Swimming and Sweatpants (Some Observations of Odd Dublin Fashion)

We discovered there is a public pool not too far from us so we decided to go and try out the Toddler Swim session. While perusing their website, I was excited to see they had individual private changing rooms (no awkward naked groups) and not so excited to see that they require alll people to wear swim caps. So, out I went on Thursday to buy swim caps for Daddy and I. I've never done this before, you see, so I didn't quite know where to go. Luckily I found a sports store in Dun Laoghaire that carried them, UNluckily, I look like this in one:

Contrary to the way it looks, I am not furrowing my brow here...it's just that tight. Look at my eyebrows! It hurrrrts. I think it's because I have my hair in a bun in the back but geesh, how do Olympic athletes wear these things?

Ok, there, I got it on a little better. Lookin' gooood. (sarrrcasm) This is awful.

On the upside: I now know what I would look like bald.

So, Friday morning we made our way to the Monkstown swimming pool. Norah had been waiting by the front door since breakfast because we made the mistake of telling her we'd be going to the pool a couple days before. She was sooo excited!

We walked there, about a 12 minute walk (not to be too specific), and it's a very nice facility.

There are private dressing rooms - like this huge one we had:

(Swim cap in action. I was verrry fast. Wayne, of course, looked very handsome and generally like an Olympian in his swimcap so I didn't even bother to take a silly picture of him.)

Norah had such a great time! She loooved it. First, all morning she kept saying, "I wanna go fwimming pool Mommy" and would nod her head "yes", repeatedly, as she does with every sentence she says. So we got in and she just laid against me like the picture above for about 10 minutes. She was so cute! Then she got a little more adventurous and wanted to stretch out and even did some kicking. 

And tonight, as I was putting her to bed, just as she closed her eyes, she opened them and said "Wanna go fwimming pool Mommy - wif Mommy and Daddy. Nowah want Yay-dee bug (lady bug)" (they had a ladybug floatie there). Annnd... then she promptly passed out.

The only downside: It cost us 5.50 Euro, each. So, 11 Euro, or $15 US dollars for a 45 minute open Toddler Swim. There was no class or instruction, just a bunch of parents with adorable babies, floating about. It was really fun and Norah loved it but we definitely can't afford to do that every week. That's one thing I've noticed here - activities that I would assume were cheap, are very expensive.

We went to that baby group on Tuesday and it cost 15 EURO! That's $19 US dollars! (For a 50 minute class, singing baby songs.) That's insane. Who can afford to do that every week?

In Seattle, I think the Greenlake pool costs something like $3 (which would be 2 EURO) - completely reasonable.  

Ok, on to some ramblings about weird trends here in Dublin:

One: Sweatpants worn by men, alllll the time, everywhere.

You can see that chap there in the back is a shining example. This is a group of 5 teenage boys and three of the five are wearing these pants. These aren't sweatpants like "sporty pants" you might see in the States. They're the real-deal sweatpants with the elastic at the ankle and teenagers, and grown men, wear them. In public. Not when they're at home with the flu. In public, thinkin' they look gooood. They're whole matching get-ups too. It's not like they're 'bummin' around' one day. That'd be fine. Instead, they're 'suited up'. And they feel like a million bucks.

The other male atrocity here in Dublin is the haircut. We've seen men here, every single day, with this haircut...circa 1992. They have sort of a buzzcut where it's slightly longer on top, faded down the sides. But the awesome part is the 'bangs'. They seem to put a bunch of gel in their hair and comb it down onto their foreheads with a fine-tooth comb so that you can see the lines in between the 'bangs'. It's heinous. I don't know if my description does it justice so I'll try to snap a picture of one of these "Snatch" like dudes. (If you've seen that movie, which I don't think I even have, they seem to be dressing like those guys). The guys with these 'hair-do's' looooove to complete the look with the full-Adidas-running-suit ensemble. This is a slight step above the old-school sweatpants in that it is 'running suit' material but it is no less eye-catching. You know, the running suits with the 3-line Adidas stripes down the sleeves and the legs? Those ones. Wayne and I swear, there must be an actual warehouse where these guys go to get these things. We see at least 3 guys dressed in this exact outfit, with matching hair, every single day - usually at Tesco. I just don't understand it.

Ok, now on to the women. I HAVE to snap a picture of one of these girls but for now my words will have to suffice. A certain subset of women in Dublin are orange. I don't mean, bad self-tanner, slightly fake-tan-looking. They are full-on ORANGE. Well, the color spectrum ranges from 'jaundice-yellow' to HD-color, Oompa-Loompa Orange. It has taken me 7 weeks of living here to figure out that I don't think they are even going for, real-tan-color. I think they actually go for this orange color. I hope some of you who visit will get to see this. They're not the like the girls I'm used to seeing in Seattle, where they may be way too tan but you can tell they're just going to the tanning beds too often. It's still "tan-color", it's just that they're too tan. Usually these are the girls that work in the tanning salons and you don't see them all that often. This, in Dublin, is a different animal.

It just strikes me as sooo odd and out of place given that it is so incredibly dark and cool here. (It's like Seattle weather in November, all year. Not as much rain but just as grey). So it's not as if you'd look at them and say,"Oh hey, it's January, you must've been out suntanning". And the fact that they're so orange makes me think they couldn't possibly be going for the "just got back from Spain" look either. It's so orange, it has to be on purpose. What purpose? I don't know.  

To add insult to injury though, the majority of these dark-orange girls, also have platinum white, bleached-blonde-hair. Really white. So, the contrast is made all the more stark.

Perhaps this is an odd mating-related-ritual between the orange women and the sweat-suit men. A ritual I can't possibly understand given that I'm married. Only more cultural-immersion-time will tell. 

This is not to say that all people in Dublin are guilty of these crimes. I'm sure there are just as many non-orange, non-sweat-suit-wearing men and women, it's just that we have noticed a lot of these. We don't notice the normal-colored beautiful Irish woman because we're too busy staring at the blinding white and orange one standing behind her. Or, the handsome Irish guy with the scarf and nice hat because the 'Adidas gang' with their bangs just out-shine him. So, I'm sure the highly-fashionable, natural-skin-tone'd Dublin folks outnumber the weirdos but that's not much of a blog post.