First Irish Wedding

This weekend, John and I went to our first Irish wedding. Well, actually we went to the afters. Unlike at home, weddings in Ireland are broken into parts. Some people are invited to the ceremony and dinner. More people are then invited to the afters, that is the dancing after the meal. The festivities officially ended at 12:30 but my understanding is that many people were going to go to the club in the hotel and that the festivities usually don't end until well into the night or morning!

Anyway, we went to the afters and got there about 9:00 PM. The DJ was playing and a few people were dancing. Mostly people were talking. About 10:00 PM there was a show by Irish dancers that lasted about 30 minutes. After they danced a few songs, they then called the bridal party out onto the dance floor and the Irish dancers then danced with the bridal party as well. It looked like a lot of fun! Towards the end of the evening, more food was offered to guests. It was the standard pub/party type food: chips, chicken wings, chicken goujons, and calamari (at least that's what we think it was). All in all, it was a good night.

And the Bloggie goes to...

Last night, I went to the Irish Blog Awards with a few friends. I wasn't planning on going but Yvonne offered to give me her husband's ticket and come with her. The awards only started about 30 minutes later than advertised. DJ Rick O'Shea hosted the awards and a video skit with George W Bush introduced each award. They were quite funny! Rick also named the awards the Bloggies. I quite like it and hope that name will stick.

There were some journalists there (I think), or just bloggers taking serious notes. I just enjoyed the time out with friends and even got to meet a few new people. I was disappointed that Knitting Neels didn't win the best craft category but was happy that The Voyage won for best specialist blog. Oh, there was also a raffle and Yvonne won a DVD player!

On the walk home Aileen and I saw a hen night. :)

Food festival

Two weeks ago there was an international food festival down in Marlay Park. We actually organized ourselves to head down there since the sun was actually out and we have been a bit "lazy" on the weekends. So, we hopped the bus and spent a couple hours wandering around and eating. On Saturdays, there is a market so we took a bit of a wander through that as well. We got me a nice big ceramic mug for my tea and hot chocolate.

Overall, we were pretty happy with the diversity of food. We did wonder, however, why Dublin got its own designation as a culture. See, the rest of the flags were names of countries. The U.S. stand had chocolate chip cookies and such. The Mexican stand had yummy Mexican food and salsa and other sauces to sell. It was actually through the Mexican stand that we found out about the festival because they are usually at the Saturday market that we go to get our salsa. There was even a sushi making class!

After we ate our fill, we wandered around the park a bit until it closed.

07-07-07

On Saturday, we tried to have a belated 4th of July party. As my future sister-in-law pointed out in an email, the date happened to be 07-07-07! How cool is that? Anyway, we tried to have a party but most people were out of town. Two people ended up attending!

Anyway, we decided that a party in the park would be nice. Now remember, this is Ireland and itrains a lot. It has also been raining every day for I don't know how many days (too many tocount). We almost cancelled and had people come to our place but decided to chance the weather. For the most part, it payed off. We had a little spread on a blanket in Herbert Park and enjoyed a lovely afternoon with the other two brave souls who joined us. And it only rained a little bit!

Dublin Marathon

Today was the Dublin Marathon and we watched parts of it. We woke up to hear clapping and it looked like there was a wheelchair race at the beginning. Since my camera batteries were low, we only got a few pictures from our apartment which was at the first mile line. Later we went along another part of the course and watched/cheered people on.

Two Russians won in the men's and women's races, with the man breaking the record.

Eicom and/or blogger are apparently having issues since my connection keeps timing out. So, here are a few pictures and I will try to post more tomorrow.

Street Circus

This week in Temple Bar there was a street circus "festival." I was really looking forward to it because I like watching circus performers/acrobats. However, the performances were only at lunch and dinner times. And you needed to get a ticket for the performances ahead of time. I was bummed on Friday evening when I found out that you needed a ticket for the formal performances and that there weren't street performers out and about. Today, we finally found a couple street performers. We still didn't go to anything that needed a ticket.

Mini Marathon

5th June was the Women's Mini-Marathon. It was a beautiful day for the 10 kilometer walk/run. My friend M and her boyfriend's roommate walked it with me. It looked like everyone was having a good time and there were some people on the sidelines spraying the walkers at times. There were supposed to be about 40,000 women in it and from what I saw, we were towards the back. Some guys dressed in drag to participate. It took us exactly two hours to walk it and we got a medal at the end. We were sad that the free massages were done by the time we finished.

Sorry the post took so long to write. I had technical difficulties on 5th of June and went away for a trip to Kerry and just got back today...

Women's World and Ducks

Today I went to the Women's World Show at the RDS because I had to go pick up my number for the Mini-Marathon on Monday. My friend J went with me. It was the smallest convention that I have been to and I really hope that nobody actually pays 10 Euro to go to it. Any participants of the Mini-Marathon and a guest get in free. They had some shopping and free stuff but not that much. A lot of the shopping that they had there looked cheap but with high prices.

After we left, we went shopping around Grafton Street. That was a productive trip even though I need to do more shopping tomorrow. When we got back to my place from shopping, we saw lots of little yellow ducks in the River Liffey. Apparently, there was a plastic duck race with 150,000 ducks in an attempt to be the biggest duck race and break a world record. By the time I got home, people were throwing the ducks from the River to people on the Quays.

Generosity

As I have posted about before, I am walking in the mini marathon the 5th of June. I hate asking people for money so I have put a sponsor sheet in a couple staff rooms. So far, I have raised about 200 Euro! I am pretty impressed with the generosity of people here. Everyone that I have approached has donated something.

Mini "Marathon"

Today I officially registered for the Dublin Women's mini-marathon that will occur on the 6th of June. It is a 10k run/walk. I intend on walking it. This mini marathon is a huge fund raising event here in Dublin. 40,000 women are allowed to enter. I don't understand why it is a women's only thing but it is. I have been told that some men dress in drag to participate. I have decided to walk with my friend M. Well, she convinced me to walk with her really.

pictures of damage

The previous post wouldn't let me post any pictures. I think that the website doesn't like pictures posted with long text. So, here are a few pictures of the damage that I took with John's camera on Sunday.

The damage

On Sunday afternoon I went out walking in city centre looking for damage/signs of the riots. It was actually fairly difficult to find them. People had their bikes chained to the posts down O'Connell Street. About an hour after the civil unrest ended, people were able to drive down the street again. All in all, life went back to normal very quickly. The Footlocker was closed on Sunday but re-opened on Monday. The still don't seem to have shutters on their windows, though. I wonder if they will get any.

On Monday, people were talking a lot about the incident. I don't like to call it a riot because it didn't seem big enough to me. From some of the pictures I have seen, I missed the more violent part of it. Also, given the amount of tension in Ireland between the people who think the North should stay separate and those who think the whole island should be one country and the history of violence between these groups, it is impressive that there wasn't more damage done. From talking to people, it sounded like the counter demonstrators (ones who didn't want the original march/parade to happen) had gathered bottles the night before. They apparently planned to throw them at police and the marchers.

Some people were also saying that marches like a Love Ulster (Northern Ireland) shouldn't be allowed in Dublin. I understand their sentiments to some extent. It does seem like when there are supposed to be peaceful marches about an issue dealing with North/South, there is some sort of civil disobedience. Maybe people just aren't ready to put some of the issues behind them. I don't pretend to understand the situation as I have only been in the country less than a year. However, given the long history of conflict, it seems that the issues may need to be handled in a more delicate manner.

Another thing that I found interesting from this civil unrest was the comments about "thugs" and organized crime. Numerous taxi drivers have told me that there is a strong organized crime network in city centre. It seems that some believe that when the civil unrest started, the organized crime groups and "thugs" then took advantage of the situation to break in to places and loot them. The people doing the looting definitely seemed to be young, in their teens perhaps.

Fund Raising

While the civil unrest was happening about three blocks away, fire fighters were raising money! They had a fire truck and firefighters in uniform with buckets asking for money! Also, shopping was happening more or less as usual. Granted by the time we saw the firefighters raising money, some of the unrest had moved south. Still, why weren't they helping out? There were fires started during the riot after all.

Store Break-ins

During the riot, people took merchandise from stores and broke into some. When we were walking behind the stores that faced O'Connell street, we saw lots of clothes and items just dropped on the ground. A lot of these had tags on them still. They must have been stolen earlier in the civil unrest.

While we were at the riot, the Foot Locker got broken into. If you look closely in one of the first pictures I posted, you can see the broken glass windows and the police guarding the entryway. When this store was broken into, we saw loads of people running off with merchandise. We were actually behind the store and just saw people running off with sports clothing.

Apparently, Shuh (a shoe store), Footlocker, and another shoe store got broken into. Eddie Rockets and McDonald's had their windows broken. Clothing also appeared to be stolen from Penny's (a discount clothing store). I wonder why these stores were targeted. Merchandise easy to carry, poor security? Oh, there were also loads of store security guards at the entrances of any stores that were open and that didn't have the metal pull down gates.