Traveling.

So people keep telling my to blog and I'm not sure what to talk about because I've kind of just been doing the regular classes by day, pubs by night. With that being said, I will update you on my plans to travel.

This Weekend.

Kylemore Abbey & Garden

Included in tuition, are two school trips. One being this weekend. We will be leaving Friday morning and bussing over to Galway, where we will get a tour of Kylemore Abbey & Garden. The picture makes me nervous, but we shall see. From there, we will check into our hotel and most likely end up going to some pubs. Saturday morning, we will ferry over to the Aran Islands. Once on the island, we will visit Inis Mor to see some archaeological sites I believe. We will also visit Dun Aongus, which has some nice cliffs I hear. Then Sunday, we'll leave Galway and go to the Cliff of Moher, which I was told to go to by many different people. And then it's back to Dublin!

Northern Ireland.
Our next school planned trip is to Northern Ireland. It'll take place the weekend of October 22nd, which just so happens to be the same weekend my family's coming to visit. Go figure. I don't have to itinerary for the trip yet, but I know we'll be hitting up Belfast and somewhere in the Londonderry area. I'll keep you updated on that when it gets closer.

Reading Week.

In Europe university's don't really have too many breaks like we do in American, i.e. Fall Break, Thanksgiving Break, and any other American holiday's that would cause long weekends. The only break we get is a week called Reading Week, which is ten days in November meant to help get some extra exam prep. Obviously this means big excursions for all us Americans. Liz, my roommate (Kristen) and I have all decided to travel together for this week. 

The plan is (and we're booking our tickets after we get out of class right now) to fly to Rome Saturday morning. We'll spend two nights, three days in Rome and then train over to Florence. We'll hang out in Florence for two days, and then, because Florence airport sucks and doesn't fly to any relevant cities, we're going to train it over to Milan. We'll be in Milan for about an hour before we catch a flight to Prague. It sounds like it would suck to only spend an hour in Milan, but it's a rather expensive city so I really don't mind at all ha. We'll be in Prague for two nights and then jet-set over to Paris! Kristen has a friend in Paris, so hopefully she'll have fun stuff for us to do. We'll spend 3 nights in Paris and head back to Dublin Monday afternoon. I know, I know. Monday classes. However the difference between the plane ticket Sunday and the plane ticket Monday, was 50 Euro, which is A LOT of US dollars. My plane ticket Monday now it 14.99 Euros. This whole trip, including planes, trains, and hostels, will be roughly $400. Not including food. It sounds a bit pricey to me, but everyone else says that's really cheap so alright! I'm excited for that.

Other.
Other places I'll be traveling to on my own dollar include; London, Edinburg (Scotland/where Harry Potter was created), Amsterdam, Cork (southern Ireland), andddddddd any place I can snowboard, which could be Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or any super cheap place.

Pubs, pubs, pubs, and more pubs!

So my actual classes don't start for another two weeks.. which means these first three weeks are all about getting accustomed to Irish culture. And Irish culture means pubs. All day, everyday. People here will go to the pubs before work in the morning and get a pint like it's no big deal. Our professors here, whom we're suppose to call by their first names and not professor, invite us out to drink with them after class.

I should clear up this class thing. I do have an Irish 101 class for the first three weeks before regular classes start. It's split up into five sections: Irish Culture and Society, Political and Economical Landscape of Ireland, Peace and Conflict, Irish History, and Anglo-Irish Literature. And everyday we have about six hours of class. Also, for every hour we would have had class in America, it's two hours here. Argo, I'm taking six credit hours per class here, and getting three credit hours at Ship. Sucky.

Anyway, so basically all us Americans have just been trying to fit in with the locals and go to pubs every night. There's always some sort of deal going on, luckily. For example, Tuesday night at a dance club called Dicey's, it was student night. That means €3 pints and bottles. Which is a pretty good deal. Most pubs are about €4.80 every night for a pint of Bulmers or Guinness. Temple Bar area is about €6 for  a pint of Guinness. Mad expensive over there.

Now for the truth about Irish pub culture. People told us that the Irish don't go out to pubs and get drunk. They go out and sip on a pint of Guinness and have an artful conversation. That is a down right lie haha. Every Irish person I've talked to at any pub I've been to has been druuuuunk. Granted they can hold a conversation while shitfaced, they're not sipping ha. Again however, those folks going to the pub before work or in their lunch hour, are sipping a bit. Only about two pints at those times. Maybe that's what we were told about. And then after 7PM, that's when the real drinking kicks in. On the way to school, every day, at every pub we pass, there are about 20-30 empty kegs outside waiting to be replaced. Guess I have more learning to do ;)


I also wanted to touch on slang I've picked up so far.
Dodgy = sketchy. For example, when I tell people which part of Dublin I live in, they usually say, "Oh, that's a bit of a dodgy area." Lovely.
When getting a cab, ask for a "lift." If you ask for a ride, you'll either get arrested for prostitution or have one hell of a time :P
Speaking of prostitution. A sure fire way to know who's a prostitute and who's just a slutty girl walking the streets at night, a scrunchy. I've seen a couple in my "dodgy" area.
"Fall under a bus in the morning" means to die.
"Nacker" means douchebag. Usually can be spotted by wearing track pants and a track jacket. In England they're known as chavs.
Chips means fries.
Crisps mean potato chips. These aren't good over here. They come in Cheese&Onion or Salt&Vinegar. If you're lucky, you can find original flavor, but they're bland. Almost like I'm chewing on a raw potato.
"Craic" means a good time/good conversation. Example, pubs say, "Come in and have some good craic." A bit dodgy when you hear it said for the first time..


Well, that's it for now. Byeeeee.

Céad míle fáilte!

Wednesday

So it was my first weekend in Dublin and it was amazing! When I first got here, it was a bit difficult to get through the airport because everything is in Gaelic with really tiny, hard to see English underneath. But we managed. After getting in the wrong line for passport stamps, of course ha. There were five other kids on our flight with us, but we didn't even see them till we all met up outside baggage claim.

Speaking of the flight. It didn't seem long at all. It ended up only being five and a half hours, instead of the original seven that I thought it would be. The in-flight entertain was nice too. I watched Scream 4. Luckily I didn't jump too much on the plane. We got free dinner. I had meat ravioli and Liz had some weird chicken and rice thing. It wasn't half bad. Then I listened to all the Glee soundtracks and slept for a bit. Talked to the flight attendant about living here for the next four months and then played Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for the rest of the flight. I didn't feel tired at all surprisingly.

Thursday

Then all seven of us got on a coach bus and were taken to Blackhall, where we're living. Originally Liz and I were in a three-bedroom with a European roommate, but when we got here, we were told we're in a five-bedroom with two Americans and a European. Luckily I got the double bedroom, which means I get two desks, two beds, two shelves, and two dressers. I pushed the beds together to make somewhere between a king and queen :) Princess bed? Maybe. They mattresses are actually really comfortable. Shout out to Alyssa Taylor, they're the same kind of mattresses that you got when I went shopping with you.

Later that day, we had housing orientation and a nice little tour of the immediate surrounding area. And things that we might need to get to that day, like food and paper products. Pubs. They have Aldi here, which apparently that have back in the States, and it's super cheap. I got enough food for a week there and it was only twenty euro. And then we went to a pedestrianized market street called Henry Street and I got a cell phone. It was a rip off, but it was the cheapest thing they had and it's the same phone all the other American students have, so that'll be a fun game of who's phone is this? Then we all went back to our flats and crashed. I think I slept for thirteen hours.

Friday


What was not included in our housing orientation tour was how to get to school. They did give us a nice,  big tourist map of Dublin and show us on it where school was, but that was about it. We needed to be there for registration by 10am and they said it was only a twenty-five minute walk. Liz and I left at 9am and got there at 10am -_- I'm sure it is a twenty-five minute walk when you know where you're going though. Oh, also, all our roommate are in a different program then us, so we couldn't walk with them because they needed to be there at 9am and we weren't getting up that early. But anyway, so we finally got to the school and did the whole orientation thing, got our ID's and free lunch and another tour of where the other school building are. It's not a campus. The buildings (five of them) are kind of stuck in random spots in center city. It's not so bad though.

After that, FIE (the other program) kids had another couple hours of orientation, so Liz, Melissa (a new friend) and I went exploring. We went to Trinity College and St. Peter's Green and pretty much just got really lost. But getting lost here isn't bad at all. There's a river that separates the city into North Side and South Side. I live on North Side and school's on South Side. Along with Temple Bar area and everything else. So when you get lost, just find the river and it's easy to find home from there.

Saturday

Somehow, I didn't wake up till about 3pm. I didn't even go out the night before haha. I'd blame it on jet lag, but we traveled East sooooo yah. When I woke up, Liz and I went to Aldi's, which I mentioned earlier, and got food. Then when we got back, everyone came up to our flat and had spaghetti dinner. It was a good time. And then everyone came up and started drinking. It's weird playing pong with people from all across the States. So many different rules haha. No one from out west knows "Island" and if they do, it's called "Lone Ranger" .. Yeah. So even with just the American students, I'm learning culture :P After a while, we went to one of the pubs across the street called Mulligans. I had a pint of Bulmers, which is the Woodchuck of Ireland. So good. A few people here actually know what Woodchuck is, which is exciting haha. Around midnight, it was last call there, so we left there and started heading towards Temple Bar area. On the way we stopped in some pub with a live band. They were pretty fun, but then some weird, old Irish guy started singing to me and I left. We went to a pub called The Quay's (pronounced keys) which was jammed. But there was also a live band, which was pretty good. All the bands just play covers of American songs though. After The Quay's, we went to The Temple Bar, which was creeper central. I had my first pint of Guinness there though. Much thicker here than in the States. I don't know how I feel about it. And I don't know how people drink more than one of those. They're so filling. Two of my friends, Jack and Zach, are seeing who can take the most pub glasses, and I may join in. Mom would hate that. But I did take my Guinness glass though. Well, Jack took it for me. I don't know if it's like this back home, because I'm not bar-able back home, but each drink has it's own glass with it's name and logo on it. So this ought to be a fun game. But after they closed and kicked us out, there was a Papa John's conveniently located next door. Of course I had to get Papa John's. They didn't give us garlic sauce though. They gave us Ranch. Which wasn't bad, only because well.. yeah. But normally I don't like Ranch at all. But after that, we just found the river and found home. It was a good night.


So for the long post haha. But, if you'd like, here's a tour of my flat.


-Sara