The first few days in a nutshell

So you may be asking yourself what I've done the past couple days. Or you may not be. Regardless, I will tell you.

Orientation in any country suck. Don't tell me how to write and essay or study or whatever...I got it. I've been in school for quite some time now and I think I've got that kind of stuff under my belt. However, I did meet some pretty awesome people. So yay for that. Classes are weird here because instead of registering for classes before school starts, you just pick 6 or 7 and go to them to see if you like them. after about 2 weeks you pick 4 or 5 and then write it on a peice of paper and hand it to registration. It's a little nerveracking for us Americans, but the Irish are crazy laid back (which is awesome) so it cool. After spending like 9 hours in orientation, we spent 4 hours at the Stables (the on campus bar (perhaps America should introduce this idea)). It was great craic (aka fun). Drinks are expensive. There was lots of dancing and socializing and meeting more awesome people.

Day two of orientation was much the same...more meeting people, more bars, more food. We went shopping in town and the city. There are child gangs here that are quite scary and young girls in long skirts that heckle Americans....weird. Riding the bus can be difficult because you can't see out the windows on some, so you totally look like a American, but most Irish are willing to help and don't mind it. They're also very sarcastic, so i like that. Finding a person who has a car has been exceptionally helpful and much appreciated. We piled into a very tiny car and had lots of groceries. Also weird things: packaged pancakes and having to bring your own shopping bags, otherwise you have to pay for them.

Today was our first day to really explore some of Limerick. A few of us went and saw St. John's Castle which was really awesome. Great view of the city and some great history. We also saw the Limerick museum (not too exciting) and St. Mary's cathedral, which we couldn't figure out how to get into but then someone told us how when we got back to campus, so we have to go back there. We then somehow wondered into city centre and did some much needed shopping for hair dryers and more food.

We had a pretty awesome wine and cheese party tonight. 7 people to 6 bottles of wine....note to self 4 euro wine= nasty shit. But it was fun. More girls came over and again, met new people. It's a pretty motivated group of people so we'll be doing lots of traveling together.

I'm totally joining the outdoors pursuits club because you get to go caving and rockclimbing and hill walking (hiking) all throughout Ireland. i sounds pretty sweet.


More stuff I've learned:
1. when guys ask to go have a cup of tea, they don't want tea apparently.
2. when asking for a ride to the store, don't ask f3or a ride ask for a lift, because you're not asking for a ride.
3. lots of people ask you if you want to have some crack. They're actually asking you to have some craic, which means fun.
4. Putting travel hair dryers into a power converter/adapter will indeed make the electrical sockets explode.
5. Fuck can clearly be used in every context
6. the weather here is really crazy....rain, sunny, rain/sunny, coldest in the afternoons and warmest in the morning and night.....its hard to handle...

well my computer is going to die because of that whole explosion thing...so there will be another update real soon because there is soo much more to talk about. This is the abridged version. Hope you enjoyed and check out pictures on facebook (when I put them up of course).