so, i'm in dublin.

It's honestly a little hard to believe that I'm in Ireland right now.  Sure, I've had some trouble flushing the toilet in our hotel and the electricity only works with our room card in a slot, but the denial in me is willing to dismiss that as a quirk of the hotel and continue on as though this were just some strange new city in the Midwest.

Except it's not.

The foliage is freakishly green and the weather almost absurdly warm.  Could you sit on the top of a two-story bus in Ohio for the duration of a 1.5 hour tour without hating yourself for the decision?  Can you stroll through a park with strange trees and birds and playground equipment and then--all of a sudden--OSCAR WILDE is grinning a sultry grin and playing with the flower in his lapel?  No I say.

So far everyone is really nice.  There's a wild contingent that left dinner before dessert to go out drinking, and there were these two girls who just yammered on about boys and cats and makeup and Coach bags until I thought for sure they were aliens because they couldn't possible be real... but really everyone is super nice!

Some interesting things so far:

1) I'm more interested/fascinated by the biology of the place than the history.  As soon as I saw the first bird flying over our bus from the airport to the hotel, I wanted to know what it was.  The same goes for all the weird trees we saw in the parks.  It makes sense though, in a way, because both history and ecology are exciting ways to connect to a place, and since we haven't had much time to really explore when the cool old buildings are open, I guess biology is my best bet... except I haven't really learned any yet... I also think it's because Dublin feels very modern.  Apparently, during the boom, a lot of buildings updated to make it more appealing to the hip new young people who were coming in...

2) Most pubs where pour their final drinks around 11:30pm, which is totally a time I can handle.  My roommate and I checked out this place called the Library Bar tonight, and we pretty much just sat in big comfy chairs, surrounded by shelves of old books, nursing schnapps we weren't really drinking at all, and observed.  It was so relaxing!  I actually really enjoyed myself.  The only thing that could have made it better was music.

3) "If you put your money in the Bank of Ireland, it'll never see the light of day.  Literally.  There are no windows."  - Our Hop-on-Hop-off bus guide

4) There are rainbow colored doors everywhere because when Queen Victoria died, it was mandated that all doors be painted black in mourning, but the Irish never like to play along, so they went a little wild with colors.  It's so nice and happy.  The bright yellow doors are my favorites.

5) We went to the Guinness storehouse today, and ti was pretty interesting.  My favorite part probably had to do with the advertising.  They had amazing animal themed ads back in the day that made really no sense at all.  "My goodness!  My Guinness!"  It didn't takes very good to me, though.  Too "roasty" for my taste, to be honest.  Kind of like alcoholic coffee.  Also, did you know that Guinness signed the lease in 1759 (or 69?) for 9000 years?

Okay, that's it for now.  My battery is approaching the critical, and I'm a little nervous yet to try my power cord. No laptop fires until Galway!!!  Sorry no pictures either.  I haven't taken any.  I hope to remedy that fact soon.