You've got mail

Got a care package from mi madre today! Thanks so much mom!! The slippers are sooooo adorable and comfortable, and I can't wait to smother everything I eat with the (actually spicy) spices you sent me! :) xoxox so ps. If anyone wants to mail me anything, it will find its way here. ;)

10 Things I love

My favorite blogger does a segment each week called "Ten Things I love Sunday" and I've decided to copy her. At first I kind of figured I would only write Ireland, travel related stuff in this blog, but it has become a bit more random and segmented than that. So I am just going to keep it that way. Ignore this entry if you'd like, but here are ten things I'm obsessed with right now.

These illustrations, Etsy is a never ending supply of adorable!

Glitter in general, but also the idea for these oxford inspired heels, I want to make my own pair!

This beautiful and creative way to jazz up your hair, now I just need an occasion

How long my hair is getting, I'll look like Blake Lively in no time! ;)

This look. I used to do this occasionally in Seattle, but I've noticed everyone here wears shorts with tights. I counted eight girls just coming out of one lecture.

My new lipstick. Not nearly as elaborate as any of these, but I never thought I could pull lipstick off in general. 

LOST. I can't stop. It's an addiction. 

This soda. It is so refreshing and deliscious

Tea! I have had like six cups today.

These heels. I want them so bad but they are way too expensive. 

Self Control, chyeah...

BAM. paper done. Editing tomorrow morning. That was actually a lot easier than expected, let's hope it makes sense. Would not have occurred without the knowledge of the GREATEST program for procrastinators of all time. OF ALL TIME. A lovely free program for macs called Self Control. Maggie told me about it, and I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. You set up a "blacklist" of all the sites you generally procrastinate on and then set a predetermined time that they are blocked from your computer. It can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 hours. No matter what you do you can't access them from your computer, not even by shutting the thing down! No more refreshing facebook fourteen times a minute, no more reading my tumblr dashboard for what I think is ten minutes and turns out to be an hour. I have been saved from myself!

However I still managed to procrastinate a bit, as my mom has said "we used to manage it before the internet too!" Here is a list of things I felt were more important than my paper;

• making coffee
• dancing on my bed to Grace Kelly by Mika
• peeling my nail polish off
• brushing my teeth
• changing my shirt three times
• drawing this picture of a cat
• stretching
• Three "mental breaks" to sing We Used to Vacation by The Cold War Kids 

Check out this song, it is awesome and reminds me of all my beautiful friends back home.

oops...I did it again

That awkward moment when you realize you apparently have a four page paper due in the ONLY CLASS THAT MATTERS tomorrow at 10am.

Got my red bull and my notebook. Here we go.

Credits

Looking at my classes, and my traveling schedule/general lack of motivation (Study abroad isn't real life, right?) I have been kind of stressed about my grades for this semester. I will just be traveling so much and the grades are, for most of my classes, based on just one paper and one final test. Anyways I have been a little worried about doing well in them, my gpa doesn't matter too much but I don't want it to take too hard of a hit. I looked at my DARS this morning, that is degree audit reporting system for those who don't go to UW, and it tells you based on all the graduation and degree requirements what you have and have not completed. Not counting any credits I may get this semester I need

• 41 more credits total
• 10 credits in upper division sociology courses
• leaving me with 31 elective credits

Which means, I can apply for my classes (except the sociology ones) to count as S/NS, satisfactory or non satisfactory credits. Since they only need to count as electives anyways, basically I just need to get at least a 2.0 and then I get credit, but it won't affect my gpa. 

Crisis averted!

"How Thoughtful"

I hate talking to people in the morning. Unless it is a I've slept on your couch and was expecting it sort of situation. If I am in my own element, my room, my apartment or whatever the morning is my time to sort of gear up for the day. I would almost consider myself a morning person, I can be cheery and bright and lovely at 6am, in fact it is more likely than if I tumble out of bed at noon. However, I need to have my routine. I like to be able to take my time getting ready, do my makeup, listen to whatever song I want, even if it is just Mika's Love Today on repeat for half an hour. When that routine is thrown off, I get grumpy. It doesn't matter what side of the bed I wake up on, before I've gotten ready and had breakfast/coffee/tea my mood is liable to switch at any second. I woke up today feeling alright, not really well rested as I tossed and turned most of the night, but determined to have a good day. Almost every day I have gone downstairs and gotten my breakfast to go so I don't have to make small talk with people. 8:30 am is too early for small talk, don't you agree? Anyways so today I sat down with these two girls I know, and there was this other girl I don't. I'm not sure if it was exacerbated by her accent, but every word out of her mouth dripped with pretension and the idea that she was superior to me in some way. I made some comment about how I was excited for my trip to Cork so that I would get to see a little more of Ireland, as Dublin wasn't really as foreign as I was expecting. She questioned me and I said merely that the differences just weren't as significant as I was expecting and especially being 25 minutes away from the city center and stuck on campus many days. I got a strange look and then "what club did you go to for the create on your wrist?" (thinking it was a stamp) and I said, 'oh no, its a tattoo' to which she rightfully asked what the meaning was. I said they had much more elaborate backstories but the short of it was reminders to be creative in everything you do and make the world more beautiful in any way you can, and to go with the flow, take a moment, breathe and then live life the best you can with what you have. To which she replied with a sort of hmmph sound and what came off to me as a sarcastic "how thoughtful". Then after asking what year I was in school, I said I was sad to be a third year as that means I have to go into the real world in a year, and she was like, "oh, it's not that bad, I've taught english in Hong Kong for the last two years". Like I said, nothing she said was particularly rude but the way she said it was very much a tone that said I do not take you seriously, you hippie tattooed fool.  Maybe she meant well, but at 8:30 in the morning, I don't need that nonsense.

Here is the Mika song, if you've never heard it I suggest you give it a listen. Great song to get you pumped up for the day!

There are good ships and there are wood ships, but the best ships are friendships

(I didn't take this one)

My friend Maggie is Irish, and has a ton of family still living in the country, of course she doesnt really know them, but family is family and you gotta help one another out. Pay it forward and whatnot. Family is the reason we ventured into town yesterday. Maggie had a cousin of some sort visiting Dublin for the day with a friend (from Chicago, not Ireland) and it was requested that she show her around a bit. Now this is all well and good, but to be real we only know like two neighborhoods and a handful of street names. Oh well, we headed down and met them at the spire. Have I mentioned the spire? It's just this giant spike in the middle of Dublin, strange.

These things were awesome

With cameras in hand we deemed the day a photo safari and vowed to take many more pictures than we had on our previous jaunts into town. We stumbled upon something called Trad Festival which we came to find out was a festival to celebrate traditional Irish music and art. We got to see some Irish dancing before popping into a cafe for a snack and a pint, only to find they had no guinness!! No guinness? Is that even allowed? After that we wandered the temple bar area a bit, we ran into these people dressed as giant puppets. I took a photo of the one in the dress and then as I was walking away the other guy came up and wrapped his arms around me. I must have jumped three feet off the ground. They spoke in these ridiculous voices and he said "I saw you taking pictures of my wife!" Hilarious. (They sound the hand creatures in the movie Labyrinth). After awhile her cousin was tired so we helped them back to their hotel. Unsure of what to do with the rest of the day ahead, we popped into a pub to mull it over with a pint, Guinness this time.

Stepped into the neighborhood's namesake, Temple Bar itself. We squeezed our way in through the already crowded bar, 5:45 on a Sunday, I guess the Irish do know how to party. After an hour of foot tapping, hand clapping, beer sloshing music the band was done and we decided to venture out to another pub. On our way out the bar, a woman handed us flyers, we almost didn't grab them but thank goodness we did because they were for a free half pint of Guinness at a neighboring pub! Funnily enough, the same band from earlier was now playing at this pub. We got a few head nods that said they knew we were at Temple Bar and we felt a little like their groupies. At one point one of the band members came up and grabbed Maggie for some Irish dancing. It was adorable and hilarious.

There was this mysterious door that people kept going into, we finally decided to see what all the fuss was about, and it turned out to be a show of some band doing indie rock covers, we went to the bar to order a drink but then some guy asked to see our stamps, which we clearly didn't have. How he knew we didn't have any is just as mysterious as that door. We were asked to leave out the back exit which led us into an alley.

Where we found a jazz bar, unfortunately the music had just ended but we met this old irishman who made us promise to come back and check it out next Sunday. After that we made our way to another bar, where we were bought these shots called snowglobes, there were about five different types of liquor in it, including one with little gold flakes. Really pretty, even more delicious. After that we ran into some guys we sort of knew, and then took a bus home, made spaghetti and watched music videos with Seetha and Ali.

You can click on this link to view my album of the days photos on Facebook.