wish my name were irish

woke up today with nothing to do (and no real desire to find something to do).  but alas, it was BEAUTIFUL outside–sunny and maybe 67 degrees.  i felt guilty about sitting around in the house, so i took my host family’s dog (milo) for a nice long walk and tried to get to know the area.  i usually just catch the bus that stops 1-2 minutes from the house, so i haven’t really looked at the rest of my neighborhood.  about 5 minutes into the walk, i fell off a curb trying to cross the street and got some nasty scrapes.  no dresses for me for awhile.  tonight i’ll go into dublin and meet the rest of the group to go to bars and clubs for the evening.

we have about 10 days in dublin to finish up our politics and history lessons with our professors from trinity.  then we leave for northern ireland for 3 weeks.  then one more week in dublin.  then ISP (aka FREEEEEEDOOOMMMMMMMMM!).  during the isp, individual study project, we can go wherever we want in ireland for the month to do research for our 40 pg paper.  i’ll probably do mine on art and politics (shocking, i know).  the main attraction is that we don’t really have anywhere we have to be for the whole month.

phrases the irish love:

1. “brilliant.” not used in the way we’re all used to, like “albert einstein was a brilliant student.”  instead, it’s more like amazing or wonderful.  for example, my 9 year old host brother had a football match today and his mother asked him, “were you brilliant on the field today?”
2. “grand.” everything is grand.  not great or good, but grand.  how are you? just grand, grand, thanks.  how was your day at school?  it was grand.  did you hurt yourself falling down while walking the dog?  no, i’m grand.
3. “gorgeous.” they often describe food or meals as being gorgeous– as opposed to supermodels or mansions.  the fajitas my host mother made were just gorgeous.  the meal that the hostel prepared for us was gorgeous.

they LOVE this song in the pubs in temple bar.  and every time, there’s some big girls singing along: