Sam's Online Journal

We had Domino’s and I visited a cyber cafe on that first night just outside of Dublin, the one for about the millionth time and the other for the very first. It was funny because we were trying to decide what to eat, and there were so many options, but the students knew they had seen a Domino’s when we were driving up on the bus, so they were determined to find it again. That led to a wild trip where they swore we were being stalked, and where we doubled back on ourselves a couple of times before finding the most over-priced pizza ever, and yes, they still had the Noid up on their signs. Raise your hand if you remember that guy. Anyway, then the debate began whether or not we wanted to pay so much for something we could have just gotten at home. I was of course starving by then and said we should go for it, which we eventually did, but we only got two pizzas and fought over who got more than one slice. That was a fun discussion.

After dinner, most of the crew finally turned in, but I was still high off my trip into the city earlier and I couldn’t settle down. I checked with my troops and “tucked them in,” then left a chaperone in charge while I went for a little walk around the area by myself. Don’t worry. I didn’t get lost again, well, not that time anyway. On my walk I encountered a little place that catered to those who were cyber friendly. Or something like that. I’m not quite sure how it advertized itself, but I did know that there were tons of young people in there, typing away. They were playing role play games like World of Warcraft (don’t ask how I knew what it was), and typing emails, and doing all manner of other internet related activities when I entered, but I had only one thing on my mind: getting a Facebook account.

You see, on the first day in Ireland most students had either a cell phone or a camera that they used to document the trip. You can imagine how many photographs were taken as a whole from the 55 students and 10+ chaperones who were with us on the journey. And one phrase I heard more than any other when a picture was taken that had multiple people in it was, “tag me in that.” I of course had no clue what “tagging” was, and I kept trying to wrap my brain around it the more they said it. Then when we were in the ruins the day before I finally asked one of the students from another school what tagging was. She laughed at me and explained that tagging was the Facebook expression for making sure people were identified in the photos where they were featured. That way you could look at every photo with you in it at the click of a mouse.

So, I went into that cyber cafe with that purpose in mind, to get me one of those Facebook accounts so I could be tagged in all the photos that I didn’t take myself but that had me in them anyway. It sounded cool. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 6”