Pay no attention to them haters cuz we whip em off

As Caitlin packed up her belongings Friday morning we discussed our weekend plans. She wanted nothing but to stay inside with David and make up for the hours she had missed with him while running about Dublin with me, I wanted to sit around, blog, email, sleep and just generally relax and hope that my cough would finally cease. As we made one last trek across campus together, both of us were sad to say goodbye but very excited for the promise of a free moment (or 48 hours) to come. After bidding her adieu and watching the aircoach drive away down a road I have yet to learn the name of I headed back to my dorm. This was around 11am, I then fell asleep until 4 or so and planned to get up and start doing something, but I still felt pretty exhausted, dinner was at 5:30 and then I was informed that my friend Maggie was having a party in her apartment, and I am in no position to bail on new friends at the moment. This party led us to the student bar, which closed down around midnight and then in an unfortunate hug turned tackle fiasco our friend Michelle smacked her head against the concrete and fearing she had a concussion, we all went home and her roommates took turns waking her every two hours. So much for Friday.

I go to sleep and expect to sleep half the day away on Saturday and get some much needed rest, however for the millionth time I wake up around 5am completely exhausted but unable to fall back asleep. I restart Angelica (my laptop) and hop on facebook, after a little while I feel I am able to go back to sleep so I try. I am awoken with a start at 7a (which is a story for another post), and spend the next few hours talking to John and Colby on facebook which was a nice treat. The one good thing about my involuntary early rising is it allows me to catch my friends as they are returning from their own parties or outings.


Anyhoo, I head sleepily down for brunch, the only meal offered on Saturdays, which consists of you guessed it, beans and sausages and this time, chips. They seriously serve chips aka french fries at EVERY meal. Wasn't really in the mood for that so I had like, three cups of coffee instead and some fruit.

Around noon I get a text from my new friend Julia saying it is her birthday on Monday and invited me out for waffles/crepes to celebrate. This outing turns into one of those times where you expect to just window shop but everyone needs to pop into various stores to look for things and we spent most of the afternoon downtown. Seetha and I went and got our eyebrows threaded, which sounds strange but was actually a million times less painful than waxing. I suggest it if you have eyebrows that like to take over your face if left unchecked.

We (being me, Julia, Seetha and Jon) returned to campus around 5 and went our own ways, promising to meet back up around 8 to begin the birthday celebration. Those partaking in the festivities were Me, Seetha, Julia, Jo, Maggie, Stephanie, Ali and Jon. Unfortunately for Jon he is the only guy and had to sit around as we all did our hair and makeup. I bought Julia a birthday crown to wear which shockingly stayed in until our cab ride home. Before heading out we took a series of silly pictures, my favorite of which is this one; which is a reaction to a noise Jon made when we decided to make "sad faces". Being the dumb international students that we are nobody has any clue when the buses come so we trekked along, merrily belting out hits from the nineties. We waited at the bus stop for at least 25 minutes where we just kept attempting to find a song that we could all sing all the way through, bus stop karaoke if you will. Just as the final bus arrived, so did about 50 students coming from the student bar. We piled onto the double decker bus and singing/shouting matches ensued between us and some irish lads in the back. Peace was finally found when someone started a rendition of Don't Stop Believing, I think the urge to sing along to that track is pretty universal. Our next stop for the evening was a pub in Temple Bar called The Auld Dubliner.



This place definitely has that pub feeling to it, leather stools, wooden tables, brick walls, totally sloshed irishmen. We danced along to tunes such as La Bamba and spilled our beers every which way during Cotton Eyed Joe, but soon decided we needed a snack and tumbled out the bar and across the street to our new favorite eatery, Abrakebabra. This is a clever name for a Kebab shop which has like pita/gyro type things and hamburgers on the cheap. Good drunk food. What happened next has to be my favorite moment of the night.
(picture in order; Julia, Seetha, Stephanie, Me, Maggie)







In case you hadn't heard, Will Smith's daughter is a singer now. She has a single on the radio entitled, Whip My Hair, in which she does just that, whips her hair around and around. The girl is ten, the song makes no sense and you want to hate it. But in the process of trying to hate on it, you might sing it a lot, you might even search it on youtube just to make fun but then it gets stuck in your head. INCEPTION. And then you love it. Now, Julia especially but Jon and I as well as everyone else really like to use "hairography" already. By that I mean we are big on flinging our head and bodies around while dancing and this song is the ideal one to do it to.  We had been talking about it all night, but knowing no dj was likely to play it. We order our delicious late night snack and lo and behold, Willow pops up on the screen! Without a second hesitation, ponytails are out, purses are thrown down and we are raging. I whip my hair back and forth I whip my hair back and forth. I'm not talking jokingly swaying your head a little bit, I am talking commitment. Out of control, scaring the irish folk, my neck still hurts as I write this, commitment.
We went on like this for three minutes as the various other people in the shop looked on in awe? horror? confusion? and slowly backed away from our corner of the place. I'm not really sure what impression we made but we had a darn good time.
After we were satiated we began our long journey to Harcourt street, the location of the various nite clubs. Our goal was to get into a place called Copperfaced Jacks aka Coppers, which is supposed to be pretty poppin'. You would have thought with its reputation we would think better of trying to get in at 1:30am but we will learn eventually. After stopping multiple people on the street for directions, nearly all of whom were tourists and had no idea, we finally found it and were faced with a line edging on two blocks long. While this particular club is open until 4 or 5 am we realized the night would be half gone by the time we made it in, and you can bet we wouldn't have no space to whip our hair in there. We turned around and decided to pop into the next place that looked appealing. It is hard to make a decision with a group larger than 4 or so people and we passed by a number of places, finally stopping into a pub that was painted green, with loud music and fogged up windows. Turns out it is a pub called Hogan's. The place had a kind of industrial but really warm feel to it and I was instantly happier. Could have been the warmth, could have been the swarms of hip looking people but we got good vibes from the place. As Stephanie and I went down to find the toilets we knew it was going to be a good choice because Superfreak came on, the next was Baby Got Back and then suddenly we were transported to Stockholm. Not that I have ever been to a dance party in Scandinavia, but Jon is from Norway and studies in Sweden
so he knows whats up.
The dj starts spinning all this electro-pop and we shimmy, shake and yes, whip our hair for another hour or so. The dance floor is in a basement, wood floors, brick walls, packed with people and multiple bartenders. It was just really super cool and hip and I will definitely be going back. Around 4am we decided to call it quits and rang up Julia's favorite cabbie, Joe. Now this was my first experience with Joe, and he certainly lived up to the hype. He instantly blasted the music, started jokingly swerving on the road, and turned the lights in the back on and off like a strobe light. Happy and appreciative we started changing all the song lyrics to fit his name;


Make me feel, like you're the only Joe in the world, the onlyyyy Joe in the world (Rihanna)

Since Joe picked us uppppp, we can breathe for the first time (Kelly Clarkson) etcetera.

As a birthday gift to Julia he popped out of the van and grabbed her a heineken from the trunk as we bid him goodnight and promised to call him every weekend to drive us home. Then it was back to Seetha's apartment for a spot of tea. All in all an extremely fun night.

Oh, did I mention I didn't have a drop of alcohol the whole time? My wallet and my health are a little bit happier. Proud, huh?