POD to Pints

due to meagan's sassiness, i deleted the "from" from my titles. 'blank to blank' is the best way to describe the wide range of random things i'm experiencing daily.
on friday we had orientation for our classes. this semester, if it's anything like they say, should be pretty awesome. they're taking us to see nine plays, the first of which is 'no man's land' with michael gambon, who i loooove, and guiltlessly so from the 'harry potter' movies. we're taking conservatory classes (voice, devising, movement, acting) at the gaiety school of acting and then contemporary irish drama at the IES (the program) center. a conference of american directors and playwrights is coming in at the end of this month, and we're doing a short staged reading for them, so that should be interesting (especially because the piece's playwright will be there--eek). and then we have a larger showcase at the end of the semester. we'll also be with irish students for some of our classes, which i didn't know and am really excited about. i love my roommates, but i really want to make sure i meet locals as well. that night, we went to temple bar and found a beautiful pub that we hung out in with our IES crew for a few hours, and then tried to haul over to a club, but the night was entirely miserable in the rain, so we ended up at a friend's house drinking jameson--good night for bonding. on the way to the first pub though, i got my first introduction to the charming irish gentleman. we met three of them in the street--one of them tried to slag me (i.e. to pull one's leg) about being a prominent parliament member, which i didn't believe for a second. he found this quite charming, because most irish think americans are super gullible, and tried to persuade us to come with them to the barge--don't worry dad, we went our own way.
yesterday, we went into the city centre for the first time to go to penney's, which is cheap clothes heaven. on the way back to the bus, we happened on the liffey swim, which is a charity event where about a hundred guys with a death wish swim in the murky and freezing liffey river down the middle of the city. everyone was cheering, and it fit in with the sense of community that comes in often in ireland. we went to the barge, the pub down the road, at night, where i'm trying my hardest to like beer. the irish seem to love coors light for some reason, even though they have plenty of delicious drinks of their own. then we went to a club, POD, which was completely ridiculous, and a lot of fun. it's definitely the cream of the euro trash crop, especially because irish guys love my roommate kathryn. we met several studs who thought they were just the absolute shit, and many girls with this weird style of hair that a lot of dubliners have--half of their hair is cut to their ears, and then the top is short and mullet-y, and the long part is in a ponytail. it looks like it's been cut with a weedwhacker, and when paired with their truly frightening amount of black eyeliner, is quite the spectacle.
today we went back to penney's so we could cheap towels and umbrellas. my umbrella was thrashed within the first two days--the wind here is out of control, so it got inverted about 15 times--i keep seeing umbrellas in trash cans, and now i see why. i had to get an extra towel because our heat isn't working and the air is always damp, so mine neeeever dries. and i'm not sure our hobbit washer will even fit a towel in it. we also went to the barge to watch the all-ireland hurling final--hurling is like lacrosse, soccer, and baseball. you have to watch a video; you can watch for five minutes and three guys go down with injuries. and it's all volunteer, so whoever plays for their counties are huge superstars. kilkenny kicked waterford's ass by, like, 27 points, which is a whole hell of a lot, from what i can tell. for those of you who know my lack of interest in sports, i was totally riveted. i think i found my groove--irish sports keep it interesting. my roommate kathryn and i went for a run through st. stephen's green, and on our way back, a bus driver started mimicking us and doing the macarena in his seat, and a little boy on the DART (regional train) cheered at us--we had quite the time. we're sitting around and watching british gladiators--way more ridiculous than the american version, if you can believe it. to add to weird irish tv, we just saw a commercial that featured a gorilla drumming for a full minute--it was for cadbury's chocolate, so the relation to gorillas was...indecipherable. we're getting a huge kick out of it.
anyway, that's ireland so far! we're going to cork this weekend, a county to the west with a beautiful countryside. tomorrow we're visiting christchurch cathedral, which should be beautiful, and i have my first class. more updates to come!