Please Don't Judge Me...

...I went shopping yesterday

Book O' Kells

Friday night marked my first touristy event in Dublin. I went to Trinity and saw the Book of Kells and the long room of the library. Unfortunately pictures aren't allowed or I'd probably have a billion of the library - it was by far the coolest place I'd ever seen. It even smelled like old books.

Trip to The Burren, County Clare

So this past weekend was very busy. It started with our day trip to Howth and kept going with our program trip to the Western Coast. Our itinerary was something like this:
Saturday:
11am: Stop for coffee, tea and scones at Tyrellspass Castle

2pm: Tour of Gleninagh Castle, Blackhead, Cliffs of Moher, Poulnabron, Dolmen and Lemeagh Castle (now this is what it said we were going to do, but the actual itinerary involved the Cliffs, driving along the coast and Blackhead, if I saw the other things I didn't know it.)

7pm: Mass at St. Patrick's Church in Fanore - that's right, I went to mass, not that I had much choice in the matter, but I was there all the same. I've decided the reason I don't go to mass is because it makes me too uncomfortable, I actually felt anxious as we bused to the church. I think it's just because it's unfamiliar, I don't feel like I belong there and I feel like a giant poser for trying. To sum up, when I get near a mass service I radiate awkwardness... Anyway - the service was short and the priest spoke in Gaelic part of the time so no one (not just me) knew what he was saying. It was really cool to hear some of the songs in Gaelic and afterwards some even ventured to say that the priest's voice rivaled that of Morgan Freeman - that good.

8pm: was a three course meal at the our hotel. It was delicious. There was cheesecake. I was happy. That night was low-key, with only a few bars in the area (the area was actually known for it's matchmaking activity and when we went to mass the priest asked if were in the area so we could be matched) we went to a place called Monk's and had an early night. I was excited to see that the town had a fiddlers, although not a pub like at ND, it reminded me of ND all the same.
Sunday:
We started Sunday with a "full Irish breakfast" - read enormous amounts of meat. We then got on the bus to see more sites. The first stop was Corcomroe Abbey, a ruin church. Next up, a ruin castle: Then what-seemed-to-be a random farm house. I guess it was the filming location for a TV show called Father Ted's House, but it's still lived in by a family who fed us delicious scones and tea. We also got to watch their sheepdog heard some sheep through the fence, something I haven't witnessed outside of Babe.
Afterwards we walked around the Burren and visited a large turlough, which is a disappearing lake. It forms and disappears with the seasons and the amount of rain. It was pretty cool. And finally headed home. And that was my weekend in a nutshell. The bus ride home involved an hour plus of group sing-alongs and by far the best performed song was "A whole new world" from Aladdin.
P.S. Click the bottom picture for the full album from the weekend.

Week One

So I was trying to update daily so I didn't forget things, but then my life just seemed too boring... The Irish lifestyle appears to be a lot more laid back then what I'm used to. For starters, today was the end of my first week of classes. On Monday I had three of my classes, during which I did not receive a single syllabus, nor a required reading list. It's actually a little unnerving, I feel like if I'm taking classes I should have something to read or do... But roll with the punches I guess.

Tuesday I went into town to welcome the Trinity students from Notre Dame and help them get their luggage to their dorms since I didn't have any classes. If I feel lost without something to do, they have to be feeling twice as bad - they don't start classes until October!

Wednesday was another day of classes. That night we went out to a pub in city centre. Despite the fact that it was a Wednesday night there were plenty of drunk people around, on campus and in the pubs. My favorite encounter was with the girl I sat next to on the bus. She got on and asked if I was going to the same pub that her group was going to. When I said no, we were going to Doyles, her immediate response was, "You're American!" Ah the accent, it's a dead give-away...

Thursday was another no classes day. Instead of feeling like a bum with nothing to do I walked around Blackrock to try and find a grocery store. In true Courtney fashion, I got lost, hit two brick walls and spent over an hour and a half walking before getting to a store that took me 25 minutes to walk home from. Good job me. I did manage to take one picture of my walk before the rain started, I'm not sure if the pictures capture the view I witnessed, but I'll try anyway (The Irish Sea is minutes from my dorm):

Today, on Friday - another day without classes, we went on a day trip to Howth. It was b-e-a-utiful. We had pretty good weather, with bouts of sunshine and only a small rain shower. There was a lighthouse, a castle, Ireland's eye, sea cows, real cows... overall good stuff. Click on the bottom picture to see more pics from the trip.

Firsts

So my first Saturday in Dublin was spent walking around city centre for, well, probably a total of four hours. I should be more familiar with the city now and I should have gotten some shopping done while I was there, but no dice. Eventually I may know how to get around, and eventually I may purchase some pots to cook my food in, but until then I'm just confused and hungry.

After a long afternoon of walking around we watched part of the ND football game, and I'm sad to say they don't look much better then last year. We ended up not watching most of the second half because we had to catch the last train out of the city, so overall, a long day, but not much to show for it.

Sunday I experienced my first hurling game. We walked to a small pub in Blackrock to watch Kilkenny take on Waterford. It was very violent and hard to follow, but somewhat exciting (unlike this blog entry, however, tomorrow marks my first day of classes here in Dublin, so maybe there will be more to say then...)

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Dear Mom, the rain jacket you bought may have been the best gift you've ever given me, even better than the gift of life...
This morning I woke up to the sound of pouring rain. At first I had a moment of panic because it sounded like my window was open, but no, the walls are just paper thin. It was pouring down rain all morning and so I experienced my first 40 minute walk in the rain. Thankfully, my rain gear seemed to work some-what well.


(Rather than just give pictures of my rain gear, which I was more then tempted to do, I decided to use my self-timer - as you can tell in the top photo I didn't think I could fit my whole body, I am pretty tall you know)


So a wet day was spent on campus where we had a boring orientation meeting and I learned about culture shock for the five-hundreth time. The coolest part was the free bags and scarfs:

I also came back to Blackrock and ventured out to legally buy my first form of alcohol:

I decided on the Blue Vodka, because, one, it's vodka, and two it's a pretty blue color (and it makes me think of Bagel). The rest of the night was spent in the dining room with all the other international students learning about their home countries, drinking, and talking politics.

Busy, busy day

Today was full of walking, getting lost, and standing in lines. We walked to main campus (a 40 minute walk away) to try and get our student IDs, but it was a lot harder than it sounds. We thought they were pre-printed for us because we sent in passport pictures, but that was a no-go. So then we walked around campus to five different buildings hearing different things from different people in attempt to get what we needed to obtain the ID. In the end I wound up with two new IDs: a student ID and a student travel card.

I also began to figure out my cell phone situation. I picked up a phone from the O'Connell house that someone had left behind in a previous year and at first all seemed good, it was pink and already had a couple euros on it, but then when I tried to replace the SIM card, the phone locked up on me. So now I'm working with another left over phone and hopefully I'll "top up" soon and having a working phone for the semester!

Basically a long day, with nothing too exciting to share, I hope the pictures helped a little...

Woah

Holy crikey, it has been a long past few days. My travel to Ireland started with five hours of sitting and waiting to check my luggage (The picture above was my view all morning). Highlights from that portion of travel include getting to watch all the Korean Air people check in all morning, sitting next to a little old polish lady who judged people (like clearly judged, she would turn her whole body to stare and look at them, mostly with a scowl on her face), having to pee really bad but worrying I wouldn't be able to take all my luggage to the bathroom with me (in the end, five hours of waiting won against my bladder and it all worked out - the stalls were big enough to fit all my luggage inside with me), listening to three polish teenagers talk in nothing but polish all morning only to have their computer start playing "I kissed a girl," and most exciting of all, coloring pictures in my new coloring book (Thanks Bagel!). While I was sitting I was also waiting, waiting to figure out what it was that I forgot, or what it was that I messed up. At one point I was sitting next to a girl who called home and an hour later a man showed up with her passport, only to find that it was an outdated one, it was moments like that that I was waiting for... but the flight seemed to go pretty smoothly. I got on at 6:50 pm and stayed awake until dinner (there was cheesecake!), tossed and turned for a while, and eventually landed in Dublin at 8:15 in the morning. We then bused to the O'Connell house (a building that ND owns and it acts as our program headquarters of sorts) where we sat for a bit and then took cabs to our respective dorms.
Dorms. This is where the real party began. This is what my room looked like at first:


It may not seem bad, and the room isn't too small, but what the pictures don't show is that we did not have hot water, nor electricity at first, and the showers have clear, glass shower doors (still sans hot water). And those are just some highlights... I'm getting used to it, but I may never stop complaining about the showers...

The rest of the day was mostly unpacking, a little bit of wandering and making our first meal - it was two courses: mac 'n cheese and ramen noodles. (Notice that we only had one pot to cook and eat from, which had to be cleaned with boiling water because that was the best we had...)

The last two pictures are of my some-what completed room... The day ended with a walk to UCD main campus (two miles away) which ended up being a huge mistake because I didn't go to bed until 2 am, and after all that traveling it was not happy. But oh well, today was a new day. And we spent it going into the city, grocery shopping, and trying to learn our way around. To get into the center of Dublin we took the DART which runs along the water for a ways:

And that's pretty much been my trip so far...

I'm here!

Okay, just a quick hello to say I've made it. I'll post more soon when I'm settled in....