Craic All Week Long!

All the universities in Ireland have this thing called "Rag Week" which is week-long fundraising for charity. However, this being Ireland, its pretty much an excuse for week-long fun and drinking. Some of the events that were going on include (but are by no means limited to): live concerts every day in traditional Irish music and modern music, juggling, mechanical bull riding, pole dancing competitions- yikes, dance parties, "mystery tours", darts, comedians, etc etc. Funnily enough, in my classes with all international students attendance was about the same. In my classes with Irish students...no one was there haha. My Irish friend Paul from my consumer behaviour (spelled the Irish way) group said that they should just cancel classes for the week because none of the Irish go. But, they didn't. Oh well.

So on to the weeks other adventures from the week! First of all, on Monday my (American) friends Nina and Alex and I went to An Spailpin Fanach, which is an adorably old fashioned pub complete with wooden interior and homey peat fires in downtown Cork. The traditional music society has live events every Monday night, so we got to see singers (male- I LOVE male singers) and musicians (tin whistle, 5 old violin type thingies, an accordion, and a backwards flute!) while drinking cider and enjoying the atmosphere. I even made another Irish friend- one of the singers- and HE USED THE TERM CRAIC! Nina and I were so excited, thats actually the first time I'd heard the word dropped in conversation. : D Hopefully there will be many pictures soon; I actually keep forgetting my camera so I have to wait for other people to put them up and then steal them!

Jill and I meant to go visit Blarney Castle this weekend, since we FINALLY had gorgeous weather Friday, Sat, and Sunday. However, we went to another American friend Blake's place where we met a whole bunch of other international students living in the apartment complex, which was awesome. But we pretty much ended up staying up far too late and sleeping through Sunday. Blake was a gentleman and gave Jill and me his bed while he slept on the floor next to the heater : D. See, this is the problem with living so far from campus and downtown Cork- I have to make friends who don't mind if I sleep on their floors. But I wouldn't trade my host family for anything : )

The next day, we ran into some of our new friends and went to lunch at a great Thai place on St. Patrick's Street. Ironically, that was the third time that I have eaten out and the second time that it was been Asian food! The other time was Istanbul haha. I'm not doing very well with experiencing Irish food I guess. Luckily, Michelle (my host stay mom) has promised that we can get some fish and chips and hang out in one of the Douglas pubs soon though.

So now for my final, and scariest semi-adventure of the week. I took a nice long walk out into the countryside from the house again on Sat before going downtown and have more lovely pictures of the green fields and picturesque scenery. I was going to try to find this sacred well that Emmet and Michelle had told me was out there somewhere, so I wandered down a side road about 45 min of walking away. I came across a Garda car, which I'm sure you know is the Irish police. The man and the woman inside the car stopped me and asked, "Have you seen two lads with guns and a dog walking around here? They're suspects in an incident." Hmm. Negative good. I answered "No, but I think I'm going to walk back home now." And then they laughed at me. And I walked quickly back home. Yikes. Thanks for being so helpful, Garda.