My first week was orientation week, which was SO nice because it basically just allowed us to be introduced with Dublin. Also, the first week was St. Arthurs day which was the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Guinness. That was a HUGE day in Ireland. We went to temple bar for the evening. I wish I had a better sense of bar culture back in the states so I had a better comparison for pub culture here. Example: First night in temple bar, I was sitting in this pub with Bri listening to irish music. Melissa (my roommate) and Zach called wondering where we were, and we saw that they met some people. They came over by us, and the first thing this kid does is grab my face and plants one on me, then says "hey, whats yer name?" I respond with a blank stare and an "em...Kaitlyn. Whats yours?" he says "doesnt matter." I kept looking around at my friends like "did you not see him just kiss me?" Saying I was shocked was an understatement. He did seem though to be quite outgoing, so I'm assuming that kind of...greeting isnt unusual for him.
My first week though I had horrible luck with heating hair tools. I bought a converter that is meant for things like hair dryers, flat irons, etc. So, I plug my flat iron in it and my iron was working, but then it just shut off and wouldnt turn back on, and felt extremely warm in the handle. MY GLORIOUS FLAT IRON IS DEAD! That thing was magic. Well anyways, the next day I plugged my crimper into the same converter, and it turned on and was heating up just fine...so I thought "hey, it must've just been my flat iron", so I wasnt concerned really and it was performing like usual. My hair was steaming a bit, but I figured it was just from hair product, but then it was steaming A LOT, and then...a chunk of my hair burnt off. The thing BURNT MY HAIR OFF! I turned it off immediately and ran to the bathroom to examine the damage. Luckily, you cant tell at all. Unfortunately, it damaged SO MUCH of my hair. I mean really. It was bad. Since then I have broken my hairdryer, and my roommates. This is even using her converter. I'm taking this as a sign. Oh! Also our first week we went on this tour of a farm, and they also involved us in tradition irish things, like baking, dancing, music, games, etc. There were also TONS of adorable puppies. So freaking cute.
I had my first week of classes this week, which has been good. I dropped Anatomy! I was SO happy about this. Now I have all of January here for fun. and travel. I'm taking some boring classes, but I'm also taking a few amazing ones, i.e. Cultural Performance in Popular Entertainment, and Social History and T.V. Drama. These look like winners. What else did we do this week? OH! We found a pub close to us that looks promising. It gets expensive going to temple bar, especially for 6 euro pints and a taxi. The pub near us is more reasonable prices and within walking distance. We also went to Howth. This cute fishing town in our county. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. My breath was stolen. It was perfected happiness walking along the pier, listening to music, and looking at the wonderful landscape before me. I love this place. I wish my camera worked so I could take photos and show everyone! (yes, my camera stopped working too. How great is that?) I'll try not to have such a long span between blog posts, I feel like I wrote a freaking novel. Bye friends!
OH! P.S.
Here is a little video of the 17:59 toast to Arthur Guinness last thursday, and also that evening in a pub. The guy was singing "wish you were here" and it made me think of all me friends back home...so obviously I had to record. We didnt make it in time to get a pint to toast with, everywhere we went was packed! The pub we were at ran out of glasses even. The 17:59 toast was this big global toast to Arthur to kick off the celebration. It was a big deal, they had concerts that were televised with a countdown to the big toast...it reminded me of the dick clark new years thing. I just found out that Noah and The Whale performed there. I immediately regret not buying a ticket for the concerts.
