Day 3

Yesterday we made a trip to the Portobello (a pub that our superiors in IES couldn't praise highly enough) to watch the final Hurling match between Kilkenny and Waterford. Hurling isn't the same as the Olympic event. Think less nazi poster-boys throwing a concrete frisbee and more ultimate frisbee+golf+Irish people in short shorts beating the tar out of each other with shillelaghs. I won't go into the rules (despite any rumors you might have heard about my massive intellect, I am not Wikipedia), but it's an amazing game to watch. So, at the pub,Adam and Derrick each bet a pint against Joe that Waterford would beat Kilkenny. I almost made the same bet (the Waterford jerseys go remarkably well with my complexion), but my natural fear of becoming an enabler won out--this was fortunate, as Waterford got STOMPED. It was so horrible that even Joe ended up disliking the whole thing.
Today we went on an exodus to renew our Luas passes. Luas is the lightrail in Dublin. It works almost identically to the New Jersey Light Rail (as far as I know--I never actually bought tickets on the Jersey light rail, figuring the state authorities would probably spend the money on crack). In order to save valuable eurobux on ticket-scanning machines, the city opted instead to use an honor system. If you buy a ticket, you will board the train and feel like a chump. If you don't buy a ticket, you will board the train and immediately be accosted by hostile men in neon vests shouting incomprehensible shit straight out of Finnegan's Wake.
Thankfully, my roommates and I can avoid this lose/lose dilemma. We live in an area that requires use of the Luas to reach our classes, so IES reimburses us for the passes we buy. Unfortunately, this required us to walk all over the city, first going to the IES center to get proof of our being students, and then looking for some vaguely socialistic student discount ID card in order for IES to be more ballsy about giving us our money back for the Luas passes we spent $60 on. All in all, it took us about six hours to get some stupid train passes.

I think I'd rather be accosted.