10 Questions About…

On Thursday we left Patrick’s mom to bring the kids to school and we went into the Immigration Office. I would play menacing music here if I could. Our last trip was not very successful.

I was crabby – as you are when you have to waste time with something like this. It was pouring rain. We were much later than I wanted to be – but I have to say I was very impressed. We were out and I had my new immigrant card with a super hideous picture of me in 30 minutes.

We got outside and it was sunny! Actually it was one of those – 2 hours of sun, half hour of pouring rain kind of days.

Anyways Patrick and I snuck off to the National Gallery. We have been wanting to see the Paintings from Poland exhibit. There is a huge Polish population in Dublin – huge. So I think it’s so mart that the help to introduce the rest of the Irish population to Poland in this small way. Also I think it’s a smart way to get the Polish immigrants into the National Gallery. (The Gallery is free, by the way, which we also like.)

I won’t go on too much but the paintings were all done from 1900-1930, I think. The colors were really vibrant and symbolism was big. As we all know, Poland was liberated in 1918 (clearly news to me) and then the Germans invaded in 1939 (I might have gotten that one) and that is when a lot of this art was done. Jesters seem to be a big symbol and quite a few of the artists seem to either use the perspective of children or children’s stories as themes.

We also saw the Turner watercolors, which are only shown in January. They are pretty amazing if you think about someone actually making a good painting using watercolors – and I only mean that because watercolors are so smearing and bleeding that I could never make a recognizable picture.

The cool thing about the watercolors, if you could paint, is that you can capture landscapes like I’d like to capture them in photos except the photo is too small. One picture showed a town on the side of a mountain with a sun set. I’d be lucky to get just the mountain or the town or the sunset in a photo.

So it was fun to spend the day doing something the kids probably wouldn’t love. They do like the National Gallery – we just go through the art much quicker.

Today we went to the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibit. It’s held at the RDS; the same place we saw the Pogues before Christmas. This time it was all decked out for high school science fair booths. It was great. OK, great might be pushing it – but it was interesting once I got people to shake off the crabbiness.

I think the students do a great job with their science exhibits. It’s a little bit like the 4H building at the State Fair.

As we pointed out with the kids they start with a hypothesis, explain their methods and include their results.

My favorite was exhibit was from St Joseph’s Boys National School in Terenure. They researched Albert Einstein. Two of their students popped up and ask – Do you want to know about Albert Einstein?

They were great at going back and forth giving me facts and Einstein. Then Patrick started to quiz them in his teacher-way and they were able to answer everything. They were just so enthusiastic you had to love them.

Some of our other favorite exhibits:

• Lefties have a greater chance than right handed folks of have an IQ of more than 140. (Kate’s a lefty.)
• The best way to study is to is to do a word dump where you read a page, cover it and jot down everything you remember reading. Just reading was the worst way to study.
• High heel shoes are hardest on your feet; flip flops are best for your feet. (They didn’t test Doc Martens.) Expensive sunglasses are actually better for your eyes than cheapies.
• People find popup ads on the web frustrating and distracting but they don’t tend to notice or remember the contents of the ads.
• Also there’s more of a professional science exhibit within the big science fair. We saw giant cockroaches. (Reminded me of the bar where Damian works in NY – also reminded all of us about the challenge on America’s Next Top Model where they had to model with cockroaches.)
• We learned that my reflexes are much quicker than Patrick’s or Lily’s – Kate and Aine didn’t even bother challenging me.

Two more interesting notes – most of the young scientists were girls. The award winner this year was a 13 year old.

Finally I had a add a picture of us on the bus stop as I finally remembered to take one.

On Monday we met up with Kevin, KC, Quinlan (8), Brenna (3), and Rowan (4 months, I think). They are from Minnesota but are living for the school year in Galway while KC teaches at NUI Galway.

On the way we stopped by Trinity because we had some extra time. We met up with Kevin and crew at St Stephen’s Green and went to a playground. I swear it was 60 degrees. The kids really enjoyed playing and we enjoyed talking to the parents. After playing we went to a very OK – but perfect for kids – restaurant for lunch.

The Kevin’s crew headed back for the train to Galway and we made our way home. We stopped by the National Gallery – where we got the family packs for the first time. They are great! They include paper and crayons (colors) and a scavenger hunt sort of thing for different ages. We really enjoyed it.

Friday night we went out to an Italian cooking lesson. I was very excited; Patrick was not. We had plenty of time so we took the first bus into town which we thought would leave us walking for about 20 minutes. An hour later we’re still walking through Ranelagh, Rathmines, and Rathgar – some very beautiful neighborhoods, which I’m sure are even more beautiful if you’re not wearing high heel boots!

We called the cooking school and found out that the class had been cancelled – Patrick’s prayers were answered.

So we went into town, had a nice dinner, and popped into the International Bar for one drink before heading home. Fortunately or unfortunately we ran into our new best friends Chris and Anna from Manchester.

It started when Chris asked me if there were any Irish in Dublin. Often it can feel as if there aren’t and as if Polish or Latvian has become the national language. I had to laugh because I was part of the proof that there aren’t any Irish left.

What’s funny was that Patrick and I had been kind of talking about that at dinner. Right now there are about 1-1.5 million people in Dublin. They are predicting 2 million by 2019 – and most of that increase will be immigrants.

So Dublin is very international. I think it’s kind of fun. You hear lots of languages and accents. It’s a huge influx of young people too. I’ve already written a blog post on the impact of this influx on social services, such as schools. But from a fun perspective, it’s good but it makes Dublin (and possibly all of Ireland but I can’t say) a different place, which I wondered if that would have a negative impact on tourism.

According to our new best friends – it does. They were just in town for 3-4 days and they liked it alright but they didn’t have plans to return. I think it wasn’t what they were expecting and they thought it was too expensive. And they were working with Sterling which is twice as valuable as the dollar.

Anyways we had a fun night with them. We took a rickshaw to the last pub – which I believe was the last pub open in town. We stayed out way too late because our new best friends were in their 20’s. Anna gave me her email address, which started as anna1984… luckily I stopped myself before I asked if that was the year she graduated 🙂

Well we found a piece of Americana in Dublin – a huge shopping mall on the North Side called Blanchardstown Shopping Center. It’s pretty much like Rosedale without the thought towards parking logistics. We tried to eat at a TGI Fridays but there was a 30 minute wait.

We went with Patrick’s mom and brother. They were nice enough to let us tag along. Everyone got something new. I wanted to go out there to check it out at some point and really – it’s the kind of place you need to drive so it all worked out well.

That being said I don’t think we’re going back next week. There is a children’s theater so I suspect we’ll be back at again – just maybe not to shop.

Here’s our Christmas agenda. I know several of you have been curious about what we were doing here:

We went to Mass on Christmas Eve. Lily asked Irish Grandma on the way home if we’d have to go on Christmas Day too. We were both relived to hear that the answer was no. The funny thing about Mass was that it was so full that some people (the late people like us) got their communion outside with the smokers and cell phone users.

Then we came home and just relaxed. We could have gone to the pub but we had our big night at the Pogues last night so we weren’t too desperate to get out.

Kate was the first one awake in the morning at 8:00. But she held on until 9:00 when we woke up everyone else. Aine got up around 8:30 but she kind of forgot it was Christmas and so she didn’t mind hanging out in the room.

At 9:00 we opened presents – tons of them. The girls made out like bandits with an electronic, doll stroller and handheld electronic games kind of leading the pack. Patrick and I took a walk around the park after the present opening. It wasn’t really cold at all.

We had Christmas dinner around 1:00. We started with an appetizer of salmon – wild salmon. Then we had turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and more. Everything was wonderful. For dessert, we started with plum pudding, which I have to say I liked. The girls did not. But there was ice cream and after ice cream a chocolate cake appeared – and somehow Aine found biscuits later. I forgot to mention that we got crackers. For those who don’t know crackers, they are toys wrapped up like pieces of candy. Two people share it. One person grabs each end and it pops when you pull each end.

Then we just hung out. The girls played with their toys. Nemo was on TV. Patrick and Fearghal had a nap. And we phoned home.

So it was a quiet but very nice day.

While we were in town one day we went to see the Christmas decorations at the General Post Office in Dublin: 

The Pogues played at a big arena (the RDS) on December 23. I should have ordered tickets online but I was too slow. They were sold out. Then the day before the concert I heard a rumor that a special guest star was going to sing the Fairy Tale of New York. So I was super bummed.

So on the day of the concert I talked Patrick into heading to the RDS to see if we could scalp tickets. Naturally we left late – we left at 8:00; the show was advertised for 8:00. We sat on the bus stop and I was giving up hope. But then (our first miracle of the night) an 84 bus came. I didn’t even think the 84 ran on Sunday. The 84 was the quickest bus that would take us nearly to the door of the RDS.

So we jumped on. Then the next stop up there was some scuttle with a bunch of kids who were trying to get on the bus for being 16 and were clearly carrying several cans of beer. The drinking age in Ireland is young – but not 15. But the hassle was cleared up pretty quickly when the boys sacrificed one friend to stay on the bus stop with the beer and they all stayed on the bus.

So we were again on our way to the show. We arrived and the place was packed. The first thing we heard was someone else asking for spare tickets; not very promising! So we paced near the front gate a bit. We were just decided if we should go home or go into town to see another show when a woman appeared at my elbow and asked if we needed tickets. I quickly said “yes – two” and nearly everyone else around us tried to jump oin her for the tickets – but it was too late. We got ‘em!

We were over the moon. I couldn’t believe it. I held my breath through the various gates and checkpoint until we actually were in the hall.

The RDS is huge. I was there for the Horse Show a long time ago but hadn’t been there to see a show. There were no seat – all standing room. There were two sections – the front and then a set of barriers before the masses. The bar was in another room. There are no giant screens with close-ups or light shows, which was OK with me. The place was packed – of people of all ages but everyone having a great time.

So we had a beer and went in just in time to see (well, hear – we couldn’t see that much) Shane McGowan hit the stage. He was slurring but really no one can sing like Shane McGowan. Either the crowd or maybe Shane McGowan seemed a beat ahead or behind each other for most of the concert – but that was OK. It’s not like we were there to see Pavarotti.

Everyone was dancing – or slamming as the case may be. Poor Patrick was wearing a sweater and a coat so he was sweating. We were dancing around and Patrick didn’t even mind when he got a boot in the face. Someone way up front had foolishly thrown there shoe into the crowd. We didn’t care if he went home barefoot after Patrick got hit.

The finales started and my rumor was right. Sinead O’Connor came out in a Santa suit to sing the Fairy Tale of New York. It was a great show!

On Tuesday we let the kids skip school and we went to see a Christmas pantomime – Snow White at Liberty Hall. The show was at 11:30 and we were the only non-school group but that was OK.

The pantomime is an over the top fairy tale with lots of audience participation. Most of the kids know when to shout “don’t eat the apple” or they argue with the characters to say – “oh no you won’t” “oh yes I will”. The used a lot of music that the girls recognized from Hairspray and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Aine hid her face each time the evil queen appeared – but then she’d slowly uncover her eyes to watch the action. Even the big girls were kind of dancing with the cast at the end of the show.

The house here is heated with oil. We ran out of oil on Saturday. Today (Thursday) they brought the oil but it still isn’t working. There are 2 space heaters.

So we have gone without real heat since Saturday. It’s not as cold as home here (outside) but I’d guess that it’s been hovering around freezing. So, it’s cold enough to want heat.

Lily wore gloves to bed the other night. The girls and I all sleep in the same room – because I keep the space heater on for a while in the room though I don’t let us sleep with it on. I’m afraid that the space heater will start a fire.

I have to admit that I just can’t understand how the oil people can’t deliver oil and have it working immediately. Clearly that sort of work must be reactive. It is winter. I guess their business plan is to let people freeze for a few days before they bring oil.

I guess we’re lucky that we ran out of oil last Saturday and not this Saturday as I imagine that the oil shops will be completely closed next week for Christmas.