Irish People LOOK Irish

Our second day in Dublin was a blast! Matt and I, being people who don't have cellphones or wear watches or have any way of telling time, woke up 15 minutes before check-out and a half hour before our orientation at USIT. Good thing I brought my French beret - it certainly came in handy to hide some serious bed head. We packed up our bags, rushed downstairs to book two more nights, and relocated to a 6 person co-ed dorm room.

View from our hostel window

Our orientation was great. They threw a lot of information at us about accommodation, jobs, taxes, banking, etc. A cute little Irish girl came in from a temp agency and gave us her spiel, and I think we've decided that's the best way to go. Office jobs pay pretty well here, they are contract positions which allow us to move on and travel easily, the temp agency finds work for us, and it's 9-5 Monday-Friday. I'm not sure that finding a job will be the hard part, but finding a place to live will be. We might be hostel bums our whole time in Dublin!

The weather has been fantastic so far - about 12 degrees every day, grey but no rain...yet. We can walk the streets without a jacket no problem. Garda (police) are everywhere. People (i.e. local bums) like to drink on the streets. We walked past the Garda yesterday who was asking a man to pour out his beer onto the side of the road. As he was pouring it, the Garda says in his cool Irish accent "that's a waste of a good can, isn't it?" They're funny here. There's also security staff in every single store, even the grocery stores. All of the girls here dress up. They wear dresses and skirts with black nylons and tall boots. They wear various different styles of pea coats, with cute hats and scarves. I'm glad I brought my pea coat and beret - now I don't feel like too much of a loser compared to these stylish Europeans.

Realizing how easy it is to blow all of our money, Matt and I started "watching" our spending. We were really proud of ourselves when we bought two nights worth of dinner food at the grocery store for 7.79 Euros - that's 2 Euros per person per meal! But don't be too proud of us, we did some pub hopping and consumed a few pints of Irish beer later that evening, and blew 17 Euros on Chinese food on our way home. Well, we tried.

Since our move into the dorm room, we've met some really cool people. We went to a few pubs with Jake from Wichita, Kansas (yep, his house has been hit by a tornado). The pubs we were in play a lot of North American music. I think it's kinda strange to hear Madonna and Kid Rock in an Irish Pub - let alone an Irish man singing Kid Rock karaoke! There was one Irish band that played the song from from P.S. I Love You - you know, the one the hunky musician sang to woo Hilary Swank? Oooh, that got me excited, I love that movie. When we arrived back at our hostel, we met another roommate, Marwane from Morocco. He's a really interesting guy. Matt and I pretended not to watch him do his daily prayer rituals before bed - we couldn't help it, it was too neat not to watch. He apparently does it 5 times a day. Both Jake and Marwane invited us to do some touristy things with them today, but we didn't go along. We have a year to spend doing that stuff, whereas most other people are only here for a short time and they cram everything in at once. Plus, today we want to focus on job/flat searching and updating our CV's.

Grafton Street


Live entertainment on Grafton Street

Oh, we discovered another area of Dublin yesterday - Grafton Street. We kept saying how much our Mom's would LOVE it! Lots of fancy shopping, beautiful display windows, Christmas lights, and street entertainment. The atmosphere is really cool, but too expensive for our tastes. We also took a stroll through St. Stephens Green Park and I took lots of pictures of coloured doors. Why don't we paint our doors cool colours in Canada?!

I know it's not coloured, but I took this one for my mom!

Today we found a Winners-like store that was packed full of people and good deals. Matt bought a rugby-style hoody at a department store and he's looking quite Irish. There's a huge rugby game in Dublin tonight, Ireland vs. New Zealand. Matt just went to a pub with Marwane to watch the game. I probably should have went! Oh well, I can stay here and update my CV. The game is on tv and Metallica is playing in the background - what more could I ask for?!