Week end

The word weekend here is actually pronounced as if it was two separate words. Not that the term even means much here since the weekend is just when the Irish students go home. The big nights to go out are Wednesday and Thursday.

We went out on Thursday night to The Kings Head (yeah, no apostrophe). That night there was a promotional event going on for a student fashion show. They had James Bond 007 playing in the background with subtitles, a DJ spinning popular American tunes and fancy cocktails for sale. Then around 10:30 a student the band went on. I really enjoyed them, they played a mix of classic rock and some trad music as well. It got really crowded toward the end, but was a fun night.

Friday night we decided to stay in so the girls all baked cookies and then we went over to the boys' apartment and watched The Quiet Man. It was a pretty cheesy, but interesting movie. It was filmed in the 50s in a town called Cong, which is only about 25 minutes outside of Galway. We actually went there on our bus trip to Connemara and the tour guide pointed out a lot of places where scenes in the movie were shot.

Saturday I walked into town to meet up with some friends and we went to the local farmers market. It's pretty cool and has all sort of different stands selling clothing, jewelry and of course food. There's a falafle stand, doughnut stand, fresh vegetables, sushi, and a big stand with lots of fresh fish (they were freaky looking, especially the big shrimp). After that the boys were hungry so they took us to Finnegan's, a pub/restaurant that supposedly has the best seafood chowder -- which I now totally agree with. The soup basically has whatever seafood the restaurant currently had in stock. I had no idea what was in it since I don't eat fish very often, but Paddy guessed there was squid, clam, salmon and lobster in it among others. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And whenever you get soup here you aways get a side of bread -- usually two slices of brown bread.

Last night was a failed attempt to go out to a club. The girls and I got all dressed up and went out, but since the students go home on weekends town wasn't too hopping. We tried GPO first but it was empty so we tried Cuba (the most popular club) but it was past midnight and there was a 10 euro entrance fee. We then tried Club K, but didn't like it at all. There's always college aged kids standing in the streets to stamp your hand to get into clubs for free (it's sweet, but the stamps are not easy to get off). One of the kids was really outgoing and had stamped our hands for Club K (right as we left Cuba). When he saw us leaving Club K he questioned us why we didn't like either club and then recommended another place. Well, we didn't like that either and had to walk past him again. He started slagging (kidding) us about not liking any of the clubs and being picky. Apparently he has 'regulars' because some American guys came up to him to get stamped while he was talking to us. We had seen the guys earlier in the lobby of my friend's building and when she told him we had seen the boys in her lobby there was no end to the slagging. We now know not to say someone is in our lobby, haha. Hopefully we will run into Gary again, he was a funny kid (and told us he would be there most weekends). In the end we just grabbed some fries at Supermacs -- basically the Irish version of McDonald's/Burger King -- and came back and passed out.

The Internet is STILL down in my apartment and has been for the past week and a half. I'm hoping it will be fixed by Monday, but reception hasn't been very good at telling us what's going on.