The Best Night of my MultiCultural Life

I should've written this post much sooner, because I think enthusiasm shows up best in writing if you put it all down as soon as possible: the details and such are all fresh in the mind... still pretty and vivid and stuff. But anyway, I wanted to share with everyone:

Friday night I went out in Dublintown with a grand and diverse group. I rode the bus downtown with my friend/neighbor, Niall, and we met a bunch of people at the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar. The crowd included a French couple, Vanessa and Dmitri (sp?); a German guy, Joachim (YO-heem, say it with me now-- YO-heem); an Irish couple, Owen and Mary; and Niall's sister, Ciara. We saw _Rebel Without a Cause_, which I've always wanted to see-- and it was everything I hoped it would be... brimming with 1950's cliches: greasers, girls, cars, knife fights; apron-wearing moms who bake cakes; high school cliques, etc. And, now that I'm on this point, I suppose these things are not cliches: the theme of the movie is classic, and I'm sure if you cared, you could find Greek tragedies dealing with the same types of conflict. All I know is if James Dean showed up at my high school, I'd gladly pull a knife on any girl who tried to carry his books-- it would be my job, after all, to make the new boy feel "at home".

Then we went to dinner at the oddly-named Pizza Stop. I'm not sure if this is a command or an assertive suggestion. But, my pizza was tasty with anchovies, shrimp, and crabmeat. The conversation was uplifting and interesting, covering many social and cultural topics: French wedding customs (Dmitri and Vanessa are getting married next year), Irish local government (Owen works for an office that discovers misspent money and punishes people for it), computer-applied translation programs (Joachim), Graceland (myself), and on and on. The total bill was e111.96 or something like that, which in this town is a massive bargain for such a large crowd.

We then proceeded to meet my other neighbor, Riona, and her two friends Aine and Gillian, and then we all went to a club called the Turk's Head. The music was fraternity-party average (How many songs can Destiny's Child do that sound exactly the same?) but the company, as before, was great. We left not soon after a minging Indian man kept asking me for my phone number, though I showed him my wedding ring and told him I was happily married. Niall led us all out of the club, made sure everyone had a way to get home, and then he and I caught a disappointingly quiet NiteLink bus home to DCU.

Niall had earlier promised me that riding the NiteLink would be an adventure: a bus of swashbuckling pirates, transsexual prostitutes, drunk nurses still in their uniforms, and hobos. No such thing. I guess all that means is we'll have to get our United Nations group together to go out again, so I can ride the bus home and prove at least one of my two hyoptheses: 1) that Niall is a liar, or 2) that there are no nurses in Dublin.

Slainte!