If it's a summer day, not a cloud in sight, it feels like it might rain

I just witnessed a moment that was one of those where somehow, it’s only awkward for those NOT involved. This one is special though because usually when those moments happen, I think in my head that it would just be so much less awkward if I was the one involved and in control of making the situation awkward for others. Cause that is actually a position that I do like to be in very much. This one however, I am extremely happy not to have been involved. And it was just weird really. So here’s what happened: I just walked into this living room where I was just planning on doing exactly what I’m doing right now (minus one awkward feeling). There were about 10 people in the room when I came in, but only 2 of these are important. One guy and one girl. Then, another girl walks in the room who obviously knows these two because they all give some version of “heeeeey!” when they see each other. The new girl then walks over to the first girl and does the normal cheek-kisses. Then the guy makes some comment about how he didn’t get any kisses when he saw her that morning. Then she says “sorry, I just don’t kiss everyone.” The guy then proceeds to stand up and come over to her and go for the cheek kisses…but no wait! He went for a double kiss on the mouth! Bold move for sure. Then it starts to get good. The other girl then says “I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed by a gay guy.” So the guy comes over and gives her just one long kiss!! THEN, the girl who was kissed first made some comment about how she was jealous of him! So SHE went and kissed the other girl!! It was ridiculous! And you could tell that everyone else in the room was just feeling more and more awkward about it as each part of the story unfolded. I am now the only one left in the room with these three. Everyone else left within 5 min or so. So I’m just staring straight at my computer screen and nowhere else. And needless to say, I’m very happy to not have been involved.

So one interesting thing to note about Ireland is that when you order food somewhere, they reserve the right to change up the ingredients from what is listed as much as they want. Such as, I just went to a café with a guy and we both ordered the exact same sandwich, and it was made by the exact same person, yet he ended up with: a different sauce, different veggies on the sandwich, a different flavor of potato chips, and mashed peas instead of corn on the cob. And that is not the only instance of that either. It’s really very confusing. Good thing I don’t care TOO much what I get cause it could be a serious problem.

I find it very interesting that I am only willing to purchase brands that I don’t know if there are no options with brands that I do know. Like I can walk up to a section of the store filled with drink options and I will walk away with a Coke almost every time. There may be 30 different options present and there is a good chance that I would like some of them much more than coke (I don’t even like coke much! I’d get pepsi if they had it..). But still, I will go for the coke every time just cause it’s something I know. Same with candy. I always walk up to the candy counter and it’s like I really want to get some candy but there just aren’t any brands that I’ve heard of on the shelf so I end up walking away with my tooth unsatisfied. And I hate to have to do that to him because he really is my sweetest tooth. Hah cheesy. And actually, I shouldn’t say that I leave him unsatisfied. The one brand of candy that I know here is Haribo gummi bears and I have eaten a TON of them. Like I’m sure that everyone in my room with me is thinking I’m a huge FFA (future fat american) cause they can all just see me over there in my bunk every night watching an episode of the office, and they can all hear the work that I’m doing on the fantastic gummi ursus.

So to end that last paragraph, I used the word ursus instead of bears. That word is the general scientific name for the bears. Thus, I used it. However, I find myself wondering why I do things like that. Like I didn’t just know that. I took the time to get on google, search for “scientific bear name” and find what I was looking for. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense except that, at the same time, it does.

So I went by this coffee shop yesterday afternoon that is owned by some friends of my aunt and uncle’s. It was called An Tobar Nua which means “on the canal”. I was planning on just walking in, stating that I was related to the great Bunker and Penny Sessions, and having something awesome happen after that. Instead, I went in, ordered some food, sat down, ate it, played on my computer for about a hour, then got up to leave. As I was walking out, I decided I definitely needed to see if the owners were here. So I started a convo with the girl behind the counter and ended up, in a roundabout way, finding out that they are actually not in Ireland right now anyways. They are in the States. It was mildly anticlimactic. It was a really really cool coffee shop though. It felt like an american coffee shop. And if you’re wondering what the difference is between an american and a European coffee shop, it’s all about the space. For some reason, Europeans just don’t need as much personal space as Americans. It’s like they can be all up on each other and it’s no big deal. Americans, on the other hand, like to have quite a bit of space to call their own albeit temporarily. I definitely fit the mold in this area. It’s just weird. Like if you go to a restaurant with just two people, they may sit you at a 4 person table with another group of 2. And you’re not expected to eat with the two you don’t know or talk to them or anything. You’re just expected to coexist and be ok with eating your pizza while someone you don’t know is quite literally, all up on your business. It is kinda cool be feel free to get all up in someone else’s business though. I run a tight system of double standards.

Picture Christian, he’s walking through a bookstore, semi-looking for the book by James Joyce called “Dubliners” and also perfectly fine with finding a better alternative. As he’s walking past aisles of books, he glances at the title of a book. Wait, what was that title? (Double-take, pace has not slowed though) He walks about 2 steps past the aisle, comes to a dead stop, and thinks in his head “nooooo…I didn’t just see that did I?” When he cannot 100% confirm that he saw it, he chooses to turn around and go back to the aisle. He did see that. Wow. That is the most ridiculously titled book he’s ever seen. He doesn’t even look inside of it because he doesn’t even WANT to know what it is about. He simply takes a picture of the cover so that later on, when his future self is doubting the existence of the book, he can prove it to him that he really did see it.

Ah, I really want to add a picture here…I cant think what I should add a picture of though…hmmm…maybe I’ll just take a picture of myself real quick and put it up to remind you guys what I look like…I think I’ll title this picture “Christian Trying/Failing to Look Cool”:

And now, since that picture screams “tool-shed full of tool-bags and tool-belts!”, here is a picture of me being me. I’ll title this one “That’s More Like It”:

Ok fine. Here's the picture of the cover of the book:
I probably played that up too much...but is that not a ridiculous book?! I think so.

So I am a little upset right now because I took an awesome video yesterday that I really wanted to show you guys except that I can’t because it is on my camera and I did not bring the cord to connect my camera to my computer. That actually is part of the reason that I haven’t taken many pictures. It’s like, if I can’t even show the pictures to people until like a month after I’ve lived them…I don’t know. It just seems like it would be annoying. Plus, people aren’t really going to be wanting to hear that much about my trip when I get back if they’ve read this blog cause I’m sure you’re getting way more than you asked for with this. Anyways though, the video was of this banjo player that was playing in the street here in Galway. He was insane on the banjo first of all. But then he was singing as well and his voice was pretty good as well. Then, on top of that, he was wearing tap shoes and he used his feet on the ground as precussion!! So in the video, he is dancing and playing the banjo and because he’s trying to make money, he’s being really theatrical and swinging his banjo all over the place. Remind me when I get back and I’ll show you the video. It was really impressive and reminded me of something that I would do in public if I had talent.

But there are a ton of musicians in the streets here. I really like it actually. I could just walk around and listen to street musicians all day I think. And some of them are stinkin good too. The good one’s always make me think of the movie “Once”. Cause there are some real artists out here that probably won’t ever make more than just the euros tossed into their hat, instrument case, or in one instance, their pants…haha this one guy had tucked the legs of this oversized pair of pants he was wearing into his socks and whenever someone wanted to give him money, he would grab the elastic waist and pull it out and people would toss money into his pants! Haha he was legit.

But then I see the other people who are trying to showcase their talents on the streets for money. There are some dancers who are cool. I can respect that. But the ones I just don’t understand and who I will NEVER give money to are the people who dress up in some outfit and pretend to be a statue. Like really? Ok even if that was a real talent, how boring of a life must that be? Just to stand there all the time and then be able to brag about how still you can be…no fun at all. Like this girl for instance that I saw today:
Oh wait. That's NOT a girl. That's a guy!! What the heck is he doing with his life? and he honestly wasn't really that good at being still. Plus, it rains like half of each day here (on and off all day) so they have to pick up and run inside multiple times throughout the day. Meaning that when it's raining, this guy has to go sit in a restaurant or something dressed like that until it stops. Crazy. I do have to give this next guy some credit though cause he was pretty stinkin good at it:
Ok that guy is actually a real statue. I did see that guy though and I thought he might be fake so I spent like 30 seconds getting close to it and in the end, I got the courage to touch it. I'm still not 100 percent that it is fake but i'm like 98%. The 2% that I'm not sure comes from the fact that its just in such a random place for a stationary statue...I don't know..I'll never be fully sure.

Today, we've had some great Irish weather (rain, cold, windy) so I decided to go for a walk and try to see something cool. Here are some pictures that I took on my walk:
This is the gate to a cool little cemetery that I found during my walk. I spent quite a while in here and had just a really sweet time with the Lord and some good fellowship with him. It was much needed and he definitely met me in a way that I needed. But these next few pictures are from the cemetary. And keep in mind, these are all just taken with my phone so quality isn't awesome. I took some with my camera as well but, as aforementioned, I cannot put those on my coputer til I get back to the states...



This was the biggest and coolest celtic cross. Almost all the graves had celtic crosses on them.
There were a few graves that were just big slabs of some kind of stone where the words were just barely and faintly etched into the top. This is one of those..



So anyways, that cemetery was a pretty cool place.

I feel like this little spot was made way cooler by how hard it was for me to get there. It's like a little walkway on top of a wall that was like...gosh it's just going to be too hard to explain. It was like a walkway that was up high but there were huge breaks in the wall so I had to actually climb up the wall to get here. Like it was basically two walls, like 10 feet apart from each other. And in between them is filled with dirt and now grows grass and these trees and stuff...if that makes any sense..
Just a fairly legit railway bridge.
Aston Martin Vanquish. Yeah, I touched it multiple times.
When I got out into the country a little bit, the walkways looked like this most of the time. It was really pretty!

So that's all the pictures I've got for the moment. Obviously I've decided to start taking some with my phone so hopefully they'll keep coming.

Ah this is just going to be a beast of a post. That's good. Ok so definitely one thing that is different about irish guys than the guys in the rest of the world is that, for some reason, they just love to walk around arm in arm with their friends and sing loudly in public places. Or really anytime. Like you could be looking around in a store and two guys in the back will I guess say something that reminds them of a song and they'll just break into it. It's actually exactly how I wish everybody was...but I don't know how well that would go over in the US. Who cares though actually! Dudes, be ready to sing with me in public places when I get back. Especially Danny. ;)

So the biggest decision that I still need to make today is whether or not to buy this hat that I really want. I'm not doing incredibly awesome on my budget (no suprise there) and this hat is like 30 euro...I really like it though. It's one of those oldschool hats that you would expect to see on either a newsie or on a golfer who wears knickers. I want it. Let's just be honest, I will probably buy it.

So I'm really interested to know whether people other than my parents have actually read through all this...actually, I wouldn't even be suprised it one of my parents didn't feel like reading through ALL of this. I mean I know it gets pretty lengthy. But hey if you do read it, you should let me know...yup yup.

There are people that I miss a lot right now.

I'm done. I should have stopped long ago but I didn't and there's no sense in...gosh. Whatever. I'm done for now though. Ok bye. Dang it. No i'm not done. I forgot that I wanted to recomend that everyone get's a CD by a band called Coconut Records. I've been into them for a while now but I'm listening to them right now and they're really tight. It's Jason Schwartzman's band (drummer from Phantom Planet and actor in like every Wes Anderson movie). They have two cd's and if you really are going to get one, get the one called "Nighttiming". And if my parents are the only ones reading this, then this was probably a worthless blurb cause I don't really feel like you'd like this band that much...hah maybe you would though. haha

Ok now I really am done.

Crash Bandicoot

Ramble! Where'd you go?

Before I get side-tracked with all that I want to get side-tracked with, here are the pictures that Trevor took of our James Joyce trek back in Dubsies:



Tons of this kind of stuff all over the place. I was into it.
We were walking right by a canal for a large part of our hike...thus the water in all of these...
You can see the next 20 minutes or so of our walk down the left side...
This is after we got to the coast and were actually on our way back. Those yellow flowers just lines like a solid 2 miles of the coast.
This was the "ocean" as we first saw it when we hit the coast. The tide was down at the moment but I guess whenever it comes in, this place just fills with water really quickly. That would have been cool to see. If you look really closely, you can see a black dot in the upper left of the picture that is a couple out there walking on it with their dog. So there's a little perspective...
Haha this was awesome. I wish you could see the surrounding area because this was in the middle of nowhere at all. But this little crappy mobile home had locked itself in there and that was just where they were living. We were taking pictures til the people inside looked out at us and made it awkward.
That's the last of them. Thanks Trevor Brown for taking those.

Now. I feel like during the last 24 hours, I have thought of so many things that I wanted to mention and now I keep drawing from the hat but every time, it's just a blank slip. I'm going to try one more time or else I'm just going to wait and do this later...blank. Sorry. I'll get back to this later today. Which honestly, is probably fine with you cause you'll be sleeping for another 6 hours or so (best case scenario).

Yer Boi

If you're looking out accross the atlantic from the US then yes, it's true. The grass actually is much greener on the other side.

The 5 pictures above were all taken by Trevor Brown. I wish i could take credit for them but i can't. They are all from around Dublin. The two pictures below are just things i got with my phone so they're nothing great. I wish i could capture how quaint and beautiful it is here much better than I have been able to. But i guess a taste is a taste.



In my head right now, I’m literally having a debate over whether or not I should add pictures to this blog. I don’t have very many at all but I did take a few with my phone today while I was out walking around…I just don’t feel like they will even come close to doing this place justice and so if I post both the pictures, and a large amount of verbal praise for the beauty of this place, you will be forced to question me. So who knows…I’ll decide by the time I finish up writing this.

You know how people always go places, take a bunch of pictures, come back home, get really excited to show you their pictures, and then finally convince you to sit through all of them? What is the disclaimer that is thrown out 95% of the time? “These pictures will not be able to do this justice.” To which you reply with an “I’m sure” or a “yeah of course”. Well I feel like Ireland might be one of those places that you actually could do justice to with photographs. Like if a really good photographer came here, I think that he or she might actually be able to capture this place in pictures. From a purely visual standpoint that is. The really incredible thing about this place is just the amount of GREEN!

So today I woke up early and caught a bus from Dublin to Galway (west coast of Ire). It was about a 3-hour bus-ride and even though, from a third-person perspective, I’m sure it would have looked like a very tranquil, smooth bus-ride. However, if you could have been in my head during this bus-ride, it was anything but tranquil. So I’m sure you’re wondering why it was so stressful mentally but I think I’ll make you wait a minute to hear why. Instead, I’ll go into the views driving across Ireland. Ireland is beautiful in a way that is different from anywhere I’ve ever seen before. It is very close to flat most places. There is very little elevation change anywhere. It’s just small rolling hills. And the entire country seems to be sectioned into sheep pastures or something. Like its just squares of perfectly smooth, green grass each bordered by rows of small trees. Then there are random streams winding their way through the countryside. Each bringing with it some very quaint, shire-esque bridges. Then there are the little perfect houses; each sitting on the highest point of land on each plot like the watchmen of paradise. And of course, the oversized cotton-balls with legs are EVERYWHERE (I’m speaking of sheep). And now, though my current literary train of thought is just all over the place, I shall now explain why the bus-ride was stressful. It’s really a stupid reason and probably one of those things that only someone like Alex will really be able to understand fully. So there were only 4 people on the bus I was riding on and I’m going to guess that this bus has at least 50 seats (and no, I’m not saying alex could understand best just because it deals with a bus). So anyways, whenever there are only four people on a bus, and there are 50 seats, you expect that people will spread out and give each other some space. However, as we’re about to pull away from the stop in Dublin, a girl got on the bus and walked all the way back to my row (2 from the back) and sat, not just in my row, but in the seat next to me! I think she asked whether I minded but she was from Finland, so I couldn’t understand her REAL well. Anyways, after she sat down, I decided I should try to make friends so I made some small talk. Her English was not so good though so that didn’t last long. After about 15 minutes, she decided to try to sleep. Long story short, I ended up spending the next 2 hours and 45 minutes telling this girl not to worry about it each time she nodded off and ended up with her head on my shoulder for about 5 seconds before jolting to awareness. It was incredibly awkward but she just kept doing it!!! Like I’m not exaggerating, she put her head on my shoulder at least 20 times during the car ride. I was like, “are you kidding!” I mean I didn’t actually say that though. And every time she did it, she’d give this little laugh that at first was OK, but by the end, I found myself mocking the laugh in my head for the 3 minutes following each time she did it. Needless to say, I was happy when we got to her stop.

Well, I thought about just going ahead and posting this now, but I just read back through it and it is just kinda flat. SO I think I’ll wait til later when I can add more too it and maybe I’ll be in the mood to be more ridiculous.

**18 Hours later**

Wow. I’m getting behind now. And even though I have now two very big nights to tell you about, I must first make some meaningless observations about the room in which I am currently sitting. Ok so see if you can picture the wall décor that I am about to describe to you. O the wall directly opposite me, there are 8 red dots all in a horizontal line and decreasing in size from left to right. Each one has a clock in it with the local time of a different place in the world. There are three things about it that are bugging me. Firstly, I don’t understand why they made the dots decrease in size if they were going to put the same size clock in all of them. That just doesn’t make sense and it kinda looks weird because the dot furthest to the right is almost disappearing behind the local time in Tokyo. This brings me to my second observation. The local time in Tokyo is found on both the 4th and the 8th dots…that’s just kinda weird. I mean there are 24 time zones in the world (I believe) and here we have space for only 8. But instead of choosing 8 different ones, we have chosen Tokyo twice. Then, on top of that, the décor itself is 8 different red dots surrounded by white…each very reminiscent of it’s own personal Japanese flag. I dong know. It’s just confusing me. Then my last problem with this is that the 6th dot is larger than the 5th. It’s like they’re out of order. The 2nd is smaller than the 1st, the 3rd smaller than the 2nd, etc. All except the 6th. It’s kinda driving me nuts the more I talk about it though so I’ll move on.

In other news, I definitely watched almost all of Spiderman 3 with some people last night and Toby Maguire has got to be the cheesiest possible character in that movie. I mean when spiderman starts moving his hips in a pelvic thrust motion repetitively, you know that you have moved from the genre of “awesome comic book movie with superhero that I secretly (and I guess now openly) reeeeeally desire to share superpowers with” to the genre of “what the heck is happening and why am I still sitting here? /SLASH/ haha this is kinda funny actually…”

So two nights ago, I was on my last night in Dublin. And it was a great one. At, I believe, around 7 or so, I set off with Trevor and Jean (the tight couple I met there from N. Carolina. And I don’t think they’ll read through this, but on the offchance that they do, I’m not going to go into details of why they’re so awesome because that would be awkward. But we’ll just say that they’re tight and that as far as couples go, I’ve never met one that was as easy to hang out with. And they obviously loved each other a lot and understood each other really well. Ok I’m done) where was i? Oh yes, I set off with Trevor and Jean on a journey. Trevor is a creative writing major back in college and so he’s into cool books and stuff. Anyways, he had read a book of short stories that take place in Dublin written by the one and only James Joyce. Joyce apparently liked to be very cartographically accurate and so he put maps in the book to go along with the stories. So Trevor had one of these short stories that took these two children out into this field on the coast of Dublin and so we were going to try to walk the path. Well, turns out that Dublin is very different in 2009 than it was in 1920 and so there is a lot more going on around the shipyards in Dublin than there used to be. Anyways so we weren’t really able to walk the exact path but we did end up finding the field we think. Even if it wasn’t really the field though, the hike was AWESOME! I feel like we really got out of the touristy area and saw some of what the real Dublin is like. And once we got to the coast, it was beautiful. Trevor took a ton of pictures so when he puts them up, I’ll put some of them on here so you can see some of our trek. I think we probably walked somewhere between 7 and 10 miles total and it was great. Totally loved it.. And then that night, I just went back to that pub that was playing the good music the previous night and hung out for just a bit before going back home. Great night.

Now to last night. Last night I went to a pub here in Galway that was playing some traditional irish music and I was totally planning on just staying for a little while and then heading to bed early, but I met these two American girls in there and I ended up going around with them to a few different pubs looking for a good place to get our irish dance on. Their names were Ashlee and Alycia and the reason they were so fun to hang out with was because they weren’t like every other american girl here who just wants to meet guys who are down to have a random fling for the night. They were actually just fun to hang out with for the night and they weren’t getting wasted or anything. Plus they danced like my friends back home do and didn’t seem to care much that everyone was watching. So it was a real fun night. It’s weird though how you can spend an entire evening hanging out and just having fun with some people and then at the end of the night, you say bye and you’re pretty much positive it’s literally the last time you’ll talk to them. It’s just kinda weird but is kinda a pattern on this trip just cause people are always moving on to other places (including myself).

Ways to tell if a girl is an american:
1. If it takes her more than 20 minutes to finish a beer, she’s got to be american.
2. If she makes a little sour face after every sip of the beer, she’s definitely an american.
3. If she’s wearing flip-flops when she goes out at night, she’s an american.
4. If, when the irish music starts playing, she moves her hips first instead of her feet first, there’s a good chance she’s american.
5. And if she’s not wearing a lot of make-up when she goes out, she’s an american.

How to tell if a guy in a pub is american:
1. If he’s part of a group of people, and you watch them for more than 5 min, you will see that the american guys are all looking around the room and trying to find the cutest girls that look the most drunk. Then after about 7 minutes of searching, they will each try to place themselves near the girls they have chosen, “accidentally” bump into them, and use that to start a conversation. Americans, in general, are annoying and just trying to make out with a girl each night.
2. If he his not part of a group (he is alone), the american guy will be leaning against a wall, beer in hand, trying his best to put of the cool guy, John Wayne vibe. I think his hope is that a girl will just come talk to him if he looks cool enough or something. Regardless, it doesn’t work. But that american guy is very easy to pick out.

I have decided that the best way to meet people is to just go up to them and start a conversation. I’ve found that most people are also interested in meeting people and that, even though this is contrary to my former thought process, the start of a conversation does not have to make sense. You just have o say something, anything, that breaks the ice. Then you exchange names, origins, etc etc etc and now you’re friends. It’s actually very easy.

And I really like it that for some reason, which makes no sense to me, people think I am british. I don’t think I’m trying to talk differently or anything either. I am just glad though that I don’t sound like I’m from Oklahoma. Even the american girls I was kickin it with last night said they thought I sounded like I was from the UK. It made me way too happy.

OK this is waaaay too long. I’m going to stop without a closing.

Christian

OH and obviously, i decided to add pictures...

You are dancing to my little red book...

Once again I find myself sitting on this same couch, my feet suffering greatly but temporarily alleviated from pain by means of the coffee table perch they have commandeered. Once again I am typing on my laptop while listening to Ben Harper’s new cd and am currently listening to the song “Faithfully Remain”. There’s another chick flick on the TV turned on by some girls. Really, you could put this moment directly beside the similar moment from yesterday and you might not even be able to tell a difference. However, an entire day and night has gone by between the two moments. A good day and a good night.

I’ll work backwards. I just returned from the Irish Museum of Archeology with Phil. It was pretty cool. It had a bunch of things that they have found from the Viking era. It was pretty crazy. They had some sick combs that were carved out of slivers of deer antler. The prongs were so tiny I can’t believe you could make them without them breaking. And then they had a bunch of weapons and jewelry and masonry and all the stuff you would expect. The two coolest things that they had there were: first, they had a canoe-type boat from like 500-100 BC. It was carved out of a tree trunk and was about 35-40 ft long but only like a foot deep. For some reason, it was awesome. Then they had these guys whose bodies had been found in some marshland which had somehow preserved them incredibly well. Like it was actually really creepy. This one guy’s face was like perfect. Other than the fact that it looked hard, and his skin had turned to like a charred black color, he could have been alive still. And you could still see like the hairs on the back of his fingers and everything. It was crazy and kinda creep-tastic.

So directly before that, me, phil, and Daniel went to get some lunch and took a real long walk around Dublin and just took in some final sights. Originally, we were looking for an Irish lunch but after examining about 8 menus, we decided to avoid low-blowing our wallets and we just went to Burger King. Phil tells me that I almost got killed by a guy on a motorcycle when I was crossing the street. I was like, dude, the motorcycle dude is lucky I didn’t see him coming cause I would probably have instinctively punched his motorcycle in the face. Yeah.

I’m trying to think what we did all morning prior to lunch…oh yeah, I slept til like 2pm. We were up pretty late last night. The night started out with just hanging out with a bunch of people in the hostel. I think, in the end, our group consisted of a French-Canadian guy, 2 german guys, a german girl, an american guy, an american girl, and two guys from florida who think they’re irish. We just hung out for a long time at the hostel and then at around midnight, we went to a pub down the street that was playing some awesome traditional irish music. I mean it definitely felt very gimmicky and completely non-authentic, but it was still fun because the live band was good and they were playing great music for doing some folky dancing. Now let’s just say that there are two facts that, at this point, are 100% true. Fact 1: Christian Roderick does NOT know how to folk dance. Fact 2: at least 50 people are now FULLY aware of Fact 1. Hah it was really fun though. I do want to say that nobody was really dancing when we got there and I’m pretty sure that I get a lot of the credit for getting the dancing going. A group of like 30 year old girls from Wales were cool enough to join in on the dancing and it was a good time. Then they made us go to some other place to dance cause they said it was more fun. It ended up being like a real dance club. The girls got us in free somehow and I pretty much had a blast dancing “Christian-style” for a while and then we left at like 3 AM and came back to hang out at the hostel some more with everybody. All in all, it was a pretty fun night. I’m always down to get my dance on!

Prior to all that, Phil, Daniel, and I went to a restaurant that was serving “Real Irish Food”. The food was great and the live irish music was awesome and it was just an all-around good experience.

And that brings us right back to the mirror image of this current moment from yesterday.

Basically though, at the moment I am very happy with having found myself able to meet people and I’ve been happy with the people I’ve met as well. One of the German guys that I met yesterday reminded me sooo much of Andy it was ridiculous. He and I ended up getting into a really intense discussion about socialism/capitalism/obama/bush/etc. It was actually pretty fun though cause he wasn’t completely close-minded about anything and I hope he didn’t find me close-minded either. I think he helped me understand some of why he thinks the way he does and stuff. But really, when it really gets down to it, there is just this fundamental difference in thinking between american capitalists and European socialists. I really believe that if they could experience the freedom of capitalism, they would realize that it’s value greatly outweighs the negative aspects of it as a system. And the more I learn about how thoroughly socialism dominates every area of your life in Europe, the more scared I become about that happening in the United States. I hope to have some more conversations similar to this throughout my trip.

Well…I don’t know whether anyone even really reads this in it’s entirety (which is completely understandable considering that it’s all kinds of long), but if you do, thanks for caring that much. I’m having a lot of fun over here and I’m also just loving meeting all these people.

I’m out for now.

Rodsies

Phoebe what?

Results of speedwalking around Dublin for 3 hours:
1. Feet feel like they are currently walking around on hot gravel when, in reality, they are actually just perched atop the miniature coffee table sitting in front of this comfy couch I’m lounging on.
2. My shirt is not wet but is very damp. It has been “spraining” off and on all day here. IF you are not familiar with the term, here is an explanation: “spraining” is a term used to describe a very light rain. It is different from saying that it is sprinkling because when you say it is sprinkling, you usually mean that it is essentially misting heavily. However, when it is spraining, it is both misting (not heavily though) as well as raining sparsely (word?) . This is taking me much longer to explain than it should cause I’m trying to be all clever about the way I say it. Basically though, spraining is a mix between sprinkling and raining. It’s not just “raining” because the raindrops are fewer and further between. It is also not just sprinkling though because there are raindrops mixed in. Thus, spraining. Gosh.
3. My fingers are almost to the point of being numb from cold and my arm muscles feel very sluggish for the same reason. However, I am also sweating pretty heavily. There is a really cool, fairly strong wind that is ever present thus far in Dublin and when the sun is not out (as is the case today) it can be pretty cold. I, in all my brilliance, decided to just wear a t-shirt today and have ended up with cold arms and hands. But due to the intensity of my walking, I find myself sweating as well. It feels confusing but I like it…

Did I or did I not buy something really shady from a creepy lady in an alleyway that I accidentally wandered into? I did not.

I did, however, purchase 2 sweaters from a store, the name of which I shall not disclose. Regardless though, I now can actually dress appropriately for the weather here. I definitely brought not enough long-sleeved shirts. I just brought all t-shirts. Stupid.

So originally, the purpose of my long walk through Dublin was to meet up with Phil Rogers and Daniel at the Guinness Brewery for a tour. Phil and Dan showed up at my hostel this morning and are staying til tomorrow night so we’re kicking it. Unfortunately though, my head does not hold as good of a map as I thought it did and I never found the brewery. I did end up in a really cool part of Dublin though. I think I kinda got away from the touristy area and got to see where people really live and I got to see some actual irish people instead of just seeing the mix of people visiting Ireland that I had been seeing. So that was cool. Dublin is interesting. I can’t really get a read on it. Sometimes I’m really impressed with it’s cleanliness, and other times, I’m appalled by how filthy it is. Sometimes I meet irish people who are just the nicest, most helpful people I could ask for and other times, they are just short (verbally and in stature) and kinda mean.

In my hostel, I am in a room with 5 beds other than my own. Currently, 4 of them are in use. I am rooming with a guy from Ireland who lives about 45 minutes away and is just here for a week taking a class, a French-Canadian guy who is 18 years old and here looking for a job and a place to live (he’s kinda weird and awkward), and then a French couple who are obsessed with whispering very loudly. Like seriously, I think they could just talk half as loud as they are “whispering”. And there has got to be no language more annoying to hear whispered than French. And they keep inviting me to go do stuff with them cause they think I’m lonely and I keep having to come up with excuses when the truth is really that they don’t speak great English and it would be a really labored conversation which I’m not too into.

I did meet a couple of tight people from North Carolina. Jean and Trevor what what!? Yeah but they’re tight and we went out and got a couple of pints of Guinness last night which, as I was told so many times prior to testing it out for myself, actually is a lot better here than in the states. It’s still not my favorite, but it’s not bad. We’re in a really touristy area though so a pint ran us about 6 euro a piece!! That’s like $7.50!! Ridiculous…but totally worth it. I would talk more about the N. Carolinians but I feel like they may read this and that’s just weird.

As of right now I have yet to put my camera to good use. This does not mean that I have not taken any pictures though. I have taken one. You know those pictures that you always see on people’s cameras where you can tell they JUST took their camera out of their bag and they just want to shoot something so they take a picture of their friend when their friend isn’t even looking and so you end up with a picture of some person almost from behind with his mouth half open, looking like he either just pointed at something or is about to point at something and the lighting sucks, etc...well I took one of those of Phil. That is the only picture I’ve taken. It’s pretty good.

Oh yeah, so there are head shops all over the place with big marijuana leaves on the front and stuff so me and another dude walked into one just to check it out. They weren’t selling marijuana there (not that we were looking for any) but they had all the paraphernalia like US head shops. And of course they have all the counter-culture stuff like t-shirts with che Guevara on them and stuff. Anyways, I have been thoroughly confused about whether pot is legal here or not because I will randomly see people smoking it just out in the open but if it was legal, I would think they would be selling it in places like head shops. So anyways, during my walk today, I saw a guy who was smoking some and so I stopped him and asked him. I was like “dude, is marijuana legal here?” His answer was, “well…it’s not illegal…want some?” So I said no and he went on. But what the heck does that mean? Like what a noncommittal answer. I mean using my deductive reasoning I think that means that it is legal…but why wouldn’t he just say that? The point though is that I still have no idea what the laws are here regarding pot and I think I am more confused now than I was before. Awesome. I guess I really don’t care anyways. I was just wondering.

Another thing worth noting is that the new Ben Harper CD is legit. I got it just before I left and have been listening to it a lot. I’m actually listening to it at this exact moment. It’s bomb. Check it out. The song on right now is “Faithfully remain”. It’s a good one.

**Two hour time gap**
So now I’m definitely watching PS I love you. Not my movie choice. These two girls just came into the TV room and decided we needed to be really chicky flicky and so they’ve not turned it on and I’m engrossed. I believe their names were Rachel and Amanda…not positive though and who knows if I ever will be? Jesus does. He knows everything.

I have never been as happy as I hoped to be with a wine that has a screw-on top. This bottle wasn’t even dirt cheap or anything. It was like 15 dollars US. It just had a screw cap so it sucks. Ok fine it doesn’t completely suck. Maybe it’s like a 50% sucker. Yeah. That’s about right.

I feel incredibly gay watching this movie with people I don’t know. Why is it so different when I watch a movie with people I don’t know as compared to watching the same movie with people I do know? Like I could watch this movie with Becca or with Alex and I wouldn’t feel gay at all. But here, in this room with these two girls I don’t know, watching “Merrick” telling his wife how much he loves her, I feel crazy feminine. I don’t like it. I wonder if that’s how every girl in the room was feeling during gladiator yesterday…I don’t think so. I think that’s just cause its not a negative thing for girls to like guy things. Or maybe I’m just stupid in thinking that Gladiator is a guy movie…whatever. It’s whatever. It is whatever. It IS whatever.

*1 hour later*

Ok, so the actress that plays phoebe in Friends is also in PS I love you as one of the main girl’s friends. She’s freakin hilarious.

Christain

Outski

I never knew there were female leprechauns.

So here I am. Just kickin it in Dubsies. First of all, here are a few things that I have noticed while walking around today:
1. Out of every hundred people, about 95 of them are smoking. Now of course that is an exaggeration. But seriously, tons of people smoke here. And you may ask why, if I am so aware that I exaggerated, why I did not just change my estimate to be more accurate and avoid the exaggeration? As a response to this presumed question, I will say that I did it for effect. But seriously. In Dublin, it’s not a question of whether or not somebody smokes. It is a question of whether they are currently smoking.
2. The only people who have dogs in downtown Dublin are homeless people. But seriously every single one of them has one. It’s weird. All the dogs look like they’re about 8 seconds away from death. (again, an exaggeration for effect)
3. Today I was walking and I saw a t-shirt that said “In BOD we trust”. I have no idea what that means to people here but I really wanted to get it because, of course, I am Christian ROD the BOD. For any of you who are unaware, that is a name that was given to me by my boy Alex Little who keeps it really real. I have no idea why he calls me that. It started as Rod. Then Rod the BOD. And now it’s just BOD. I really don’t know why he calls me that because I’m not exactly rockin a killer bod or anything. However, I like it so I have not physically forced him to quit even though I could.
4. Even before the tourists come here, Dublin is an extremely diverse group of people. There are people from all over the world here. Then you have all the tourists as well who have come from all over. I believe that this contributes to the reason for the next observation that I have made.
In the states, cars drive on the right side of the road. Also, etiquette states that you should always walk on the right side of a path or walkway. In Ireland, cars drive on the left side of the road and, logically, their etiquette states that persons should walk on the left side of the walkway. However, there are so many people here who are not used to walking on the left side of the walkway that you end up with about half and half. Considering how packed the walkways are with people here, it can make it very difficult to avoid running straight into people. You usually have that thing where when you’re walking straight at someone, at the last second you will both move to your respective rights in the states. Here however, about 50% of the time, you both end up moving in the same direction and it results in a collision. I’m always worried they’re doing it on purpose and are trying to steal something from me.

So basically, I don’t really like Dublin. It seems to have very little irish flavor (unless irish and American flavors are very similar) and though it seems to be trying desperately to be rich and full of flavor, it just ends up coming off as very touristy. Thus, I look forward to moving on to the western part of Ireland so that I can experience a little more of the true irish flava flav.

How much is there really to see in Dublin? I’m sure this is something you were dying to know the answer to. Basically, there isn’t a whole lot. There are really only like 3 things that I want to see as far as I can tell. I have seen one of them (Dublin castle) and it was kinda a let down. So I don’t have REAL high hopes for the other two but hopefully I will be pleasantly proved wrong. I could tell you what the other two things are but I think I’ll just let you wait until I have seen them.

“Christian, how do you feel about being over there all by yourself?” Wow. That’s just another really great question. Thank you for asking. Um, I think that at this point, I would say that I am very much enjoying being alone over here and I’m enjoying the freedom of having no one around. However, even though at this moment, I am enjoying it, I can tell that it is something that I will eventually get sick of.. So we’ll see how long that takes. If I start getting sick of myself, I guess I’ll just have to meet some people. *Fright!!* You know? OK well yeah.

I did get up the guts to sit down and kick it with a homeless dude who was begging on a bridge yesterday though. I wish I could say he was really tight but honestly, he was kinda a jerk. I think it pretty much came down to the fact that he thought he could make more money if I wasn’t sitting beside him so he wanted me to leave. So after a couple failed attempts at conversation, I just tossed him a “Jesus loves you”, threw up the deuce, and peaced out. I think I’ll try it again though later maybe…(“again though later maybe”? is that even English?)

Meals so far: Lunch yesterday – burger king, Dinner yesterday – dinner? What? I think I was asleep…, lunch today – SOME NAME’s sandwich joint (irish chicken ceasar wrap…yum), dinner today – burger king. I’m definitely not branching out enough. That’s all I’m saying.

I guess the last thing that I will say right now is that I still have not taken a single picture. There are really just two reasons for this. This first would be that I do NOT want to look like just another tourist (I know, for some reason I care even though I literally have no reason to) and the other reason is that there really just isn’t that much in Dublin that I would want a picture of.

Oh and the parliament here is not called “parliament” or “congress” or anything lame. IT is called the “House of Lords”. That’s tight.

Keep it real boyos and lassies. (those names are not irish slang I don’t think, I just like them)