Stories From The 1st Week of Class (Part 2)

And we're back, after kicking off my shoes & sippin some tea, I'm ready to finish telling my stories!

So, where was I? Oh, I got it: Wednesday. Wednesday was better cause I had both Acting & Voice class, aka my favorite 2 classes. Both have kick ass professors, really chill, really knowledgeable, & really easy to relate to. In Acting class, which I knew would be my favorite (duh!), our professor's name is Donal & he had us just playing games & doing little acting stuff like tableaus. We played games that everyone knows, but they do them different over here. Instead of Red Light, Green Light they call it Granny's Pantry or something like that. He also modified games I've played in drama class & at MLW. Zip-Bang-Zap sounded close to Zip-Zap-Zop, but ended up being Whiz Bong Chasm with different words, & Killer was played with winks instead of scratching palms. Let me just say that it was the most vicious game of Killer I've ever played. At staff days (my MLW brethren) it should only be played with winks, the paranoia is unbearable & the tension is high.....its beautiful!

Voice class is awesome too. It had me thinking about actually being a Voice coach/teacher if this acting thing don't quite work out (which I'm in no way speaking/typing into existance). But, we're in the very beginning stages of the class & Cathal (pronounced Cah-al) has us thinking about how we breathe & working on properly breathing in pressure situations. I swear, we (as in common folk) know so little about how our bodies work. We take breathing for granted, but I'm telling you now that I'ma come back & school y'all on how to breathe properly & improve y'all lives. It feels damn good to breathe well, even if you just learned one thing. Plus, it helps that Dublin has really fresh air compared to everywhere not near a mountain in America. They're so much better about being eco-friendly over here, its really ashame we aint adapted some of the stuff they doing. I'll rant about that another day.

Finally, today I went got a haircut. Yes yes y'all, I found the needle in the haystack: a Black barbershop in Dublin! First off, let me say that there are Black people over here (among a bunch of other immigrants). Some go to Trinity College, a lot work around the city, & most of them are African. This is not to say that they're out in the open all the time, I'm still surprised when I see some people who share my skin tone, but if you spend enough time walking around the city you'll find the Us's. But anyway, back to the story. So, the other night I asked a random Black security guard in McDonalds where he gets his haircut. This brotha was kind enough to draw me a little diagram to explain where I needed to go. He told me to head to Parnell St & I'd find one down there. Luckily, I had been down Parnell St (albeit a little lost, lol) recently, so today I went down there to find a new barber. When I wandered about on Parnell St before, I came away with the impression that it was Chinatown in Dublin, so I aint think I would find what I was looking for. But sure enough, as I walk past the 8 different Asian restaurants in a row, across the street I spot a little door for a place called Mighty Caesar's! It had a sign for dreadlocks & that barbershop staple: the poster of all the different haircuts from the style magazine. Home sweet home indeed! I walked inside the joint & they had mad S-Curl boxes stacked up! (Side note: mad African dudes over here got S-Curls & shit. What's going on? Is Shalamar making a comeback?) Did I ever tell y'all I used to know the dark skin brotha on the S-Curl box? His name's Gary & I used to play ball with his son back in middle school. But anyway, (sorry for losing focus) I got a pretty decent cut when I was up in there. Dude ain't Shawn (my barber in Atlanta who always has a brotha hooked up) or Karl (my barber in Columbia who's been consistent for years now), but this dude was cool. I ain't get his name, but we small talked about Black people in Dublin for a lil bit, with some African movie playing the background. I swear that movie looked like an African Bollywood film! Y'all, me & Farah talk all the time about how similar Black people & Brown people are & its the truth, Ruth! Shout out to Samuel L Jackson, lol!

But yeah man, it only cost a brotha 10 euros (about $13-14 with the conversion) & it was decent. Dude even rubbed some Pomade on my head afterward instead of spraying me down with that aerosol stuff, which was weird but I guess thats how they do it. You'll see the pics of my cleaned up look next week, when I get back from Galway (more on that later). Oh & final thing, check out a movie called Intermission, its off the chain! Its got Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, & Kelly MacDonald in it (all of em do movies in the states, imdb them) & it a big ensemble cast movie with violence, hilarity, & heart as well. Its an Irish classic nowadays, it came out in 2004, & was a big hit with all my people that live in building with me. So go put it in your Netflix queue, you big dummy! (Redd Foxxx R.I.P.)

Peace & blessings, y'all
Its waaaaaaaay past my bed time since I got class at 8:45 tomorrow (eek!)