Sleeping with Strangers

I'll pick up where I left off...

Our Wicklow tour was amazing.  It was rough getting up early enough to catch the bus downtown again (we had to be there at 8:30 and its at least a half hour bus ride) but it was totally worth it.  We saw the fishing piers outside Howth, a bunch of old churches followed by a bunch of old cemeteries, the lake where they filmed Bravehart, and the national park where they filmed P.S. I Love You ( and according to our busdriver the park where they're shooting the new Kiera Knightly film which doesn't immediately appear to include pirates).  The churches were interesting, the lake provided a ton of great photos, but al the girls were more interested in the P.S. I Love You bridge. He was telling us all about how the park was overcome by wildfire and about all the unstable soil that produces bog cotton, and we were getting out our maps and preparing our poses (In the movie Hillary Swank is lost in the park looking at her map on a windy day much as we going to appear to be doing).  Another interesting point was a large villa on several acres that boasted a white sandy beach that was flown in from California and given to the bride of someone in the Guinness family.  It had been home to Tiger Woods for a weekend when he played in Ireland last year for the small pittance of $30,000.  Our bus driver had a nasty habit of talking a lot which made it difficult to sleep between stops. Difficult...not impossible. I'm pretty sure we all got in a good nap as well.  But really...we had a lot of fun and I learned a lot about Dublin that I would never have known otherwise.

In the interest of making everyone jealous, Monday I booked my ticket (including transportation) to the BRITISH OPEN. My new friends from South Carolina found the package online and I immediately invited myself informing them that they had to hold off on booking.  I had to go get my credit card...but more importantly I had to call my Dad.

The only interesting point about work this week would be that Melanie and I decided to branch off and walk 10 minutes for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. They started off using marinara sauce as salsa and I'll let you all imagine for yourselves how the rest of the meal went.

Thursday night Lana and Caitlin and I met down of Graffton after work to do a little shopping. We had a nice dinner and a few drinks and called it a night because Friday....

We left on our first weekend trip! Our train left Dublin-Heuston Station at 9:10 and arrived in Galway a little before 12.  We stopped and had lunch and then tried to find our hostel.  Now personally, I have never stayed in a hostel or gone to sleep away camp or stayed anywhere were I have to share my personal space for long periods of time. I was informing my friends of this as we entered our room and I almost had a panic attack.  There before me was a horrifying scene...four bunk beds lined up against the wall supported a folded blanket and a pillow for each bed.  There were 6 of us from our program (a mix of boys and girls mind you) which was bad enough until I did the math.  There were two open beds.  There was the potential that I would have to sleep with two new dirty strangers. Everyone else seemed fine with this, even after I pointed out the obvious fact that these two randos could be insane drug dealer who had come to Galway with the sole purpose of killing their new roomies after they got drunk and passed out.  It didn't seem to bother anyone else that we all had to share a dirty shower that sprayed water out the door into the main room.  Everyone said the place had character so I tried to find its good points.  It was smack dab in the middle of the main strip of bars in Galway, it seemed pretty safe considering the number of doors I had to use my room card to get through, and it had a full length mirror (a necessity we have all been missing).  Still, I thought it held a high possibility of a knifefight and/or contracting a rainbow of unwelcome diseases, and if I'm really going to compromise my principles and my safety the place had better be pretty cheap--which it was not. To overcome my anxiety we all went directly to the bar after check in at 1 and never left.  Needless to say we all had a fantastic time barhopping and listening to live music, and at the end of the night I began to understand the charm of the hostel...we stumbled back across the street to our unairconditioned rooms, climbed into our tiny bunks, opened the windows, and listened to the music and city noise until we fell asleep.

Saturday came pretty quick.  We had to be up and waiting for the bus for yet another tour (which had seemed like a much better idea when we booked it while we were still drunk the night before) by 8:30. When my whole family came to visit Ireland when I was in the 8th grade I could not for the life of me understand why everyone was getting so sick on the bus on saturday mornings. I know now, and I think we all unanamously voted to stop booking bus tours and days that would not doubt contain a hangover. I'm pretty sure we mostly slept through the morning stops...making it off the bus to spelunk through an old cave and eat lunch. (We were all starving considering the contenental breakfast included in the price of our rooms consisted of toast and water.)  But in the afternoon we finally made it to the Cliffs of Moher.  This trip is pretty scary with boys who seem to like to test the limits of their own morality and I kept having to pull people back from cliffsides and ledges. Still we got a lot of unbelievable pictures and it was a really nice day to just walk around and be in awe of how small we really are.  I think Ben summed up all our feelings best.  We were standing as a group, looking over the edge of 217m out into the Atlantic and pondering life, and he said "Man, its amazing that birds can crap in midair." Amazing indeed.

**I'd like to make a side note here that Ben is actually incredibly thoughtful, the moment was just too funny and memorable not to comment on.

Saturday night we went to a couple more bars, but everyone was pretty much spent ad we came home early.  This morning we grabbed breakfast at a cafe near our hostel and rode the bus home. In the future I promise to post more often so my posts wont be so dreadfully long.  Next week is Caitlin's birthday so we're staying in town and I'll keep everyone updated on the festivities.

To be continued...E

So as it turns out...we're here to do work.

I'd like to start off by apologizing to all of my devoted readership for my lack of updates.  They made me start a Google account at work and I was really confused because it kept asking me to start a new blog with my Gmail address and I didn't really want to do that. Speaking of work....

I don't think it really hit any of us that we were here to partake in an actual internship this summer and not just play downtown, eat out, shop, and drink a lot. It's a really stark wake up call to have to get up at 6:30 to catch the bus on time when you're used to staying out until then.

But I'm getting ahead of myself as it's been quite a while since my last post. The weekend was really fun, but kind of uneventful (and by uneventful I mean I don't really remember much...) Friday we went downtown.  The bars close surprisingly early (2 am) as do the pizza delivery places (midnight) and so we spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get any sort of food delivered to our residence at 3:30 in the morning. We even considered calling a cab to go through the McDonald's drive thru as they informed Lana over the phone that we wouldn't be allowed to order if we were walking.  We all woke up around 1..starving...and it took an hour to figure out how to get Domino's to deliver. Then we went back to bed around 4 and slept until 8.  We went downtown again on Saturday night.  Sunday we woke up feeling productive so we headed back downtown to eat lunch at La Gondola (this small little Italian place we found that serves big cheap pizza) and then went to the Guinness Storehouse (which as it turns out is located across the street from my work). The Storehouse was really interesting.  It was a self-guided tour and you could walk through and see the whole brewing process.  I even tasted the roasted hops (I think..or maybe Barley...either way it tasted like dirt but it's apparently really important. That Storehouse was the one that produced it for all the factories in the country and a secret stash is kept in a locked and gaurded safe in case something would happen to the main stock. That way Guinness could continue on if something horrible were to happen to the Storehouse...I mean these people are pretty serious about beer.) There were several levels that covered the companies various advertising and on and on until we finally made our way to the Gravity Bar.  I felt like I was in Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory...the elevator kept going up and up over Dublin and I figured eventually we'd just shoot through the roof or something.  The view was incredible...you could see forever over the tops of houses and buildings.  The room was circular and the walls were made of glass (or hopefully something sturdier because we were pretty high). Plus..you get a free pint of what I'm guessing was really fresh Guinness.

Luckily, my boss is nice and Melanie and I didn't have to work on Monday, so we spent the day downtown trying to find where the building was.  We found where we thought it was, took pictures in front of the sign and pretty yellow door, only to find out the offices where we actually work are like half a mile away.

Tuesday...our first day of responsibility.  Actually, we would come to find out that I'm playing pretty fast and loose with the idea of responsibility as we don't really do much. We met Michael, our boss, down by the gates and he walked up through to our offices.  He set us up with intermediate laptops (our new ones were supposed to be there on Wednesday) and showed us around the website we were going to be working on.  It's a consumer review site of businesses around Dublin, and we are supposed to manage content and try to pull customers in from other blogs with promotional posts.  This will all be well and good when the website actually LAUNCHES. Since it's not public yet there are only a handful of posters, and so we spend our days looking up contact info for businesses that could potentially become advertisers, read different blogs, play on facebook, and Gchat with each other from across our cubicles. We really like our boss though.  He's fairly young and most of his reviews start with "If you're really hungover this is the place to go...".

They warned us that the Irish workplace is different than the American workplace and they were right. Wednesday we busted our butts to get to the office on time...we were supposed to be there at 9 and were excited we made it 5 minutes early only to be turned away by the cleaning crew because they gates the block off entrance to the building were still looked. Thursday we were the first people in the office at 9...we had to unlock the doors and turn on the lights and nobody else rolled in until between 9:30 and 10. On top of that...nobody there talks. They don't just ignore us, but each other as well so it can get awfully quiet around there sometimes.

We managed to hit up The Comet on Tuesday, but Wednesday I fell asleep on the couch in the living room right after dinner around 8. Thursday nights are a big night in Dublin, and judging by how hard we went out you'd think we were blowing off steam from working for years instead of just a couple days.  We had a great time...I even risked a couple pints of beer. We slept in late this morning, but spent the afternoon downtown shopping on Graffton and Henry Street. No really big purchases to report but it was a nice day to walk around.  

Tomorrow we leave early to go on a bus tour of Wicklow County and the countryside.  We get to see where they filmed P.S. I love You and Braveheart.  We get back tomorrow night but we're really looking forward to getting away even for a little bit. 

xoxo E

Google's Birthday and One flashy Interview After Another...

Yesterday we got to celebrate our first group birthday! Conner (a.k.a. Google, the Goog, Magic Man, or Magic G as he will be referred to henceforth as he seems to know just about everything. On the bus ride to our excursion (which will be explained later) alone I learned the four different meanings of the word fine as defined in the dictionary, the ingredients and preparations necessary to bake a Red Velvet Chocolate Cake, and the correct use of the word henceforth. Not to mention he has flawless navigation skills and is good at fixing the computer.) We all chipped in and got him a cake from a bakery relatively close to our apartment, got the waitress to light the candles, we all sang Happy Birthday, and then made him give a toast.  Our group as a whole is big on toasts, birthdays or not.

Before all the birthday and excursion festivities, Thomas and I went with Lana to her interview.  Not to say that we actually sat in on her interview (just being clear because according to our program managers they have had several problems with interns doing this) but her potential job is at one of the biggest, most internationally acclaimed, malls in Ireland.  It has 29 restaurants and is over a mile long.  Though I'm incredibly excited for my marketing director intern of a roommate to keep me updated on all the greatest sales, it took us over an hour and half to get there by bus and then the Luas (which is apparently Irish for "very slow train") and Lana has to be there from 9 - 5 and is expected to work some weekends so I'm guessing she's not quite as thrilled.  I've already started to teach her the Dolly Parton song...

After we headed back to City Center to get the International Student IDs from the "use it station" to help us get our International student travel cards, to help us catch a break on paying for public transport to and from work everyday.  Keeping in mind that 5 of the people from our program had gotten these cards on Wednesday and 1 had gotten it a couple hours before we showed up WITH THE SAME INFORMATION WE HAD, we thought it would be a breeze. However it seems that in a couple hours time span one of us had greatly disgraced the country while using his EUSA student IDs (the ones we received with the program that said STUDENT at the top right above UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI) and it was no longer a valid source of proof that we were indeed international students and not bums or terrorists. The international insurance card we provided stating our program dates by permission of our university, our Ole Miss student IDs, our licenses and passports were not credible either.  Turns out the requirements had changed that afternoon and they now needed proof of tuition, signed university letterhead verifying our enrollment, and our firstborn children to be considered actual students. Inexplicably, we had brought none of these things along.

Last night the program sponsored an "excursion" which included a free 3 course dinner and a folklore reading at the oldest pub in Dublin, The Boar's Head (which according to Goog was founded in 1190). The stories were really fun and I finally got to try real Irish Stew.

I had my interview this afternoon along with my friend Melanie who will hopefully be working with me. I say hopefully because at the end of what I considered a great interview, the interviewers said they would inform EUSA of their decision and the program would be in touch soon. I'm pretty sure I had all the right skills but more importantly I'd be working for free so in all reality my skills, even my personality, shouldn't really matter that much.  You know it's a bad economy when people won't even hire free workers. We had originally intended to follow the mapped directions given to us by the program, which indicated 2 buses and a 20 minute walk (in heels), but thought better of it when we were informed that we could take a 20 minute bus ride that would drop of us directly in front of the hotel where we were interviewing. During this bus ride, and luckily not during my interview, I found out that the buttons on my nice suit shirt come unbuttoned very easily and it's hard to notice the difference until a good breeze really hits you.

 

After the interview we went to where they produced the travel cards (Trinity University Student Union).  I filled out all the paperwork, and gave the guy his money. I barely flashed him my EUSA ID and he finally printed me out an official student travel ID card that will get me discounts on all plane and bus tickets without even asking me if I had international official ID. You've gotta love college workers. 

Until next time...E

Burns, Bathmats, and bedspreads

I'm here. Seriously, I made it. I've been talking about it and my mother has been planning and packing forever, and I'm really here. On my own. Freaking out. When we first arrived at 9:30 this morning, Lana and I piled into the smallest taxi known to man.  My luggage couldn't even fit in the trunk, we almost had to sit on it. They drive clown cars over here, which seems quite quaint until you have to haul a lot of crap.  We checked in and the office informed us that the two of us would be living together...along with another girl from our program Caitlin (who has anxiety issues. We get along swimmingly.)...and a random older man that had lived there for months and isn't moving out until the middle of September. We have yet to meet him.  There was food all over the kitchen, we didn't have Internet, the lights in my bathroom didn't work, and there was what appeared to be a giant poo stain on the blue carpet by my bed (which would probably explain the nasty smell.) Home sweet home. 

Though I cried this morning, immediately regretted this decision, and then promptly made what I'm sure had to be a $50 phone call to my mother telling her as much, I'm doing much better this afternoon. At least for now, and I hope it will stay that way for a while. I stalled on unpacking in favor of hanging out at the other girls apartment (which by the way has a brand new kitchen, a TV, and smelled like Febreeze instead of feces) and met the other people in our program.  We all went on a walking tour of our neighborhood, which the EUSA people kindly informed us was in a "shady part of town", and then found our way to the market.

The Tesco supermarket is oddly organized. TV's were across from the milk which was in the same isle as the all purpose cleaner which was located beside the bakery..and so on.  We got basic food staples and home stuff like cleaners and and toilet paper and travel alarm clocks.  And liquor. Expensive liquor...not because it was high class, but because this is Dublin. A 6 pack of bud light was nearly $15, and I couldn't find any Vodka under 20 Euros so I didn't buy any.  Luckily, the corner market sells quite the variety of wines. We went to the department store and bought towels and the cheapest package of bedding (amazingly only around 15 Euro). I say we meaning the girls becuase the boys didn't so much care about the department tore. Thomas had told me earlier that he didn't have towels and I had asked him if he wanted me to get him one.  He informed me that he was alright...he would just use an old T-shirt

When we came home we unloaded our packages and sat down at our respective computers. That's when I noticed the unsightly rash running up my thighs.  Raised, red, and burning, it's not really the kind of welcome mat you want in a new country, nor does it encourage the meeting and making of friends.  I don't know what its from, or what I'll do if it doesn't go away when I finally shower, but for now I'm taking it one minute at a time.

Tomorrow we have official orientation...and we learn more about our jobs! Tonight we drink...somewhere close....hopefully.

Stay tuned to my riveting progress...Love to all, E