I Am Not a Trained Monkey!

That's a lie.

I've been yelled at to update my blog. Let me explain something. In order to update, I have to do things. If I come back to the US and re-read my blog and find that it's filled with live updates from the library I'm going to be sorely disappointed. So I'm sorry that it has been almost a week since my last update but I've been busy having that so called "time of my life". 

We do have numerous things to cover, however, so lets get to that.

1. My Mom and Peggy's visit. 

I believe the sole reason my mom came to visit me was so that I would blog about it. I'm embarrassed that it's taken me this long to get to it. Anyway, we've covered the bag of goodies. The week was fairly low key as I was in the beginning stages of one of the most stressful work weeks of my college career (see previous three entries for evidence). Most nights consisted of us going out to eat, and then me collapsing and staring at my old best friend television for a few hours. I would then take a 30 minute shower before heading back to my apartment. What a great child I am. I was so grateful that I even managed to get her sick. On Saturday we were supposed to go on a tour to the Wicklow Mountains. I show up at their hotel and find that my mom is horribly ill with food poisoning. Whoops..apparently the oysters at dinner the previous night were not ok. So I'm given the task of showing Peggy where to pick up the tour bus before heading back to UCD to write my papers. I managed to put her on the completely wrong tour. Whoops. It was a banner day for all. I went back later to take my nightly shower though...I wasn't letting that one slip through the cracks. I also discovered my new favorite show "I'd Do Anything", a reality show where they pick the next Oliver for Oliver!. On Sunday Mom was feeling better enough to go to Tara with Peggy while I continued to write (wow, writing about their visit makes me feel like a horrible child), returning in time for dinner and a shower of course. Then on Monday our friend Rachel came down from Scotland to visit for the day. I met up with the crew in Bray and had a fantastic afternoon. The weather was absolutely beautiful and Bray was gorgeous as always. Afterwards I showed mom and Peggy around UCD and the area a little before they went back to the hotel. No final shower, unfortunately. While the visit might not have turned out as planned, it's always great to see friends and family. It's also always great to have a nice, hot, hotel shower where the water never runs out. 

Second: Where have you been for the past week?

Well on Friday I handed in all of my papers and promptly collapsed onto the sofa in relief. Then hell broke loose. I'm not really sure what happened, but I enjoyed it. I went up to the convenience store with my roommate to buy some beer for an afternoon celebration of success (lies). On our way back to campus someone stopped us and told us that public safety was guarding all of the gates and wasn't letting alcohol in. Apparently they have been preparing all semester for this day or something. So we freak out and decide to "find an alternate entrance". To our surprise, they are guarding every way in. Wow. So we buy a tube of Pringles and a bag of chips so that we can get a bag. I, in a display of paper induced ridiculousness, empty the Pringles into the chips and put a beer in the Pringles tube. Alex, my roommate, just shakes her head at me. I feel cool. We then put the other beers in the bag. We begin to walk in the gates, worried that they'll take our drinks. Long story short they didn't care that we had beer but they were only letting UCD students onto the property so they were just checking ID cards. Ironically, after all that, Alex had forgotten hers and we had to argue our way in. We then enjoyed a lovely day and night of leisure, forgetting any stress that we may have had.

The next day I woke up with a headache and an inexplicable craving for peanut butter. Also a message from my friend in Galway saying that she would be coming that night with another one of our friends. I starred at my messy room and decided that I would just watch some movies until she arrived, love me, love my mess. 

Liz and Lea arrived and for the next two days we marched around Dublin. Wow, they managed to run through my "things to see before leaving Dublin" list in about a day and a half. What should I do now?  We went to the Jameson Whiskey Distillery, which was at the top of my list. Our guide was good, but American, which really added a surreal aspect to the tour. Especially when she'd say things like "well for us Americans" and you'd look around and realize that everyone on the tour is from America...or Canada...so North America. My favorite part of the tour?

in front of diarama of model workers and cats

Tour guide: The distillery had many cats, including Sam* who was the most loved. 

Everyone stares at cat and has the same awkward though

Tour guide: In fact they loved him sooo much....

Tour: No...no....don't say it...

Tour guide: thaaaaat they had him stuffed, there he is!

Tour: ahhhhh.....dammit.

*I was too creeped out by the models to remember the cats real name. I think it was Sam, don't hold me to that.

Then yesterday Lea left for Amsterdam and Liz and I took a short trip to Belfast. I was just about to fall asleep on the bus when we stopped on the highway in the middle of a field. Nothing for miles, just stopped. Hmm, I wonder what's going on. Then a Guarda boarded the bus. Ohhh dear, this might not be good. He then politely demanded to see all of our passports, we were on the Northern Ireland boarder. Luckily I had mine, but I distinctly remembered talking with Liz about whether or not we needed one. We decided better safe than sorry. Always bring your passport, otherwise you're going to be left in the middle of a field on the Northern Ireland boarder. Thats a lie, on the way back I discovered that they just need to see some form of ID, not necessarily a passport. One guy got away with simply saying "I'm Paul, I'm from Holland". 

Belfast was nice. The area around the university was gorgeous with a fantastic botanical garden. I'm not going to lie, there isn't much to do there. We were able to see some of the murals, but you really need to take a taxi or bus tour into the neighborhoods to see the famous ones. Since we were there for such a short time we weren't able to do that. Belfast also had some great architecture, so while a lot of it was really modern and new, occasionally we would run into a fantastic building. I think I need to go back for a second look. I don't have any pictures, however, because my camera ran out of batteries and I was too cheap to pay for more in pounds. I'll steal Liz's pictures at some point.

Bray, always beautiful
Rainbow outside my window, I thought it was nice
I called this game deathball. Basically people stood on opposite sides of the quad and kicked a soccer ball at each other as hard as they could. It got ugly
Jeremy made the mistake of posing for a picture and took a stray deathball to the chest. I honestly thought he had died and was amazed he escaped unharmed
Mary, Alex and Hannah

Marcus and Mmoloki

Mom and me in St Stephen's Green

I should also add that after all of that discussion on where I should go for vacation...I've decided to stay in Ireland. Hahahahahah, I fooled you all into thinking you had a say into my life. Seriously though, I realized I'm going to go home and say "yea, I spent a semester in Ireland" when what I really mean is "I spent a semester in Dublin, the crazy multi-cultural holding cell for the rest of Europe". I want to experience this place, so I'm going to take a week or so and hit up the West Coast.