Taco Flute and Donkey Mop

Hello to the world of blogging! Just kidding, I've done this a while now, but, whatever... :-)

Last weekend Sandy Freborg was here in Dublin, and it, guess what? Rained. But I had the opportunity to show her around despite the weather, and while most of you are thinking, "Jeeze, you've shown your Dad around, your Mom and Mike around, Emma and her friend around, Rachel's friends Sarah and Sarah around, and now you're showing Sandy around, you've probably already done everything there is to do in Dublin by now, haven't you?" While for the most part you're correct, but there were two things that I hadn't done until this weekend with Sandy:

1. Walk into the Old Library in Trinity College and see the Book of Kells. While the book itself was only kinda cool, the Library itself was amazing. I was a little disappointed by the fact that everything was roped off, but what you could see of the Library was INCREDIBLE. Mom and Mike, you were both totally right about seeing it. The Book of Kells is a book that was written by Monks and illuminated by illustrators (like Metalsmithes and such) circa 800. There are four volumes of the book, so one book was open to a page all written in Latin while another book was opened to a page of one large drawing. The book was about the size of a normal-sized laptop and about the thickness of your average Chemistry book. The Library was filled to the brim with 200,000 books, the oldest in Ireland, and they were all perfectly organized. This caused a mini geek-out in me because, as much as I'd like to pretend I didn't, I DID work in a Library for two years and in another Library for 6 months. I love old books, I have a collection (many don't know this, but ask my family, they are forever telling me to not bring any more home because we have no room for them) and would have just loved to browse the titles and edition numbers of any of the books. They were, however, behind TWO (not one, but TWO) sets of rope barriers, so I calmly walked past, pretending that I didn't just pick my jaw off the floor, and exited with Sandy.

2. We went into Christ Church Cathedral. Now, I've walked past this place hundred of times (probably, so don't doubt me) and never actually gone in. Sandy and I paid our dues and slid into the chairs at the back to watch/listen to the orchestra (?!?!) rehearse for that evening's performance. We just so happened to catch this free show, only paying what was needed to get inside, when that night, people had to pay almost 20 Euro to get in. SWEET! It's so amazing to see music performed live in a space where it was meant to be performed. I'm not sure if I wrote in this blog when I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, but housed there is one of the original 20 copies of Handel's Messiah, all hand-written by the genius himself, and it's housed there because the world premiere of this iconic piece of music was held IN THAT CATHEDRAL. How amazingly cool is that? But anyway, that just goes to show that these spaces were not only meant for sermons and hellfire, but for music that can make grown men (and women) cry. SO, Christ Church is the oldest church in Ireland (there has been a church there since the mid 1000's... and there's still pieces of the foundation underneath the church). Once inside and deciding to wander, we discovered a wall that has been crooked (it leans, much like the Tower of Pisa... but... not...) for AGES and AGES and a CRYPT! The Crypt houses lots of graves and a museum and pieces of the original foundation. It was creepy and cool and incredible all at the same time :-)


Sunday morning (rain is falling) and we head up to Grafton so Sandy can get some shopping done before she heads out and all is well. We have lunch at this sweet little pub tucked around a corner in an ally and talk for about an hour before she had to climb back on the Bus of Insanity (or the AirCoach... The Bus of Insanity just has a better ring, and I've spent so much money on this thing that it might very well be driving me insane...) and head back to the dreary days of Londontown. But she leaves for Oregon on the 8th, so she doesn't have too much longer to wait!

Head home, eat dinner, listen to music and do a little homework before I get a call from Rachel asking if I want to see the lights on Grafton Street get turned on (duh). I look out the window and the rain is coming down so hard that (no joking you) there is a duck sitting in the middle of our parking lot. BRILLIANT! So I laughed, pulled on my wellies and headed out. I met Rach's friend Jenny (who is studying in Scotland) and sipped hot chocolate (Starbucks doesn't have Carmel Apple Cider, can you believe that?) while listening to the mayor of Dublin and the Energy President go on and on about Grafton Street and how all the lights are energy efficient. So none of us cared about that stuff, but you should have seen the kids. They were having to entertain themselves and it was the best thing I saw all day. This one little girl, she was sitting on her dad's shoulders, and she was sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes at these two really important men, while her brother was standing on the ground next to his mother and getting in trouble for talking during the presentation. I loved it! The waterworks in the sky turned off for all of us to see the flickering on of the energy-efficient lights, then almost immediately burst into working order again. Good thing we had umbrellas.

That night (last night) we watched Jay and Silent Bob's Great Adventure (I think that's what it's called, it's Florian's favorite movie) and Wedding Crashers with Steph, Florian, Felix, Jenny, Rach and I. It was wonderful to have just this really easy-going night.

Today was class, and it was, well, class. I'm doing this scene with Rachel, Pete and Kenna from a play called Low in the Dark, and if any of you reading this blog are lovers of absurd theatre, you should check this one out. It's Marina Carr's first (or one of her first) plays and I love it a LOT!

Now it's dark and I'm sleepy and kinda hungry and cold and I'm going into the kitchen to make tea and some dinner and all will be well!