Ceilli: "Kay-Lee"

one of the many strange birds that roam around campusfish and chips at Beshoff's!

Trinity College main entrance

a church off Grafton Street

as opposed to the Mediocre and Exceptional Cigar Emporiums down the street

this might be on Baggot Street, but I'm not sure

This past Wednesday, I actually got the chance to go to a ceilli, which is an Irish dance. I didn't get any pictures of it, though, because I was actually dancing myself (not for long, though, since there was a lot of whirling involved). It was a lot of fun to see a traditional Irish get-together; there were actually people there promoting an effort to get students to speak only Irish on a specific day. Apparently Ireland has a goal to have Irish spoken across the country on an everyday basis.

After the ceilli, however, I stood outside in the rain for just a little too long and ended up with an Authentic Irish Cold. I've spent the past couple of days moping around my room and blowing my nose, but hopefully I'll get better soon. A very nice pharmacist from Boots helped me find the cold medicine, which apparently is not kept on the shelves in Ireland. On the upside, due to a few fevers, I've been warm for the first time since arriving here! Maybe this is the secret to surviving the cold weather.

Despite my Irish Cold, I managed to make it out to the equestrian club trials on Friday. I had to go out to Bray, which was about a forty-five minute bus ride and what should have been a five minute walk. My friends and I got incredibly lost though, and wandered around for half an hour in the dark before wandering into a swimming facility and asking for directions. Luckily, the trials were running late and I made it just in time to ride. They threw me up on what looked like a Clydesdale cross named Max (possibly with some fluffy teddy bear genes as well), and we rode for about ten-ish minutes, just walk-trot-canter in one direction and then a few small jumps. Max, although very gentlemanly, was not really interested in bending. Overall, it was a fun experience, but I'm actually hoping that I didn't get picked for competition so that I don't have to have my show gear shipped from the U.S.

Today, at lunch with Emory's program coordinator, I discovered that Emory will pay for me to travel in Ireland! They won't pay very much, but if I stay in a hostel, they'll pay for me to travel to Galway and stay for two nights, which is pretty exciting. So as soon as I kick this cold, I want to start making plans.

p.s. I dedicate this post to Marie, who interrupted me in the middle of writing it.