Weird plants, strange men, and horses

Believe it or not, the first night in hostel Mad Jack and I had trouble sleeping.  Mind you this is after running an excruciating sleep deficit.  We kept hearing a party raging below and it kept waking us up.  Whatever, it was only temporary right?
Mad Jack's orientation happened at some point of time during the day so we had resolved to wake up and get going fairly early in the day... like 8 am.  8 sounds good, right?  Get up, get some breakfast, buy converters, and get to the campus.

Nothing was open.

Not even the coffee houses which just seems counter-intuitive.  We walked down at least two streets with nothing open, before we gave up and went back to the hostel.  Apparently, the entire country keeps the schedule of a party town.  Nothing opens before 9, most not even before 10.  It was strange.  In fact the only person we met was this crazy lady who wanted to talk about how awesome the universe was.  I was having none of it.  For some reason, every second we were not walking was wasting precious time I needed to find housing, job, and converter.  Not in that order.
So in the end, we talked to crazy lady some more, then headed out for NUIG (the college) where I abandoned Mad Jack for the day.
I spent the whole day touring around Eyre Square looking for places to apply for jobs and had a "grand" time. Then went to re-claim Mad Jack.
I had been calling apartments once I got a converter and somehow found this really nice tea house.

Because taking pictures of an actual building's inside is just creepy.

But when I went to get the Mad one, I found the number to a place offering rent at 50 euros a week (400 per month).  I thought, this will probably be maybe a step above the hostel, but let me give it a try and see it.
At least I could sleep in a private place.  For some reason I like sleeping in private.  I did not know this about myself.
I talked to the woman who's name I still don't understand.  It's like the bastard child of Alisa and Ilsa with an Irish accent.  Kinda cool.  I  talk to her and she gives me the run down about the place and asks if I want to see the place.  I arrange to do this the same day.

What the hell is this?  A sci-fi world?

So having wandered around the town all morning (walking about 2 hours), I walk to this new place (about 30 minutes).  Here's some pictures of the walk that I thought you would all appreciate.  You know, cater to my obsession with flowers, skies, and buildings.

Clearly some kind of witch food.

Please note the giant rocks in the field that humanity decided to let remain.
Small children were using them as field goals later on.  It was awesome.

I'm pretty sure Mad Jack hasn't seen this yet....
He's been kinda going crazy about religions lately.

This one is just for Salty Meg.  

Vandal-Eye-zing has hit Ireland....

 Let's see that weird thing close up...
This weird little guy is now part of my daily foot commute.  That's right, folks, we bought the first apartment we tried on.
Actually it was a house.  There are three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a courtyard.

Yeah, you heard me, bitches.  A courtyard.  Capt. Thom has a courtyard.  Complete with an ivy wall, stonework, two sheds, and ... clotheline?  Crap I still have to do laundry in Ireland!  I thought the brownies took care of that.

Anyways, here are the photos of the place before we moved in...

So first here's the entry hallway and the kitchen:

I don't know why this seemed utterly important.

Preview of the courtyard

 So I was already sold at the kitchen.  It has such a nice homey feel.  There's so much room for cooking and the table and the view from their was gorgeous.  It just felt really nice.
So living room...

 Not gonna lie.  What actually sold me was the horse picture.  Oh, you want a close up?

 It's in the picture on the left.

So then we went upstairs, where I found out that to turn on your hot water in Ireland (possibly just in environmentally friendly homes?) you need to pull a string.  Also, the spigots are not under the shower head.

The little light means the water will come out.

Then finally we reached the room that was to become mine and apparently my brain stopped functioning because these pictures really suck at showing it off.

 These are two full sized closets next to a vanity alcove.


Down there is the bed.  And yes, I noticed the orbs.  I choose to ignore them.

Actual brightness of the sun.

The colors of the curtain also impossibly important.

Then while walking out of the room...I discovered a little window.

This fails to convey the sheer awesomeness of this window.  Let me try again:

That's a little better

I didn't get out to the courtyard that day, but I want to share my main writing space with everyone, so here's some pictures I took recently.

Cafe' Lisa from now on it al fresco!  That means outdoors right?

Shockingly, brownies did not do my laundry.

So basically, this house was good as far as I was concerned.  It was cheap, close enough to the campus and the town (30 minutes was the farthest but this was also the most in our price range).  I talked it over with Mad Jack who didn't give a shit.  He's good-natured that way.
So we moved in the next day.
Which left us one more night in the hostel...

So, having gone through another very full day in Ireland, you'd think we would sleep well.  Not so much.  We did realize that the party we thought was raging in the hostel was actually coming from a bar nearby.  I was not amused, but put in my earplugs and fell asleep.
After all, I'd been in Ireland for two days and I'd found us a place to live.  Now all that was left was a job...  More on that later.

Speaking of more on that laters... bet you thought I forgot about that porn-for-women thing didn't you.  Well, I didn't.  Here's straight from my journal (why it's in present tense).

So it's 9:30 pm on our second night in Ireland and our last night in Nimmos Hostel and porn for women is happening outside the window of the cafeteria area.  Basically across the street from me.
There's a fella, who gave me directions earlier today.  He's an Italian tri-athlete, studying in Ireland, something about cupcakes, adorable puppies, helping the homeless.  Whatever.  He was too cute for me to remember the details. It's like when you don't remember the product the sexy ad was selling.
Now, this same guy is WASHING HIS WINDOWS.  Shirtless.  With little blue boxers.
As I'm writing this, he's leaning out the window making sure he gets the outer rims and doing some kind of cleaners yoga to do it.  At 9:30 pm, shirtless... so yeah, porn for women in real life.
Basically, made the hostel worth it.

This was him later on after changing his blue boxers.