Whew, I need to update…. So I spent last weekend in Dublin with Yael (sweet, long-awaited reunion!) and her wonderful host family. I got there Friday afternoon (my bus was an hour late, hooray rush hour) and I was greeted by the best hug I’ve had in a while. Yael immediately started me on an abbreviated historical tour of the city, walking me down O’Connell Street with a special pause at the statue of workers’ rights hero Jim Larkin. We met some of her SIT friends at the “buttery” at Trinity College—which was, incidentally, celebrating its Green (eco-friendly/aware) Week—and got me some coffee… damn, I’m drinking it again. We continued the tour for about a half-hour more while walking to the bus station to catch the half-hour or so ride to her family’s suburb.

I was greeted by Yael’s host mom, Siobhan, and sister (seven), Ailbhe (pronounced “Alva”), who made me feel welcome right away. We chatted for a bit, and then Yael and I went to her room to change into nicer clothes before heading back into the city for dinner and pubs. We ate at a great Indian place, where we split a bottle of wine and were drunk well before our food arrived. It was so good to catch up and spill things to one another that we’d been storing up for months. We paid our bill and proceeded to a huge, multi-level pub where we met up with more of her SIT friends and then basically dominated the dance floor. Seriously—Americans have better moves than all of Europe combined.

We slept in way late the next morning, had a quick breakfast, then headed into Dublin again, where we wandered around all day. We went to the national museum, where the highlights were definitely the “bog bodies,” the shiny things, and the ancient religious statues of women masturbating (what a progressive society! ha ha…). The “bog bodies” are centuries-old bodies recovered in remarkably well preserved conditions from bogs around Ireland whose every detail has been explored and explained by archaeologists and anthropologists. It was incredible to read the descriptions provided of their respective statuses in life and the specifics of how they died. God, life was brutal… I would have been the first to go, I’m sure, and perhaps voluntarily.

We also went to the Dublin Writers’ Museum, you know, because I guess there were some great Irish writers or whatever…. Juuuuust kidding, it was great, but Yael and I both thought it could have gone into modern Irish writing a lot more. Then we wandered through some parks… and then another one… or something… and we talked here and there, and I was bad about taking pictures. Oh, and at some point, we bought post cards and sat writing them out together in a busy park on a statue that reminded us of Guadalajara.

I’m devolving into stream of consciousness writing. In any case, we had a quiet night in, cooked for ourselves… wait a minute, that was Saturday night… Um, I’m thoroughly confused. Well, anyway, it was such a good weekend and I’d do it again in a minute. So. fantastic.

Next up: the craziness that is RAG Week…