The First Real Night Out

Thursday we had a scavenger hunt in the city--surprisingly, the hardest place to find was the building we met up at for the scavenger hunt.  Our administrator, Mary, told us what bus stop to get off at, but once we got there, The Irish Writer's Center was a bit tricky to find, especially because some Irish boys were teasing us with wrong locations.  (I asked them where it was and they tried to persuade us to come inside the building they were going into!) Half the group gave up trying to find the location and spent the afternoon at the pub. The actual scavengering, however, was great fun and we were put into groups, which forced everyone to branch out a bit.  We covered most of the city and learned a lot not only about navigating, but about statues and monuments throughout Dublin.

In the evening, we checked out a pub across the street from the campus.  The place was lovely but the only attendees were our parents' age! Which actually was useful because we were able to ask them embarrassing questions, such as "what is the tipping custom in Dublin?"

Yesterday, Friday, we were in orientation all day, and even though the presentations made everyone nod off, the teachers allow us to be bad participants for now, blaming everything on Jet Lag.  After we collected our books, a few of us went grocery shopping.  If you care to know, I'll be living off pb & j and pasta all semester.  For dinner, we cooked a big pasta dinner and broccoli, and dined in style. 

After dinner, one of the girls in the program told us about a Mexican pub that would be giving out free sombreros, so like any good American, we rode the bus into Dublin to check that out.  On the bus ride, some lovely lads invited us to a club called "War" that paints war stripes on everyone's faces. Tempting, but we were on a mission and one of the lads was only 17.

The pub apparently operates really underground or doesn't exist.  We settled for a bar that had no cover charge.  After only a few minutes of talking amongst ourselves, we met some Irish boys (you knew it would happen).  We spent the evening talking to them, repeating our names and where we're from and convincing them that DCU is not a bad college.  They were fun (bought us beer) and I've got a phone number from Greg on a slip of paper.

Tonight, one of the former teachers in the program will be taking us on a walking tour of the city, followed by story-telling and our first pub crawl, so look forward to my updates!