Yay Money!

My two new favorite words were discovered today: "fees" & "refund". Got an email today from UCD saying that I had quite a nice bit of money owed to me from the college. I knew that my loans from the government were more than my costs here were going to be, but I wasn't sure what that meant. Would it just not get disbursed? Would it float away in the ether of exchange rates? Apparently the full first half got disbursed to the UCD Fees Office and so now I've got extra! And when the second half is disbursed next semester I'll have extra again! This is how I feel about this:

I've opened a bank account finally and once my info gets cleared by amorphous criminal and governmental entities (which should happen by Thursday evening or Friday morning) I'll be able to deposit the refund check. Now I know that this isn't actually real money, but rather a loan from my illustrious country, so I'm going to try to get a savings account too on Thursday/Friday and put at least half of this check in there so I don't spend it and have the previously mentioned illustrious country pissed at me when I can't pay them back right away. So yes! YAY!

Photography Friday!

Or rather I'll say Fotagrafaicht Aoine in honor of this officially bilingual country. And to my Irish readers, if that's wrong feel free to blame englishirishdictionary.com, it's not my fault if y'all are putting false information out there.

ps sorry about the blurriness

Irish Bureaucracy Hooray!

Hello! So like I said in my last post, I've gotten my Garda card! I first showed up here on Monday at about 4pm, but guess what?? The office is open until 10pm but they had stopped issuing numbered tickets hours beforehand, meaning that enough people to fill up 6 more hours were already waiting!! So on the advice of the surprisingly nice front desk man, I came back the next morning at 8:30am to get in the special student line outside. Even though they don't start paying attention to that line until 9am. And the line was already around the block. For reals. All I've got to say is thank god it wasn't raining and that I had had the foresight to buy a breakfast crepe to eat in line (thank you breakfast crepe girl!). It wasn't that bad actually, I got my ticket - wooo #284 - and the lady told me to come back at 12:30. So I walked around downtown a lot, went to the Hugh Lane Gallery that I hadn't gotten to see a few weeks ago, read my book on a bench by the Liffey and window shopped.

Got back at noon and guess what number they were servicing? Why it was 140! Awesome. So I walked more, window shopped more, read more. At about 2:30 they were finally at number 220 so I figured I ought to just stick around there. And seriously, GNIB, you would make so much money if you had a cafe. And you could charge whatever you wanted! You've got a hungry, anxious, captive audience, why not make some serious clams AND chill out the people in the waiting area? Also, my uniformed friends, you have got to make a child play room. It doesn't have to be awesome or anything, just a room with some lame doctor office toys, books and changing table. There were understandably loads of small children there with their parents, and these were some bored and frustrated kids. I felt for them, if I didn't know how to talk I'd have been crying and whining too. And another thing, why in the world is the entire bathroom area lit with blue flourescent lighting? It gave an almost black-light quality to everything and was super unsettleing. That's got to be a hazard in terms of inducing seizures.

What I don't get are the people who waited there the whole day. I was stressed out and uncomfortable enough from just the 2 hours I spent there, I could not imagine how I would have felt to sit there for the entire 7. And I was just getting my student registration done and was relatively secure that my documents were in order and that I would be approved, and English is my first language. It must have been awful for the people who weren't secure that everything would work out. Sitting there I realized that my privelege as a white, educated, English speaker must have reduced the stress level considerably. So way to go fellow immigrants, you've got my respect!

Quick Hello!

Hi!! Don't worry a bigger post will be forthcoming, but as I have class in about half an hour, it'll have to wait until tomorrow morning. However (drum roll please) ........ I have been issued my Garda Registration card and am currently a legal resident under my student visa until September 30th 2009! Woot! And it only took me 7 hours of waiting to get it......

True Facts

Hi all! I'm up away to Belfast this weekend, but here are some facts I've realized about Ireland:

1) It will rain at least a little bit every day. If they have a full day of sunshine, it is regarded as wonderfully freakish and all of a sudden you see way more pale Irish skin than you're used to.

2) Because of the previous there really are rainbows all over the place. In the past week I've probably seen a rainbow every other day, including one gorgeous full-on child's drawing arc. (No luck on finding any leprechauns yet, still don't know where this country is keeping them....)

3) When I tell people I'm from Texas they never bring up George Bush, like most Americans would do, but they always ask me if I ride a horse everywhere and do men really wear those spiky things off the back of their boots and really tight jeans? (My answers being no, not really, and actually yes!)

4) Not surprisingly, I've learned that the majority of the Irish slang I'm familiar with is staunchly Northern Irish (Norn Iron!). There have been plenty of times where I've thrown out a slang term that I thought would pass right on and I'd fit in nicely just to have my housemates ask me What the heck I was saying? and Is that an American phrase? Thanks a lot Belfast ;)

5) People are friendlier to strangers. Not in a Texas "How you doin' honey have a nice day now!" sort of way, but in a "Well we're standing next to each other and we've exchanged a question so we might as well get to know each other!" way. Case in point: I'm in the line for the women's bathroom last night in the Student Bar, girl asks me if it was the line and I say yes, we exchange the stock conversation of "Why is the queue for the women's always so long!??!" As an American this conversation is done for me. Not so to freshman girl studying social science from Dublin "oh just right up the road in the top of Stillorgan". This happens all over the place: on the bus, buying shoes at the shopping center, etc etc.

6) I still get asked for directions. And I totally love that. Thanks for teaching me (giving me the genes for??) how to walk assertively Mom.

My First Trip Into Dublin

This is slightly out of chronological order from the last post, but I made a video from my first trip into downtown on Saturday the 6th. It was a nice foray, definitely a museum kind of day because of the weather. So I went to St. Stephen's Green, had an awesome little lunch in a cafe, visited both the National Museum of Ireland (Archeology & Ethnography site .... of course) and the National Gallery of Ireland. Then I walked up O'Connell St to the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery (a contemporary art museum) but... it had just closed. For another time eh?

Highlight of the trip would definitely have to be the 3 MUMMIFIED Irish Kings on display in the National Museum. I had no idea bog preservation was that awesome, you could still tell that one of the kings had had red hair! Oh or maybe the sad person who's job it was to wear the leprechaun suit plus giant papier mache head. That dude was still there four hours after I'd first seen him while walking towards the river. Talk about schadenfreude, just seeing him made me glad I was sitting on a smelly bus out of the rain.

On my first night out in Dublin, or "Whoooo COPPERS!"

So night before last I had my Irish initiation to a 'country' bar. It was called Copper Face Jacks (more affectionately known as Coppers) and this link's comment section says it all and more. PLUS it was the night after the All-Ireland Hurling Championship (the Super Bowl of hurling in Ireland if you will) so the place was awash with Counties Kilkenny and Waterford fans. The DJ had an almost wedding dance style of mixing, playing a few rap tunes, then a Jackson 5 and Blues Brothers, then a Cotton Eyed Joe-style "Everybody knows the step but Katie!" song. Essentially it was a dance your heart out, laugh at the creepy dudes and sing along at the top of your lungs party, and it was frickin' awesome. Oh and don't worry, I picked the steps up just fine :)

Fourth Night Here

Went to the beach today! .......well, ok it was the Merrion Strand (pokey beach town with a pokey beach), but still it had a surprisingly nice effect. It's amazing what an afternoon on the beach can do for your disposition. Particularly if that beach has happy dogs and giggling toddlers who like singing the chorus of "A sailor went to ......" "SEA SEA SEA!!" It's not that fancy, and there really wasn't that much beach to speak of, but it's a great spot to watch everyone having their post-Sunday lunch family walk.

In about 10 minutes I'm going out for the first time downtown! The two girls across the hall just moved in and invited me to join them, which made my lonely heart leap like the 7 lords (....a leapin'!). I'll give my verdict of the pub soon.