Tales of Illegality

Now that title should have pulled you in! Too bad its full of lies.

This week has been fairly low key, things are starting to move really quickly and I don't feel like I've fully settled in yet. To try and feel a bit more sturdy I went into city center this weekend to do a bit of sight seeing and exploring. Most of my time in the main part of Dublin has been spent in Temple Bar or on Grafton Street and surrounding areas, so I was dead set on exploring new places. I got off the bus at St Stephens Green, a beautiful park in the center of the city. While this is located near my usual haunts, I hadn't gone in yet and took advantage of the mild temperatures and sunshine (which is becoming more and more frequent!) to explore. It was absolutely beautiful, with flowers just starting to bloom and families enjoying a Saturday afternoon in the park. 

I then set out walking, I thought I had mapped myself a nice little route that would take me by a few Dublin landmarks while allowing me to get a feel for the city. Unfortunately my navigation sense is awful, and after a few turns I found myself smack in the middle of Grafton St, as per usual. ARGH. 

I started to worry a little bit, if my navigation sense is that bad, do I really want to try again without a buddy with me? No. So I realized that the bus route back to UCD would serve as a perfect trail, allowing me to pick up the bus whenever I needed it while still exploring. I set off after a number 10 bus and enjoyed a nice stroll through neighborhoods mixed with Georgian architecture and quaint brick buildings. I even found the Romanian embassy! I reached a point where I realized that I would have to pay a euro and change to get back on the bus, but nothing if I just kept walking. As money goes quickly here I chose the latter. Now to put this into perspective for you Philadelphia minded people, I estimate that the distance from city center to UCD is roughly the same as the difference from UPenn to Overbrook....with a slightly different demographic in the middle. Not too bad, but enough to make me tired by the time I reached home. 

That was Saturday. We all know how my Sunday night went, so moving on.

The rest of the week has been fairly low key. Today I went back into the city in order to get some sneakers. I joined the UCD squash club last week and realized this week that the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that the BMC squash club has regarding court shoes is probably not applicable over here, and they might want me to have shoes that WON'T ruin their courts. Luckily Penneys in town sells really cheap shoes, I managed to pick up a pair of court shoes for 12 euro, and snag a pair of gold ballet flats on the way out for 6 euro, SCORE. They're probably going to disintegrate the minute I put them on. 

The sun was out again and I decided to live the european lifestyle and head to the market for some fresh veggies for dinner. The veggies they were offering looked awful. Take two. Picked up some nice fresh flowers to liven up the slum that we call our apartment. Great, excellent, realized five minutes later that we do not have a vase to put them in. Cut to me in Marks and Spencer starring at a wall of vases wondering exactly what I'm looking for in a vase. Do I want it to be tall, short, square, circular, colored or clear. Then I spotted the perfect one. The 4 euro one. 

Realizing that while my purchases were cheap, they were adding up, I returned to the bus stop. I was about to board a bus when I saw a sign announcing "Remember its Ash Wednesday, don't sin, eat our fish and chips". Can't argue with that logic, and I hadn't eaten lunch. 

If I remembered the name of the place i would highly suggest it. 7 euro gets you a heaping plate of fish and chips (fries) and the upstairs dining room has big leather chairs that allow you to sit back and read a newspaper while literally eating a heart attack. 

It was then that I noticed a strange phenomenon....everyone was dressed in strange outfits. Now I had casually taken notice of this on the ride in and (honest truth) assumed it was a Ash Wednesday/Lent related things. On closer inspection I realized that everyone was wearing brazilian flags and related brazilian items. Meanwhile an occasional person would walk by wearing a hat in Irish colors that was, for lack of better word, ridiculous. Turns out Ireland was hosting Brazil in a soccer (football) match tonight! Surrounded by fans of Brazil I immediately wanted to run out and buy a flag myself and parade through the city with it hanging out of my pants, just like they were. However my legal status in this country is up in the air for another week and a half (hopefully settled on Friday) and I did not want to run the risk of being deported while just trying to fit in. I did find it odd that there were more Brazil fans than Ireland fans.

Anyway, I returned to UCD fully intending to go back to the city for the game. Anyone that I asked to come, however, responded that they were going to open mic night to watch a friend perfom. Eh, that works too! We trekked over to the student bar (a different student bar than the one that ENG night was in) to cheer on our friend. 

I'm going to pause here and say that Brett was with me and give a shout out to Brett's mom who I hear is an avid reader of my blog! Thanks for tuning in!

Back to regularly scheduled programming....We were stoked, there were roughly 15 of us, some had made t-shirts. We sat through act after act...and it was everything you would think an Open Mic night would be. Bad Backstreet Boy songs, someone singing Brown Eyed Girl, a "Spoken Word Artist" and a comedian who actually told Holocaust jokes to the horror of the audience. Best part about the comedian was that by the time he came up everyone had left and it was just us watching...so he tried telling some jokes about Irish politics....to a group of 15 Americans. Poor guy.....thats what you get for telling Holocaust jokes. 

Long story short, we wait there for 2 hours and find out that the organizers had never put our friends name on the list. We were less than pleased.

If you made it through this entry you are amazing. That is without a doubt the longest entry about nothing I've ever written. Pictures coming soon!