Recent adventures...

So I haven't updated this blog in a shamefully long time. Well, like two weeks. And I was on a different continent with limited internet access for a week of that. So really it is not my fault.

The last few weeks of break were good. A highlight of it would have to be the MAARMEK night out. We decided to go for a group dinner in Gourmet burger in Dun Laoirghe, a strange choice considering that two of us are vegetarians, but ashy and I had falafel, which was AMAZING! Maeve decided it would be fun to torture the veggie for a while and started waving the remenants of rachs burger in my face and rubbed in on my glass and fork and stuff so i couldn't use them, but I am used to that sort of lovely treatment so it was grand!

The fun really started when we decided that we were too cheap for proper dessert and wanted pick n mix. I never realised how few places sell pick n mix at nine o clock at night. Rach, Maeve and Kate were in one car and Ashy Emma Maria and I were in the other car, so it turned into a bit of a race. Well as much of a race as you can have when one car's engine is like twice as big as the others, and when neither of the drivers will break the speed limit on the basis the road is icy and no-one wants to die in a car crash. I was pretty happy that it was Ashy driving though, as the excitement kind of got to Maria and she tried to make ashy go the wrong way around a roundabout, and also drive in front of a luas. Real safe Mermy!

We finally found pick n mix in stillorgan, and after buying ridiculous amounts of sugar we contemplated what to do next. Then we decided- TREASURE HUNT!!! Only instead of treasure we needed photos- one wearing a strangers hat, one with a dog, and one with a member of the team wearing a false mustache. Into our cars we got and away we went! Emma Maria and I scared some poor man buying a ticket at the luas stop, but he was nice and gave me his hat. Then we accosted some lovely couple and their adorable puppy. Finally Maria and I sprinted all the way through Dunnes to buy spray cream for ashy's mustache. Finally we went to the top of Dunnes car park to claim our victory. Sadly Rach, Maeve and Kate decided to change the rules at this point and say that we needed the mustache in all the photos. We refused on the basis we were already done, they argued back and then we realised wait, we are not having an argument about a false mustache. That is just silly.

Sadly I haven't got our team photos as Maria STILL hasn't sent them to me, but I do have a few! Sometimes the most fun things to do our the randomnest. People probably thought that we were insane, but we had fun anyway, and that is all we care about!

The next week I went to Morrocco with the fam to see the house there. Wow. I am still in shock. I had never been to Africa before and it was so different to anywhere else I have ever been. The house is sooo nice (i hope it doesn't sound like I am gloating, I am just really excited about it!) and I managed to bags the coolest room. It has a really sweet window seat in it, so I can see myself getting a lot of writing and stuff done there! The development will be ready in june, I can't wait to bring the rest of MAARMEK over, especially Maria as she is a big french nerd and will love speaking french all day. I should really practice mine...

Celine, who runs the development took sibling and I out to some clubs in Marrakech with herself, her boyf and some friends. Woah, they do things differently there! It turns out that is you are part of a certain group you just go to Marrakech at the weekend and go mental. Underground clubs, VIP areas, champagne... sibling and I were like well ok, 92/Mess'rs will seem a bit different now! I don' think i opened a single door the entire time i was there. ONe day the doorman literally RAN past sibling and I to get to the door first. It was scary.

It was pretty sad though, because on one hand you have all these rich people spending 120 euro on a bottle of champagne... which is the equivilent of another persons wages. For a month. On our last full day there my father put a pair of shoes in the bin, as it had been raining the day before and he had discovered that they now let in water. They were in good condition, but obviously living in Ireland you can't have shoes you can't wear in the rain. One of the housekeeping people came to him and asked if she could have the shoes for her father. Dad had to write a letter saying he was giving her the shoes, she wasn't stealing them. It was pretty heartbreaking, spec since sibling and I had been out the night before with all the flashy morroccans buying bottles of champagne as big as our waists (I do NOT want to know how much those cost). Celine said she doesnt normally go to those kind of places, she finds them too flash, but she wanted sibling and I to see them. It was really cool, I had a lot of fun and a little superficial part of me got a total kick out of the whole vip treatment thing but... I prefere Mess'rs with its little dancefloor and its kickass Abba medley!

Marrakech is a savage place, I am pretty excited to go back and bring the girls over. It was also a pretty decent way to end the holidays, even if i was sick for the first few days (playing lacrosse in shorts, in january is never a good idea... though i wish i had gotten the memo about the MONSOON!). Sibling and I had so much fun as well, though we watched way too much deal or no deal in french, french soap opras and also italian gameshows... the last one was the most annoying considering sibling speaks fluent italian and I can just about say my name and ask for directions!

So that is about all of my adventures to date! We have a lacrosse match against dublin/trinity tonight, I had forgotten how badly I suck at that sport! But we are going to Mess'r after, and that means Abba medley so I am pretty excited! Actually having to work now is a bit of a shock but it is nice to see everyone again in college, and as a first year arts student I am not under TOO much pressure... yet..

The best laid plans of mice and men...

I really wish I knew the end of that expression, no-one ever says it... Anyway, in my last entry I said that Maria and I were planning on having a quiet New Years Night in because we didn't want the effort of going out... Good plan, no? Sadly that plan went downhill at about 5 o clock when Maria rang me with her 'I am about to suggest something you may not want to do' voice on...

Maria's parents are both from the same village in Limerick, and a lot of her family still lives there. They go down there every Christmas but Maria wasn't able to this year because of work etc and she was really missing it... after various convos with different members of her family on New Years Eve she looked at the train timetable and saw the the next (and last) train was leaving at half 6. It was 5 o clock. So she rang me and asked if i felt like going down to Athea, and in a momentary fit of spontaneity and adventure I said 'yeah sure why not?' and wandered into the sitting room to persuade one of my loving parents to drive us to Heuston Station. My mother said fine, I will make your father do it but you will have to leave in 20 mins if you want to make it. I was in a towel, having just got out of the shower, and had to pack. Never fear, in the quickest dressing/packing known to mankind I was ready to go by half 5, at which point Mermy and I set off on our adventure to Limerick. I was surprised by how ok my mother was with it, until she pointed out that this was in fact the second time Maria and I had done this (last time was for Monday Night Madness) and asked me to stop planning trips an hour or two in advance and give her at least a days notice. My father thinks that we are the most random people in the world, but as it was Maria's idea and in their eyes she can do no wrong he was more amused by it then anything.

So Maria, her little sister Orflaith, Orflaith's friend Hayley and Maria's cousin Erin and I went to Listowle ( I think that is how you spell it) for the night, to a random club called Mermaids. I had to borrow a dress because in my 10 minute packing I managed to forget one, but it was ok. We spent most of the night dancing (and complaining that they didn't have any Abba) then seriously missing Dublin taxis as we waited half an hour in antarctic conditions for our taxi to come get us. We were pretty amused by Maria's cousin, Eoin, who was fairly drunk and kept saying 'sound as a round pound' which became our catchphrase for the next few days. It was rather difficult to explain to the Ashy and Emma when they rang us at 4 to see if we were still up in Maria's house that we had randomly hopped on a train to limerick when we had claimed that town was too much of a trek for us. 'You guys are so weird' was the lovely response we got, a bit rich from a group of girls who had just stolen a pile of magazines from outside a shop. (Why? I don't know, and I don't really want to either!)

We spent Thursday sleeping apart from a big lunch at another one of her cousins house, which was nice. We sat in the sitting room at what we nicknamed the kiddy table (which was hilarious because all 5 of us were between 16 and 19) and watched the aristocats, which a brilliant movie. (Maria liked it because it was set in France, the french nerd) Then Maria and I had a nap, and hung out with Orflaith and Hayley. It felt like we were back in 6th class as some of the boys were trying to persuade them to go back to Erin's because Nookie liked Orflaith and I think Eoin liked Hayley. Maria and I were helping them come up with excuses like 'we were going to take the ponies because we have no lift but Hayley just got thrown off one and is stuck in a ditch' and laughing at the back-to-6th-class of it all, though it was slightly wierd because Nookie had previously tried to get stuck into Maria at Monday Night Madness, and Orflaith is her 16 year old little sister. Then Maria and I went to sleep, because it had been like 5 hours since we last slept and woke up at half 12 with her mom telling us we were driving up to Dublin in half an hour. I seriously think that Maria was a koala in a past life, she is constantly sleepy! It also appears to be contagious...

So I had a random and fun few days in Limerick,(not to mention extremely well resting considering we slept for about 24 hours,) and I have learned two important lessons from our adventure. Firstly, that it is fun to be spontaneous and do random things and that sometimes it is better not to think and just to do something. (the wierd thing is I had just decided that my new Years resolution would be to stop taking things so seriously and just have a laugh when Maria rang... two hours later I was on a train to the other side of the country.. go figure) Secondly never plan a quiet night in with Maria, you will end up in Limerick.