Day 28: Ireland
He clapped his hands sharply twice, tea time was over. We filed upstairs, disposable cups in hand and settled back down around the leather topped table that filled the long room. He sits at the head of the table, hands clasped in front of him, elbows on the table. His glasses hang around his neck, split in half on the bridge. Hair: white contrasts with his stark black sweater. His accented voice powerfully fills the room. He makes Molly move to right next to him when she fails to produce a pen and paper. He has us all write a memorable sentence and then rips them all to pieces and builds something new. He takes words and effortlessly builds a story that has us on the edge of our seats. We're all scribbling notes furiously, not wanting to forget his words.
I wrote that during our writing workshop on Friday morning. My Travel Writing class and I went to an Irish Writing Center and basically got yelled at for an hour and a half by this really arrogant, douchy guy named Theo Dorgan, who was very intelligent and said the most amazing things that inspired me to want to write. He was awesome. I wish we could have spent more time with him.
Here are some of the things that I wrote down:
A good sentence brings out emotion or evicts shock. A good sentence is memorable.
Talking about something that has movement will automatically add movement to your sentence
You must consider your reader to be a radically free soul. The more you imagine yourself writing to a very intelligent reader, the better your writing will become.
Play with cliches
"All I ever wanted, for just a moment, is to intervene in other people's minds."
I didn't write down who that quote was by and I don't have google to look it up, but I find it to be a very powerful notion. All writing is is diving into the imagination and conscious of another. Now incredible that reading words on paper is really looking deep into another persons mind.
Theo made building a story seem completely simple. I am awful with coming up with an idea but then once he put them out there I was all for continuing on. My head was spinning with different ways to write the story.
He had us describe the gangway to the ship in detail and then what it felt like to go up the gangway. He then came up with the beginning of a story who has had a few drinks and is standing looking at the gangway and wondering how she is going to make it up it and past security.
He spun it so easily. It wasn't even a real story and yet I wanted to know how it ended. It was one of the best workshops I have ever been to. I was disappointed when we left at 11:30.
We went to Trinity College after that. It's one of the most prestigious colleges in Ireland. It was originally a Protestant only and male only college and has been around forever. We went there because it is where the book of Kells is. The book of Kells is a really old, beautifully illustrated book. It wasn't too exciting to see but the room after it was a huge, long library. That was stunning.
We were given 45 minutes of free time before we had to go to lunch. The college was having a student activity fair. There was a huge banner that read 'Welcome Freshers' hanging on one of the buildings that over looked the square where it was being held. As soon as we walked out of the Book of Kells building one of us said that we wanted to mingle with some people at the fair and two guys heard this and immediately said, "Mingle with us!" Caine and Carl were their names. They had just come from a brawl, which I am pretty sure means party. They had been partying all night and Carl was supposed to be in class.
They were both very Irish, although Carl was significantly more Irish. Which is horribly stereotypical, but I swear he was a leprechaun. Pale as hell, fiery red hair, and an accent so thick that he had to spell his name for us to understand him.
Caine hit on Cody. And when I say hit on I mean blatantly told him that he was a cutie and made him really uncomfortable. It was absolutely hilarious. We are pretty sure that both of the boys were still on something. As we walked through the activity fair Caine kept saying that his brain was melting because there were so many people around him who were all Mafia.
We discovered that SAS is the perfect conversation starter. We would go up to a booth that looked really interesting and when they would try to get us to join we would confess that we weren't from around there. We would then tell them about what we were doing, most people didn't believe us. But once they were convinced they all thought it was the coolest thing.
There were clubs for everything. There was a rifle club, a frisbee club, a radio station, and a Pirate club. We met Grace and Caoimhe (Which, when she said it, sounded like Queva. But when she wrote it that is what came out.) They were part of the photography club. We got free popcorn from one of the booths. We then met Jake, who plays Joffrey on Game of Thrones.
How did that happen, you ask?
Well, we had seen a booth that was giving away free pizza. We didn't get it at first but after the delicious popcorn we went back to that tent. As soon as we got up to the tent Molly started immediately noticed him. "Is that the guy from Game of Thrones?" She got really excited but we weren't sure if it was him. Maybe it only looked like him. We found ourselves talking to the guy who was standing next to him about whatever their booth was about, something to do with student leaders. Molly started a conversation with possible Game of Thrones guy and told him he looked exactly like him. He denied it, of course. He said he gets that a lot. His friend then started talking about how people think he looks like Dr. Phil. Which he didn't at all, but for some reason we went a long with it.
Molly was still freaking out a little so I asked him if we could take a picture with him. He agreed and Cody took one of him with Molly. When we walked away both Molly and Cody were freaking out, they watch the show and it looked so much like him that it absolutely had to be him. Cody decided he wanted a picture too so Christy went back and asked.
As soon as they both got pictures we ran into another guy who confirmed that it was him, the show is filmed in the North of Ireland and Croatia and he goes to school there! When we looked him up on IMDB the first line of his Bio confirmed it!
I'm now regretting not getting a picture with him. I don't even watch the show but we met a celebrity!
And then we ate a strange lunch. Well, not that strange, but cream of mushroom soup just isn't my thing. Well, not anymore. It tasted pretty good but I didn't feel very well after eating it. It came with four different sandwiches, egg and chicken and some other unknown meat. It was one of those situations where we went to the restaurant and then had to eat what they put in front of us.
After lunch we went on a literary pub crawl. We started in one bar called Duke, where an actor sang us a traditional drinking song and then was joined by another actor and together they performed a piece from some play by an Irish playwright. I did not write down who it was, but it was very entertaining. We then went on to two additional pubs. They usually go to four but we were on a time crunch so we had to skip the last one. Also, because we were on the pub crawl for class we were not allowed to drink so we really only spent about 10 minutes in each pub. He would give us specific things to look for, so it turned into more of a scavenger hunt.
He also asked us question that we had to answer at the end of the tour. The purpose of it was to make sure that we were paying attention and whoever answered the most questions correctly at the end would win a Pub Crawl T-shirt. I did not win the T-shirt, the questions were hard!
It was a little depressing to go on the pub crawl and not be able to drink anything. Although we made up for it the next day. But that is a different story…
We got back to the ship around 5:30. We really wanted to go to the Guinness storehouse, where you can see how they make Guinness and learn how to pour it. But we were told it closed at 7 and so we didn't have enough time. It turned out that it closed at 5, so I am glad that we didn't try to go. I never made it there, which was disappointing. It would have been so cool to learn how to pour Guinness correctly. We would watch them pour it in all the pubs, they would fill up the glass about three fourths of the way and then let it settle before topping it off. I want to know why they do it that way!! Why not just fill it all the way up and then let it settle. So interesting. I guess I will just have to go back there.
I went out in the evening with a group of people that included my roommate. We went to the Temple bar area, which is a very famous and popular part of town. That whole area of the city is called Temple Bar but there is actually a Temple Bar that we tried to go to but it was 21 and up and not everyone in our group was of age. It was extremely busy, partially Temple Bar is the hot place to hang and also because it was Culture Night. It was a night of art and music and it was all going on right on the street, all over the city.
We ended up at O'Reilly's, one of the pubs that we went to that afternoon on the pub crawl. It has this really cool portrait of Guinness that moves every once in a while Harry Potter style. When we were there in the afternoon I saw him pull out a sign that read 'Drink Guinness Responsibly,' he smiled knowingly, put it away, and went back to his pose. It was pretty cool.
We met a local, Nick, who actually was from the states but has lived in Ireland for 8 years with his wife, who is Irish. He bought us all shots. They were called Mini Guinness shots, or baby Guinness depending on where you went. It was the best shot that I have ever had. It was Tia Marie topped with Bailey's, so it looked like a teeny tiny beer but tasted like chocolate. Absolutely perfect.
We then headed to another bar where we were told the alcohol was cheaper. It was so busy in there. So busy that we basically spent the entire time standing in the middle of the room, shoulder to shoulder, in the pathway of everyone trying to get to and from the bar.
I had beer spilled all over the back of my legs multiple times. It was very claustrophobic in there. I drank a cider, which was delicious. It tasted like apple cider and you couldn't really taste the alcohol in it, which was dangerous.
Don't worry, I had a Guinness at the first bar. I couldn't go to Ireland and not have a Guinness. It was good, but it had an aftertaste that I didn't really care for. I liked the dark beer that I drank in Munich better.
Apparently the culture in Ireland is to act as sober as possible no matter how many drinks you have had. So everyone in all of these places were really chill. But not us, we were dancing to the music, or attempting to dance in the closeness, and having a lot of fun.
We eventually had to leave that bar, there were just too many people there. We wanted to go to a club but the one we went to wouldn’t let someone in our group in for some unknown reason. If one person couldn't get in then none of us were going in. By that point it was only about midnight but we were just not feeling it anymore. Half of the group decided to go find wifi, so four of us caught a cab back to the ship.
They had set up shuttles to take us to and from the port because it was about a 40 minute walk, but the last shuttle left at 23:30 so a cab was our only choice, no way were we walking. It was only about 13 euros split two ways, not bad at all.
The next day I was planning on going out with Molly in the morning. She wanted to get the underside of her tongue pierced, and I decided to get a piercing with her. She had a field program in the afternoon so our plan was to head out by 10 o'clock to find a piercing place.
I crashed hard when we got home, I slept so good, it did not last long enough.
I met Molly for what turned out to be one of the craziest day's of my entire life.
