Survival of the Fittest

I knew this day would be epic, but wowza.

I was awoken around 8am to the sound of bagpipes. I didn't know why, how or who. After about 5 seconds of laying in my bed in confusion I knew it was real. We jumped up and ran to the window like kids looking for santa claus on Christmas Eve, and there he was... Kevin from Brooklyn. He made my day. Everyone was out on their respective balconies either a)drinking beer b)dancing or c)trying to convince themselves this was actually happening while still in their pjs (me and bri).

"My mom brought them from home when she visited last month"... if I was bringing home bagpipes I would have to throw away half of my wardrobe to check my bags. After we thanked Kevin for waking us up the most memorable way of our entire lives, we costumed up and american friends who looked like they puked green all over each other started arriving for the grand paddy's day french toast and apple cobbler feast. Both why we were taking this meal to celebrate the french and why meg decided to make peach cobbler for breakfast is a mystery, but hey, I didn't hate it (and obviously neither did alex- see below).

Once we made sure that we looked just ridiculous enough we set out on our journey to the parade. I met up with an old friend on the way just to say hello.

And like all the Irish say, the parade is lame. Apparently it's better in NYC and Chicago, but the people were priceless. And please don't ask about my Irish Indian headdress... I am very aware that it makes no sense at all. I am just embracing the randomness that is the day of paddy's.

The parade started an hour late, while we were on our way to meet our program director to go to Croke Park for the hurling and gaelic football finals. Good news though: amid the hectic crowds and racing against time, we did manage to slip into Ray's Pizza to grab a heavenly hawaiian slice. We were running along in our stupid outfits that screamed american tourists and realized we had to CROSS THE STREET of the parade. Impossible it seemed and timely it was. The group ended up waiting an hour for us to arrive but at least they were graced with our green orange and white presence. So basically we missed the parade, almost missed our tickets, then on the way to Croke Park an Irish man sees Ben... with my camera in hand he was amid capturing the beauty of a delicate swan in a small river (probably also screaming something random and blowing his paddy's day whistle that I was about to grab from his mouth and destroy any way that I possibly could)... and tries to push him in the river. NOT COOL, but surely funny. Got to the games, ben fell asleep in his chair while the rest of us watched irish men with huge legs beat each other up without any sort of mercy for a couple hours. It was fun, and plus I got an ice cream sandwich there. yum.

Quick power nap... time to go out. Every place is packed. We end up at a fine establishment called the hairy lemon soaking in the last few hours of paddy's. At this point in the day the crowd was outstanding: filled with highly intoxicated british women, people struggling for their own consciousness, men using the ladies room and one crazy hairy lemon.

Twas a marathon, not a sprint.

"Hi! My name's Barbara but you can just call me Babs." - 1st week in dublin Bri says this to alex and ben in the Brazen's Head. We still don't know where that came from, but I couldn't see her as anything else.

She's tiny, she's tan, she's feisty and she always knows the haps. Brianna DiTocco aka Babs is one of my roommates in Dublin. She's still mad that a nickname she gave herself less than a week after meeting me stuck and that I refuse to call her anything else. She once called me the "Beaminator," for an attempt at revenge but never continued. She loves shoes, animals, michael bolton, pb&js, italy and tequila. She packed a whole backpack full of shoes for a week long trip to Italy, and brought 8 pairs for a weekend in Belfast. Two weeks ago she woke up with gum in her hair and walked into my room to ask me to remove it. Yesterday she forgot her purse on top of a cliff on the Aran Islands and asked me to retrieve it. 3 days ago she said she saw two cows making love from the bus and she asked me to believe her. Every day she yells through the wall to ask me to make dinner with her. She is scared of bright colors, daddy long legs, a day without lotion and split ends (the other day I turned to the right and she was literally picking mine). If no one knows who did it, then Babs did. If you laugh, then Babs will laugh. If you feed Babs caffeine or sugar (do not, i repeat... do not feel her both at once) she will literally bounce off of the walls.

A couple weeks ago we were in a disagreement over something stupid (probably who will buy toilet paper next) and she said so seriously... "Katie, the honeymoon stage is over." It's true, it was over, and now we are ruthless. Over the weekend on our group trip to Galway, Ireland our friends started telling us out of the blue that we have some type of sister-like relationship that could potentially benefit from counseling. I think they were exaggerating, but we decided to take the weekend as a couples therapy vacation (it couldn't hurt, could it?):

She's my partner in crime, a really good arm rest, the butt of many undeserved jokes, the smallest one in every room and someone that is impossible to dislike. She's Babs.

Day in the Life of a Gypsy

Every first Sunday of the month the almost creepily silent square of Smithfield fills with gypsies, travelers, small farmers, horse buyers and curious outsiders (ME)... oh and HORSES... but not just any horses- unkept, ratty, poorly fed and aggressive Irish horses. This ridiculously random event in the middle of Dublin has been going on for almost 300 years and has become most expectedly controversial with government officials who support the modernization of the area. They've tried to end this trading tradition multiple times, but without fail the gypsies prevail. I decided to attend this "fair" last weekend in which I could not manage to find one cony dog, ferris wheel, funnel cake OR scrambler. This is what I found:

bob marley reincarnated

P.S. the whole town still smells like the horse fair today, 7 days later.