First Day

It felt like my first day in Galway really started after that shower. The shower is a tiny, tiny stall with barely any room to move around and the drain doesn't work very well (I need to go report it and ask for maintenance people to come but thanks to the short hours at reception I haven't had the chance). I had to use an extra shirt to dry off because I didn't have a towel yet. None of that mattered because it felt so nice to be clean. I was not very long out before someone knocked on the door to my apartment. I thought it might be my roommate so I ran to open the door. Turns out it was an American girl, but not my roommate. Her name was Bridget and she had also just arrived. She didn't like her apartment and so she'd asked if anyone else had arrived yet so she could see if they were all like hers and the people in reception directed her to me. I let her in and showed her around. She said my apartment wasn't like hers at all. We walked over to her apartment and as she pulled the front door closed behind us the inside handle came off. The floors really were sticky and the downstairs was missing a seat completely. I could see why she was upset. After that she decided to go talk to reception and see if she could get moved. I went back to my apartment and worked on unpacking some more.

Alcohol...

About a half hour or so later Bridget came back over and we went across the street to Dunnes to get food and look at bedding. Dunnes is kind of like a small Fred Meyers. They have food and clothes and shoes and some houseware type stuff. We were both really hungry so we just picked pre-packaged sandwiches and juice and sat down on a bench in the store to eat. Then we wandered upstairs and looked at the pillows and sheets and towels. We were going to go to another store, but Bridget wanted to get her housing situation figured out before she bought bedding, so we came back. I went back to unpacking and eventually finished getting everything put away. I waited for a couple hours and then I started to get hungry and worried that I wouldn't get the stuff I needed that night. I waited until just before 6 pm and then I took off on my own.

More alcohol...

Still more...

And more. I've never seen so much alcohol in a grocery store-like place. I was going to take more pictures in Dunnes, but Bridget and I were REALLY hungry and we got distracted looking for something edible.

I walked over towards Dunnes and decided to explore off to the left first. There was a place called N17 Euronics (yes, just like the movie rating) and so I went in there looking for a hairdryer. I found short Cat-5 cables for 5 Euros (I brought my super long one just in case and with all of it coiled on my desk there's no room for anything else) and some hairdryers but they seemed kind of expensive. I wandered through the whole store and then they told me there was 5 minutes to close. It was only 6pm. I bought my Cat-5 cable and went on my way. I went out to the Galway Shopping Center, a little farther on down Headford road, the street that goes by Gort na Coiribe. I was looking for Penney's and I found it, but it was closed. I stuck my head in Car Phone Warehouse, but they were closing too. Tesco is the only 24 hour store nearby and they are mostly groceries but some other stuff too. As the shopping center shut down for the night I wandered around feeling lost and kind of lonely. I went over to Supermac's, and got a hamburger, fries and a drink. I thought it would be like McDonald's and I recognized the name from an ad I'd heard in the taxi earlier that day. I sat down to eat my food and it didn't taste at all like McDonald's, it was worse.

My food from Supermac's. It looks benign enough, right?

When I left Supermac's, it started raining. It's not a long walk, but alone, in a foreign country, when it is dark, very very cold and now wet, it was kind of miserable. I went in Dunnes and wandered around, trying to find sheets and a pillow that I liked. I picked out a fluffy white towel (they didn't have a blue bath towel, only white or yellow), a good pillow, a duvet (because they don't really do comforters or quilts so much here apparently), a duvet cover that came with a pillow case (they're blue and white striped) and blue sheets. I also picked up a Mickey Mouse pajama shirt, which even though I didn't need it, still made me feel a little better.

My Mickey pajama shirt. I'm wearing it right now. : D

I walked back to the apartment and started putting my bed together. I put on my Mickey Mouse t-shirt and pajama pants and then a sweatshirt and my panda hat too because it was really cold. It was about 8:30 when I laid down just to try out my bed...