week one, in review

dear friends,

well, i have been here just over one week and i realize if i don't start to document some of my day-to-day life i am liable to forget it. i did not actually take the above picture, but i did learn that unruly children are often referred to as fanta-filled-fuckers [etymology: children at pubs being served fanta]. i will try to post actual photos in future, but my dilemma is that my wristlet [my prefered purse] will fit either my moleskin guidebook or my camera but not both. for the timebeing i feel i must continue to make use of the guidebook. there is no use of my taking pictures if i am going to fall in the liffey and never make it back to my cubicle at ucd to post them.

perhaps appropriately, given that's what i am getting paid for, i have been spending the majority of my monday-friday at work. this is an adventure that begins when i catch the bus in dolphin's barn [etymology unknown]. i have grand plans to document my daily journey, so stay tuned for that. it takes well over an hour each way, and so most nights i end up making dinner, eating too many jaffa cakes, chatting with my housemates, and crashing. i am sorry that i only have one good pub story [below]. after thinking about inequality all day, it is nice to come home to the assorted bunch i live with and our beautiful courtyard/garden. caitlin is a friend from undergrad who i am really just getting to know. we've bonded over different friends done-wrong by the same boys, and caught each other up on various members of our class that we have respectively stayed in touch with. sara is an adorable gothy gal from norway who inspead of the love of black and hatred of rom-coms also has an affinity for puppies and flowers. david is doing a phd in molecular bio and richard is an architect from the west of ireland.

my other friend in dublin also went to queen's, but now she is an conservator at the irish museum. apparently this involves vacuuming a lot of zebras and i am looking forward to my behind the scenes tour of the museum of stuffed things that hasn't been changed or improved since the 1800s. colleen and i went out last thursday for an astonishingly delicious dinner at this place and then for a pint at a pub close to trinity. it was there that we encountered two irish dudes in a heated debate about what spooning was. dude #1 did not know, and dude #2 was trying to educate him using a diagram (fortunately of spoons) on the back of a receipt. eventually dude #1 learned the word (he swore he knew about the phenomenon) and dude #2 seemed relieved and was a fan of high-fives. in the end, there was no question that these two would be left to spoon each other.

on the way to dinner, we past a memorable place from my last visit to ireland a set of stone steps in temple bar, where i made friends with a nice irish boy and a friend who shall not be named made better friends with someonelse in the ally. that incident which i will tell you about if you ask [even though said friend would kill me] involved me saying "listen, i don't care if you are regretting playing the skin flute in the streets of ireland, i am tired of this, i need alone time", abandoning those i came on the trip with, making new friends and seeing U2 perform for free. i have not been afraid to do my own thing ever since. although, walking past i realized a lot has happened in the 7 years since i have been here.

finally, i had lunch today with a fellow ra of the sfips (our book, yes i say our even though my name won't be on the cover has been optioned by simon and schuster and is projected to sell better than the book that made sfips a public intellectual). this completed my meeting up with all 3 people i know here on the emerald isle. he introduced me to the wife of this guy, although i am irish politics retarded so i had to google him when i got back. hilariously, the sfips also mentioned the tea-shock [i am now into phonetic spelling] is a good buddy, so perhaps i will get to have jaffa cakes with him sometime. it is a strange life i live.

i did manage to spend most of the weekend in dublin-proper enjoying the shops on grafton street (especially marks and spencer, yes i am an old lady) and looking for some antique jewlery for a friend of a friend. expect next week's newsletter to be filled with such exciting topics as "bloomsday", "how to live it up on your elite university's dime", "old people who make the sign of the cross while passing churches on their bicycles" and "yep, i still miss having water pressure"

if you are taking the time to read this, it probably means i miss you.
cam