with their guided tour, and I had never even been before. The tour was really cool and interesting, and I just kind of side-hugged Gigi throughout the entirety of it. Claire J was there too so I got to chill with her a bit. I will probably also go to Chartres with them next Monday, hopefully with Carolyn in tow.

Last night Emily Holland stayed with me. She went to my high school and I haven't seen her since, and then she came into Paris this weekend because she's on vacation (she's living in Dijon for the semester) and she wanted to see Gigi. She needed a place to stay so she crashed with me. It was really really cool. I had a lot of work to do, but I couldn't help talking with her anyway. We reminisced about high school, and people we didn't even remember, and how I was a crazy person in high school (yes, folks, even more so than I am now) and all that jazz. It was really interesting to reminisce about high school with someone who I didn't hang out with then. And I don't know why not - clearly I was missing out. We had a really fun time just eating pizza and sitting in my room and reading the Swedish gossip magazine that Vaune brought me in January.

I've met so many cool people in Paris. First I got to know Vaune and the other people from my Tulane group. Then I met Alan at the Sorbonne. I met Julia through work (and through Erin), and I met Amy through Julia. I feel like I don't have enough time to hang out with these people as much as I want to. And now in the past week I have met even more people - Jim & Tim (roommates with rhyming names... how priceless is that? And the real question - is pricelessness quantifiable?) and then through them all of the people who wander in and out of their room (Becca, Kait, Stephanie, etc). And I only have a month and a half to get to know these people and then I may never see them again. I know I have a certain degree of wanderlust and that's how I end up with so many "short-term friends," people who I meet somewhere (Menotomy, Ste-Anne, Tufts, France...) and become close with and then I have to leave them. It's also why I don't have as many friends at Tulane, because I can't seem to stay grounded there. I love meeting new people, but it's kind of sad when it happens this late in the game.

So that's my über-long blog post. Tomorrow is the school party, and I have a CSer coming to stay. Then I have to finish up my assignment, then it will be the weekend, and then going to Chartres with Gigi and Carolyn, then working for two days, then off to Dublin, Brighton and St. Andrews!!