Trinity College

I just called the Russian embassy over here to ask them some questions about obtaining a tourist visa and the lengthy process it requires and I got really scared and stuttered on the phone because I thought that they may assassinate me via my cell phone.  And I probably shouldn't even say this on the blog, especially because they'll probably find it and deny me a visa.  So I'll shut up.

So guess what?  I decided to do something crazy and enroll in a class at Trinity College.  Have you heard of Trinity College?  It's this little university in Dublin, started in 1592, the university where every famous Irish author attended, the most well-known university in Dublin, top tourist attraction, an amazing place.  And guess what?  I go there!  I'm a student there!  Ok, not an ACTUAL undergrad student there, but a student no less!

I decided after my Spanish classmates show me up all the time with history and facts about Europe (but NOT the Spanish language, surprisingly) that I should further my education.  I found out that Trinity offers Extramural classes for adults to take and decided to take one called "European History 1500-1700: Power and Belief" because...I know nothing about European history.  I took a European history class my sophomore year of high school but all I remember from it was some book I read about the many wives of Henry VIII.  The Ottomans?  Couldn't tell you anything about them.  The Reformation?  Something having to do with a church split...?  The Hapsburgs and Charles V?  Some...powerful family..?  I shouldn't admit how little I know but a lot of my friends here have confirmed that they don't know this stuff either so I don't feel as stoopid.

I walked in my first day and got totally lost in the sea of old buildings and punk college students and sent Drew this text: "I feel like an F-ing freshman all over again.  I'm in this building where I think I'm supposed to be but its a huge student union/hang out type of building and there are millions of students and they're all sitting down and I'm in here with my American boots and my American hair and am wandering around like a big dumb F-ing idiot and everyone is staring at me because I'm out of place."  So...to say I felt stupid and insecure was an understatement.  For some reason I believed that this was just an "adults only" type of class for old people who feel like learning something in their free time.  I was wrong though - it's an actual college class full of punk Irish kids who all have a million friends and I stick out like a sore thumb because I don't have messy hair and jean shorts with tights on under them and ankle boots.  But no mind!  I marched up to the lady at the front of the class and told her I was an Extramural student and I needed a syllabus and she told me I was confused because this syllabus wasn't for ACTUAL undergrads, like myself.  Meaning...she thought I was young and cool enough to look like a legit student!  Thank you, crazy weird lady, for making my day.

I generally like to pretend that there's not that much of a maturity difference between myself and college aged kids, because I like to believe I'm 22 in my head, but...there is.  I have to sit towards the front, where no college kid would be caught DEAD, because I can't hear what the prof is saying if I sit in the back.  I chuckle at all the silly puns and jokes that the professor tells while the college kids mostly just roll their eyes.  I fast and furiously take notes because I'm there by choice, while the rest of them get on Facebook on their laptops.  I guess there are some differences between us and sadly...I guess I'm not 22.  Dangit.

I'm really enjoying my class though and it feels amazing to actually use my brain again.  And it feels awesome to learn things that I never knew!  I can tell you all about all the aforementioned topics listed above and I leave feeling good about myself and good about life.  It's twice a week so it gives me something to do AND it's productive, so that's a bonus!  Woohoo!  Anyway, wanted to share that little tidbit with anyone who cares.  I'm off to make some chicken tortilla soup and attempt to find the SAG Awards online.  Later!

S'mores Bars

As I've mentioned, "busy season" is back in full swing and that means Drew's working a lot.  And that means he's got coworkers who remember that I bake and beg me (via him) for treats every week.  And as I love baking and getting whatever I make out of the house quickly, I'm happy to oblige!

I found these S'mores Bars on Pinterest a year or so ago and they've become a staple in the Solomon house ever since.  And man oh MAN are they heavenly!  I've made them for Drew's coworkers before and they were begging for them this week so here we go!

The Cast of Characters: marshmallow fluff, salt, vanilla extract, flour, chocolate bars, butter, graham crackers (or any other cracker/biscuit cookie), brown sugar, white granulated sugar, and an egg.

The Irish aren't privy to the greatness of graham crackers, so I bought my favorite cookie/biscuit to crush up.  (These things are dangerously good though.  I've been known to eat whole sleeves of them at a time.  Leave me alone!  That was 6 months ago when I was lonely and eating my emotions!)

So put enough of these pups (or your favorite graham cracker) in a bag to crush up to make 3/4 cup to 1 cups worth. 

Meanwhile, measure out a 1/4 cup of brown sugar...

A 1/2 cup of granulated sugar....

And a 1/2 cup of butter.

The Irish also don't sell typical American sticks of butter, but rather large chunks of butter measured in grams.  I don't have a food scale (packed away somewhere in Dallas) so...I have to slice off slabs of butter and attempt to cram them into the measuring cup required.  It's very annoying and messy.

Shoving butter in a half cup.  Fun.

So add the butter and sugars together and whip them up.  (The recipe also calls for a hand mixer but I make due with what I have.  Or rather...don't have.)

When that's done, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract...

And an egg.

Mix mix mix!

In a separate bowl, add a 1 and 1/3 cups of flour...

And 3/4 cup of your graham crackers (though I used almost a full cup because my pan was bigger)...

And 1 teaspoon of baking powder...

And a 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Mix that bowl up too.

The recipe states to "add [the flour mixture] to the butter mixture and mix at a low speed."  So I dumped it all in and whipped it up fast.

It should turn into a really thick, hard-to-mix-without-hurting-your-arm-like dough.

So...then you take half of this difficult but delicious dough and press it into the bottom of an 8x8 inch pan (though again, I don't have one so mine was slightly bigger).

You really gotta get your fingers in there to flatten it all out.  Voila!

Now it's time to unwrap your 10 oz. of chocolate bars.  

And lay them out all over your dough.  

You may also realize halfway through this process that you don't have enough chocolate bars, so you may have to run across the street to your local market and grab 5 more humongous chocolate bars and get judged by the checkout guy.  A-hole.

Now it's time for the most difficult part of this recipe: the marshmallow fluff.  This stuff is sticky and not-easily-spreadable and annoying to work with.  But bottom line: you gotta spread it all over the chocolate somehow so hop to it.  It's not gonna spread itself.  

Blah.  Help.

Ehh...this'll do.

Then the recipe calls for you to flatten out the remaining half of the dough and place it over the marshmallow fluff by flattening it in a plastic bag, cutting the bag open, and placing it on top.  I don't wanna waste a plastic bag for that so I usually just flatten it out by hand and fit it all together like a puzzle, like so...

Then pop this bad boy in a 350°F oven for 30-35 minutes, until the top is lightly browned.   

Yum city!

Now.  The hardest part of making this recipe is waiting an hour or two to cut into these delicious gooey morsels of happiness.  If you cut them before they're cooled completely, they become a sticky melty mess and ooze everywhere.  Trust me, I've done it.

Oh baby!!  So so so good.  I had to test them before I gave them to strangers, duh.  

So anyway, I recommend you make these ASAP (like I do every other baked good) because they really are amazing and wonderful and Drew told me that his people have already been raving about them.  Whew!  That's news to my ears.  And fragile ego.  

One of these days I'm going to post the actual recipe here on my blog in a cute, readable format when I know how, but today is not that day.  So I shall link you to the recipe for these amazing creations here and wish you happy baking!

Fighting Words

As part of my "keep busy in Ireland" initiative, I started volunteering last year/semester.  So far it's just happening once a week but I expect to increase my hours in the new year.  I initially started by contacting a Volunteer Placement agency and then went through their gazillions of opportunities to finally pick the place I am now: Fighting Words!  FW is a creative writing center where kids and teenagers can come with their classes to learn how to write creatively and work on their own projects.  It sounded right up my alley and after having been already a few times, I think I can say it will be a pretty good fit.

They have different classes from different elementary schools come every morning of the week for field trips from 10-12.  We usher the kids in and take off their coats and bags and get them settled in the center of the colorful, brightly-lit room.  There are a couple of volunteers milling around (like myself), as well as a person who "leads" the group discussion, a typist who dictates the kids' story, and an artist who illustrates the stories.

We talk about the basic elements of writing a story: plot, characters, setting, etc.  We also explain that we have a mean editor in the office here (a man on staff who sits behind a obscured desk) who HATES children and who rarely reads children's stories but MAYBE if they're good and they come up with a completely original story, we can get the editor to read the story and publish it.  They get so excited talking to the mean editor and he makes them laugh and gets them pumped up to write a wonderful story.  And so it begins.  The leader asks the kids for 5 different characters (today's were a Princess, someone named Jimbob the Monkey, a cat, an angry toaster, and a tree) and then they all vote on the main character.  Then we come up with 5 things that the main character is afraid of, things the main character wants more than anything else in the world, the main character's best friend, the setting, the basic outlline, etc. and every time we vote.  We finally have the skeleton of the story and the kids basically take turns creating the first half of the story.  It gets pretty funny and pretty bonkers.  During the second hour, we break into groups/tables and each volunteer sits with a group of 3 kids and helps them complete the rest of the story the way THEY want it to.  After that hour, we take the stories back to the "mean editor" and he reads it and decides that it's an amazing story and he's sorry he ever doubted the kids' ability and wants to publish it.  So each kid then gets a copy of the story with the pictures that were illustrated by the artist earlier.  Pretty fun.

This week we had a group of all boys who were pretty funny and cute.  The boys that I sat at the table with were fascinated with the fact that I was from the States and asked me all about Disney World vs. Disneyland ("Well how do you KNOW Disney World is better than Disney LAND if you haven't even been to both!?" and "Oh yeah!  The Harry Potter park is near Disney World!  I wanna taste butter beer!!" and I would agree with them wholeheartedly.)  When trying to come up with a name for their character, one of them said "Well I want to name him after one of my six pets.  I have Tesco, Dexter, Jason, Jason Jr., Jasper, and Carol."  Which made me laugh.  Carol? Ha.   And when talking about sports, I mentioned that my husband played basketball and they kept asking me what team he played for.  I'd explain that he didn't play PROFESSIONALLY and they kept saying "It doesn't matter!  What team!?  What team!?" so finally I was like "Um...the Lake Highlands Wildcats...?" and they thought that was awesome.  "COOOOOL!"  Little boys are funny.

Although I don't LOVE the kids all the time (they smell funny, and they sometimes have bad attitudes, and they're punks), I just like...the environment.  In the afternoons they host similar sessions for junior high and high school kids, they have seminars on the weekends for teenagers, they have writing groups for adults at night during the week, and they love their volunteers and hook them up with cool writing things, like lectures to hear author's who are in town and other fun stuff.  AND the people who volunteer there are all into writing too!  The girl I met on my first day there asked what I was doing in Dublin and how long I'd be here and she said "Two to three years?  That's plenty of time to write a novel, like me!"  And she's right.  And today the guy I volunteered with was talking about the two books he's working on, based on the simplistic model that Fighting Words uses with their kids!  They're creative people who wanna help other young people be creative while taking advantage of all that the center has to offer!  And I like it.

So...I'll keep volunteering there and hanging out with the punks and surrounding myself with good people and we'll see what happens!

Back to It

We've been back two weeks now and we seem to be back in the swing of things!  We're finally no longer jet lagged, which is good, Drew is working all the time, which isn't so fun, and the weather is a disaster, but I'm staying busy.  Busyness is key.

I've done some grappling with the idea of potentially job searching again...though I'm still leaning towards...no.  Ha.  I ran into a bunch of random people back home over the break, particularly at baby showers and parties and other family events, and a lot of them would ask if I had a job.  I'd explain that I looked for a job and applied a million places the first two months I was here and nothing really worked out.  "Reeeaaallllly," they'd say.  "So...what do you...do all day?"  And then I'd launch into a memorized/rehearsed script I have about how my main focus is just to keep myself busy, so I'm taking Spanish classes, I joined a gym, I cook a lot, I blog, I meet friends for lunch, I joined an American Women's Group, and then I usually make some self-deprecating comment about being a real housewife of Dublin and reference my newly acquired ironing and sewing skills, throw in a chuckle for good measure, and stop talking.  They'd end up smiling and nodding with a look I couldn't decipher and say something like, "Well, yeah.  That's important.  Sounds good!" and then we'd thankfully both move on.  

But can I be real?  (Brace yourself for a non-angry rant.)  I didn't love having this conversation with people.  I didn't love the way it made me feel when they'd look at me funny for not having a job.  It's not like I didn't try.  And it's not like I was planning on coming over here to do nothing and contribute nothing (financially) to the family.  And...it doesn't make me feel awesome when people sing Drew's praises and talk about how great he is for letting me come to Dublin to play all day.  I know how incredibly lucky I am and I let Drew know that all the time and how much I love him.  But hearing "Gosh, you're a lucky girl!  Your husband works so you can life a life of leisure!" starts to grate on you and make you feel guiltier than you already do on a daily basis.  And I know we're here for Drew's job and he IS working is tail off to make our dreams come true....but also, it wasn't super easy for me to leave a job I loved and was actually good at to come here and iron and cook and feel like a bozo that contributes nothing [financially] to the family. Drew is seriously the best guy in the world.  But it would be nice if I or others felt like he was occasionally lucky too.  But why am I writing or telling anyone who reads this blog this?  Y'all know what it's been like and know that I do stuff.  Living overseas as a couple is just as hard for both people and both people have to make it a success...which unless you've done, you don't know or realize.  Ok, off my soapbox now.  I need to quit this and not let the bozos who don't get it get me down.  Gotta let my haters be my motivators!  Or something.  #expatproblems

Moving on!

So...in the vein of staying busy, I've been...volunteering (more on that later), taking more classes (more on those later too), having dinner with some girl friends, running, gyming, cooking, Skyping with my precious niece who I love and adore and miss unbearably, planning trips, getting excited about family coming in February and friends coming in March, and doing other random errands/things.  It's been good.

Birthday dinner for my friend Lauren!

Some Sunday afternoon drinks to combat the cold/rain.

Elf-looking Bebe on Skype!

Anyways, that's been it for now.  I gotta start writing more often!  Drew says I should write about things like gun control and current events so maybe I will.  Once I figure out what these things mean and what I think about them.  Ha.

Ok, happy Monday!

Xmas Break Wrap-Up

I don't really  have much more to report on our break, besides New Year's Eve, a lot more eating, family time, friend time, baby time, and some more eating.  But I'm posting pictures anyway.

Girls lunch at La Duni!  Besties.

Drew finally getting his favorite meal on earth at Houston's/Hillstone.

Dev had people over for New Year's Eve, God love her.  It was low key but very fun and I went crazy with the camera.  Sorry not sorry.

Sexy Mere.

Sexy Drew.

Sexy Blakesta.

Sexy Kathleen.  (Who is also a birthday girl!  Yay!  Happy birthday!)

Sexy Lindsay.

Clownin' around.

Me and Dev's dog doing some serious bonding.

Dark picture of me and Moll.

The Brothers Solomon!

Mere, me, Cait, and Little Peanut.

Good lookin boys.

Friends!

Huh?

Blake's midnight smooches.

Family at the Chili Bowl!

Sad/crazy pic on the plane.  Trying not to be sad so we take stupid pics.

The two Guinness we drank the day we got back to lift our spirits.

 So...that was the break!  A wonderful time had by all.  Now we're back to real life and we're unpacked and settled in again just fine....though our sleep is still totally messed up and I'm not sure when it'll go back to normal.  Drew has started work again this week which means busy season is in full swing.  Dangit.  I've had two American Women's functions this week and lunch with a friend and her bebe and some running and working out and Spanish classes and some cooking...so I've kept myself busy and am feeling good!

Alright, off to...keep myself busy again.  Later!