Donde esta el wifi? Barcelona Part 1

Okay it has been a long time since I blogged because Barcelona was just so epic!! I was overwhelmed at the prospect of capturing the experience in a blog post. It could be a short story! I've decided to divide it up, per the advice of Samantha Nania. Also Zachary Kitt's surly comments have proved motivational as well.

So here is Part 1 of my trip to Barcelona:

A few weeks ago I went to Barcelona with a California friend Jeremy, who just so happens to be studying abroad this semester in Salamanca.

At first I was incredibly nervous since I don't speak any spanish and Jeremy has the spanish competency of a 2 year old (his words, not mine), but it actually ended up not being a problem at all.

This trip was one hell of an adventure, i'll start at the beginning.

I departed Thursday. I flew the notoriously cheap airline, Ryanair. They have low airfare prices but they make up for it with all of their easily accumulated fees. I didn't check in online 4 hours prior to my flight (missed it by literally 15 minutes), something that i didn't know i had to do, so when I got to the airport I had to pay a whopping €60 fee to check in.


Ryanair service is astoundingly bad. I was shocked to find that I couldn't get water on the plane without paying for it.

What's really funny though is that whenever a ryanair plane lands, they sound the trumpets....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGjj9wfzJdM

meaning that ^ plays over the loud speaker, quite loudly.


Once in Barca I headed to my hostel, which was....decent but not great. I pretty much dropped off my stuff there and then went out looking for food, hoping to spend time not in the hostel.

I stumbled upon a vegan bar/restaurant called the catbar. This place was awesome! I was astounded by their prices, very cheap especially for vegan food.

The food I got was absolutely delicious, and I decided to get a girly, blended drink. When I asked the bartender for suggestions she suggested a smoothie. I chose a shot of rum as my liquor choice and she blended it up. As she handed it to me, the owner/other bartender grabbed a bottle of vodka and poured about 2 shots into my smoothie. As he was doing it she said

"no I already put the alcohol in..."

to which he replied,

"noo you always put the alcohol in last"

as he continued to pour.

basically, that guy kicked ass.

After drinking my smoothie and eating my food I decided to head back to the hostel as I'd have to wake up early the next day to greet Jeremy.

And, after a horrible night's sleep, that's exactly what I did!

On Friday morning Jeremy met me at the hostel and we started wandering around Barcelona.

 We saw a lot of amazing stuff, from old, gothic cathedrals, beautiful parks to awesome graffiti, Barcelona really is overwhelmingly beautiful.

At this point we didn't know where we were going to be sleeping that night (or any of the following nights) and so we had our luggage in tow. The result of this was that the whole day we felt homeless.

For Jeremy the breaking point was when he ate an orange, the amount of trash produced by the peel made him feel especially homeless for some reason. My breaking point came after the fourth time I had to lay out my suitcase on the sidewalk, open it up and pull something out of it.

Living out of a suitcase in the public streets of Barcelona will make you feel homeless.


In between eating oranges and living out of suitcases, we stumbled on an amazing Dali gallery. Jeremy and I had a lot of fun there, and Jeremy was able to take a ton of pictures. Seriously this Dali gallery and the Picasso museum we would visit on Sunday were the highlights of the trip.

Now we had applied to several people on couchsurfing.org the week prior hoping to find a local to host us during our visit. One of them replied to my email on Friday morning and I was able to read it while in the hostel, where I had wifi.

But we needed to keep checking the email to find out how to get to his place, so most of the day, aside from sight seeing was spent searching for wifi.

Which in Spain is pronounced "whiffy"

Sooooooo

"Whiffy aqui?"
and

"Donde esta el whiffy?"

became frequent utterances.


While we were hunting for a place with free wifi, we were approached by many beggars.

According to Jeremy it isn't just common in Barcelona, but also in Salamanca. Basically older women approach you and beg for money. But they're picky about who they approach, preying on tourists, *ahem* AMERICAN tourists.

That's one thing about being American in Europe, you find out that you're a target for a lot of things. Petty crime, short-changing, begging.....we have a reputation for being gullible.

Anyway, Jeremy and I went to a juice stand and while we were picking out juices a woman approached me and kept asking me for money. Now I frequently give money to anybody who asks for it. Seriously I give out money a lot to panhandlers. My philosophy is that if I'm well enough off to not be begging for money I can spare a dollar for somebody who isn't. However, this woman (amongst the other Barcelona beggars) just seemed so full of shit.


There was something fishy about her, and I wasn't comfortable giving her money. I politely said no to her but she wouldn't stop asking me.

Now....as I mentioned earlier I don't speak spanish. I wanted to say something like "I have nothing" to this woman.....what came out was
"de nada"


yeah....I said "it's nothing" or the spanish equivalent of "you're welcome" to a woman asking me for money.

I immediately realized how wrong this was and quickly walked away with Jeremy, who rubbed in just how awful that was.


Yeah I'm a bad person....don't worry, I paid for it later.


So after finding some whiffy we were able to get the address of the couch we would be sleeping on.

We decided to walk there but kept getting incredibly arbitrary directions from tourists. Eventually we settled on a cab and thank god we did because we were about a 10 minute ride down a bunch of side streets away from our destination. Basically we would've never found it.


By this point we're both exhausted, having been up all day, walking around Barca with our luggage, we just wanted to have a couch. But when we got there we intercommed up to the room and nobody answered.

Jeremy felt defeated but I reassured him.
"Don't worry" I said, " I have an idea"

and then i proceeded to call up to every single apartment on the intercom.

I felt like Elf when he gets in the elevator for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3oNBnEqu8

a bunch of people responded, in spanish.


Yeah I didn't really think that one through.

I kind of just stuttered some "hola"s and then explained that we were looking for a friend but didn't know his number....basically nobody understood.

and then a woman called down to us and we could hear a loud baby crying.

The woman sounded very stressed.

Jeremy looked at me like "what did you do?!"



yeah.....once again, I'm a bad person.


we admitted defeat and went and sat on a bench down the street. 10 minutes later we decided to go back up and try again.

SUCCESS!!!

V's roommate Maika answered!

We went up and she greeted us, as we entered her living room my eyes immediately went to the couch.

Now this section of my blog is not for the faint of heart.

There, on the couch, was a dildo.

yep, that's right.

A DILDO.

Maikai noticed it and smoothly picked it up and put it on the end table behind some other junk, assuming we didn't see it.

Oh, we saw it Maikai. It's hard to not notice a fucking dildo on a couch when you're COUCHSURFING.


Anyway, our host V was out and about so Maikai hosted us. She was really cool and easy to talk to, we discussed films and music. After a while V arrived. Now V is short for Viviar, which is pronounced like "BBR" so I'm just calling him V.


V was a cool guy. He was in his late 20's, working on his PHD in Philosophy. He earns money translating stuff between English, French and Spanish. He was very smart and a little pretentious. But mostly pretty cool.

He took us out to get tapas, which are basically spanish appetizers. In Spain, everyone eats tapas like all the time though. They don't go out to bars without ordering tapas. Jeremy even went on a tapas tour back in Salamanca.

I can see why, they were excellent!

And so easily vegan.

It felt great being in southern Europe where the food actually has flavor, quite a contrast to northern Europe. As one of Maikai's friends would tell me on Sunday, Northern Europe is not known for it's food.

So true, English and Irish food is the worst. Soooo boring.

Well after the tapas we went back and Jeremy and I went to sleep.

Now I bet you're thinking, "hey chelsea, we want some more pictures."

Don't fret dear readers, there are tons of pictures, including one of our sleeping quarters. In fact there are 450 pictures, which can be found HERE, on Jeremy's photobucket. Definitely worth looking at, we saw a lot of cool stuff.

But obviously I cannot put all 450 pictures in this post.

So our sleeping situation was grim at best. We had to share a mummy sleeping bag, so we were both pretty cold.
(For those of you unfamiliar with mummy sleeping bags, they're a type of sleeping bag which is form fitting, meaning it's very slim in the feet. This is different than a regular sleeping bag which is the same width at the bottom as it is at the top.)

So really it was only wide enough at the bottom to cover one set of feet, and divided between two sets it didn't cover any feet.


yeah it kinda sucked. but hey it was free.

This concludes Part 1 of my Barcelona trip. Like I said above, please check out Jeremy's photobucket, these pictures don't even began to capture the epicness of our first day. But to avoid confusion I recommend stopping when you get to this picture below, I'll explain the later photos in my next post.

^our sleeping arrangements. For fun, let's play "Can you spot the dildo?"

Don't get shifty with me buckoo.

I am seriously lagging with the blogging this week.

The truth is, I have a lot to blog about, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it, since it's opinionated and it wouldn't paint some people in the best light, to say the least. Also I'm working on 2 essays which are both due next Friday, and since I'm going out of town this weekend (yay!) I have to work on them now.

I'm going to Donegal this weekend, and there's a chance I'll get to see the Northern Lights. I'm pretty stoked and definitely packing my camera. This is going to be my first time leaving Dublin and I think it's a bit overdue. When I get back on Monday though I promise there will be some good blogging.

For now though I'll just discuss a bit of British (English/Irish) slang.

**Before I get to the slang, I need to clarify that technically Irish people are British but calling them that is like calling a Canadian an American (because Canada is in North America) and they really don't like it. However, I don't know any other convenient way to refer to both nationalities so I'm going to continue to be technically correct albeit Irish-nationalism wrong.**

  I just heard my roommates and their friends discussing "shifting". When they say they shifted someone it means they made out with them. It's like hooking up. Like "we're going to the club to get shifted".

Yeah kissing and random making out is really popular in Dublin. This is just what I've heard, and not first hand experience, seriously. I came to Ireland herpes free and I intend on leaving it that way.

I mean what is this, the 60's? Is everyone here a sailor? Was that last question offensive to seamen? Did I just write seamen...twice?


more slang:

the best known one is "craic" which means fun.

"Oh that was great craic"

everyone here also says "grand"

Like all the time, it's basically the Irish equivalent for "awesome".

But when they pronounce grand it rhymes with fond.

"Oh yeah, it'll be grand."
^I hear that sentence multiple times a day.

then there's their version of the American "guy".
In America we might say, I met this guy last night or "these guys were in front of me in line..."

In Ireland they say "ya man" or "ya wan" (feminine)

So they would say "I met ya man last night who used to be a sailor. "


I think those are the weirdest. it also bugs me when they say queue instead of line. They say "queuing up", everyone was "queued up" and "get on the queue".

It bothers me in NY when people say  get "on line" instead of "in line". But calling it a queue really fries my potatoes.

which, as everyone knows, are called chips over here and not fries.


I'm not great at segues.

Anyhow it's getting late and I need to get to bed. Sorry for the lack of posts and I promise I will have some gnarly photos in my next blog for sure, as well as an unflattering epic of sorts.

Goodnight dear readers.

Old enough to drink but not to chop.

Why hello there dear readers, long time no............write/read?

That was awkward, let's move on.

So this week has been pretty great. A little dull, but great nonetheless. I went grocery shopping on Tuesday and bought a whole lotta produce amongst other things.

There's basically 4 chain grocery stores out here, but the cheapest one is Aldi, so of course that's where I headed. I got roughly 10 apples, around 0 oranges, about 8 bananas, a large bag of carrots (I'm guessing 12), a medium bag of sweet potatoes (4), a bag of onions (3), a bag of garlic (3), a box of tomatoes (8), 2 boxes of tea, honey, bread, and frozen vegetables, for 18 euros.

That's $23.91, which is pretty decent considering all the fruit I got and that this is Ireland. I think the same trip would've run me about $25 at the bodega Mr. Coco's in Brooklyn, where I and most of my roommates do a fair amount of shopping. (Sam prefers Dr. Coco's.)

I know in California that same grocery trip would've cost me like $10 but I'm trying not to think about that.

After that great success I headed to Ikea because, believe it or not dear readers, roughly a month into my stay I still didn't have any pots, pans, plates or eating utensils that weren't plastic and stolen from subway.

So Ikea was awesome. I think it's actually cheaper here...I'm guessing because Ireland is closer to Sweden than America is...but who knows.

For 30 euros ($39.86) I got a set of 6 steak knives, a spoon/knife/fork set, a plate, 3 pots, 1 pan, a cutting board, a wooden spoon/spatula/large fork cookware set and a nice pillow (mine was lacking).

I love Ikea.
One strange thing happened though, as I was shopping for the knives I saw many notices that knives were not to be sold to people under the age of 21 as a measure to prevent self harming. As a 20 year old this worried me but as an optimist I just assumed this rule wouldn't be too strictly enforced. And, honestly even if it was I knew I could play the culture shocked American card and get out with the knives. That last sentence sounded slightly criminal but I'm not gong to rewrite it.

When it came time to check out I went through one of those self check outs and the machine stopped when I scanned the knives. I had completely forgotten the 21+ rule and just assumed my machine was being weird. I called to the self check out assistant and she said, "Oh you got some cutlery did ya, it just wants me to verify that you're 21." She said this without even looking at me, all while entering passwords and scanning her ID, then she walked away. Apparently this 20 and 10 months year old passed for 21 folks!

But then she had to come back to approve my credit card while I was paying, which mean she had to cross check it with my ID. She seemed a little thrown while she was checking my license, and it dawned on me as I was heading home that she probably noticed my birthday, and then I had the further realization that she probably thought it read December 4 rather than April 12, due to the backwards date format these Europeans use.

Either way that lady knew I wasn't 21, which means I can't go back there if I need more knives.

On the way back from Ikea I spotted a gas station.

€1,60 per litre.

^that's just about as European as it gets, allow me to convert that to American.

€1,60=$2.13

1 litre= .264 gallons

The conclusion: gas here costs $8.07 per gallon.

That's absolutely crazy, or as they say here, mental.

No wonder they don't have any large cars. Aside from their busses which are ginormous. The roads here are also very tiny, I've yet to see a single road that isn't only 2 lanes wide, and I'm in the city. The busses often drive on the sidewalks, which is mortifying when you're in them. I spend half my time in the bus just waiting for it to crash into whatever building/car/light post it's narrowly brushing by. The rest of the riders never seem to notice. I'm often reminded of all the times at home where I would pull into a parking spot and Kelley Hughes would freak out and start yelling "Oh my God! Oh my God!" and I would say "What?!" as I turned off the engine. To which she would reply "Oh you were really close there." Kelley would die in a Dublin bus, if not from fright then because all of the Dubliners would attack her for yelling.

Love ya Kell.

Also, I've noticed I'm funnier when I'm being cynical, so I'll try to find something strange for the next post. The problem with settling in is that everything seems normal here now and I'm not finding as much material to blog about. I would realllllly love blog suggestions if any of you have them. Like different cultural questions or whatever.

Come on people, why do I have to do all the work?

Just kidding. It's definitely more work reading these than writing them. So on that note dear readers, thank you for following my posts and goodnight.

Dear Readers,

I have had a revelation this weekend.

It all started on Friday when Rad and made plans to bake some brownies. We went to the local grocery store to buy ingredients. We ended up buying a mix, something i would never do back home where i have a fully stocked kitchen which includes cooking implements.

Anyway I suggested to Rad that we make a drinking game out of our baking. She thought it sounded like a good idea so we started spit balling rules.

I came up with one rule, "every time anything is measured we both have to take a shot."

Rad's rule was a bit more direct, "Anytime we know what we're doing we have to take a shot."

Needless to say, we got shitfaced drunk.

And we videotaped the whole thing.

I'll get around to editing that later, it is definitely hilariously embarrassing and too great to keep from the world.

I skyped at some point towards the end of the night with my friends back at Pratt who convinced me to write a blog post in my inebriated state. They always do that and I always listen. When will I learn?

And that is how the wonderfully eloquent and classy blog post under this one came to be.

Almost everything in that post is true, I do miss NYC and my friends there, Radhika is pretty cool and men who are immature do in fact suck, but one thing that sober Chelsea does not agree with is the high caliber and favorable passion with which drunk Chelsea describes Irish Whiskey.

That's a brand by the way, in fact the cheapest brand of whiskey that Rad and I could find.

I'd like to go on record right now saying that it does not rock. In fact part of me is convinced it's the devil. 

Moving onto Saturday, I awoke with a hangover so vicious I wanted nothing more than for my face to melt off. Rad had blacked out most of the evening, and didn't even have a hangover. Lucky girl.

I went home, got into my bed and didn't get out of it all day.

What was particularly funny was when I got home at around 1pm, my roommate was in bed and I asked her how she was, to which she replied, "hungover".

She informed me that her and two of her friends had split a liter of vodka. So our room that day was very quiet and dark, the lights were never turned on and the blinds remained closed all day.

That is until the late evening, when Manon popped out of bed and started getting ready to go out. She asked me if i was staying in to which I replied, "Yes. Are you going out?"

Then she started to explain her "hair of the dog" theory, which, just thinking about, made me gag. I told her she was crazy and she said I was crazy and then I told her to have a goodnight and she left.

I went to sleep at around 2/3 ish and awoke this morning (Sunday) with one hell of a headache. I had forgotten how much my body hates alcohol. Hangover round two? Yes.

So now I can explain my revelation dear readers. I have decided to only drink once a week while here, and when I do drink, to do so in moderation. I can't think about alcohol right now without feeling like throwing up, so I have no idea how soon the next drinking night will be, but one thing I am sure of is that there will be no more drunk blog posts. That's what facebook status updates are for.

I am not making any promises, as I've learned drunk Chelsea tends to have a mind of her own, but i would prefer this blog be about Ireland, and not a running list of Mexican things that I think are cool like nachos and Jenny's mom.

I don't even eat nachos.

this blog goes ut to ana and jenny

i loveee yiudx guya aooo much,


yourw WESOEM



sooooo I'm very dsrunk right now witrhf radkhika


and i widsh i wads in nyc withg you bitches

you rock

donrtt let anyone tell uo otherwise


but i love rad

shess ONE COOLL bitchew


and just so you gy ss knokns nachos mexixxcans and anaa rock  also jennys mom.


you know what else rocks? irish hwhi cskley?

ywes whiskey

kiscks ass


an dd uyo know who sucjs

bouys

who aewnrenyt men.


i loveyiou gusy

This post is all over the place.

So for those of you who haven't heard me complaining about this yet, Dublin is cold. When we're lucky it's a non-windy 50F. More frequently, however, it's a brisk, wet 3C, which is European for 37F.


Needless to say I've been wearing layers.

I wish I could say so much for the locals, but nope, Dublin girls run around in next to nothing. Their heaviest article is typically their 6" pumps.

Usually they walk around in see-through leggings and short shirts, yeah they don't leave much to the imagination.

I've seen a lot of crazy outfits, from backless "dresses" (is there a minimum requirement of fabric to qualify as a dress?) to fur coats paired with short shorts (more on the fur thing later). But the worst observance came last week when Rad and I were downtown pub hopping and we spotted a young woman in her underwear.

Yes, her underwear.


She was with a group of friends, most likely heading to a club, and although they were all scantily clad, the rest of them had remembered to put pants on.


Radhika and I did a double take, and didn't do much to hide our shock. If these people had been more observant not only would they have heard our blunt "are you fucking kidding me?" but also, maybe, just maybe, they would've reminded pantsless-Patty not to leave the house half naked in 40F weather.

Here's hoping she hasn't caught pneumonia or spread something else.


Dubliners also love fur. They wear sooooo much of it. Fake or real, I can't tell (I've never been much of a fur connoisseur) but it's definitely tacky. It's like Dublin is full of Cruella Devils. But it's not always fur coats on old ladies, which i think is a fairly normal sight, no it's like weird fur collars/dickeys and fur vests and shorts.

It's unsightly. We've got ourselves quite a hairy situation here in Dublin.


(SEE WHAT I DID THERE?)



I'm over the whole Dublin style debacle. Onto a European eccentricity, winking.


Yeah they wink a lot over here. Don't they know winking is reserved for old people, shenanigans, and perverts?


Maybe that's just in America, because seriously I've been winked at more in the last month than I ever was in my whole life back in the states.


I can't explain it but it's unnervingly frequent.

I remember one time when I was little at Disneyland, I'm guessing 4 ish, this old woman passed by me and winked.

I remember feeling uncomfortable, but knowing that she was old and sometimes old people make you uncomfortable and you just have to act like they aren't freaking you out.

I was very wise for my age.


Point of that story is that babies instinctively don't like being winked at, so winking must be associated with something awful and it's ingrained in us to not like it because, I can only imagine, it was something horrifying to our ancestors.



Bottom line: winking is an uncomfortable gesture that is forgivable when geriatrics are involved, expected from creepy guys with no game and hilarious when tomfoolery is afoot.

Somebody needs to tell Europeans.



So I asked a few people for topic suggestions for this blog, by a few people i mean my brother and Sarina.

Sarina said on facebook chat,


"Hmmmmm.

Idk.

but you should totally get a tat of a 4 leaf clover while your over there. it would be cute and have meaning."


I was totally tempted by the deep meaning that tat would definitely have, but in the end I've decided against it.


My Brother Zak told me to write this blog post because, "Idle hands are the devil's playthings."



He didn't have any suggestions though as far as topics go.


But that's okay, I seem to do a good enough job ranting about the everyday to sustain some sort of interest.

I am going on some trips this month so there will definitely be some picture posts coming soon.


Goodnight dear readers, stay warm, fur free, blinking, meaningfully tatted and busy in the name of Jesus.


-Chelsea

Prawn Flavored Blog Post.

So apparently three blog posts a week is coasting, two is disappointing and one is simply unacceptable. At least according to Sam and Jenny. 

Which is shocking because they both know how lazy I am. 


Anywho, here is a forced blog post, if you pick up on any general contempt...you're very astute, good job.
So I recently found out that my sweet roommate Manon and her friend Leslie, both Frenchies, read my
blog!! I think that's very nice since I can never bring myself to read other people's blogs.

I tend to get bored.

So I'm always very flattered when I find out people are reading this blog and I was extra flattered in this case since Manon and Leslie speak English as a second language, and I'm sure it's a bit tedious for them to translate all of my colloquialisms.  




Well I've decided to dedicate this blog to food. 


One thing I've noticed about Ireland, and have heard is the same in England and Scotland, is their obsession with meat and cream. I had no idea, although it seems quite obvious now, that the simple, American dinner, meat and potatoes, is Irish. I mean I always assumed that was a 1950's, microwave dinner type of thing.

(Of course I knew potatoes were Irish, check the background of this page)



Anyhow, I have deemed this place the land of meat and potatoes, everything they make here has the addition of animal products in some form.

I went out for Chinese last night with an American friend, Zach, and he ordered vegetable chow mein, and I ordered vegetable curry. I've never had a curry like this. It was definitely vegan, but instead of a typical curried coconut milk sauce, my vegetables were in this weird sort of gravy.

Dear readers, if you could see the expression on my face while merely explaining this you would understand that this was not a good thing. I'm not a really big fan of gravy, I think it has it's time and place though (Time: Thanksgiving. Place: mashed potatoes.) and in my Chinese food, let alone a curry dish, is not one of them. 

Needless to say this was an Irish take on Chinese food, and I was the victim.

Zach and I were discussing chip flavors that we've noticed while here;


-Prawn
-Bacon
-Roasted Turkey
-Cheese and Onion

....just to name a few.

They have an obsession with Prawn flavored things here. I've noticed it in other forms besides chips. 

Also, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are an American thing. My Irish flatmate saw me making one and said, "Wow, you guys really do that?" 

Also, the peanut butter here comes in "American style". 

Zach was telling me that peanut butter itself is known as being very popular in America, much more so than the rest of the world.

I guess peanut butter is our marmite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite).


Last night Radhika and I went on a falafal hunt TO NO AVAIL.

We found this chain called "Abra Kadabra" that served falaf amongst hamburgers, french fries and tacos (they call themselves a "mexican restaurant"). BUT they don't have hummus, yogurt sauce, tahini or any other seemingly compatible sauce option for falafals. Nope instead they offer garlic sauce or barbeque.


I had been drinking a bit and when the man behind the counter said this i quite bluntly replied "Eww that's so gross"

and then there was a moment of awkward silence where I just stared at him.....I mean in retrospect I probably shouldn't have blamed this poor guy who, in his attempt at money making, unfortunately has aligned himself with such a sad excuse for a restaurant, but due to my mild intoxication these rationales were pushed out of my mind and replaced with disgust for the lack of cultural diversity evident in this country.

what the fuck is garlic sauce?



and who doesn't know that you eat falaf with either hummus, yogurt sauce or tahini?


needless to say Radhika and I booked it outta there and instead bought crappy pasta and couscous at the local grocery store.

So to sum up Ireland in regards to food. It's boring. But that's probably just because they put so much time and effort into developing their beverages, and honestly dear readers, when it comes to Irish drinks, I haven't any complaints.

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

Pictures!!

Before I start this post I'd like to explain my previous blog posting. I was going to delete it. It is the incredibly embarrassing product of my Pratt friends taking advantage of my enamored state by encouraging me to blog when I really just shouldn't have been anywhere near a computer at all. But after some thought I came to the conclusion that this is a blog about my Irish adventures, and anyone who thinks I'm going to come to Ireland and not drink is clearly a fool and they can go read another blog regarding ostriches or something. Also, not to brag or anything, but I am a pretty funny drunkard.

Moving on, 

So where I last left off I had just gotten to Trinity off my plane, we're talking Thursday morning. I didn't get internet until midday Saturday because, even though it's an ethernet connection, you still need a password and username, information that was given to us late Friday. However, you also need an out of date computer because it took a whole days worth of trouble shooting to configure my mac to the internet. A whole stressful, lonely, incommunicado day of downgrading my brand new macbook pro's internet browser. 

But, obviously, it works now. 

These are pictures of the park/street right next to my dorm. All of the streets in Dublin are about this width, which makes riding in the huge busses a bit scary, especially when they pass people in the same lane, which, I'm pretty sure is meant for only one car at a time. 

This is one of the views from my flat. If you disregard that ugly gray rooftop it's actually quite beautiful.

This was a strange little band playing in town centre. Fun fact, after I took this picture they followed me, playing their strange instruments and singing in gaelic, for about a block. Although it was only a block it felt like a lifetime.

These friendly leprechauns are always on this corner, right across from my school, every day. It seems like a pretty fun job actually, definitely warm (yeah, it's been chilly here).

  This is the view coming into town centre from the top level of the double decker transport. All of the busses here are double deckers and expensive considering I take it to get to school and back.
€1.90 a ride :O
It's a pretty nice ride though, nice way to see a good amount of Dublin.

These are just some scenic photos I took while walking into city centre/Trinity yesterday (about an hour walk). I love the houses. They're all very big and yet they have such a cozy feel. Must be all the red brick. 

I found an Asian market yesterday and was delighted when I saw their stock. As a vegetarian/vegan household, most of the grocery shopping/cooking my dad does is Asian. And this brand of sauces is a staple in our house. In the orientation for the international students they told us about an "American" candy store which only carries American products. They said that finding a comfort food that you would have at home can ease homesickness. I've seen tons of American candy here, especially kit kats, but this weird, Asian sauce stuff was what made me think of home. This little market is definitely going to be where I do most of my shopping.

So those are the only pictures I've taken so far. I'm still settling into this strange foreign land, and I promise there will be better ones to come once I get my bearings a bit. 

Goodnight dear readers,

love,

 Chelsea.