Tuesday morning my art history class went to check out the Book of Kells at Trinity College. Don't feel bad if you don't know what that is; I only knew from my high school art history class. It's a big deal here though, and with good reason. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript from the Middle Ages, probably the world's most famous. Maybe not all that exciting for most people, but I loved it. A picture stolen off the internet:
The Book of Kells is on permanent display at the library at Trinity. Our tour included a trip through the Long Room, which, if you love the smell of old books as much as I do, was basically heaven. There's a really funny controversy about the Long Room. I don't know if any of you have seen Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, but it seems George Lucas used the design of the room without permission for the Jedi Archives.
The Long Room:
The Jedi Archives:
I don't know if Trinity actually sued over this, but I find it amusing.
Thursday I had my second session of my Irish language class. It's very humbling at this point in my academic career to have difficulty counting to ten. Something very cute about counting in Irish: one is haon, two is dó, three is trí, and so on, but when you count you say "a haon, a dó, a trí," which is the equivalent of "a-one, a-two, a-three."
Now to the most fun and most painful part of this post, which also happens to be where the title comes in. Supposedly (and who knows how accurate this is; I got it from a less than reputable source), "Hóigh! A chleiteoigín!" means something akin to "Hey, twinkletoes!"
So last night Jenna, Tessa, Zeke, and I went to this Irish dance event through the European Business School, which has some sort of connection to IES (some EBS students live in IES housing, some IES students are taking EBS classes, and we're all invited to each other's events).
Getting there was enough of an adventure. We're not particularly good planners; the event was in a suburb of Dublin, and we knew we had to take the DART to Seapoint, so we went to the station and bought our tickets from the machine without even knowing if we needed to go northbound or southbound. We made it to the right station and saw a train, so we just hopped on it without knowing if it was the right one. Turns out it was--lucky us--but it doesn't end there. We got off the train at Seapoint and realized... we had no idea where in the town the event was going to be held. So we're in this deserted street at 8:30 on a Friday night without even knowing the name of the building (or the name of the event, actually) that we needed to find.
But this big group of European kids came up behind us, and we figured that they were EBS kids so we just glommed onto their group and got there alright. It was a neat place; it was sort of a community center (or neighbourhood centre, if you will) dedicated to preserving Irish culture; there were a lot of jam sessions going on, just people coming with their instruments and playing traditional music together.
Zeke and Jenna enjoying the free tea and scones they gave us:
Tessa and I are classy ladies:
But then, the next surprise of the night--this wasn't an Irish dancing show we were attending; it was an Irish dancing workshop. This old man demonstrated the steps to a bunch of dances to us--briefly and none too clearly--and then we all got up and sort of kicked our way around the room. Awkward, crowded, hot, and absolutely amazing. This is how it was supposed to look:
And now, because I trust you all to not use this against me, I am going to include a video that Jenna took of Tessa, Zeke and me doing I don't even know what kind of dance. If any of you were laboring under the delusion that I am a graceful human being, you're in for a rude awakening. Zeke was my partner in this dance; that's Tessa on the end of our line.
After three hours of this, we caught the EBS bus back to city centre and made it to the Luas with one minute to spare before the last train of the night. I love it when things just barely work out; the evening was fabulous from beginning to end.
Tonight Zeke and Jenna made us tacos and flautas for dinner. (What? Something other than cereal and grilled cheese in my diet?) You'd think Ireland and Mexico wouldn't mesh all that well, but really, until extremely recently Ireland was basically a third world country, and the Irish have had a lot of the same stereotypes against them in Europe as Mexicans have in America. I've heard that there have been a lot of marriages between the Irish and Mexicans. Maybe that explains the Carlos O'Kelly's Mexican restaurants in the midwest?
Right now we're watching the Irish (fine, Gaelic) channel on TV, and South Park just came on. Dubbed over. Without subtitles. This is amazing.
I love this country. Can I just say that right now?
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