Halloween Escapades

Jana and I in costume.

I’m going to ignore the majority of the week and focus upon one day, one particular holiday that is…

HALLOWEEN!

This holiday has always been such a fun time in the past and I was excited to see how Dublin would handle it. I was especially excited this year since my friend and I were dressing up as Thing 1 and Thing 2- birthday twins for the win! We even had the Dr. Seuss poem to read out if people didn’t know who we were. The costumes were homemade so they didn’t last very long, but we had fun and that’s all that matters- plus they were cheap, gotta love saving some money.

I co-hosted a Halloween party with my friend and there were both old and new faces that attended. Everyone was dressed to the nines in their best Halloween gear. I have a brief background of fx makeup so I helped out a few people that night, and I’m pretty happy with most of it- Sorry Diego!

There were about twenty of us that decided to venture into town, and we had to rush from Diego’s flat to catch a bus into town. A journey that would normally take less than half an hour turned into a ride of over an hour.

A blurry picture to try and illustrate just how bus city centre was on Halloween.

Once we arrived at O’Connell, the bus could barely move since there were so many people. Queues for clubs were around the corner and down the next street! I never thought that Halloween would be such a big event here. There were some very creative costumes out there, and I can’t imagine how much time some people put into their outfits.

Not only were all the girls dressed up, but quite a few of the boys went all out as well. I thought that the States knew how to do Halloween but I am absolutely blown away by Dublin that night.

Well done Dublin. Well done.

Some of the gang.

Almost Halloween

Remember how I said I’d have all that free time to explore? Yeah, well promises are sometimes meant to be broken. Uni is starting to get serious and I have some major assignments coming up so ‘free time’ is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of my life.

Every Thursday I have four hours of lectures, and, since it’s my last day of classes, it has become a tradition where some of the communications students go out to the campus bar for a couple of pints and chats. I feel as though I’m starting to connect with the people here and have more and more confidence to confide in them and call them friends.

The weekend went by in a blur of assignments and bad weather. Rain has definitely been a more frequent visitor as of late.

My biggest accomplishment of the weekend was buying all the material I needed for my and my roommate’s Halloween outfits. Lisa is going as a raver from the 80s while Jana and I will be going as Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss!

I’m genuinely getting excited for Halloween now, and there are more houses around me starting to put up spooky decorations to celebrate. There seem to be two big differences between here and the States: one, there are no carved jack o’lanterns. Maybe one or two houses have some carved pumpkins but they are nowhere near the quantity seen in the US.

Two, Christmas. Yes, I said Christmas.

At the very beginning of this month- and a little even at the end of September- Christmas decorations, chocolates, and other sweets began popping up in the grocery stores. I even heard a Christmas song being played. Back home at least Thanksgiving acts somewhat as a bumper to the inevitable onslaught of festive commercialized products and traditions.

Halloween should be a grand time and I cannot wait to upload some photos.

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No pictures this week because I took every thing on my phone and it crashed.

On a final note, always do your laundry before you run out of things to wear. Rain makes it impossible to do your laundry since dryers are rare and all of your clothes need good weather to dry on the line outside.