Ireland!

Wow. So it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been so busy over the last week! Where to begin!

The trip got off to a bad start with the flights because my flight from Dallas to New York was delayed 2 hours. That subsequently made me miss my connecting flight to Shannnon, so I had to wait in more lines and get on another flight. I ended up having to change from American Airlines to Delta, so my bag didn't arrive with me in Ireland because it didn't have time to get processed and switched over. That was all a bit stressful, but it worked out in the end. I got to Ireland on Thursday, safe and sound, and my bag arrived on Friday. The Delta flight was quite pleasant--I got to watch Tropic Thunder, finally, and I watched Ghost Town. Tropic Thunder I enjoyed, but it didn't live up to what everyone made it out to be. Ghost Town, though, was VERY good. Love Ricky Gervais.

The first day in Limerick (for the IFSA Butler orientation) was nice. My new friend Bryan and I walked around a bit, taking photos and such. And then there was a free dinner where I got to meet the others in the program. My roommate at the Jurys Inn (our hotel) was Laura--she was quite nice. Pleasant company. A group of us went out to a pub called Dolans that was GREAT fun! They had a small 3 piece band playing Irish traditional music. Absolutely loved that.

The second day was filled with people talking at us about safety and immigration and so on and so forth, but we did get to go to the Cliffs of Moher. THAT was cool. Took LOTS of photos there. (By the way, I will have a separate website for all of my Ireland photos up soon. I'll link to it from here.) There were lots of signs telling people not to climb over the fence because they might fall to their death. Great fun.

On Saturday we rode a bus to Cork. Our apartment complex is really nice. The common areas for some are a bit small, but that's ok. I have two roommates--Maureen (from IFSA Butler) and Muriel, a french girl. Maureen is quite nice, and Muriel seems to be great, as well--we just met her yesterday. A small group of us went to a place called the Welcome Inn that had a live guitarist. He was awesome--took some of our requests. Along with Irish music, he played Bob Dylan, John Lennon, John Mayer, Elvis, and Billy Joel--piano man on guitar is kinda funny, but he pulled it off.

Sunday was a nice day off from orientations. Our IFSA Butler local guy Ger took us around the University College Cork (UCC) campus a bit. After buying a few groceries, Maureen and I took the evening off to just chill. We found a biopic on Linda McCartney on tv--it wasn't that good, but we watched it anyway. :P

Yesterday was actually the first day of classes, but we had orientation all day, so today was my first time to go to class. The funny thing about the system here is that we go to classes we think we might like for a week and a half, and then we register for the ones we want. It's really quite nice. If one of my prospective classes turns out to be boring or if it conflicts with other classes, then I don't have to drop out of it, I just won't register for it when the time comes. I like it better than our system back home.

The only class I've been to so far is Aspects of Irish Folklore, which is just for visiting students. It wasn't a real class session, though. The professor just talked to us for a bit and handed out a small booklet. I think it'll be fun and easy, so I'll probably take that one. Later on tonight, at 6pm, I have the history class for visiting students, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm already starting to get a grasp on the layout of the city, it's not too difficult, really, because there are so many large landmarks that let you know where you are--cathedrals, rivers, a huge brewery, a giant McDonald's (:P).

As I mentioned above, I'm going to create a separate website for the photos I take. I'll probably do it later tonight.