Classes, Crawls and Candy Bars

So I've been getting a lot of flack for not being more diligent with this blog. But I think four posts in just over a week is pretty impressive... but you know, whatever.


Anyway,

I've made it through my first week of classes at Trinity!!! Trinity is completely different than Pratt. First of all, 3 of my 6 classes meet once a week for an hour. No more of that 3 hour bullshit thank you very much!! The other 3 are film studies classes and they all meet for 2 hours twice a week. BUT that's because one class is the screening and then the other is the lecture. And there is pretty much no roll taking.

So I missed two classes this week. (Sad, I know) but one of them was intentionally. It was the screening class for Streetcar Named Desire, which I've already seen. The other one was due to a time mix up but it's alright, I only missed the reading of the syllabus, and once again, NO ROLL TAKING.


So I love my classes. My 3 Film Studies classes screened "Easy Rider", "The Thing" and "Streetcar". And having seen the syllabi I'm excited for the rest of the screenings. GREAT MOVIES.

And my psychology classes are fascinating too, and only an hour long :)


So academically, I'm totally digging Trinity. Although I miss Pratt and, all in all, I'm glad that it's my school, Trinity is a nice break from the intense, nerve racking, breakdown-inducing, seemingly endless work that culminates as Pratt Institute.

On to the crawl....

So on Thursday My friend Radhika (an American from Berkeley) and I decided to do a pub crawl. A pub Crawl is this amazing tour where you pay €10 and get led around to the best pubs/clubs in Dublin. We went to three pubs and two clubs. Club entry is usually €5-10 but it was free for us on the crawl. And the drink menus at all of these places had reduced prices just for our group. Also, a free shot was given at each place!! That's 5 free shots people.

 The Pubs we went to all had in house music that was great!! They play a mix of Irish folk, classic rock and Indie music. They all played Mumford and Sons which I thought was pretty cool.

 The first drink we bought!! This is Radhika, she's awesome!

 This drink tasted awful...at first. Radhika and I had high expectations because it's a cider, but we were disappointed by how vinegary it was. But it totally grew on us.

 

Radhika decided to get some artsy shots of our first legally purchased pint.

The band at the second pub was great too! They played some irish drinking songs and some beatles. I love banjo accompaniment! They were also playing 90's songs like Jumper and such....banjo can give any song some cultural, folksy depth.

Part of their decor was bicycles. But, as you'll see below, they had some awesome wall art.

Radhika and I might have overdone it a bit with the scenic picture taking.

We were told by our tour guide to get the Whiskey and RED lemonade at this pub, apparently they're the only place with red lemonade. Since whiskey sours are my favorite drink, Radhika and I took his suggestion. It was good, but I've made better whiskey sours with regular lemonade... Oh but the whiskey was delicious, very smooth.

This is fellow pub crawler John. Seriously the life of the party, this Aussie was instantly friends with everyone on the tour.



The third pub we went to had dance hits and beer pong downstairs. As well as wall to wall posters.

Radhika and I checked that out for a bit.

But we grew tired of that scene as pretty much everyone was obsessed with beer pong and not dancing. So we decided to head upstairs...

Brian was playing upstairs. Brian is a staple in this pub, and people come out just to see him every Saturday. This was a Thursday...I don't know why he was there performing but thank god he was because he rocks. Seriously he's a great entertainer. He started out singing some Irish songs which had the whole pub stomping a foot and clapping to the beat.

The man you see on the left side of this picture was about 60, and on vacation from Manchester. He told us that he and his friends always come to this pub to see Brian when they're in Dublin. This man would lean in to me and my friend in between verses to let us know what the next line was.

And there's John, seriously LIFE OF THE PARTY!!

Brian had a lot of remixes that he personally wrote. One of them was a 9 minute mash up that started with "I'm gonna be" by the Proclaimers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tNylJr7Z4),

but instead of going "da da da" We yelled "Bottle of Vodka, Fuck the Neighbors!"

This was the title of brian's mash up and he incorporated those lyrics, as well as others about drinking, into like 6 popular 80's/90's rock songs. He said, "It's like when you're having a party, and the neighbors stop by to complain about the music. "

He had the whole pub singing along, seriously great entertainer.

We both wanted to get pictures with Brian before we headed out.

We took this on our way to the next stops, the two clubs.


We did not take any pictures at those clubs, but they were fun. I think the third pub was undeniably the best though. It had a sense of pub comradery that made it impossible to not have a blast there.

At the first club we were pestered by an Irish man who was following us around the dance floor dancing like TWO WILD AND CRAZY GUYS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH9sAENQNV8

finger pointing and everything.

He later told us that we were, "the prettiest birds in the place. And I mean that in the most insensitive way."

He also kept asking if we wanted him to "fuck off". After like the 10th time he said that, and the bird comment, I said "Listen man, you can hangout. We can be friends. (I shook his hand). But we're not going to hook up. Just so you know."

Then he walked away.

And there was this very strange punk/scene couple on the dance floor. Their moves were.....interesting? It was like a car accident, you just couldn't look away. You know when you see kid's shows/movies where they have embarrassing parents who start dancing really cooky and uncoordinated? That was this 20-something couple.

Like, Elaine from Seinfeld comes to mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xi4O1yi6b0


The next club was moderately uninteresting. But still fun nonetheless.

After a long night Radhika and I walked the 30 minute walk back to her place in 35F, windy weather. and then crashed. Also my alarm didn't go off the next day but I still managed to make it to school in time.


PUB CRAWLS KICK ASS.


Well Friday was a long day. I had to run to school since my alarm didn't go off and by 6 when I was all done with classes, I was starving. I saw that my bus wasn't coming for another 15 minutes so rather than wait in the cold I elected to cross the street and check out this touristy magazine shop. While I was observing all the weird Irish/European goods I stumbled on something. An accidentally vegan chocolate candy bar. To a vegan this is a rarity. To a starving, relatively hungover American vegan in Ireland this is a miracle. And for only €1!

Yeah I bought it. And it was delicious.


Well I'm going to end this post here as it's definitely long enough.

Have a good day dear readers,


Love,
Chelsea

My flight and getting to the Halls

Ay yi yi

this is gonna be a long one......

I'll start where I left off with the journey overseas. I first flew from lax at 7am to nyc. I slept through most of that flight, despite the bickering young couple next to me. "Stop trying to control where I look."

not kidding. BREAK UP ALREADY GEEZ.

then I had a two hour layover at jfk, which, after switching terminals and going through international security, only left me with about 40 minutes of sitting around, waiting to board.

My flight to Ireland was interesting to say the least. I flew Aer Lingus (hahaha) and I sat next to this really friendly older man from new york. He was on his way to Amsterdam and was bragging about how many youtube hits he's gotten (I believe he said his username was rononeb). Well he was friendly but spoke quite candidly. "I've only been to Ireland once, had a layover there for a night, and I remember thinking 'Geez I see why my grandparents left this place.' That was the 80's surely it's changed since then."

Thanks rononeb.

Then I got my first taste of the Irish character via my flight attendant. Very rude and yet friendly at the same time. How do they do it? I'm not sure, but I've seen it a lot since I've been here, but more on that later.

At one point, my flight attendant came by with the drink cart and asked me, "what would you like to drink?"

To which I replied, "What are my options?"

Then, with a smile on his face and a bit of a laugh he replied, exasperated, "Just tell me what you want."

He definitely didn't get any more polite as the flight went on. I asked him at one point if he would exchange currency and he just looked at me, laughed, and while walking away answered with a very short "no".

but the in flight entertainment was very nice. I mean that sincerely. A lot of good, recent movies. Most of them were high brow and a bit cerebral, but I managed to find the shitty, feel-good, turn off your brain movie that I needed at this nerve racking time. And after I watched Larry Crowne I slept a tad then listened to my iPod.

Here's the first really hilarious Irish eccentricity I observed. When we landed, half the plane clapped. and there was even one apathetic "yay" from a few rows up. It was obvious that the half who were clapping were Irish, and the other half were not and were very confused. I've never been in a flight before where the landing was met with cheering passengers. Does that mean it doesn't usually work out? Scary thought.

Anyhow, Trinity has this great free service called "meet and greet" where a Trinity student will pick you up at the airport, give you a sim card and help you get to your residence. I was greeted by Marc, who, by the way, was a stone cold fox.

Marc was very sweet and friendly and we had a good long talk about movies, Trinity and Ireland vs America. He's actually the one who pointed out the Irish's amazing ability to balance being friendly and rude all at once. He also told me that in America the service is phenomenal, and people are very friendly and kind.

Being an American who never noticed this, or thought that American service was above and beyond but rather just average, you can imagine how unnerving this was to hear. I just kept wondering if everyone was going to be rude like my flight attendant or if he was considered polite by Irish standards.

Marc got me to Trinity via an air coach bus which cost 7€. Then I asked how I was supposed to get to my dorm, the Halls. He informed me that my Trinity dorm housing was actually about a 30 minute walk from campus and that the busses don't run between 11:30pm-7am. So after giving me his number in case I had any questions, he put me in a taxi and told the driver where I was going. That fare was 10€ plus the 1€ I tipped (I later found out that I was swindled due to my American accent and that it shouldn't have been more than 6€, but, whatever, it happens right?).

Now it was about 7am and I had just arrived at Halls. There's plenty more to recount but I'm tired of blogging so this is where I'm going to leave off. I'll continue this story later, with pictures.

Love you all
Chelsea