DAY ONE...
So. First, I'll start with our flat, which is plain and older, but in a super-classy area of Dublin (a nearby house went for over 2 million euro!), and very nice...
This is our room, with my roomate Kate on her bed. She's a lovely girl--everyone I've met from the program seems really nice and friendly, although a little awkward; we all are, these first few days, & the jetlag probably doesn't help. I except the theater girls (there is one boy and twelve girls....dear lord) will probably get on like a house on fire once we start class.
Here's our room from the other side: my bed, our wardrobe, and a bit of the window. It looks out over more houses and a back garden that's composed mostly of brick.
Our first night here, our RA's took us through Dublin to show us how to get from our flats (on Upper Leeson St) to the IES Centre (on Rathmines Road), and then took us to The Barge, a pub. Cozy & I split a pint of cider, and on an empty jetlagged stomach that was enough to make me even more delirious.
Beautiful Dublin at dusk! The city's gorgeous.
DAY 2: GLENDALOUGH
We had some orientation in the morning (finally! A schedule! With actual dates on it! I don't know if you'll understand how starved for information we are. We're getting it in bits and pieces, which is both good--we are all still exhausted and this is probably the only way to process--and bad--it's frustrating). After that, we piled into a classy tour coach and were driven about an hour outside Dublin (windy roads! Green countryside! SHEEP!) to Glendalough, the ruins of a monastic settlement founded by St. Kevin in the...fifth century? I couldn't really hear the tour guide, and anyway, I was distracted by the scenery.
We had lunch at the Glendalough Hotel (very classy soup and sandwiches, with tea at the end. I really enjoy this Irish thing of having tea after your meals and just lingering for a while. We had a few minutes to wander the area, wherein some of us hung outside the gift shop--I bought postcards, but mostly amused myself by taking artsy photos of some farm equipment:
And this is part of the hotel where we ate lunch:
Coming to Glendalough made me feel much more settled, for some reason. Driving through the countryside looked familiar, from when I did just the same with my parents, and I recognized the sheep and the fences and farmhouses and green grass in a way that I didn't recognize Dublin. I haven't got to know Dublin yet; it could be any large British Isles city (although I know it's the independent Republic, it still visually looks a lot like, say, Oxford). The countryside, though, that is the Ireland I know. And yes, it is that green.
More beautiful scenery at Glendalough:
The round tower here is one of the characteristic signs of an Irish medieval monastery:
And the graveyard is scattered throughout the ruins:
I don't want to know how many photos I took of the graveyard. I don't like the word 'picturesque' on principle, but if any place deserves it...
Then we walked down a beautiful wilderness path to the loch:
Which had signs warning of a steep drop off:
But the lake itself is just breathtaking. (And you should take many breaths, because the air there is clear and wonderful.)
And Kate (my roommate, on the left) and Meghan (Cozy's flatmate) by the lake:
After that there was a bus ride back to Dublin (I fell asleep), and dinner at a really classy place called Odessa. There was a set menu to choose from, one starter, one entree, one dessert--and the food was incredible. I will probably never eat so well in Dublin again, just because I couldn't possibly afford it. I had tomato and mozzarella bruchetta with some amazing green stuff (it looked like dandelion leaves and tasted like basil), and then steamed salmon on new potatoes with green beans in a peppery sauce. Oh, and chocolate mousse with hazelnut topping and bitter orange sauce. I sat with Cozy and Kate and three of the IES staff came to sit with us, and we had wonderful friendly happy conversation. This entire day I felt a million times better about being here. I will feel even better once I get a class schedule.
Also, there was a spider adventure. Yesterday night after we'd all walked home Cozy rang our doorbell to say there was an enourmous spider in their flat, and could one of us deal with it? I generally don't mind spiders too much, so I came over to see if I could catch the thing. Yet when we returned, the spider was nowhere to be seen. Lee and Meghan, Cozy's flatmates, said they had seen it drop from the wall and disappear. We hunted for a few minutes, but no luck.
Tonight I walked back with the three of them, and since my flatmates weren't home, I came to hang out in their apartment. Cozy was sitting on the floor of her room, on her computer, with me on the extra bed reading Andrew's guidebook, when all of the sudden she shrieks like a madwoman and takes a flying leap onto her bed--the spider is there, cornered at the wall and her dresser. And it is huge: about two and a half inches long and standing up off the ground (so two and a half isn't much, but hold your fingers out that wide and imagine a spider). I told her to go get a pot, which she did; the other two crowded around the doorway and we took pictures of the things before I nabbed it. I feinted at it with a pen and it ran out (and I'm not terribly afraid of spiders, but even I get the willies when they're big and they run at me) and I slammed the pot down and caught it. Then there was an argument over what to do with it, which culminated in Lee helping me get a piece of cardboard and then a fat wedding magazine under the pot, and me carrying the thing out to the street and flinging it onto the road. There is photographic evidence of me being brave, thanks to Meghan.
And then of course I come back to my flat and Kate says that Micah saw a huge spider in our living room. Great. We have an infestation. If it tries to crawl into my bed I'm murdering it on the spot. Grrr.
Tomorrow is more orientation (academic! Oh yay class schedules!) and then this weekend Cozy and I, & whoever will join us, are going to be touristy around Dublin, and get it all out of our system. Also Saturday is Lee's birthday, so we're planning outings for that. I'm settling in; it's going well. I'm still a little discombobulated, and I miss home (and there is a fecking spider in our flat), but I think it's all going to be good. Except maybe for the spider. That sucker's going down.
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