Days Six-Nine

Monday, June 29th - Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Of course, upon waking up after our midnight move and first night’s sleep in Galway, the first thing I wanted to do was take a shower so that I might feel a little better about myself. After asking Abbie how to work the shower, I sat and waited for the hot water to heat up…and waited and waited and waited. A quick check of the taps revealed there was absolutely no hot water in our dorm. But this was to be expected, since we were apparently residing in the Murphy’s Law Dormitories.

I pushed all of that out of my mind and went to our “orientation” where they told us it was important to go to class and gave us our library cards and internet access passwords. Still not really sure how it ended up lasting for two hours…But after that a group decided to go find this famous fish and chips place near the end of Shop Street (I was personally hoping their portions were smaller than the baby beluga we experienced in Dublin).

So we set off for the city center, looking utterly like tourists as we consulted our map every two seconds (it’s left at the cathedral, by the way) and eventually arrived at the fish and chips shop. I’m delighted to say that it was pretty delicious and the glass of Coke was very refreshing after drinking pretty much nothing but beer for a few days. (Although I do miss Dr. Pepper like you wouldn’t believe. Did you know they don’t have that here?)

After dinner, we decided to go to a pub because, hey, our classes were still twelve hours away. We eventually settled on Taffe’s and all thirteen of us managed to find seats together and have a few pints before the live band began to play. We eventually got my friend Brittany to get up and out-Irish-dance the tin whistle player (she’s amazing) who was doing a pretty crappy job at it. There was also this very drunk Irishman (I think his name was Roland) who took particular interest in us and danced with us and led a spontaneous chorus of “Don’t Stop Believing”.

Tuesday was the start of classes, my only one being my Irish Theatre class. It seems very promising and interesting (though I do miss Dr. Katie’s lectures like crazy) so I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a lot of fun with it. Plus, we’re going to see pretty much every show I wanted to see at the Galway Arts Festival. I stayed in Tuesday night, watching a movie with some friends as we made dinner (yeah, it sucks not being able to eat at pubs all the time) and went to bed early.

Wednesday we watched a very sad movie about the Irish independence from Britain and the ensuing civil war. Then, I had my first Irish music class…of which I think I’m going to be slightly disappointed in…seeing as how we’ve spent the last few days talking about form and musical instruments…stuff I’ve happened to pick up in the last three years of being a music major. We’re also learning to play the tin whistle…which might prove to be more annoying than cool. But I did answer a question about minstrelsy and felt very proud of myself (Thanks DK).

Later that night (still Wednesday) we went down to Salthill to a pub to listen to a storyteller. It felt kind of odd not having any video or visual aides or special effects to add to the man’s story (as we have become accustomed to in our day and age), but it was seriously cool to just sit and listen to a man tell folk tales that have been passed down for hundreds of years. After that, we walked down to the ocean and went to another pub, at which time I called it quits because I had done absolutely none of my reading for the theatre class.

So I woke up at about 7 am this morning to complete said reading, eventually joined by Abbie who rolled in at around 9 am (I’ll let her explain that one). After our theatre class I went downtown to buy the previously mentioned tin whistle and then went to the music class to learn how to play said tin whistle. In all, today’s been rather dull compared to what I’ve been doing normally. In fact, I think it might be the first night since coming to Ireland where I’ve stayed in by myself.

And I’m really not sure what to do…

(Shop street, Taffe's, Roland (?) & Ricky, Abbie & I at the ocean)