calling the dan

Today was most excellent. We woke up (and didn’t shower since our hostel is lacking hot water for the time being—GROSS), ate a quick breakfast downstairs, and met Dan’s dad. He owns a bus company and has graciously offered us his services for our stay in Ireland. Knowing that we are from the south and can’t handle the cold, he had a whole collection of winter jackets for us to wear while we stood outside and watched Dan’s Gaelic football match. Gaelic football is my new favorite sport and I’m determined to learn it and bring it back to the US and completely dominate the world. It’s pretty much a combination of rugby, soccer, and US football and while it is officially non contact, there are body checks a plenty. After we remembered that we as Americans have a reputation for being loud and obnoxious AND that nobody knows us, we decided to live up to that expectation fully and “call the Dan” (yes that was my idea, and yes I am a genius). For those who are not in the know, calling the Dan consists of yelling “goooooo Dan sic ‘em woof woof woof” Obviously once a bulldog, always a bulldog. Hooray.

Dan (#10) dominating his football match

After Dan’s match we went to tea (another reason why I love this country) where we warmed up with tea (obviously), fruit, bread, cookies, etc…deelish. Even though we just watched a Gaelic football match, we still needed more sports (we put the athletic in athletic training-duh) we hopped in the bus and headed to the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) museum to get our learn on. En route to the GAA museum, we had our own version of Saturday night live-Sunday afternoon live anyone?? Complete with renditions of forrest gump and celebrity jeopardy. Good thing we all peed before we left because I definitely would have wet myself. I would say that I’ve never laughed so hard in my life, but I kind of do that on a daily basis thanks to my athletic training peeps.
So yes, we got to the GAA museum where we got a tour of the facility including the locker rooms, player’s lounge, the actual field, and the box seats. What’s really cool about the Gaelic sports is that it’s all amateur. NOBODY gets paid; they just bust their asses for the love of the game. Gives you a lot to think about especially with the NFL lockout. Going to the GAA museum has really gotten me excited for the Gaelic Games on St. Patrick’s Day though, the energy is going to be out of control! After our tour, we went upstairs and tried our hands at playing Gaelic Football and Hurling-Needless to say I was a complete fail and made a mockery of Ireland’s national sport (sound familiar? Flashback to tai chi in Taiwan)

the entry onto the field of Croke Park

all of us in the locker room with jerseys

chillin' with a giant hurling stick

We finally pulled ourselves away from playing our Gaelic games, but really a busload of elementary schoolers came in and we felt bad for hogging all the fun, and hopped a bus to take us to the Guinness Storehouse.
The storehouse is basically a museum walking us through how Guinness is made, the history of it, fun advertising campaigns, etc… It was really interesting actually, but something else that was pretty cool is that the museum is shaped like a giant pint glass and is 7 stories and the 8th story is a bar that gives you a 360 degree view of Ireland. We got really lucky today and there were no clouds, so we saw EVERYTHING. We made it through the museum, enlightened to the world of Guinness, and had our free pint overlooking Ireland. I could get used to this!!

at the gravity bar in the guinness factory

putting milk mustaches to shame

cheers!

aileen and I with our "tasting" glasses

at the entry of the museum

For dinner, we experienced more of Ireland’s hospitality-we went to dinner at one of the DCU’s professor’s house where she made us a lovely dinner and dessert. The DCU students that were over at UGA came too and we had a great time sitting around, eating, and cutting up.
We caught a bus back to Temple Bar (the area that we are staying—I’ll post on that later), dropped some stuff out, and met up with Dan and Susan at a local pub. This was much more fun than the clubs-we just grabbed a pint and rocked out to (American) music. I may or may not have had to do ten pushups on the NASTY PUB FLOOR because i lost "the game". sadly it was not documented on film, but i have plenty pictures of Erica doing them. gotchaaaaa. Came back pretty early because A) it’s Sunday night and pubs close early and B) we have to be at school tomorrow. I had great hopes of updating the first post and adding more details/pictures, but I should probably attempt to sleep.