A Day at the "Beach"

Day 3: June 19, 2012

            Tuesday morning came even earlier than the previous. The Irish Film class had to watch a movie at 9:30am. First of all, who ever watches movies at 9:30 in the morning? And second, who ever knew that John Wayne was Irish? I’m just glad he didn’t try to put on an Irish accent in The Quiet Man. The film was about a man born in Ireland, but moved to America at a very young age, who returns to his home town of Innisfree after he *spoiler alert* kills a man unintentionally in the boxing ring. I won’t give you anymore details for the reason that I actually would like you to keep reading this post and that the movie was so long that I could probably write a book just summarizing it. In short, it was directed by John Ford and was not as bad as I’m making it sound, though I was dancing in and out of consciousness the entire time until the 30 minute fight scene at the end (oh yeah sorry, *spoiler alert*). The Quiet Man had the class laughing in many parts, whether on purpose or not we will never know.

            After the movie we had a group trip scheduled to go to Sandycove, a small beachy town about 20 minutes, by train, outside of Dublin on the Dublin Bay. Now if you saw the word “beachy” and started singing the classic hit by Nicki Minaj “Starships” then you are not alone. Well you actually are, because this so called “beach” is as far from being a beach as it is from being in Southern California. Don’t get me wrong, there was water, and maybe a little bit of sand, but that doesn’t make it a beach. Even though we call Yorktown Beach a beach, lets be honest, we all know it’s really not (sorry to burst your bubble Todd). So anyways the reason we went to Sandycove is because it’s where the famous Irish author James Joyce lived and began his book Ulysses. We were going to visit Joyce Tower, but apparently the guy working the little museum there had one too many Guinness’s the weekend before and wasn’t opening it until Thursday.

            After a little exploration of Sandycove we headed down the road to the little town of Dalkey. It was about a 20 minute walk and we started going through some neighborhoods, which was a little awkward. I think it would be weird to look outside my window back home and just see a group of 16 college students walking by my house. So we split up into two groups, and my group ended up stopping in the town square to grab a bite to eat. While we were eating outside this man approached us. He wobbled over to us, obviously drunk or something, and he just started rambling. I’m not quite sure what all he said but he quoted a little bit of Einstein, name dropped a few of the most famous Bob’s in the world (Marley and Dylan), and gave us two words of advice “AARRGGGGHHH” (not quite sure where the two words are in there but it’s a direct quote. I promise). He did this all before the local Garda (police) came over and took him away. So after making the long trek back to the Sandycove train station we were all worn out. The ride back to Dublin was much quieter than the one going.

            That night after dinner we all met up at Porterhouse, a pub right outside one of the gates of Trinity. It was music trivia night and it was a blast! We split up into two teams to see which group could do better on the “Classic Modern Rock” trivia. First two songs were easy and they reeled us in, but the third was a little tricky. It was “Beautiful Monster” by Neyo.. pretty sure that does not fall under the category of “Classic Modern Rock” but we got it. The rest of the songs went back and forth between easy and difficult. My team, “Cilantro,” only got three wrong. So after music trivia was done we found something that hit close to home, JENGA!! We played a few rounds of this and then once they had to tell us they were closing we all headed back to our dorms to continue the group bonding through some card games and good laughs.