"Strictly no parking-- as opposed to leniently no parking?"

On my third day in Galway we had orientation at NUIG. Juice boxes and folders with more information in them were waiting for us on our chairs. A parade of people talked to us, everyone from one of the Vice Presidents of the school, to a couple of Garda sergeants, to those in charge of the students clubs and societies (which are abbreviated socs, pronounced 'socks'). About half an hour into the thing, a guy came in and sat in the empty seat next to me. He asked me what he'd missed and I explained. Turned out his name was Ryan and he was to become my first real friend in Galway. It took from around 9 until 11:45 or so, if I remember correctly. There was a coupon in our folders for the College Bar and so pretty much everyone trouped over there. The College Bar really is a bar, but it's also a place to eat. There's sandwiches and soup and pizza or there's whatever they're serving in the Carvery. The Carvery line was a lot shorter and so I went through that. I got beef, steamed vegetables, mashed potatoes and milk for 5 Euros. After orientation I wandered around campus some and found the banks. I went in the All Ireland Bank (AIB) to see their application and find out how many fees were associated with their student accounts. Then I went to the on-campus branch of Bank of Ireland and looked at their app. I liked Bank of Ireland (BOI) better so I signed up with them. I got a laser card, which is a debit card and they said it'd get to me in a week. That ended up being a problem, but for the moment, I was just happy to have it set up. I wandered off campus and spent some more time exploring. I got a phone. And when it started getting dark I headed back to my apartment.

My Irish apartment-mate had come back early for just a night and so I got to meet her (she was going to Berlin with the Art Soc until Sunday). She offered me a cup of tea and we sat down to talk. The first thing I found out is that she makes a good cup of tea. She actually managed to make it taste good. Apparently the secret is no sugar, but plenty of milk. Her name is Lauren Dooley and she's a first year. She lived with two girls from New York the semester before this one. She's studying history, French, classics and English right now, but will concentrate on French and English next year. (They pick two courses of study here) We seemed to hit it off pretty quick and we ended up watching Cool Runnings together (she hadn't seen it and it's been years for me). "Ya dead mon?" is now a running joke and we want to get a Jamaican flag for the apartment.

The next day I went back to school and listened to professors from different departments tell us about the classes we're allowed to take and how to get into them. Afterwards I spent a while wandering around campus collecting time tables for the classes from the departments I was interested in. Eventually I went back to the Quad and snuck around inside. I came back out and found Lindsay, Lauren, Minn and Angela waiting to take the campus tour. I joined them and we all followed one of the guys in charge or the Student Union around while he told us about the different buildings. Ryan happened to be in the same tour group and he talked to me for a bit. We got separated as the group moved to another thing to look at and I got distracted collecting people's phone numbers. Eventually most of the Willamette girls left the tour, so I found Ryan again and we talked some more. After the tour was over, Ryan was hungry so we headed back towards the restaurants on campus. Unfortunately none of them were serving food anymore. We wandered downtown, looking for somewhere to eat and didn't have any luck. In the end we went to Scotty's Steakhouse, which is really close to Gort na Coiribe.

I spent Saturday just kind of hanging out in the apartment relaxing because it was nasty outside and I hadn't just spent a day doing nothing in ages.

On Sunday I wandered around with Ryan for a while and then we met up with the rest of my group to have dinner at the Petersen's. It was a lot of fun. We had mac and cheese and smoked salmon and crackers and fancy cheese and whiskey and Bulmer's (an Irish cider) and soda. I tried Bulmer's and the whiskey but both were really icky. Lucky for me, Ryan was happy to drink the rest of them. Emily made cookies that were really yummy. Around 9 pm, we all headed out. I wanted to help clean up, but they assured me they didn't need it.

Ryan and I went to Corrib Village (where he lives. It's closer to campus than Gort na Coiribe, more expensive and also where even more insane partying goes on) to see if any of his roommates had shown up yet. We ran into a girl going into another apartment where a couple of his roommates were. She invited us in and so we met a bunch more Irish students. It was vaguely uncomfortable because a bunch of them were drinking and one guy was smoking. They were friendly though.

After that, the exact sequence of events gets a bit muddled. Lauren got back late Sunday. We all met Rita at 10 am on Monday. Then we started trying out classes. Putting together a schedule was a fun game because we aren't allowed to pick any classes that start before 11 am and we can't have any on Fridays either. This is because Professor Petersen's class, Irish Pilgrimage: Ancient, Medieval and Modern goes from 9:30 to 11 every Tuesday and Thursday and our Irish Life and Culture class goes from 9 to 11 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Fridays are off limits because we have several weekends excursions that often start on Friday mornings. The first one I tried was Development of the Castle in Medieval Europe. It's an archeology class and I've never taken one of those before, but it was nice to have the professor immediately acknowledge that he had a lot of visiting students and that he knew most of us weren't archeology majors. The next class I tried was Medieval Drama later that day. It was supposed to start at 5 so I showed up at least 5 minutes early. There weren't very many people there. We waited... and waited... and waited some more. The professor never showed. I had heard that happened sometimes and so eventually I just packed up and left. The next day I went to the castle class again (from here on out, it's Clastle, as it was eventually nicknamed by Lindsay) and tried one more time for Medieval Drama. This time the professor and a lot more students showed up. The class itself sounded fairly interesting, but what really convinced me to stay was that the class would be putting on one of the plays at the end of the semester. I'm looking forward to that and hoping I can be in it. On Wednesday I tried (you'll notice a pattern here) Medieval History: 5th to the 9th Century. I like the professor for this class. He's got a wonderful dry sense of humor. Without changing expression or tone of voice he will slip in these little comments that, if you're paying attention, are hilarious. On Thursday I tried out Celtic Civilization: 'A Field of Gods and Men'. The main problem with this class was that half of it was on Friday.

See, how classes work here is kind of odd. There are two hours of class a week (sometimes plus another hour of tutorial). They are almost never both in the same place though. For example, my first hour of Clastle (Monday) is in the D'Arcy Thompson lecture hall. The second hour (Tuesday) is in IT 125. A lot of them are also at different times. Medieval Drama goes from 5 to 6 pm on Mondays and 3 to 4 on Tuesdays. It's strange. The problem with the Celtic Civ class, which was one I really wanted to take because it's all about mythology, is that one of the hours was on a Friday. I talked to the professor after the first class, because realistically it's about five Fridays I'd be missing out of twelve, and he said that it had been done before even with all the missed classes. I also wanted to sign up for an English seminar which is a smaller specialty type class. All of the classes I had been in so far were big lecture type classes (hence the lecture halls). The seminars though are little classes like we have at Willamette and more interactive. There were several I wanted to take but firstly, you can only take one seminar per term and secondly, only one of the ones I wanted really fit into my schedule. It was going to be on Spenser's The Faerie Queen. I got in, but Professor Petersen recommended I not take all of the classes and so I ended up just keeping Clastle, Medieval Drama and Medieval History because all of those fit into my schedule and I had liked them so far.

That weekend we left for Dublin, which I'll tell you all about in another post. Once we came back our Irish Life and Culture class. I didn't understand how this class worked until it started. There are actually 4 hours a week. On Monday we have Irish Literature in English with Professor Kirry O'Brien. Immediately after that we   have Irish History with Professor Mary Clancy. On Wednesday we have Sociology with Professor Marilyn Moylan and then Irish Literature in Irish (translated) with Professor Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh (her first name is pronounced Alva). All four of these classes are mostly focused on modern Ireland (aka Ireland after 1900 for the most part). I was kind of disappointed by this, particularly for the history class (I wanted to do ancient Irish history), but as it turns out that one's my least favorite any ways. 


In and around going to classes I mostly explore, do laundry, eat, clean, do homework, upload pictures, take Irish dance lessons (not the kind I do at home, more like Riverdance type stuff) and explore. I've been meaning to go explore more bars and pubs but because of money and not really having people to go with or an interest in drinking, I haven't really done any of that. I do set dancing, which is kind of like the Irish dancing I do at home, on Tuesdays in Monroe's but that's one of the only bars and pubs I've been in. I've looked around in some stores. I've seen the outsides of plenty of places. I've tried out a couple of restaurants and several grocery stores. I found out that laundry prices are outrageous here. It's 10 Euros for two washer and two dryer tokens. I rented a bike and have ridden it around a bit. The group has done things together like a potluck and going to a hurling match. We've also done things in smaller groups. I bought my first ever alcoholic beverage, a Mixed Fruit Kopparberg (it's a cider) and drank all of it even though it was only good (aka, it tasted like juice) for the first third. It didn't do anything all that interesting to me either, it just made my head feel hot for 20 minutes or so. I've only been to one céili here so far because they're only once a month.

Besides that girl, Bridget, I met one my first day, I made friends with an American guy named Ryan Fitzgerald. We hung out a lot more at the beginning of the term. He's the one who made the comment on the No Parking sign that's the title of this post. We haven't seen much of each other recently though. Lauren, my apartment-mate is also my friend. I haven't seen a lot of her either recently. I made another Irish friend and his name is David Crowe. We met at the first Irish Dance lesson. He was tapping his feet around at the lesson during a pause and I asked him if he did sean nós (yet another kind of Irish dancing I don't know how to do yet) or tap. It turns out he's a set dancer and what he was doing is called battering. Technically I am a ceili dancer, but we do sets and the basic steps (minus the battering) are the same in both types. He was the first person my age I'd met who did any kind of traditional Irish Dancing (not the leap-y Riverdance kind that is) and so we got to talking and now we're friends. I've met other Irish people through Lauren and David and more Americans through various means, but there aren't really any others I'd count among my friends just yet. 


And that's mostly what I do when I'm in Galway. Anybody have any specific questions they want answered?

New Country, New You (pt 1)

I woke up at 5 am on my second day in Ireland to find the light still on. I got up and turned it off and then went back to sleep. I woke up again around 8:30 am and decided to get up. It was still dark outside and it was really cold. I fiddled with the heaters, of which there are about 5, each of them with a different operating system, and the water heater, again with a different system. I was going to go explore, get a cell phone and open a bank account. The problem was that I didn't know where to go to do these things. I spent a couple hours dithering at my computer and reading the student info book about the apartment. I had to reset all the heaters because I'd messed them up. They're not terribly effective unfortunately. Unlike American heaters they don't blow hot air, they raidate warmth. So, if you're sitting about two feet away, you'll feel it, but any farther and it's as if it's not on. The water heater is also really weird. It only heats water from about 4am to 8am and that's all the apartment has for the day. There's a boost dial that can heat up more water for up to two hours, but it's supposedly realy expensive to use. And while I'm on the subject of technical stuff, the internet at Gort na Coiribe is all wired, but it's still very slow and not reliable. It was okay the first couple days because it was only some of the international students, but as more people have arrived it's slowed to a crawl. Some days my computer can't even find the networks even though the cable is plugged in. It's a pain. There's supposed to be something I reconfigure on my laptop to make it like Irish internet better, but I can't find whatever it is so it's a toss up whether or not I'll actually have internet. Any ways, back to my second morning: I was still trying to find places I was going to need to go when my roommate showed up. See, I live in a three person apartment. There's a room with a single bed in it and a room with two beds in it. The single room is the Irish girl's room (she was here last semester so she gets to keep her room). I was assigned to the double room. Since I got there first, I got to pick which bed and desk I wanted. I picked the ones closer to the window, which is probably the colder area, but I wanted to be able to look out the window from my desk. There's one bathroom we all share, a semi-equipped kitchen, a living room and dining room combination and a closet where the water heater lives. (I'll photograph all of this eventually) So, I knew it was likely I'd be living with a girl who's part of my particular program, but I didn't know who. All of the students on my program, but one, are from Willamette because it's technically WU's program. The girl who isn't from Willamette is my roommate. Her name is Jamie Mullett and she's from Kentucky. Her school, Bellarmine, has a partnership with Willamette so she got attached to our group. She's nice. : ) 

The view out my window

Embarrassed at being caught in my pajamas, I decided it was probably time to go out and see what I could find, my internet research having yielded nothing useful. By 11:30 I was leaving the apartment. I was going to get food, but I wanted to save my money until I had opened a bank account (just in case there was a minimum amount needed to open one) and had a cell phone.

One of the arches into Gort na Coiribe. My apartment is on the ground floor on the other side of the staircase near the car.

Looking towards Cuirt na Coiribe (more expensive apartments) and Dun na Coiribe (townhouses). This is also the way to the school, although I didn't know that when I took this. It may look lovely and warm, but it wasn't. I was wearing a wool coat, a hat, gloves and a scarf to stay warm.

The Dunnes that's right across the street from Gort na Coiribe. That's where I got my bedding and towel.

Since I had kind of already seen what was in the immediate area around Dunnes and in the Galway Shopping Center, I decided to investigate the stores across the street from the Galway Shopping Center, starting with Curry's.

Outside Curry's

Inside Curry's #1

Inside Curry's #2

So basically Curry's equals Best Buy. It's the same sort of idea. Mostly electronics and some music, movies and video games. I found a hair dryer there for 13 Euros that looked like it might not just fry my hair and I made a mental note to come back and get it later (I didn't want to carry it with me while I explored).


Next door was Aldi.

The outside of Aldi (obviously)

Inside Aldi

Also inside Aldi.

Aldi is a gorcery store for the most part. There's also, as you can see in the picture directly above there are these metal things set up in teh middle of the shop where they put random other stuff. There's everything from clothes to rain boots to speakers and CD players to toys and cookware. All of the random stuff is much cheaper here than it would be elsewhere but it's a gamble what'll be there. And I don't know how good the quality is either...

After Aldi, I went in Woodie's just out of curiosity.

The inside of Woodie's

Woodie's was kind of an odd experience for me. It smelled, in part, like Home Depot, which smells like boredom. But it also smelled like other things. And there were tea sets and aprons and other more houseware-ish things for sale there. For example, this was the first and only place I found pants hangers at all like the ones I'm used to. I couldn't find more than the one pack so I got those. The lady I bought them from was kind of hard to understand when I asked her if there were more, so I just left it at that.

Harry Corry is a designer furniture/bedding/towel place as far as I can tell. I wandered through really fast looking for an extra blanket, but I didn't have any luck so I kept going down the line.

Smyth's, a toy store

The Mickey and Minnie section!

The next place I went in was Smyth's. I was so pleased to see and old fashioned toy store with blocks and books and games and stuffed animals. They're a dying breed in the US and more's the pity. I liked the Disney section a lot. Didn't buy anything here though.

The movie theatre!

The movie theatre is also in this complex. I didn't go in it, but I took a picture to help me remember where it was. I was at once disappointed and kind of pleased that it was pretty much all American movies. I mean, there are a bunch I wanted to see and didn't get to, but at the same time, it would've been cool to see Irish movies you couldn't see in the U.S.

I went back across the street to the Galway Shopping Center, thinking of heading to the Car Phone Warehouse to get a cell phone. On the way there I explored the shops at the end farther from me that I hadn't looked at the night before. I found a Subway attached to an arcade.

DDR!

I found a DDR machine! I was ecstatic so I stopped to play a round. Didn't do too bad for not having played in months. Now I've played DDR in three different countries (US, Japan and Ireland)!! I'm ridiculously proud of myself for that.   

Spongebob paintings on the wall of the arcade. ^_^

A butcher shop

Inside the Galway Shopping Center I decided to wander around now that the stores were actually open. I took a picture of the butchers because you see them a lot here, but you don't really in the U.S. anymore and I thought it was interesting. I went in and out of the bookstore, Eason's and some of the other places before I went in Car Phone Warehouse. I explained to the guy behind the counter what I wanted and he said some stuff too fast for me to follow (in my defense his accent was kind of thick) about going to town because they couldn't help me there. So I wandered around some more and finally went in an outdoor wear shop and asked the man for directions to get into town. He was really nice about it. He could tell I was American. He went to NUIG too and so we talked about Gort na Coiribe for a bit and then he gave me directions.

I think I'm going to have to cut this day into two posts. I think blogger doesn't like this many pictures in one post... Sorry it's taking me so long to put stuff up. I know I'm way behind. The internet was broken for a couple days and then I was out in Connemara learning Irish all weekend and I've got school during the days... Any ways just bear with me and know that I'm working on it.

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...

For Sharon

It was a 6 hour flight. I had orange juice when the lady first came around. I watched all three NCIS: Las Vegas episodes (it's quite good for a spin off. I'm pleased) and ate some Oreos and fell asleep before they came round again. They were offering dinner that time, but I declined. I wasn't hungry and airplane food is icky. I slept on and off for most of the flight. I didn't have breakfast on the plane either, though they offered that too. As we got closer, I woke up and looked out the window. It was pitch black because we were still over the ocean. Later I heard some girls saying how scary it was to look out and only see black, but I thought it was nice. Then we dropped into some clouds and everything was gray and foggy looking for a couple minutes. Underneath the clouds there still wasn't much to see. There were scattered lights, but no huge lit up areas like even the smallest US cities. It looked like there were streamers of tulle attached to the plane wings and I immediately thought of Sharon. I watched them for a while, because there wasn't much else to look at and then we were landing. It was bumpier landing than I'd had so far.

On the ground, I put my wool coat, my hat and my scarf all back on. We had landed about 15 minutes late, I think (we were supposed to get in at 6:45 am, and it was at least 7). It took a while to get off the plane. The airport was absolutely empty when we got into it. We had to go down at least four escalators to get to customs. There was a long line, or queue as it would be called here, in front of the two elderly men who were there to let us into the country. They had everyone who wasn't a student go through first. There were at least 70 (maybe more, maybe less, I'm awful at estimating numbers of people) of us left. Professor Petersen and her family waited a little longer, but after 45 minutes of so they decided to skip up the line. Professor Petersen stopped to tell me that she'd try to keep the cab driver from leaving. I don't know what took so long but I waited over two hours in line to get through customs. All I could see was that the men were looking at papers and taking pictures and typing on their computers. Finally, there were 15 or so people in front of me. Another flight had just landed and the line behind us had gotten really long. One of the men let everyone from the EU go through. All the other people had to wait behind us though and I wasn't last in line. Some decision seemed to be made because all of a sudden, the line started moving a lot faster. I got up to the window and I gave the man my letter and my passport. He asked if I had proof of insurance and of finance. I gave him my insurance card and told him I was going to open an Irish bank account. In a monotone voice he told me I had to have proof of finance 30 days from right then. I said okay and he gestured me through. I scrambled to get all my stuff and get out of the way. I went to get my checked bags and walked through customs. A bored looking man gestured me through a green gateway (meaning I didn't have anything to declare).

I came out and looked around frantically for my cab driver hoping and praying he wasn't gone yet. I didn't see him in front of me and as I turned to my left a man leaning against a counter was saying, “Unless this is her. Are you looking for me?” I started to say maybe and he waved a paper at me that said my name on it. I said yes. He took me out to his cab and helped me put my bags in the back. I almost walked around to the wrong side to get in the front seat, but remembered at the last minute that the driver sits on the other side. We started driving and he was telling me how he didn't expect it to take so long and that he had been working all night and had been about to leave when I came out. I don't think he meant to make me feel bad, I think he was just talking because he was so amazed. I apologized and explained what I could see. We listened to a CD by, I think he said her name was Kylie Minogue (or something like that) for part of the way. I recognized one of the songs. Apparently she's Australian. His CD was well-loved because it kept skipping. We were quiet for long stretches while I just enjoyed looking out the window. It was gray outside so nothing got a particularly flattering light, but it was still fun to look at. The houses were cute. I noticed that his name was John Conroy. Partially because I felt bad for making him wait, because the silence was awkward and because I was genuinely curious I came up with questions to ask him. I asked him about the signs on the side of the road, the weather and the we talked about bikes. I also told him a little about what Oregon is like in comparison to Galway. He was nice about it all and seemed glad to talk to me whenever I came up with a question or a comment. His name was John Conroy. It made me smile in a wry sort of way every time we passed a business I'd see at home. I saw McDonald's, Texaco, Subway, a Best Western (or some big hotel chain like that. It might not've been that one in particular) and a movie theater with all American movies in it.

Mr Conroy took me all the way to Gort na Coiribe and even waited while I ran into the office to see if I was in the right place/if I could get a key to my apartment, which was more than he needed to do, particularly since I was two hours later than I was supposed to be (we got there at 10:45 am). The reception people were nice and helpful. They gave me a key and showed me where my apartment was. Mr Conroy helped me get my bags to the door before driving off. I dragged everything inside and went to my room. I was the first person there and my room is a double so I picked the bed and the desk by the window. I started unpacking just enough to take a shower, which was what I wanted most in the world at that point.

Not bad for my first time flying alone, eh? I made it all the way to Galway, even if it was only through pure luck at the end.