a Craic'ing good time ...otherwise known as my first irish week

Ireland so far …

My challenges have been:

• dialing the phone. (sometimes you add an 01, sometimes a 0 in front of a number)
• placement of the shift key on the keyboard

• I keep saying dollars instead of euros
• Standing on the correct side of the street when attempting to hail a cab
• Crossing the street (knowing which way to look to check for oncoming traffic)
• Pronouncing things in a way that the Irish understand me (for instance my apartment is on a street called Fitzwilliam Quay - I keep wanting to pronounce it Kwaay…the Irish pronounce it Key)

What I've done ….

When I arrived on Wednesday …It was beautiful weather outside, sunny and in the 70's. But when I got to my apartment, I fell asleep. My plan was to get the lay of the land in my neighborhood, work out the walk to the office, and do a minimum amount of grocery shopping. Instead, I got to the apartment, and then feel asleep. So of course, didn't sleep much(if any) on Wednesday night. I did, through a serious of flipping through the local phone book and all my guide books realize that my apartment is "off the map" at least in terms of tourist maps. But I managed to figure out where I was off the map and found in the phone book a Chinese restaurant around the corner from my apartment and I ordered dinner.

Thursday, I went to the office, as I suspected there were both expecting me and not prepared for me. Everyone was charming in the office, and when explaining that I would be here for a few weeks and then taking a course out west, the frequent response was "brilliant." The Irish have proven to be quite lovely so far. An SAIC friend (cc) was in town for the night. We had a tasty Italian meal in a charming restaurant off of Merrion Square and then went to a pub, which is apparently frequented by more Dubliners than tourists (according to the cab driver- Dubliners go there for "a wee bit of drink and a wee bit of music"). We anticipated lively Irish jig type of music, instead it was rather melancholy and slow. On my ride home that evening, my cab driver shared with me his love life whoas and gave me instructions on what areas I shouldn't walk though at night…he also pointd out that his "mad exgirlfriend" kept calling his mobile on the cab ride, in a 7 minute ride, she called 10 times. I gave him love advice, and a big tip as he dropped me off. And when I came home, I actually did sleep a bit, but not as much as I needed.

Friday, went to the office. Struggled again with the shift key, and dialing out … but getting the hang of it. Then came home, took a nap, discovered a web site that you can order delivery from (yeah the internet) …ordered Indian food, watched Irish TV (which from what I can tell is a lot of BBC shows, dramas of various sorts (as in the soap opera family), American shows (a season late), and there is even a channel that from time to time has shows that are all Gaelic, and more than once it's taken me several minutes to realize that it isn't just the heavy Irish brogue that I can't understand, it's another language) I then fell asleep for the night sometime around 1am, and slept til 12:45 the next afternoon.

Saturday, hadn't expected to sleep away the morning, and I woke up to the type of weather I had been expecting, wet and grey. I walked around and found a spot to buy some coffee and yogurt and dish detergent and all that stuff. And then I ventured out into the city. I read, in more than one guidebook, about a literary pub crawl, and according to the website, it was a good activity for women traveling alone. So I took a deep breath, walked into the pub that was the starting point, and solo, bought a ticket and joined the pub crawl.

It was fun. The crawlers were a mix of americans, candadians, dubliners, aussies, even a norweigan (who used to live in new zealand) the Norwegian (or Viking as our guide referred to her) was a charming woman in her fifties, recently divorced, traveling ireland on her own because she has always wanted to visit ireland and had no friends who were interested in coming. She and I pal'd around on the crawl, and at the end of the crawl ended up in a pub with the dubliners from the crawl who kept buying us round after round of guinness and not letting us return the favor and buy them drinks. They were lovely and entertaining and we were in the pub past last call when finally we declared a cease fire …it was time to head home.

Sunday, I wasn't as hungover as I worried I would be, although I was a tad rough…. and CC was back in the city for the day/night. We ventured out for lunch, of course not before I took us in the wrong direction (and forget to bring the map with me) as we walked the Ballsbridge nieghborhood. After lunch I took her to one of the pubs we hit on the crawl, one that Osar Wilde and Samuel Beckett frequented while students at Trinity. Watching the World Cup, outside the US, is an experience. Everywhere people were draped with either french or italian flags. I'm not one for watching "football" but even I got caught up in the exitement of the game. We had sort of arbitrarily decided to route for France. Which seemed like a good idea, up until the end …and in particular up till the controversial head butt, and were genuinely disapponted when they lost. Although we both agreed the Italians had more hotties on their team.

CC left me this monday morning to fly back to the states …and here I am … back at the office, mastering the shift key, and struggling to make calls outside the office….