Patriots (Week 1, Day 4)

Thursday was the Fourth of July, and apparently no one here celebrates it! I know, I was shocked too. So I asked the people at my work where the most American place in Dublin was, and they told me there was an American-themed restaurant called Captain America's in the city center. That sounded promising.

Thursday was also the day my friend James was arriving in Dublin. Since I work late on Thursdays, Kendra was going to grab him from the coffee shop near our dorm and bring him downtown to meet me and Megan. I've known James since I moved to Seattle 11 years ago and we've been great friends for a long time, so I was pretty psyched that he was coming to visit.

Thursday is the free legal advice clinic at NCLC, and I was going to get to sit in and watch one of the solicitors work. It's an awesome service that really helps people who are confused or intimidated by the law and can't afford to pay for legal advice. This night was a pretty light night apparently, since there were 5 solicitors providing advice and only 9 people came in. Watching the solicitor I was paired with was a fascinating experience: she met these people, got a quick run-down of their legal question, asked them a bunch of details, and gave legal advice, all within 15 minutes. She had to be fast but thorough, and at all times comforting. These people were very vulnerable and would have been able to tell if she was hurrying them along. It takes a mix of emotional and legal intelligence, and the solicitor I was watching made it look easy. I was really impressed.

After work Megan and I got a ride down to the city center with a solicitor friend of hers. We told Kendra we'd meet her and James next to the statue of Molly Malone, a prostitute so famous that she had a statue made of her (or something like that). I was reunited with James, and we set out to find Captain America's. It wasn't hard. When we got in, I couldn't help but laugh at how "American" it was.

Pictured: Freedom

The whole place was decked out in red, white, and blue, there was a Statue of Liberty with a lei on it, there were multiple murals of the Captain himself, and there were guitars and memorabilia plastering the walls.

Licensed? Maybe. Awesome? HELL YES.

 The waitress tried to get the bar to sing Happy Birthday to one of the patrons, but I just ended up singing it to America. And I couldn't be happier. Even though I wasn't in The Greatest Country in the World (TM), I was still able to find a little bit of America in Dublin.

From left to right: Kendra, George Clooney, Megan.

Love this guy.

This is how the rest of the world see us. And I couldn't be happier.