Another week gone by and I’m still happy as a clam… or as an oyster here in Galway!  Oyster’s are one of the main products out of Galway Bay, and all around the county they’re gearing up for the various Oyster Festivals.  The festival in Galway city starts next Thursday so we’re going to try to go on Friday when most of us don’t have any classes.  We had originally planned to go to Munich for Oktoberfest but we have a CEA trip to the Aran Islands planned for Saturday, and after talking to one of our german friends here she told us that Oktoberfest is really just a huge, over priced tourist trap that the locals don’t even go to.  We may still try to go the next weekend but I think at this point we’re planning on going to Paris or Berlin instead. 

So this past weekend we ended up on a spontaneous tour of Southern Ireland!  The original plan was really quite simple: the girls wake up super early on Saturday morning, take a 4.5 hour bus ride to Cork, take a taxi to Blarney, kiss the Blarney stone, take a taxi back to Cork in time to catch the last bus back to Galway at 5:45.  By Friday night this had morphed into: drive to Blarney with an irish friend (thus cutting the journey time in half), spend the day at the castle, drive to Cork, meet up with a friend of mine from UMD who is studying in Cork for the semester, spend the night in a hostel, explore the city on Sunday, and be back by the afternoon.  Saturday came and the first half of the plan went perfectly.  Then, as we were preparing to head back to Cork, we decided to go for a drive to explore the countryside… unfortunately the “tomtom” GPS system we were losing was not very reliable and we ended up horribly lost, driving around rotaries 8 times trying to decide which exit we needed, driving miles out of the way when we could have just made a u-turn, and finally ending up almost 2 hours away from Cork, in Killarney.  It was already getting late so we decided to just stay the night in Killarney, a tourist-y town along the Ring of Kerry.  It wasn’t by any means what we had originally planned, but sometimes spontaneous adventures are good, and we certainly made the best of it!  Unfortunately for me, I came down with a pretty bad cold Saturday night and spent the car ride back to Galway pretty miserable.  Thankfully I was able to stop in a convenience store near the bed and breakfast before we set out to get myself some cold medicine and tissues… “man-size tissues,” to be exact, because they didn’t have any normal sized tissues.  As miserable as I felt being sick, we all got a laugh out of the man-sized tissues… each one roughly the size of a small dog.

Sunday night started “Fresher’s Week” here at NUIG.  Whereas in the US freshman tend to show up on campus earlier than everyone else for orientation and such, here they start a week later.  They have all finally moved in and, lucky me, Corrib Village appears to be Fresher central.  Since classes haven’t picked up as much for them yet, they’ve been very noisy, coming and going at night (I know, I know, I sound like an old crone complaining about those young hooligans making so much noise) and, while usually I would be more understanding, they’ve taken to breaking into the apartment buildings and pulling the fire alarms.  They got our building Sunday night, when I was sick and trying to sleep.  The alarm system isn’t tied to any sort of response team, so we (all us boring old folf who wanted to be awake for classes on Monday) had to shuffle out into the cooooold night air and call security to come shut the alarm off.  Sadly, security was already busy taking care of other issues across Corrib Village so we were stuck waiting for almost half an hour.  Thankfully things have calmed down at least a little bit since then.

Other than those little bits, everything is flowing very smoothly here.  I have a nice little schedule for each of my days, going to classes, getting readings done, running errands (though grocery delivery means I don’t have to walk 40 minutes with heavy bags!), and exploring the city.  A friend and I went on a quest for a bookstore and stumbled upon the most fabulous little bakery!  Now, it isn’t much of a “classic” bakery with cupcakes and such, but it does have some yummy breads and a few pastry type things, and the most delicious sandwich station!  Whoever comes to visit is getting dragged to it.  You don’t get a choice haha.  I ended up getting a southwest chicken wrap kind of sandwich, and me and Dennis bought a loaf of banana bread to split.  It was yummy, but nowhere NEAR as good as mommy’s banana bread!  Plus, they put some kind of strange raisin-type fruit in it… I think it’s called a sultana or something.  Not my favorite but still pretty good.

Now some of my friends and I are planning to go see a movie tonight since we can get a good student discount, and my roommate’s professor practically made seeing “Inglourious Basterds” an assignment.  And really, what kind of friend would I be if I made her go all alone?! 

So that’s my life here so far!  Still having an amazing time and soooo glad I get to be here all year!

 

<3>

 

PS my address while here is:

 

Lauren Earl

91-4 Corrib Village

Newcastle

Galway

Ireland

 

(PPS- if you ever send anything that can’t fit through a mail slot, please let me know!  They keep larger items behind the front desk but apparently it’s “too difficult” to send us an email or something if we get mail.)