Straight updates

Ireland is great. I'm having such an incredible time and I'm very thankful to be here. Today is father's day, and I just can't stop thinking today about how I'm so incredibly thankful to have a family that will send me another place in the world to learn and experience new people.


My internship starts tomorrow.  I'll be working at a place called adfaces.  It's a company that sells space for advertising.  The company is BRAND new, only about one month in Ireland so far.  However, they've been successful other places in the world.  There are only three people who work in the company, and they need help advertising themselves and branding themselves so that people will use their service.  When I pictured my internship, this isn't exactly what I had in mind, but I'm really, really looking forward to getting started tomorrow.  Because the company is so small, I think I will be doing a little of everything, and I'll really get to see what it's like and be a part of essentially developing and starting a company!


We've been doing a lot of cool stuff.  The stuff that I thought was going to be not so cool, like class, is actually turning out to be pretty fun too. I'm taking a class called international human rights law.  It's really interesting.  Ireland actually got a better grade than the US in their human rights, but there are some major differences, for example, it's impossible to get an abortion in Ireland.  Women travel to the UK by the hundreds every year to get them.  It seems so behind and that's one thing that makes human rights totally different in Ireland.

I think one of my favorite things we've done so far was go to Howth, which is a great place in Dublin for hiking.  We basically climbed a rocky mountain that was surrounded by an incredibly blue body of water and green grasses.  It was a cool place for exploring, and it was also surrounded by an awesome neighborhoods with incredible houses.  There were some houses with helicopter pads because they could only be accessed that way because they were so secluded.  Afterward we went down to the peer and had some incredible seafood chowder and all just chatted and had a good time.  I really loved it there, and when my dad and Alisha come down at the end of the summer, I think we'll definitely have to take a trip.




We've been lucky enough to be here at a great time for futball!  Going to the pubs when Ireland is playing is the best.  Like I talked about in my last post, everyone here has so much pride, and orange and green flood the streets.  It's really cool to pretend you have any part in it.  But I did happen to bring an orange... and a green shirt, so I'm good to go.  The next game is tomorrow, so everyone's meeting up after work for some bar food and futball.  This is a video I took right before the last game.  Even though Ireland was CRUSHED by Spain, this atmosphere remained upbeat and enthusiastic the whole time.

We went on a fieldtrip to a jail, that was famous for it's cruel punishments.  We had someone pretend to be the warden and took us around and talked about how poor the conditions were.  It actually got really creepy in some parts.  It's wasn't anything spectacular, but it was cool to learn about how minor some of the charges used to be and how major the punishments were.

Next we went to Powerscourt Gardens, which was a beautiful country club sort of thing.  We had lunch there in a beautiful room made of windows.  We were supposed to pay for the gardens but somehow walked out there with no one noticing... whoops!  But they were beautiful and so well kept, everyone took a lot of pictures.  It wasn't the nicest of days, but it ended up that all the times we needed it to stop raining, it pretty much did.  I guess we've got pretty good luck!

Yesterday was great, we went on a 20 euro tour of the city and pub crawl!  A tiny red headed man in a sweater and a hat took us around downtown Dublin and told us about the history and what was going on currently in Dublin as well.  He took us to some really beautiful places, and he was very informative.  Not only was he informative, but we learned later that he was a great story teller and an awesome singer!  We all went to a place called Stagshead which is one of the most historic bars in Dublin and we went to a private room upstairs and he told us 3 really funny, really dramatic stories.  Apparently Dublin, and Ireland in general, is famous for its story tellers.  I had a great time listening to him.  In between each story he would sing a native Irish drinking song, which he says we'll start to recognize as we go out in Dublin more and more.  So we all sat around the fire drinking Guinness and singing along, slightly mesmerized by this funny little guy.  Next we had a great, great dinner, stopped at a fantastic Gelato shop and then headed to the pub crawl.

The pub crawl was led by a great young company, but we heard about it through our program.  We all got wristbands and got discounted drinks at each bar.  We went to 5 bars and ended at a night club.  We had tons of different kinds of drinks, we just took every suggestion we were given.  We had strawberry beer and butterscotch shots at one bar.  The last bar was everyone's favorite.  They had a great live band, and everyone loved that we were American.  We all got in the circle one at a time and showed off our riverdancing skills.  Then the tourguide from earlier that day showed up and he danced with all of us, and it was so much fun.  The night club that we went to was owned by NONE OTHER THAN Bono. Hahaha.  It was actually really fun.  Strobe lights can make a girl feel sick after a while though, so we didn't stay too long.  It was totally worth the 20 euro and we met a lot of other people who came on the crawl with us who were both Dubliners and travelers themselves!


I'm having a great time.  I love the people I'm traveling with and I can't wait to get to work tomorrow and see how it goes.  It's gonna start getting less like a vacation and more like real life starting tomorrow, but I think we're all ready.  Our class has quite a bit of work and we have to do some work for our internship section of the trip too, so that's not the most exciting thing I've ever heard, but we'll all manage.


Overall, I'm thankful to be here, and it's starting to feel like home!