Ireland has been amazing. We got here four days ago and I am so in love with it here. Wifi in our hostel is horrendous so that’s why I haven’t been able to post so now Im gonna play catch up. We didn’t do too much the first two days. The first day was more our travel day so we didn’t arrive until the afternoon. We just checked into our hostel, grabbed some dinner and explored Dublin on foot.

Our first night in this hostel was hilarious. We are staying at a place called Paddy’s Palace. We pay 10 euros a night for an 8 bedroo mixed dorm that smells like human pee- all the time. Grand hostel. As Holly said, it gives us a reason not to be in our room. As if Dublin isn’t enough! Anyways our first night here we find ourselves in a room occupied with Mark the Aussie, Carmen the Chinese girl, and Frances the German girl. The room was also shared by two girls who spoke a dialect of Spanish. Couldn’t tell you their names or where they are from because they were in and out of the room in 2 minutes and all they said was Hi and
bye and spoke spanish for the other minute before going out for the evening. There was also a Chinese boy staying here too, Alfred, who was a friend of Carmen but he disappeared for the evening. So Holly, Carmen, Frances, Mark and I had a whole party by ourselves. Frances was trying to go to bed because she was going home to Germany in the morning at like 6. Mark was catching a flight to London early as well. But neither of them could really sleep and we all just kept talking and laughing so much, how could they?

Frances was talking about how she struggled in Ireland because she couldn’t express herself the way she wanted through English like she could in German, makes sense. Whatever she says about not being able to express herself, she is by far the funniest person I think I’ve met this entire trip. She was cracking me up. Frances, Carmen, Mark and I are all 22. Alfred and Holly being 23.

We seriously all sat and laid in our beds, shooting the shit. Talking about here, home, our lives, languages, loads of stuff. Frances taught Holly how to say her last name correctly because it’s German. The conversation went like this.

Holly: My last name is German but I’m sure we say it wrong.
Frances: What is your last name?
Holly: Kerker.
Frances: *giving Holly a puzzled look* ..what?
Holly: Kerker. It means dungeons
Frances: Oh!!! Kerker!! (obviously said the German way)

We all laughed and began to talk about funny words we have heard. Frances was laughing and making fun of how we say apple stroodle (she makes it sound wayyyyy better than we do) and I told Mark how I was laughing at Jade for using tanty where then mark kept mocking toats and other funny things. We kept talking about funny words. Fun fact, the Irish word for fun is craic. This is pronounced crack. So for all of you who thought quickly and are now laughing, yes. It is perfectly accetable to go up to a police officer and say “I’ve had so much craic tonight!” and that officer would be perfectly delighted for you. Phrases like “I’m having craic.” or “A load of craic that was!” are completely normal here in Ireland. They also advise you if you live in the states or Europe not to use that word at home, haha! Back to my funny words story, Holly says she is trying to think of a funny sounding English word. Well, I instantly think of one of the funniest English words I know and say it. Well, that opened a whole can of worms, let me tell you. My funny word of choice was spelunking. Now, if you don’t know what that is, I guess you could say it’s synonymous to caving. If you want an exact defintion, I don’t have one but dictionary.com will. So I say spelunking and Holly says what?! Holly doesn’t know what it is so I start cracking up. Frances is cracking up and instantly pulls out this nifty little device that is a text translator. It even gives the different words for American English and British English, it’s pretty sweet! She busts out this thing, begins translating words, and laughing at their German versions. She said she’s been in Ireland for weeks and all the sudden tonight she is translating and looking up more words than ever talking to us! We were all laughing so much. I was so sad that they were all leaving.

Mark begins to talk about Australia and home. He is a bouncer at a club but if you were to look at him you wouldn’t think so. In talking about what he does, he also mentioned he snowboard and worked at a ski lift for a bit. We began talking about weather, each where we live and Mark makes the comment that it doesn’t snow in Australia. Obviously it does in some parts but he meant for a majority of it, it doesn’t and it’s rare.

Mark: It doesn’t snow in Australia.
Frances: What?
Mark: We don’t get snow in Australia.
Frances: What?
Holly: Snow, like you know when it’s winter and cold and the white stuff falls-
Frances: I know what snow is.

Holly said it in the kindest way possible, thinking she didn’t know what snow was and Frances’ response wasn’t rude, it was sarcasticly nice and the moment was hilarious for everyone. Holly felt so embarassed but everyone was cracking up and Frances even thanked Holly for trying to explain when she thought she didn’t understand the English word. It was classic.

So many of these moments happened. Frances looking out the window just randomly says something along the lines of “did you notice the Irish girls get dressed and look like sluts?” and it was the lit fuse to an explosion of laughter which then sparked a whole new conversation.

That was how our night went. Carmen brought a surge protector that she so nicely shared with everyone because eight people had to share two plugs. Carmen and Frances were laughing that the English word was outlet for the.. Well.. Outlet.

Eventually we turn off the light thinking that will help everyone sleep. Ha! Now how this room is set up is it’s got 4 walls (go figure) one door (no way) and 4 sets of bunk beds. Two on each side of the door, one in front of the other agaisnt two walls of the room. I slept on the bottom bunk (Alfred above me) across slept mark, Carmen above him. Adjacent to mark slept Frances, across from Frances was Holly’s bed (making her adjacent to me) and above them both were the spanish girls. On Frances and Marks side there are two huge windows. I mean huge. No screens, just green cloth as the curtain. This cloth isn’t long enough for the window. So, we turn off the lights and I look over to notice there is a lovely amount of light projected into the room from the outside streetlight on to my wall, just perfect enough for shadow puppets.

So what do I do? Play with shadows. I’m telling Holly to look cause I’m laughing and it’s funny and next thing I know Marks hands are up because he is across from me and his bed is right under the window. We must have played with shadows and shadow puppets for like 15-20 minutes. Busting up laughing. It was ridiculous, Holly was watching and commenting and we were just going to town having so much fun with it.

It seriously was a great first night in Dublin. I was so sad to see them go! We had Carmen and Alfred for one more night. Then last night at like 10pm, two Canadian girls checked in and were checked out in the morning. Since then
We have had this 8 bed room to ourselves.

Our second day we did a bit of shopping and some more exploring all day. Looking at the beautiful buildings, Trinity College, and worked on booking our transportation to Scotland in a Starbucks because our hostel wifi isn’t so great. We found a quaint little bookstore where I bought the book that German man recommended to me at the beginning of the trip. I can’t wait to read it!

That night we went out to dinner where I ate Bangers and Mash. I know it’s mashed potatoes, sausage, and some kind of sauce. I don’t really know what is in it, but it was delicious. I don’t even like sausage that much and it was soooooooooo good. Even though it looks awkward.

After we ate we went down to the bar where we listened to the live bands play all night. The only song I wanted to hear played in a pub here was Galway Girl and it happened, twice! The  performers rotated in our time of being there and both sang that song! In this bar I decided to order a Guiness. They say Ireland made Guiness (cause it’s from here) is different than any other in the world, so hey, when in Rome right? I had two pints and got a high five from an Irish man named Finn. He was sitting at the bar when I went up to order my second one. I order and then he turns over and says “excuse me what did you order?” and I told him. He said “wow, not many girls order that” and me being me loving when people challenge me replie with (unoriginally in my opinion, but whatever) with “Im not like many girls” and he got a big smile on his face, laughed and gave me a high five of acceptance. I felt like I had just passed a test I didn’t know I was taking. He said his name was Finn and he was from Dublin. He asked where I was from and I answered “the states” but I think the look on my face said “that was funny/stupid question” because the next thing he said was “that was a dumb question, I can hear your accent” and all Im thinking was “yeah, buddy, my voice screams American” and I told him my name was Desiree. He said he had never heard my name before. I laughed and that was that. I took my beer back to Holly where we sat and listened to music. Oh! There was also this guy from Holland who talked to us for a bit. Well, more me cause Holly struggled with understanding his accent. He told stories of his girlfriend and traveling, and how he got put in jail in France and hates the French. It was a great night out relaxing!