Wheekint Nahmber Wahn (as the Irish would pronounce it)

Alright, so quite a bit to post. Today was the first day of my internship, which wasn't too shabby. I really like the people I'm working with, they all seem very laid back and friendly. I'm working in a little 5 person (now 6 with the addition of myself) car insurance company, and I guess the majority of my scope of employment is going to be risk analysis and testing the system that delivers insurance quotes. They said that they've been very impressed with their past interns, so hopefully I'm able to extend that tradition. But I'm still learning a lot about how the company operates, so there's really nothing exciting to report on at the moment.

Let's get on to the good stuff: the pictures! If you click on these, they should open up a larger version of the picture... So while I got my internship interview out of the way on Thursday, everybody else (the 4 other Stonehillers I'm here with) had theirs on Friday. So we all went into the city center and hung out together, with some of them kicking off for a couple hours at a time for their interviews. I saw this guy down on Grafton Street (a very touristy shopping area) playing some kind of funky instrument. This was the first street performer of many that I saw, so I had to snap a picture.

After cruising Grafton Street for a bit, myself, Kathleen, and Allison went over to Trinity to meet up with Devon and Erin after their interviews. Here's me infront of the entrance to Trinity.
Looking in through the door to the courtyard:
One of many cool buildings inside of Trinity:
This one is from the center of the Trinity courtyard looking out towards the exit/entrance:
After rendezvousing with Devon infront of Trinity, we took to a different area of Grafton Street area and found this street performer. This crazy SOB was balancing on a ~6 foot tall unicycle and juggling a scimitar and a couple of lit torches... and I saw him mess up and drop them right next to / in to a huddling crowd of overly-trusting tourists. This guys idea to toss weapons around in a crowd of people was probably the stupidest move I've seen since John Travolta agreed to star in Battlefield Earth - because he sucked just as bad as that movie. (although this was admittedly much more entertaining). Don't worry, nobody was hurt...
And a better shot of the juggling:
After everybody finished their interviews and we all met back up, we went out for some din and then headed back home. I snapped this picture of the sunset over the Liffey:


And this cool statue over on O'Connell Street.

Here's another one I took to let in a bit more light. This picture is a bit washed out, but you can make out a bit more detail in the statue. I should probably warn you all now so nobody expects anything fancy in the next 3 months - I'm not a photographer. Michael J. Fox could take better pictures than me:
So we caught a bus a few hundred feet down the road from that statue and headed home. On Saturday, we woke up and went back into the city for some more touristy stuff. We got onto an open-top, double-decker bus and I tried snapping a few pictures from a moving bus while we headed to the Guinness factory. Here's me as the meat of a Stonehill sandwich on the bus. That's Allison, Kathleen, Myself, and Erin from left to right. Devon was manning the camera.
Here's Dublin's answer to the Space Needle, the Spire. Kathleen overheard some Dubliner bitching about how all the natives hate it because it was just a giant (literally) waste of taxpayer money. I wonder how many times it's been hit by lightening...
Christ Church Cathedral (I think?) Sorry for the crappy picture, it was taken from a moving bus don't forget:
I believe this is the pedestrian entrance to the Dublin Castle courtyard:
Some castle, also the start/entrance of Dvblinia - which is basically the medieval Irish take of Sturbridge Village. We haven't gotten to it yet, but I'll definitely be checking it out in the future:
On to the Guinness brewery tour! This was pretty awesome... I have a few pictures from the brewery tour, but nothing worth posting because they're all pretty dark and don't really show anything too interesting. St. James' Gate, right outside the brewery entrance:
Me infront of the sign:
A crappy crooked photo taken by some incompetent Frenchman of me and Devon (I'm not bitter):
You walk through some gigantic revolving doors, step onto an escalator, and above you hangs this sign as you enter the brewery:
Apparently punctuation isn't a popular school subject in Ireland...
So I lied (what else is new), I did snag one picture inside the brewery tour. This is the original Guinness harp (their trademark logo). There's some kind of back story to the harp that I intended to remember, but have failed to. Some guy known for something or other made it and carved some kind of epic inscription into it. Then another famous guy played it for a while or something. And then something happened and it's special now. What do you expect, it was a friggin brewery tour...
And now the best part of the Guinness tour - the Gravity Bar! At the end of the tour you find yourself at the highest point of the Guinness brewery, which just so happens to be a bar with glass windows giving a great panoramic view of the city. Oh yea, and they give you a free Guinness. You're supposed to turn in a voucher you get at the beginning of the tour for your free Guinness, but I somehow managed to hold onto mine the first time around and got two. Sweet. Here's the four of us with our Guinness. From left to right - Myself, Devon, Kathleen, Erin. Not pictured is Allison, who was taking the picture.
Me with a Guinnes stach - a marketing ploy I'm going to try and sell to the company when I run out of money over here... hey, if it can get kids to drink milk, it can also get kids to drink Guinness (which is their worst performing demographic, I'm told):
Here's a pic of the view from the Gravity Bar. The pictures really don't do the view justice (especially since this is only a small portion of what you can see):
One more (go me for getting the window joint in this picture. Get used to the crappy photography, it's not going anywhere):
After the Guinness tour, instead of eating food like sensible people (now about 4PM - aka 16 in Ireland - we hadn't eaten since about 10AMish), we figured we'd just go drink whiskey instead. So off to the Jameson's distillery it was. Now, at the Jameson distillery, everyone gets a glass of whiskey at the end except for 6 people who volunteer for a taste testing competition instead. Unbelievably, Myself, Devon, Kathleen, and Erin all got picked for the taste testing competition. Mind you, about half of our 30-person group raised their hands to volunteer, so that's some damn good luck. Kudos to Allison for taking the pictures (don't feel bad that she didn't taste-test, she's not a whiskey fan and so wasn't interested). Here's us as we were about to begin the testing. From left to right, Erin, Devon, Myself, Kathleen, some German girl, some German guy's elbow:
Bottom's up:
Displaying my official whiskey taster certificate:
You might notice in that last picture, and again in this one, that there's yet another glass of whiskey infront of us. Apparently, when you drink 5 shots of whiskey, the Irish reward you by giving you another glass. I guess they were fibbing when they said we would be taste-testing instead of getting the hefty glass of Jameson's...
After these pictures were taken, me and Devon went to the complimentary bar and asked for some glasses of cranberry juice because after 5 (not-quite-full) shots of whiskey, you really need something to get a sixth down. What we discovered shortly thereafter was that the glasses of cranberry juice they give you are already mixed with whiskey. And Allison gave us her glass of whiskey as well, which we split between us. So needless to say, we were pretty tanked. Also, Kathleen needs an honorable mention here, because she took down more than any of us. Ontop of her extra glass of whiskey, she had 2 of Erin's shots. Kudos to Kathleen.

Here's a random picture I took of a bridge over the river kwai - i mean liffey. I just liked the reflection:
We all spent Sunday relaxing, catching up on sleep, getting food / necessities, and exploring the area around Shanowen Square (our home) - which apparently has a road system that trumps Boston's as far as confusion is concerned. There's a really cool park right next to my work called Merrion Square that I took my lunch to today, I'll have to grab some pictures for my next post. Hopefully sometime later this week...

Cheers