Seeing dead bodies in Dublin: round two...or is it three now?

On Friday Stephanie and I headed back up to Dublin on the bus, getting into the city around 6.30 pm. We were going up to one of the courses offered through our work and basically doing 'face-to-face-marketing' with the people enrolled in it, offering our extra materials at discounted prices. I guess this would be a good time to fully explain what the heck it is I'm doing out here.

I am working for the company i-to-i, based down here in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford. The company's main hub is in the UK office, but also has an Australia office (Melbourne), USA offices (basically run from the UK) and in Canada. There are a few different things that i-to-i does. The first one are TEFL courses, Teaching English as A Foreign Language. We have a placement service that people can use to find well-paid jobs abroad by teaching English, but we also offer different TEFL courses to get people a lifetime qualification if they don't already have one.
i-to-i Online TEFL Web site

Besides TEFL, i-to-i also is one of Ireland's leading travel companies which promotes volunteer work overseas. There are meaningful travel programs from 2 weeks to over one month where volunteers travel overseas and work with the community either building homes, working with orphans/children or community development and habitat restoration. Some of the most popular trips are taking care of lion cubs in South Africa, teaching Monks English in Nepal, teaching and caring for AIDS orphans in Mombasa, or conservation work in Kenya, Thailand, Honduras, etc.
i-to-i.com Travel Site

Lastly, similar to the volunteer work, there are also i-to-i tours; trips which are more of a vacation tour where you would travel around with a small tour group to do all the sightseeing and attractions. Then for a few days, or a day or two built into the tour, would be some form of volunteer work at a community site.

My internship is to write the PR mainly for TEFL courses, but I have also been focusing on some profiles on returning volunteers, etc. In addition to press releases, writing stories and profiles I am also doing sales and marketing for the TEFL courses. Having taken one myself now, Steph and I came up with the idea to go to some of the weekend courses to do some face to face marketing and sell some of the teaching resources we offer at a discounted price. So this is what brought us back up to Dublin...

DUBLIN
So once steph and I checked into our B&B, the Maple Hotel, we spent the Friday night out listening to live music at Fitzgerald's in Temple Bar and then met up with our two Aussie friends who were visiting family in Dublin. But probably one of the most hilarious moments we had encountered was at the pub Mother Kelly's near our B&B. The name should have been our first warning. As we walked by, I was waiting with Steph outside to finish her cigarette when two men around 60 years old started talking to us telling us that we should come in for a drink. While Steph was trying to converse with one of them, another man (around 75 years old) started into asking me where I was from and I only got as far as The States, when he busted out asking what ethnicity I was and started listing off the ones he did not like. I never got to answer but his guesses or dislikes where never close to what I am. Somehow his own conversation with himself, yet spoken to me, turned into the Twin Towers and Iraq, which is when I walked inside deciding it was time for a pint.


Once inside, I felt as if I was in a time warp and I saw my life 60 years in the future. Now I only say this because I was informed my Grandmother is readying my blog---but hey grandma, I found some good dancing Irish men you might be interested in! And like all my assembly lessons taught me (not to mention my mom) when one of the men, old enough to be my papa--(great grandpa) took my hand and asked me to dance...of course i said yes, and of course Steph took a video. There are a few of them but hang tough through the bad angle, Steph was trying to balance the camera while not peeing her pants.
VIDEO 1


VIDEO 2


After deciding that we wanted to find a pub with the average age to be lower than 50, Steph and I wandered out way into Temple Bar--which put us at Fitzgerald's, as mentioned above.
SATURDAY
Saturday, Valentines Day, we went to the TEFL course in Dublin to do some face to face marketing and then spent the day wondering around.

Steph did not want to play my game...
So I did it...

We found a nice Italian restaurant for our Valentines Day 'linner' and then went back to our B&B to get ready for the night. We had planned to get ready for the night and then walk over to the cinema to catch a movie but once we got there all the earlier shows were sold out and we didn't want to wait around for almost 2 hours for the later shows. So instead we decided to go to the Bodies exhibition that was showing in Dublin since we both had wanted to see it when it was touring The States and Canada.

Now for those of you who don't know about the exhibition I urge you to follow the link I created above and read a little bit about it. It's an exhibition of real human cadavers from full body muscles, to tendons, veins, preserved skin, eyes and etc. Human skeletons are on display showing how the human body works and operates, along with basically all the internal organs. Going through the exhibition it's hard not to be detached mentally and emotionally because frankly if you don't you become extremely sick thinking about it. It's crazy trying to tell yourself that the human brain you are looking at, which looks identical to the fake plastic ones in biology class, is actually a real brain. The human bodies on display included real eyes, eyelashes, fingernails and more. Two of the most powerful sections of the exhibition were the smoking/lungs area and then the premature births/fetus area. The smoker lungs vs healthy lungs section was a very interesting display mainly because right in front of you were real smoker lungs compared to real non-smoker lungs. Somehow seeing pictures in a book or in anti-tobacco campaigns don't come anywhere close to this. There was even a big glass box that had one slit in the top placed near the end of the section for people who smoked to drop their cigarette box in there and decide to quit right then and there. I was actually very pleased and pleasantly surprised with the amount of cigarettes in there, but who really knows how long they lasted considering the next section was for abortion fetus'. Let's just say a lot of people could have used a smoke after that.This section was probably the hardest because as a women's rights supporter and personal activist, I felt like I really had to separate myself from what I was seeing and feeling. While I do appreciate the warning sign before the separate entrance into this section, no words could really describe what individuals may feel or internal emotions that may come about from what they were about to see. On one long display table were separate jars which each contained an aborted or lost fetus during the pregnancy starting from one week of conception all the way until about the 23rd week. Then, along the wall were two displays with actual premature stillborn fetus', aborted fetus' or miscarried ones. With a few more containers on each stand which contained fetus' from an 11th week pregnancy, 13th week and 16th week. The crazy thing here was even before the 11th week you could actually see the eyes, parts of bone through the skin and see a real body. It was just a really weird moment (for lack of better word) and made me question some of my foundations of personal beliefs...not enough to change them, for they are the way they are for strong reasons, but still definitely gave me a new perspective.

After leaving the exhibition, a fabulous way to spend Valentines Day, Steph and I headed off for a much needed pint back at Fitzgerald's. Feeling welcome with open arms when the bartender knew our drinks from last night (considering we only had one pint on Friday) we stayed for the live music all night before heading into Temple Bar to find some more live music.

Now this is where it gets interesting. We came across a pub and went inside the very overcrowded room for a beer and to figure out our next game plan. After finding a little nook in the corner and hanging out for a bit we ventured off to find the bathrooms. This is where we discovered the second floor. Now, upstairs was still crowded but a lot less crazy and has a little heated balcony area were we sat while Steph finished off her cigarette (she claims the exhibition didn't work on her since she had already disconnected herself from the images she was seeing). After she finished we walked inside to a booth where we met a very strange man who preceded to ask Steph why she was out alone and when she responded by saying she wasn't alone he turned to me and asked if we were a couple. Granted this was Valentines Day, we just looked at him a bit confused and that's when he told us about the secret third floor! We walked up the secret stairs in the back of the pub and there was a whole floor devoted to live Irish dancing and music. We spent most of the remainder of the night here where we listened to the live band and I even ended up with an Irish drumstick (it's a bit different then a drumstick but very similar).
VIDEO of Irish Music(edited from full video)

When the band was finished playing music we headed back downstairs where Stephanie and I in attempt to leave the bar and go home were trapped in by a mob of people doing the can-can. Not only could we not get to the exit, but the only way we were able to pass them is if we can-canned our way out...so yes, that is what we did....we literally can-canned our way out of an Irish Pub. (My mom will vouch for me, I called her right after!)