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....

First Day of Classes Picnic

Before my semester in Dublin begins, I'm spending a week at Notre Dame. I got here last Friday in order to see Hannah, and I'm hanging around until my flight on Monday. This means I get to spend oodles of time with Bagel, Lynn, and people like this little guy:

Last night we went to the first day of classes picnic. I can't believe it's the beginning of my junior year. Not only that, but now mini Wenger is here. Jake's a freshman, and although it's always been assumed that Jake would come to Notre Dame, it's hard to believe that he's actually old enough to be here. And craziest of all, my junior year also marks Bagel's last year at ND with me. Words cannot describe how sad I'll be when senior year actually rolls around and she'll be gone completely.

Click on the picture of Jake to see more pictures from the picnic.

1 Week

So it's official, one week from today I will be here:

The bottom one is a picture on my dorm, Blackrock