an island called ireland, random tales from my walk home from class, and my pants blowing a huge hole in the crotch

this last weekend i went to ireland. it was grand. i got in after an early flight and took the bus to my friend's school. what i didn't realize is that the bus doesn't really tell you what stop you're at and it can be kind of difficult to figure out what street you're on when you've never been in a country before and are sandwiched between a 60 year old woman talking about her bad knees and some dude that smelled like the music blaring out of his headphones way too close to my head. garbage.

i essentially jumped the gun and got off the bus too early in fear of getting off too late and ended up walking a mile or two to the campus only to find that my friend was most certainly not where she said she would be. i spent the next hour trying to figure out how to dial her number on a payphone, those things are so damn tricky in ever different country, and finally met up much to my relief.

we walked around dublin a little bit and it is actually a really pretty city. i had it in my head that it was just full of rain and clouds and wind and drunks which is all pretty much true but i didn't picture such a nice city with a big river running through it and clean streets and buildings. another thing i didn't realize is how expensive it was. we went to dinner with a couple of her friends and it ended up being a promotion for amstel so after we got some free beer we headed to find a bar in the old district of town, temple bar area. it was quite a lot of fun. i had never really watched a rugby match before and as i did i realized that the people who play that sport are the gnarliest dudes out there. there was one guy the size of a tree with hair down to his butt and i think if i saw him on the subway at 1 in the morning i'd cry and curl up in the corner. scary stuff.



as we were walking around in this area i ran into someone i hadn't seen since highschool, philip valley. i went to highschool with him and it turns out he's in bilbao for the semester and was in dublin that weekend and what do you know there it was. very random. caught up for a bit and headed home.

the next day we went to the guinness factory which i guess is something that everyone has to do at least once i suppose. when in dublin, right? it was a bit of fun and although i don't really like guinness the tour was neat and the view from the top where the bar is was very nice.



nothing too excited happened that night. the world championship rugby game was on and we watched it a bar and then something wonderful happened. we went and got pizza. it was delicious.

that's mostly my trip. there's more but i'm tired.

now, walking home from school today i took a different route and saw a grocery store that only sells frozen food. everything in the store is in a freezer. i saw a man running down the street with blood all over his shirt and someone else chasing him. it was really strange and i don't know what was going on, but it weirded me out. and right before i turned to make it up to my street i heard a most awful screeching sound and it was an old guy playing a violin he obviously didn't know how to play. funny thing was it seemed he was doing it for money as the case was open on the ground in front of him. i didn't see any change but maybe if he keeps practicing.

that's all i have for now. i'm really tired.