I have friends! wahoo. We're all American (NY & Boston) and one Canadian!(or north AMERICAN as she now likes to describe herself after finding out Irish boys love American girls haha) This picture was taken on international night that our orientation leaders had set up for Friday night. So, they set up this little game called "Fast Friends" the equivalent to speed dating. Those of you who know me know that this is totally not my cup of tea and I would rather stab something sharp into my retina then take part in a game like this... but I'm in Ireland, It's supposed to be a life changing experience. If I'm not going to try new things here what's the point? (right dad?) So I play. They divided us all into "movers" and "sitters". My Canadian friend Mal was a sitter with me. Pretty self explanatory, we sat. People with the "movers" tag moved around in a circle to you. We were given sheets of paper to put people's names and numbers down which I had absolutely no intention of actually doing that. You were supposed to carry a conversation with them for about 5 minutes. (rough...) So the little whistle thing goes off, no one comes to me or Mal's table, this continued for about 10 minutes. We had pretty much given up all hope until our little Irish orientation leader friend says he'll bring us over some nice "Portugal boys" to sit, little did he know if he had sat down across from us we would've taken his name, number, and tux measurements. He brought over two guys, one was from Mexico and the other from New Zealand. The next girl I spoke to was from Spain, and I met a boy from Germany. It was blowing my mind how many people I was able to meet, and from all over the world. To me, international night was the equivalent to going on the it's a small world ride in Disney world, except these people could speak and weren't wooden. Some of them I wish could've been wooden though... like the boys we met from France. They were the last boys to come to our table. He asked me why I hadn't written his name down on my sheet.. I hadn't written any ones. So I made a joke and said "Oh Mal's got it, I'll get it from her later." Apparently, this offended him. He told me I am "late" and in his country they call that something that sounded very very close to you're retarded. Imagine my reaction...Then as if that wasn't enough of an impression. He got up and left and he said to his friend that he could have his seat. His friend looked me up and down and said "No I'm all set." Needless to say, I didn't want to play that game anymore.

I regained my confidence with my first legal drink, a pint of Bulmer's hard cider. Basically, heaven in my mouth. I also tried a sip of Mal's Guinness and to my surprise I liked it! I haven't tried Smithwick's yet Dame, but I did see it in the liquor store today! Had you not told me how to pronounce it I would have definitely been that American girl again... Thanks :) Oh and I also met another Damien today too. I was really excited and told him I knew a Damien at home, he responded with "cool."... well, I thought it was?

Saturday we took our first trip into the city! The international office offered us a free city bus tour. Everyone went on it expecting to see really cool things. Except there aren't any really cool things to see in Limerick... Aside from King John's castle and we saw where Frank McCourt lived. Everything else was statues and things like that. The bus moved too fast to get really good pictures, and the volume was way too low to hear the information about what you were seeing. Or maybe I'm just a really bad tourist/ don't have the attention span to sit on a bus for an hour and hear about the 13 different kinds of churches in downtown Limerick? It was a really good way to see where things were in the city though. The bus tour kinda reminded me of taking a duck tour in Boston, we probably got just as wet. Did I mention it was an open bus tour?

After getting a little wet, We went shopping in the city. I needed to get some stuff for my apartment and some more toiletries, my travel sized items were on the outs. We went to Arthur's Quay which is like a mini mall, and in there we found a store equivalent to our Wal-mart. It's called Tesco's. I finally am able to shampoo my hair, and I can actually dry off with a towel now. It's the little things in life you take for granted, let me tell you. Today Mal, Helen (my friend from Bridgewater) and I went to grocery shop. Food finally :) We took the bus there, then realized we spent 1.60 euro to go about one stop, and we could've walked. It's all trial and error, we'll get used to it soon! Our cards have trouble swiping at the stores for some reason. So we caused a bit of a scene as we were trying to pay and held up the entire line. A manager came over, said "yeah we have a lot of trouble with American cards." Excellent...

We decided to walk back and lug our groceries in an attempt to save money. Thank goodness they have these little signs that tell you "look left" or "look right" before you cross the street. I'm pretty certain without them I would've gotten run over by now.

Tonight I think some of the girls and I are going out to a bar near campus called The Lodge. Yes I'm well aware its a Sunday night, Sunday the day of rest. My Irish roommates (by the way my 5th roommate is a girl! She is really really nice and I'm relieved to at least have one other female in the house) were explaining to me that none of the Irish kids stay here during the weekends, they all go home. Thursday nights are a big drinking night here because it's the night before they leave, and Sunday nights are big because it's when they come back! I ate dinner with some of my roommates tonight they said to go out and have good crack! I paused and said I'm not really that into drugs... She explained "good crack" = a good time. Not drugs. I told her if she came to the states and used that phrase, she probably would end up having a good time... just a highly illegal one. Classes start tomorrow, I'm going to get so lost. Intro to Gaelic, History of Ireland, Irish Folklore... and one still to be decided. Wish me luck!

Well some of the girls are here now & we're off to hopefully have some good crack :)