Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
First post is going to be a recap of my first 2 days here in lovely Cork, Ireland. Well I definitely over-packed and because of it I had to pay an overweight baggage fee… boo no fun! But at least I know I won’t be hurting for any clothes while I’m here… aka: NO SHOPPING. I will probably be spending enough money on other things such as traveling and Guinness. Anyway, I paid the fee and we were on our way through security. But no outing would be complete without someone making a comment after looking at my passport picture. When going through security, the guy checking IDs just shook his head, mouthed “wow”, and said “You look SO young! And you’re even older than me!” This whole, you’ll appreciate it when you’re older thing better be for real, otherwise I want a refund. We took off from Chicago a little late but its ok, we spent the time journalling like the true nerds that we are and discussing places we wanted to go during our break. The highlight of waiting around in the airport was definitely seeing a small child being toted around on top of a rolling suitcase. It was adorable. When I figure out how to put my pictures onto my computer I will show you my drawing of it. We landed in New York and decided to get food. Unfortunately the only real option was Sbarro with a lady who didn’t seem to talk or understand what was being said to her. We ate our disappointing pizza and boarded the plane to Cork! David, Melanie, and I were fortunate enough to be able to sit next to each other on the plane. I watched Love Happens, we got some questionable pasta airplane food, and David drank a complementary Beck’s. We all attempted sleep and next thing you know, we were in Dublin! Local time: 9:20 AM. From there we took a bus to the Heuston Train Station. 2 kind Irish folk gave David and I free passes for the bus because they were done with theirs, while Melanie had to buy her own. Sucker. I guess David and I’s Irish heritage is bringing us good luck already. Once at the train station we had to buy our tickets online at a little computer kiosk and we got on the noon train. By this time, we were all dying from carrying all of our luggage but we managed to get on board. The train trip was 2.5 hours and we sat next to a nice Swedish man who works for Apple in Cork. Turns out the European Apple headquarters are located here in Cork, who knew? I should have asked him for a deal on an iPod since I forgot mine 🙁 We pulled into Cork and had to grab a taxi. After being turned down by the first one because we had too much stuff, a hatchback pulls up and agrees to take us. Lemme tell ya, this guy was amazing because he managed to fit ALL of our luggage into this tiny car, it was like a giant puzzle to fit them all in but he did it! You couldn’t see Melanie or I in the back seat of the car but we were in there. When we pulled into the apartments it was a relief to find out that they DID have an elevator so we didn’t have to drag all of our stuff up and down the stairs. I am on the 5th floor, Mel the 1st, and David is street level. None of my roommates were home when I got in so I just unpacked my stuff and had a look around. I lucked out with the apt I got because it has a balcony facing the river and it is relatively larger than the others that I’ve seen. Two of my roommates showed up while I was unpacking, Kristin and Kelsey. Kristin is from Washington and Kelsey is from Long Beach, CA. They are both very nice even though a bit shy. They share one bedroom and I share my room with another girl named Emily. She is from New Jersey but goes to school in Baltimore. She has dreads. I like them. Speaking of hair, the Irish girls all have really awesome colored hair… I’m considering dying mine a tangeriney-orange and Mel wants hot pink. We have both always said we would NEVER dye our hair, but it would be kind of fun. We’ll see! That night I went out with Melanie, David, Andrew, Cory and Noah. Note that Cory and Noah are girls. We went to a restaurant to eat around 7 and I had my first official Irish Guinness. I hated it in the states but, as cliche as it sounds, it is SOO much better here. I loved it! We then went to another bar that was supposed to have live music but you had to be 23 to get in?? It was very strange. So we popped into another pub and hung out there for a while. Cory, being the friendly girl that she is, made nice with the bartenders and we decided to go out with them to another bar called Slate after they closed up. It was fun and had a lot of Latin music playing. There was dancing and we met a lot of locals who were all very nice even if they were slightly making fun of us. Melanie, David, and Noah all went back a little earlier and Cory and I stayed around a bit longer. We finally decided to leave and luckily we found the apartments pretty easily. The river is a great landmark to follow! Yesterday we had orientation and it lasted pretty much all day. When we got to the campus I was just shocked! It was so pretty! It looks like Hogwarts! I loveeee it! Again, I’ll get pictures up asap. After that we just went grocery shopping, made some pasta for dinner, and I decided to stay in while my roommates went out because they hadn’t been out yet and I was still pretty exhausted from our excursions the night before. I figured out my classes, which was soooo confusing, and went to bed. Today we got our ID cards and SIM cards for our phones. Still need to figure that one out and set up a bank account. When all of that is done, its off to the immigration offices to become a real Irish woman. Well maybe not real, but at least more real than before. Well my first class starts in a half hour so I’m off….Until next time 🙂
Tags: Travel
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