The past week has almost been surreal. So hilarious, interesting, and exhausting—approximately in that order. Last week was “RAG Week” here on the NUIG campus. Practically every week of the past month has had some title and theme. There was Muscailt, the campus’s week-long arts festival: in one night I was able to go to three separate art exhibits—first by Art Society, then by the Math Department (go fractals!), and then by Photography Society. There were plays and a student-produced musical (you know I stayed away from that), random acts of art (my favorite was someone spray-painting the phrase “You Are Amazing” through a stencil all over campus), and music, dance, and literary events. Pretty great. After that, I think, was SHAG week—Sexual Health Awareness [Something]—but I didn’t really go to many of those events. This week is GRA week, or Global Rights Awareness week, and so forth. Tons of different student groups get involved in all of these…but NOTHING compares to RAG Week.

“RAG” stands for “Raise a Grand,” which was the initial goal of the week-long series of parties and promotions at pubs and clubs, with all of the money raised going to various charities chosen prior to the start of the week. Nowadays students raise the money by walking around town and campus shaking buckets and badgering people for coins, which is pretty cool. In the past, though, kids would take their professors “hostage” until a ransom was paid for them, and usually (conveniently) they were taken hostage during the time when they were supposed to be lecturing—hence the beginning of the RAG Week tradition of not going to class, which leaves even more time for partying.

And good god, Irish kids don’t waste a minute of it. I’m pretty sure none of my Irish roommates was fully sober for any full hour of the entire week. I woke up Monday morning around ten to the sound of my neighbors out on their balcony, totally schwasted and harassing innocent passersby. There was broken glass in various spots on the sidewalk and a small tub of butter smeared across the pavement when I stepped out to do my laundry (I mean, why not?). The poor head of maintenance of our apartment complex was running around trying to sweep up what he could. His name is Frank and he’s so nice to all of us—you can imagine how hellish RAG Week was for him, so I bought a cupcake mix yesterday to make for him as a thank you. I had an exam Tuesday, a presentation Wednesday, and an essay due Thursday, not to mention all of my classes are seminars, so I couldn’t exactly ditch. To be honest, I really hadn’t planned to anyway (except for my Population Geography class, which I detest), but it’s hard to feel motivated when everyone around you is drunk out of their minds and blasting Britney Spears’ “Piece of Me” (best song ever) through the walls.

The week was full of sights that just made me laugh out loud to myself, probably more in disbelief and even embarrassment for others than anything else. For instance, on my way to campus I always have to cross over this insanely windy bridge that passes by some really old, crumbling, archaeologically valuable stone house before stretching over the River Corrib. So I’m headed to class last Monday and I see three girls stumbling down the hill off the bridge toward this house. One of them wanders aside and starts texting a friend, and the other two just yank down their pants and pop a squat to pee in full view of anyone walking by. Not only that, but they are extremely vocal about the great relief they feel. I’m laughing to myself and texting a couple friends about it when, not two moments later, I come up to a guy standing against the side of the bridge, with an impatient guy friend stumbling around a few feet away and couple of girl friends laughing hysterically at him and taking photos. He is definitely peeing through the mesh barrier of the bridge into the river below, that is, unless the wind was blowing it right back at him (I wasn’t interested in looking closer). So ridiculous.

Class attendance was low all week, but that’s not to say there weren’t plenty of people on campus still. They just weren’t necessarily going to classes. Tons of kids were just walking around with open cans of beer or bottles of hard alc, or a lot of the girls had not-so-sneaky plastic bottles filled with “juice.” Plenty of pubs have to close early because they meet the limit of how much alcohol they can sell in a night in a matter of hours after opening their doors. Clubs run special parties all week long—especially during the day, you know, when kids aren’t in classes—like foam parties, lingerie parties, all that classy stuff. “Off-license” liquor stores and even grocery stores run out of their cheap stuff in no time. Kids drop soooooo much money this week on alcohol, it’s like a field day for anyone selling it. (An Irish friend told me about a friend of his who’d been setting aside six bottles of beer since the beginning of the fall semester so that he wouldn’t feel bad about dropping all that cash in one week… I mean, it makes sense…)

I went out Tuesday night, first with my friends Rachel and Brian to a really chill pub, where there was live trad music and I met a kid from France, one from Germany, and one from Italy. All really nice people and I hope I see them again. But I’d promised my roommates I would party with them that night, so I texted them around 11:30 to see where they were. Well, they couldn’t get into a club because one of their friends was judged too drunk to enter by the doorman, so they’d opted for a house party in the next apartment complex over. Rachel walked me there, but wasn’t interested in that scene (can’t blame her), so I headed in on my own after dodging my way through some guys outside playing soccer. I spotted my roommates quickly and got all the drunk-love hugs I could take before downing another shot and then taking over what had been established as the “dance floor” for the night. That didn’t last, because then my roommates decided they needed to steal some of the posters hanging on the walls. They just sort of pulled them down, and then one of them would fold it up and run outside to hide it for retrieval when we left. Soooo great. I met a bunch of new people, but most of the guys I talked to were pretty skeezy and definitely treated me differently once they found out I was American. Oh well. Sometimes that’s fun to play up, but none of these cats was the least bit charming, or if they were, they were half passed-out to begin with.

I skipped class the next morning (glorious), all in the name of cross-cultural appreciation and whatever, and stayed in that night to pack for the weekend in Northern Ireland. Just one more thing on RAG Week: there’s nothing like it. It is something you have to see for yourself, and you have to have a pretty okay sense of humor walking into it. The endurance these kids have is unmatched, and really, all the kids I met and hung out with that week during RAG events were so chill and good-natured about it all. And just plain hilarious. Oh, and the final total hasn’t come out yet, but student council reported that they definitely surpassed their goal of €15,000. Job well done.

The Northern Ireland weekend… should probably wait until next post—I promise I’ll catch up!—but I will say that seeing Claire (another fantastic Scripps woman on a Butler program in Dublin who also went on the N. Ire. trip) was such a breath of fresh Claremont air. We just gushed for a little while together and generally emanated happiness for a few days. K, will write about that whole experience next…

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…

It's about 3:45 in the morning and our housemates have just returned from some club with a ton of friends. They are singing along to "I'm Too Sexy," which is blasting through the speakers downstairs. I obviously can't sleep, so all I can do is laugh. It's kind of surreal. The girls invited me out with everyone tonight, but I didn't know the pre- and post-parties were going to be here, so I declined, feeling kind of sick anyway (I've felt all day like I have a hangover, though I had no reason to). I almost wish I'd just gone out anyway. I kind of love our housemates. They're insane.

So a little catching up to do... Sunday night, I pretended to care and went out to a pub to watch the Superbowl. I also just wanted to see what locals thought of our darling sport. Well, there weren't many bars playing it, but I think that mostly had to do with the fact that it was on so late and not many bars are "late bars" here. Anyway, we found a place... and it was pAcked. There was one side of the bar with a huge screen where everyone was congregated, so Emmy, Rachel, and I squeezed in somewhere and started watching. As usual, it was a big boring blur to me, without even the entertainment of the multi-million-dollar commercials to break it up. Fortunately, entertainment abounded in those around us. There was the obnoxious red-headed kid who insisted Kobe Bryant wasn't doing so hot this year in football... we told him it might have something to do with the fact that football is not KB's sport, to which he replied that we wouldn't know because we were girls. Then there were all of Carrot-Top's friends (red-head looked just like that actor "Carrot-Top," so naturally, he earned a new name), who spilled loads of beer... but everyone was doing that, really. Everyone also seemed to be changing loyalties left and right--festive! And there was a girl who fell off a stool and didn't get up... probably had a concussion (she actually went away in an ambulance, before the first quarter was even over). And there was some really enthusiastic fan standing next to Emmy... though we're still not sure for whom he was rooting or why--he just spontaneously and volubly sputtered out a yelp of approval now and then. We left at half-time, as it was about 1:30 and we had morning classes (losers!).

Monday was the start of "Muscailt" week here, an arts festival sponsored by tons of campus groups and the university. There's a student musical (which I won't be seeing, in keeping with my tradition of hating musicals), tons of art shows (went to three on Monday), musical performances, films, and lots of wine. Monday night, I went to a sort of Irish music and folk dancing event at the College Bar. Some guy talked my ear off for a long time, and was actually somewhat interesting, but he was so so drunk and didn't realize that he was spitting up the entire side of my face in an effort to make me here him over the noise. I excused myself to join in the dancing, at which point he started profusely apologizing for being such a jerk. I told him I'd really enjoyed talking with him, that he was interesting and well informed--true--and then was on my way. Oh well. Tuesday I was exhausted and fell asleep around 7 p.m. (woohoo!), and tonight I was sick, so I've missed a bunch of events I was psyched for, but I hope to make up for that tomorrow.

And then this weeeeeekend, I'm going to see Yael in Dublin!! Ahhhh, I can't wait!! Our housemates and co. are still going, though it's quieted down a bit since a bunch of kids left... and security's paying us a visit probably had something to do with it too. Well, reading to do...

Irish weather exists only to mock me. Yesterday morning, I woke up to snow outside my window. Kind of winter wonderland, only none of it sticks to the ground. Rather, the sky clears to blue skies just as I’m walking out the door, wearing my wellies (it never rains when I wear those things). Then, blue skies and all, it starts to rain and the wind is absolutely whipping over my face (the wind here beats anything else I’ve ever felt in my life). At least I had pulled back my bangs for the day… also, it is so so cold, enough to ensure that any nice little café I enter will have to greet a snotty-nosed customer scrounging in her pockets for a tissue. I stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper (The Times) and too many postcards, and then, because it was no longer raining, I decided to just wander the main streets of Galway, looking for a chill coffeehouse and just generally exploring. Galway roads are not, I repeat not on a grid system, which always makes for more eventful excursions… also throws my usually reliable sense of direction for a loop. Well, then it starts hailing, so I opted for a café I already knew and headed in to read my paper. I’m there for probably twenty minutes when the most glorious rays of sunshine burst through the upstairs window, beckoning me back outside. Again, perfectly blue skies and a brilliant sun, so I started walking back towards my apartment, stopping at a grocery store and a fruit/veg stand to prep for dinner. Sure enough, it’s raining again by the time I’m stepping through my doorway. Well, definitely different from Claremont.