Great Craic!

So looking back on some of my posts, it seems like they have a bit of a whiny/complaining tone. I have had my fair share of frustrations these past three weeks, and I think sometimes it’s more fun to talk about annoying things instead of fun things. But anyway, I’m going to try to remedy that because I really am having a great time.

Wednesday I got settled into my “permanent” residence (ah, the semi-nomadic life of a college kid) which is a flat on campus (or technically, just across the street from campus). It’s a smaller flat, and I have two new roommates, Megan and Caroline. My bedroom window looks onto the street, so I can spy on the comings and goings of the Dublin populace, including the man in the reflective orange suit who walks in the middle of the street, selling newspapers to cars stopped at the stoplight.

Being on campus is wonderful. Not to be too disparaging of good old Rathmines, but being within walking distance of city centre is sooo nice. Particularly for going out, which I did a bit of this weekend.

Thursday night Bridget and I had a fabulous evening in, watching Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightly) and drinking wine. Friday night, we cobbled together the most surprisingly tasty meal ever. Walking to the nearest Chinese place in the rain, we decided instead to stop into Spar’s (sort of like 7-Eleven) to see if they sold any real food. What we found was Uncle Ben’s egg fried rice, frozen chicken nuggets, and a jar of tikka masala sauce. So we went home and cooked that. Chicken nuggets in store brand tikka masala sauce tasted way better than we expected! The bottle of Bulmer’s cider we bought to wash it down didn’t hurt either.

After dinner we went out with Maura to a bar called the Sweeney’s Mongrel. It was such a funky place. The décor was vintage 70s/hipster, and there were three floors with three distinctly different vibes. The main floor was defined by the rockabilly DJ spinning her favorite tunes. The top and bottom floors had live music, with the bottom-floor band singing something semi-political about America’s tendency to blow things up. We had a great time chatting with Maura, and I tried a gin and tonic and felt super grown-up.

Saturday night, we decided, was a night to party. Admittedly I partied a little too hard, but I’m not going to go into that. Bridget and I tipsily wandered through Temple Bar, holding hands and talking too loudly. She wore a sailor’s cap, which garnered lots of salutes and pirate-speak from the locals. The first pub we went to, the Oliver St. John Gogarty, was great craic. Craic (pronounced ‘crack’) means fun, particularly the type of fun provided by pubs. It was absolutely packed with people singing along to the American tunes being piped in. A man asked me if I was from London, and when I told him I was from California, he followed me around a bit hissing “California!” in my ear and benignly harassing me about how we could no longer be friends. We also hit the Sweeney’s Mongrel at some point, where in a hilarious (but ultimately unfortunate) misunderstanding I went to the bar to order a coca-cola and came back with a Corona.

Sunday was the day of the All-Ireland Gaelic football final. Bridget, Kate Leonard, Kate Stevenson, and I went to a pub in order to watch it. We drank Guinness and Bulmer’s, ate chips, and enjoyed the match. It was a good game, although I wish we had watched it with a rowdier crowd. Cork and Down both played well, and Cork only won by one point. We stayed to watch each of the Cork players hold the Sam Maguire Cup aloft in triumph, and went home to resume our quiet Sunday afternoon. Also, that night we cooked a proper chicken tikka masala dinner (or as proper as we could, anyway).