April! (With a celebrity blog by a certain Kevin Stein)

April 4th: The Talls
I sent in my headshot and resume for an off-broadway show! I didn't get it, but it was fun to do. The show is perfect for me...everyone in the cast is over 6 feet, so I thought it'd be a good first try.

April 6th: Rabbit Hole

I already covered this, but our performance went wonderfully! I was a very proud director. Here's a trailer for the movie. Nicole Kidman is great in it.

April 6th-13th: Week of all-nighters
I had tons and tons of essays to write. 5, to be exact. All around 3,000 words. All counting for around 40% of my final grade, except for one, which was worth 100% of my final grade. It was pretty stressful, since I didn't have any of my class notes anymore (goodbye laptop). Several times during this week, I would be working until 6am, head to bed for 4 hours, wake up at 10am and go turn in the papers. It was not fun. But, all's well that ends well. I got A's on three of them, a B on one, and I'm going to find out my grade on the last one relatively soon. BOOM.

April 8th: Trinity Ball
I took a little break from my hell week of essays to party it up at Europe's largest private music party. It was pretty spectacular. 5 huge tents, some pretty big names, and a whole lot of drunken fun. Siomha and I took our friends Christina and Catie as our dates.

The four of us and Mike Rodio went to St. Stephen's green to take prom pictures, went to dinner at Hugo's wine bar and restaurant (Kevin Whelan generously treated us to dinner), and then went back to our room on campus to pregrame and watch as the sun went down and campus was transformed into an outdoor club of sorts. Neon purple lights flooded front square, and the stages all began to light up and blare music. It was pretty cool. Having the most coveted living arrangement in Dublin is always wonderful, but it was especially exciting to have VIP seats to watch the night's entertainment unfold.

The night was a lot of fun--my favorite act was, predictably, Bell X1. When they played Great Defector, the crowed went wild. I also loved watching the Rubberbandits. They're a hilarious, vulgar version of Lonely Island...except they wear shopping bags as masks while they perform. Which, if you don't know they're a band, is a pretty scary sight to see. Here's their music video for one of their most popular songs: 

April 14th-15th: Year-Long Trip 

The O'Connell house staff and the four year long kids (me, Mike, and Siomha, and then the one year-long UCD kid, Katie) took an overnight trip to County Clare and stayed in a wonderful 4 star hotel called Gregans Castle, right by the magnificent Burren.

 I think the main reason we went was for the food. It was the fanciest food I've ever eaten. I don't know about BEST food I've ever eaten, but definitely fanciest. There was some kind of weird appetizer, a yummy soup, really tasty fish, with one single piece of handmade ravioli, and the most delicious dessert ever. Some of the richest chocolate I've ever tasted. There was also a beautifully presented garden-like salmon thing, but I didn't eat that. Looked pretty though. 

The next day we just explored the Burren a bit, and checked out this art camp facility that the OCH was thinking of using for a week for the summer program. 

All in all it was a lovely trip. I loved getting to chat with the OCH staff in a more relaxed setting--talking to Eimear about her wedding, gossiping to Lisa about the spring group, mocking Joe Stranix endlessly...

April 18th: I'm jewish?

My good friend Rachel Sussman came over to cook for Passover. She wanted to put together a passover dinner for her NYU Tisch/Irish friends in Dublin, and asked if I could help (slash if she could use my kitchen!) I was more than happy to help out. Together, we made two huge pots of matza ball soup, in addition to a huge bowl of charoset (chopped up apples, sweet wine, honey, and cinnamon). After we were done cooking, we still had a lot of hard work ahead of us. 
We had to carry the huge bowl of charoset and the two steaming pots of soup all the way to the end of Temple Bar. In theory, it's a little less than a 10 minute walk. But when you're balancing a steaming and overflowing pot of soup in your hands and the towel protecting your hand from 3rd degree burn is slowly slipping....well, it takes about 20 minutes. With lots of breaks along the way. But it was an adventure! The Catholic population of Dublin looked at us like we were crazy people. I had a lot of fun being Jewish for the day, and Rachel did a really lovely job leading the prayers and dinner traditions of passover. 

April 19th: Director Interview! 

I interviewed for one of the two available positions as director for the 2011-2012 PEMCo season. I had to stay up until 4am for the interview, since the producers were not available to talk until 11pm their time. Unfortunately I was quite sleepy for the interview, but it seemed to go okay because I got director for the fall musical! Jimmy Stein got director for the winter mainstage.

April 22nd: KEVIN STEIN

In honor of Kevin's visit, I'm allowing HIM to write the blog entry for his time here. 

Kevin's first pint of Guinness in Dublin! 

Kevin reporting here!
Finally, FINALLY, after 8 long months, I made it to Ireland!  After 24 hours of travel from Los Angeles, I made it to Dublin to see Clare and get to see how she's lived for the past 8 months.  And then we promptly hopped on a plane to fly to Rome.  So much for Dublin, but we'll get back to it.

At the "Funny Palace", aka, a laundromat 

This was my third time to Rome, but for numerous reasons it was the most fulfilling one.  We took the very early AM flight from Dublin to Rome on a Ryanair flight (and let me tell you, being so frickin huge as a person sucks when flying Ryanair, but hey, it's cheap) and arrived in Rome late morning.  We stayed in this weird little hostel called the Funny Palace.  It was located in a laundromat/internet cafe with absolutely no sign with the name of the hostel (although with a name like Funny Palace, I wouldn't post a sign either) but we found it.  

It turned out great, and the guy who signed us in set us up perfectly with an itinerary for our two short days in Rome. We dropped our bags in our room, in the building down the street strangely, and headed off for the Vatican. After waiting in the HUGE line for the Vatican Museum for about 1 hour, we realized that we were not going to make it into the museum before it closed. We decided to just bite the bullet and go on a tour for 35 euro that would guarantee we would get into the museum, which includes insane amounts of beautiful artwork and a stop in the Sistine Chapel. 

Drinking wine in front of the Pantheon at night

Though I was hesitant to do it, it turned out perfectly and our tour guide Kathy was a firecracker.  She was full of information and though the museum was insanely crowded we had an beautiful tour. 

This time was so much more interesting for me, maybe cause I was with Clare and was encouraged to appreciate the beauty, maybe cause Kathy was great, maybe cause I was more mature, or maybe the art just got better. I can't be sure.  

Anyways, after seeing the gorgeous Sistine Chapel, Clare and I headed along the lovely Tiber River to the Trastevere district, where we walked through the small, windy streets and grabbed a wonderful

Italian dinner, complete with bruschetta, wine, and pasta, as well as a screaming match between a preteen girl and her mother at a table nearby. Exciting times!  After this we met up with some of Clare's friends who were also in Rome and drank some wine by the Pantheon then the Trevi Fountain.  Of course, no stop in Rome is complete without gelato, so we grabbed a scoop or two. 

The next day was Easter, and though we considered going to the morning mass at the Vatican, we realized that it would end up taking up too much of our last day in Rome (and plus it would mean getting up at like 6:30, so there was no way we were gonna do that).  We ended up exploring the Forum and the Coliseum, and though we came out a little more sunburned than when we left, it was again awe-inspiring the third time around.  There is just so much STUFF there that there is no way you can see it all in one trip.  We spent a few hours of our morning there, and we barely scratched the surface.

We then headed out to the Vatican again, this time to step into St. Peter's Basilica.  The line wasn't bad and we got in pretty quickly. This was truly a moving experience for me.  I had been here before, but this time I was just overwhelmed.  

The sun was shining through and the church was filled with beautiful natural light.  Seeing the Pieta along with hundreds of other beautiful sculptures and paintings just made me feel really full of life.  The front portion of the basilica was closed off since there was a mass going on, but we snuck through the line by saying "la mesa" (which means mass I assume?), and we caught the end of the mass.  
It's just a beautiful place full of history and this time around I was practically moved to tears.  We were lucky to be there that day, on Easter Sunday.  If nothing else, we can say we went to mass at St. Peter's Basilica on Easter Sunday. Pretty wild stuff.

Afterwards, we met up with some of Clare's gang and had some fine dinner, some fine wine, and some fine company.  We headed back to hit some other nightime mainstays, such as Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain again, and the Spanish Steps.  We made it back to our hostel late, and had to take a very sketchy detour around some closed off areas.  Luckily we made it there alive, but exhausted.

The next morning we headed off to Dublin.  Again, we were only there for a short bit.  I fly all the way to Dublin and then I only spend like 3 days there!  But it's for the best, because after hitting a few pubs and relaxing with each other in person rather than on Skype, we headed off to the Dingle Peninsula.  

By train, by bus, by foot, we made it to our bed and breakfast in beautiful Dingle.  We spent our first afternoon on a stunning walk along the coast, taking in gorgeous vistas of mountains, oceans, fields, and cliffs.  

We even had a run in with some cows.  That night we listened to some awesome traditional music and had many a pint.  Since Clare only drinks Bulmers, I got my fair share of it too, and DAMN it's good. 

(Hi, this is Clare.) We went to one of the Cooney family's favorite pubs--O'Flaherty's. They have some of the best trad music I've ever heard. It was an absolutely wonderful set. 

 I wish that we had just hung out at O'Flaherty's all night. We got kicked out around 1am when the pub closed--VERY late for pubs, especially country pubs. 

 The next morning we had our lovely breakfast and headed off on a tour around the peninsula with Tim Collins, an old pro.  He took us around in his van and we were just surrounded by beauty all day. Clare had been to this area twice before, so she knew her way around a little, and we had a blast. 

 All the crazy colored houses and the small town and the beautiful surroundings made for a really relaxing and enjoyable two days.

We made our way back and finally got to spend some serious time in Dublin.  We visited many of Clare's favorite stomping ground that I'd being hearing about all year, and it was so cool to get to connect what I'd heard about them with my own experience in them.  

Shebeen Chic, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Green 19, Messrs Maguires, The Long Hall, Gogarty's, O'Connell House, Trinity, everything.  We had some nice date nights, including seeing a very impressive performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at The Gate theatre, and we hung out with Clare's gang other nights.

All in all, it was really the perfect week.  We'd been so excited about it for so long, and to have it all work out so swimmingly was refreshing.  Makes the challenge of trying to stay happy 5000 miles apart a lot easier.  The worst part by far was leaving.  My flight left early on Saturday morning, and Clare and I had a really sad goodbye at the bus stop.  But, fortunately for me, Clare will be back in the US in a month; unfortunately for Clare, she has to leave Ireland WAY too soon.