I started walking up Headford Road and just kept going. I found the Town Hall Theatre by accident. I also found a really neat store called Enchanted Vintage Clothing that really is all vintage women's clothing. It's all very expensive, but I like to stick my head in there sometimes and just look. Eventually I did actually find Shop Street. It's the main center of "town," or downtown as we would call it, Galway. It's a walking only street that's lined by shops with little alleys branching off of it. There's all kinds of stuff on Shop Street, everything from bakeries to pubs to McDonald's to clothing stores to a thrift store to tourist trap-type shops. It's really fun to wander up and down it which is all I did for a little while. I was looking for the bank or Carphone Warehouse or somewhere to eat. I found Carphone Warehouse first. I went it and looked around. This one did have a bigger selection so maybe that would help. They were also kind of busy so I eavesdropped on the sales guy that was helping a couple of American girls. The girls were asking questions I needed answers to as well like where was the best place to get cheap groceries and where to go out to eat. I only kind of caught the answer to the question about grocery stores. Turns out he meant Aldi and Lidl. I had explored Aldi earlier, and I had seen Lidl.
After it became apparent that they were going to be busy for a while I decided it was okay to go eat. I wandered a little further down Shop Street and saw some musicians playing while standing on top of poles. A little farther on I encountered Griffin's Bakery. It made me smile so I went in. I was thinking maybe I'd get a roll and some coffee or something, but they took me upstairs and gave me a table and a menu. I ended up ordering the 'mini Irish' which is the smaller version of an Irish breakfast. It was a pot of tea, which at that point I had yet to figure out how to make palatable (I'm not really a tea person), a sausage, potatoes, beans, a fried tomato, toast, a rasher and an egg. I ate all of it. Even the sausage. Not only was I hungry, but it was good. The sausage was better than any restaurant one I've had. Still not my favorite though. The rasher is, for those who don't know, kind of like bacon. It's usually a wider piece of meat, but not any thicker and it's floppier. They don't do crispy rashers here. The egg was over easy or medium. The fried tomato was interesting, it would never have occurred to me that people would eat that. It's not like it was breaded, it had just been tossed in a hot skillet. It doesn't do much to the inside, it mostly just made it warm and caused the skin to bubble in an icky way. The bean reminded me really strongly of Bush's baked beans, which I really like. The taste was a bit different in an undefinable way, but other than that, they're pretty much the same.
Any ways, I ate my food, paid and kept wandering down Shop Street. I found the bank (Bank of Ireland) and went inside. Apparently the place to open a new account was on the first floor. That's the floor I thought I was on, but the sign was pointing up. I only found out later that the ground floor is the one you enter on and then the first floor is always what we would call the second floor. It's rather confusing. The lady behind the new accounts desk gave me some paperwork and told me to go to the bank on the NUIG campus because they'd be better equipped to help me. I went back to Carphone Warehouse and got in line. I explained what I wanted to one of the guys and he gave me a couple of phone models and sent me up the street to check with another guy to see if they would work. See, cell phones are really complicated and to make a lot of technical stuff simple, you can't use a cell phone out of the country you buy it in without changing some programming. Here it's called unlocking, in the US it's called jailbreaking and it's not entirely legal. So, this guy's shop was supposed to be near the joke shop that was a couple doors up. I didn't know near could mean above so I wandered around for a bit, getting frustrated and then I noticed a small sign about cell phones near a stairway. I went up and finally found the place on the second (third to Americans) floor. I checked the model numbers with the guy and he said he could break the first one.
It was just about 3 when I left the cell phone breaker guy's shop. I had promised myself I would head back at 3 because the whole group was supposed to meet outside reception at 3:30 to walk over to the school. I started to head back towards the school, but I didn't take the exact same route back I took getting to Shop Street and so, as happens a lot, I got lost. I came out of some unfamiliar streets by a TK Maxx which made me laugh out loud. Dunno why the name is different, but inside it's exactly like a TJ Maxx. I decided to do a quick walk through because after one night I knew I'd need more than a duvet and a sheet. It is cold here. I found a nice and decently sized Columbia blanket, bought it and left. All of that took a while though because the check out line was quite long. I hurried out of the store and kept going in the general direction of Gort na Coiribe. Pretty soon, I was walking up a much steeper hill than I remembered walking down. I knew I was off to the side of Gort na Coiribe, but that was it. Eventually I found my way down the hill and ended up near the Galway Shopping Center. Unfortunately, it was after 3:30 at that point. Back at Gort na Coiribe, I was still trying to decide what to do when I was hailed by the group. They hadn't left yet even though it was 3:50 or so. I ran inside, dropped my hangers and we left for the school. Rita O'Donoghue was our guide. She's fantastic. She was really nice about me being late too.
The school, National University of Ireland, Galway, is about a 20 minute walk from Gort na Coiribe. We walked through campus to get to the Quadrangle which is probably the most famous building. It's old and castle-esque. I think it's 17th century or something like that. Apparently students don't have classes in there anymore, but it's still really cool to look at. We went in one end and met Maeve Cuffe and Fiona Dwyer who organize our program from this end. This was also the first time we officially met Professor Petersen's family. Her daughter, Emily, her son, Aaron, and her husband, Matt. Everyone was very nice. There was a dinner waiting for us. It was chicken and mushrooms and rice and a roll and our choice of beers or water. All of us opted for water as the beers were all American. It was kind of them to try and make us feel at home, but those who actually drink didn't come to Ireland for American alcohol. We ate our dinners and got a packet of information that included our student ID cards. Dessert was cheesecake and fruit. All of it was really yummy. While we ate we shared some travel stories. At some point during the whole thing it came out that Brian's bags had been lost by the airlines. People were talking about letting him borrow stuff and someone mentioned (since he's the only boy in our group) loaning him dresses as a joke. Someone else quipped back something along the lines of, "Ha, yeah, new country, new you." Hence the title of my posts (although I don't mean it quite the same way).
It wasn't that late but it was already fully dark. The sun rises really late and sets early here. Rita walked everyone home because we hadn't wandered in the dark yet. We walked to the Petersen's apartment first and then she took us most of the way back to Gort na Coiribe. I ran over to Curry's and bought the hair dryer I had been looking at. I don't remember what time it was when I got back, but I fell asleep pretty soon after.
And there you have the second half of my first day in Ireland. Now I'm more than a month in and so I'm thinking I'll try to do one post to get you all caught up and then try to update more regularly and less painfully detailed.
Also, fair warning, the internet at Gort na Coiribe is really slow and not very consistent, so I'll upload pictures to this post when I get the chance (probably at the school on Monday because their internet is at least a little better). On the pictures note, as a lot of you've probably seen, a lot of my pictures are on facebook. Not all of them are though and for those of you who want to see everything I'm working on making an online album. Once I've finished, I'll put a link here and on facebook.
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