My first days in Ireland!

Bye bye Uxbridge, hello Ireland!

These past couple days have been completely overwhelming! Tomorrow I have orientation for international students, and I'm looking forward to getting some more friends haha! So far I have only met two of my roommates, both males. (sorry dad!) They both seem very nice but I haven't really had the time to talk much to either one of them. They're both busy with their orientation stuff too!

I'm figuring out it's a lot harder than I had anticpated living in a different country! I can't seem to do anything right! If nothing else, I will be the butt of a lot of jokes for awhile! Starting yesterday morning when I was getting off the bus to my village, I walked "off" which happened to be directly onto the bus driver.He laughed and pointed to the set of doors behind me. Cut me some slack, it was two in the morning our time and in America that side would really be the exit!! When I arrived at my village they handed us all our keys and sent us on our way with little maps. Everyone else seemed to have rooms a lot closer than mine. They had apartment numbers like 9, 12, 15... yeah mine was 39. So after walking a good 5 to 10 minutes with my luggage I finally arrive at my door. I put the key in and.. NOTHING happened. I took the key out and repeat several times. It was about 8 in the morning Ireland time, so my roommates were still sleeping. I noticed some rugby players standing across the way and asked them if they could help me turn my key, silly American. Turns out none of them could get it open either. So I lugged my belongings all the way back to reception. She had to call a maintence guy, Joe. So Joe and I walked back over to apt. 39 together. I carried my luggage, joe walked ahead of me. THANKS JOE. so we get to my door and Joe opens it with his magic key. My arms are burning from carrying everything back and forth, and I see a flight of stairs. I glare at Joe, who then offers to help me carry my things. We walk down the hall and I see a door open with my poor roommate still dead asleep. Obviously the noise we created woke him up, he rolled over and said hello. Then he rolled back over and contined sleeping. Not quite the introduction I had rehearsed in my mirror at home... Joe says he has to change the locks. I figured he'd come back and do it later. Nope! Right then and there he whips out power tools and takes off the locks. My roommate got dressed, looked in the door said hello again, and left. I haven't seen him since. Awesome, I am THAT American girl.
Following the ridiculousness that was moving in, I decided I would get something to eat. I made my way down to the student center. It is amazing! They have a farmer's market and sold fresh vegetables & fruit, fudge, and even fish! I went into the bookstore looking for an alarm clock, and then stumbled into a food place to grab a premade sandwhich. It was gross, but I was so hungry I ate it anyways. It was sunny out when I went into the store, it was down pouring when I left the store.

On my way back I ran into some American kids I recognized from the bus ride over. I joined their group back to the student center. We went to the grocery store on campus. I bought some shampoo, toothpaste, etc etc. I went to pay and couldn't for the life of me understand what the guy ringing me out said for the price. So I just stood there, asking him to repeat himself about 6 times. Then I asked if he could hold on a minute because I didn't think I had enough money on me... Actually I had no clue what he was saying and needed a minute to figure it out. Once I went outside and discussed what had happened with the American kids, we came to the conclusion he was saying "16.85" not 60.85 like I had originally thought. What a relief!

Today was my second day in Limerick, and it went a little smoother than my first. I slept in entirely way too long due to the jet lag. After I woke up I decided to try my luck getting food again. I went to a sandwhich shop in the student center and ordered what I thought was a chicken sandwhich. Turns out it was turkey. She asked me if i wanted mayo or some other word I couldn't understand. Mayo it was! Then she asked me what else I wanted I said lettuce, She grabbed lettuce. I thought I was in the clear until I followed "...and onions". She looked up and said I could put 3 trees on it first. I had not one clue what she was talking about. I stared at her blankly and she just picked some things for me, and then finally added my onions. Whatever she put on it was really good, and I ate the entire thing!

After my lunch fiasco, I decided to walk around campus. It's absoluetly one of the prettiest things I've ever seen! The pictures above were taken on my journey! The first is my room from inside and out, and then the fields that are right outside my village. The bridge in the second to last picture is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It connects to points on campus and goes over the shannon river! At night it is all lit up and it looks so cool! I will try to get a picture of that... once a get some more friends to walk in the dark with haha :) The last building is a picture of our health sciences building you can see from the bridge! The architecture is unbeilevable! One of the craziest buildings I have seen! I came back from my adventure absolutely starved and decided I would make the pasta I bought earlier. So excited to have a familar meal, I ran down to my kitchen. Only to find out, I have no idea how to turn the stove on. Talk about failure. I had a nice piece of laffy taffy (compliments of kel!), and some water for dinner.

Despite the rough couple of days, I am still having a blast! I'm in Ireland, how could I not? The next couple of days will be a lot better. I have orienation, I'll get more settled, and things will start to go a lot smoother. Something to look forward too :)