One Month In: Reflections

Things I thought I would know already that I don't:

-My Cell Phone Number

-This is always awkward when I'm filling out forms and such and they ask for my number. I then subtly say "uh, hold on" whip out my phone and check under "Me" in my phonebook. Needless to say the Garda was less than amused, and I'm pretty sure they think I gave a phoney number.

-My Class Schedule

-You know how in the US where most classes meet at the same time each day that they're offered, in the same place? Yea, not so much here. I could have class one day at 11 in Theater M, then the same class another day at 2, in the Engineering building. Also, some have tutorials and small groups that meet during "week 21 and 30". I have no clue what the weeks are, so everyday when I go to bed I have to open up my schedule, find out when I have to wake up, then check again in the morning. 

-How much I have to pay to get to City Centre on the bus

-The official charge is 1.70, although others have told me that if you say 1.50 they'll let you go for that. I have no spine and am too afraid of being kicked off the bus to try it.

-The name of that SONG

-Theres a song that they go nuts for over here, and the main chorus is just everyone singing "Doo, doodoo doo, doodoodoo, doo doo doodoo doodoo" which of course is un-googleable. But its catchy. If that sounds familiar to anyone, please tell me

That leads me to my next list

Top 5 Songs That the Irish Go Crazy For

1. Soulja Boy

2. ANYTHING by Journey, they freaking love Journey

3. Doo, doodoo doo, doodoodoo, doo doo doodoo doodoo

4. Piece of Me by Brittney Spears

5. Don't Look Back in Anger-Oasis

Top 5 Irish Phrases

1. Craic-pronounced Crack

-Whats the craic-Whats up

-That was a good craic-That was a good time

2. Locked

-Don't mind him, he's locked-He's drunk

3. Splendid

-Same usage as in America, but far more frequently used.

4. D4

-Fake tan, ironed hair, she's a D4

-Not, as I had hoped, the long awaited fourth Mighty Ducks Movie

-Refers to Dublin 4, aka where I am right now, and the trashy girls that live here

5. Knackered

-Man, I'm knackered-I'm sleepy

-So much more fun to say than "I'm sleepy"

The Garda: Irelands Way of Saying "Get the Hell Out"

I'm now taking bets on how long it will be before Old Man Pete cracks his favorite joke about the French in response to my title....

As of tomorrow I will have been here for a full month (wow, fast). Tomorrow would also have been my first day as an illegal alien if I didn't get myself to the Garda, Irelands police force/immigration service. Let me explain, when you land you immediately find yourself woozy-faced starring at an angry underpaid civil servant who is stamping your passport. Before they let you through the gate they give you a card and tell you that you have one month to

 register with the Garda, or they kick you out. They do not explain who the Garda is. I told myself "Marianna, you make sure you register with the Garda IMMEDIATELY" and 30 days later I did, I think thats pretty good response time for me. 

My day goes as such:

I should begin by saying that I never went to sleep last night. A combination of factors, mainly cold medicine and chocolate, kept me high strung until 6:30 am when my alarm went off, signaling that I should get ready to catch the bus. Why so early? Because the Garda registration process is basically a giant line that you join and anywhere from 45 minutes to 5 hours later they give you a little ID card. So I was dead set on being there at 7:30 in order to be in line for 8am opening time. I jumped out of bed, marveled at the fact that I was still completely awake, grabbed all of my documentation and my iPod, and my copy of Trumpet of the Swan (Quality Book) to keep myself occupied. I even made myself some tea and toast for a pre-Garda snack, otherwise known as breakfast. I skipped out on this fabulous Wild-Card Wednesday, anxious to become a legal temporary resident of Ireland. 

Once on the bus, I began to have terrible thoughts. What exactly was going to happen at Garda registration. I realized that it was basically a modern day version of Ellis Island.

Side Story

I've been thinking about Ellis Island ever since a girl at a club asked me "Why would you ever want to leave America, there's so much opportunity there!". Making me wonder if the next morning we were all going to board the Titanic and set sail for streets paved with gold. It also made me contemplate what a modern day version of Titanic the Movie would be like if all the Irish passengers dressed like modern day Dubliners, with booty shorts and sequined halter tops. Instead of the traditional Irish dancing in Third Class everyone would instead be flailing to Soulja Boy. Shannon, I think I have a movie idea....lets work on this...

Anyway, my overactive mind started thinking of all the reasons they could turn me down, improper paper work, not enough money in my bank account ("HA!" They would laugh at me, "You could never afford to live in Dublin on that paltry account....anything less that 1 million is worthless"), this plague that's sticking around ("Well, now we're going to have to quarantine you" they'd say, before throwing me into a ward of sick immigrants to die). I clearly was sleep deprived and the cold medicine hadn't quite worn off. 

 I finally found the Garda station at 7:45, I walked inside, carefully surpressing my nagging cough (I wasn't taking ANY chances). A man inside who I thought was homeless then barked at me "Why are you here!" "Uhhh...to register...." "Are you a student?!" "yes...." "Then you have to wait until 9 o clock" The man was not homeless, but rather a civil employee....whoops. 

9 o clock, an hour and fifteen minutes of hopeless waiting. My energy was waning and walking around until that time did not seem like an option. So I plopped down, plugged in to my iPod and began reading the glorious adventures of Louis the Swan. 

at 8:45 I noticed some students starting to line up in the endless line. A public announcement asked them to sit down. They did not, I did not dare join, even though I knew it would be a good idea. At 9 o clock exactly I joined the line, I still have not figured out why we couldn't line up with the rest of the group....clearly anti-student prejudice. There were no repercussions for those who broke the rule, once again my inability to break meaningless orders had left me screwed. Another 45 minutes of waiting and I was finally at the front, where I was cleared to meet with a Garda official. Back to waiting. By this time my roommate had joined me, also on her last legal day, so at least I had some company. Another 20 minutes of waiting got me to meet with a jolly man who had no problem clearing me to stay until exactly the date I'm supposed to leave.

Him: "When are you leaving"

Me: "Well right now the 23rd, but I'm not sure if..." (trying to get a few extra legal days out of him)

Him: "Good, you will leave no later than the 23rd" *Stamp*

He then took my passport and said "alright, you're good" When I asked for my passport back he laughed and said "Oh you're good to go wait some more until your card is ready" 

Tricky tricky Ireland. 

I waited with Lauren, my roommate, for about 15 more minutes when I heard over the PA system "Will American national Marianna Bah...oh christ....American national Marianna please come claim your card"

As I now respond to Marianna BahOhChrist as if it were my actual name, I skipped on up to grab yet another useless form of ID to carry in my wallet. My picture looks exactly like you would imagine someone who had been awake for 24 hours would look in an ID photo. Fitting. 

Lauren still had awhile to wait for her process to be done, so she told me to go wander around Dublin for a little bit and then we'd meet up for lunch. Not much happened on my aimless wander of Dublin. I walked down the river Liffey and took pictures of the bridges, then wandered up to Christ Church and explored that, which was beautiful, then Lauren called and I walked back through Temple Bar and out to O'Connell St where we met for sandwiches. I then had to come back for class. Have I slept yet? Nope. 

O'Connell St, and the Millennium Spire
Ha'Penny Bridge over the Liffey
Pretty Buildings

Door at Christ Church
The Crypt at Christ Church
Christ Church
Look carefully, the right wall is leaning out
Dublin Alley
Getting ready for a big night
Anyone who says Valentines Day is overdone in the US needs to come to Dublin. Its ridiculous

To Cook a Potato

My roommates all went to Galway this weekend, I however contracted the plague and had to stay home. For those of you keeping score, this is the second time I've claimed to have caught the plague, the other time was a false alarm, I am legitimately sick this time. 

Friday night found me sick and alone in the apartment. I was hungry, the cabinets were empty. I turned to our sole food item, a sack of potatoes (how stereotypically Ireland can you get!) and decided that a baked potato would be both easy and delicious. 

I carefully read the directions on the back of the bag, which simply stated "Stab with fork, put in oven for 1 hour". Sounded hard, but I could do it. I gave the potato a couple of extra stabs just for good measure and put it in the oven. Feeling proud of myself I went off to go watch the Office while I waited for my meal to cook. One hour later I opened the oven to find said potato, warm, but in no way cooked. Alright....lets give it another half hour, and lets put it on the top shelf where its hottest. 5 minutes later the room fills with smoke, my potato has burnt, but not cooked. hmmm.....lets move it back down to the bottom shelf. 

Moral of the story is that 1 hour and 45 minutes after placing it in the over, I still was left with a very raw potato. Major failure, I cannot even cook a potato. 

No one can accuse UCD of being passive aggressive....

St Stephens Green

More Green
Pretty doors on the walk home

T-shirts for the failed open mic night

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!

Police Blotter: UCD Style

Seen today: two adolescent youth skateboarding/running around campus screaming "run, come on, faster, FASTER HE'S GOING TO ARREST US" while a UCD security guard casually walked behind them occasionally yelling out "please walk on campus".

My stomach still hurts from the laughter

"If the Patriots lose, then clearly the terrorists have won"

Well you can't win them all. 

Yesterday was Superbowl Sunday, as many of you know, and Ireland celebrated like champs. Or at least I think they did. I was asleep for much of the day with a head cold, but when I woke up there were a bunch of Irish lads outside my window in Pats jerseys playing American football. 

The plan was to go down to the student bar where they were going to be showing the game on a giant TV. However as I was at the student store buying some snacks for the night, my friend comes running in and yells at me "Did you hear! They cancelled the Superbowl!" My mind starts racing, good God what kind of national disaster has happened that they would cancel the Superbowl, is Tommy alright? Luckily she followed that up with "Superbowl party. They cancelled the Superbowl party. Sorry, I should have finished that"

Alright, plan number 2, head downtown to the Hardrock Cafe which was promising the game and free food, etc. Not my number one choice, the game didn't start until 11:30, wouldn't end until 3, then we'd have to make our way home either through Nitelink buses or an expensive cab. Luckily upon returning to our apartment we discovered that the people in the next building over had the Superbowl on their tv. Helloooooo new friends. 

11:30 comes and we cram into the room with about 30 other people. The poor resident of the apartment appears to know roughly 9 of those people. Interestingly enough I'd say the room was equally mixed Irish and American...and the Irish students were the most intense about it. One was hardcore Pats and the other was hardcore anyone but the Pats. Another one sat around and offered commentary on "If the Irish were coaching this team, this is what we'd do" as if that would make the game less awful. His main complaint "Why the hell do they run sideways! Forward, Wes Welker, FORWARD".  

I think we all know how the game turned out. I was with a bunch of Giants fans and nearly suffered a concussion when one of them jumped up and kneed me in the head. Apparently he assumed that everyone would be jumping and didn't take into account the shaking person on the floor decked out in navy and red. If anyone remembers the game actually didn't end until the Giants kneeled down and there was all that chaos on the field. Our TV actually lost power right as the Giants were about to kneel down and the room flipped out. I had great visions of us turning the tv back on and finding that out of no where the Pats had recovered a fumble and won. Alas, it cannot be. 

18-1 isn't half bad.

My favorite quote from the night:

Irish Guy: So wait, this is Superbowl Sunday, and Tuesday is Super Tuesday....are regular days of the week just not enough for you Americans? I mean...its a lot to handle in just 3 days, slow down