Would you like some tea and coffee with that??

Lessons of the day:

1.       In Ireland everything closes really early. Basically the sun goes down and all the sudden it’s time for things to close down.

2.       Elevators like to talk to you.

3.       They don’t like the heat apparently because every building is freezing.

4.       They really really really like their tea and coffee.

Today was orientation part 1. We spent a few hours going over the general orientation things that we would need to know before orientation with the university tomorrow. It went really quick considering the fact that Beth e-mailed us everything in full detail last semester so that we were fully aware of what we were getting ourselves into. Then we had a small break with tea and coffee. In the past couple of days I think I have had more cups of tea than I have had in the past year. The best part is that they have so many different kinds of teas and they all taste so good. They also use actual sugar cubes so it’s really cool to be able to grab a sugar cube and watch it melt in the tea. At every meal or every “snack time” that we have there is always someone coming around with kettles of tea and coffee. It’s pretty wonderful. I’m not a coffee drinker at all so I don’t really touch that, but the tea is fantastic. After we had our break it was time for a cooking demonstration. We are all living in apartments and have to cook for ourselves so they figured they would show us some quick, easy, and healthy things to make. I seriously wished that I had videotaped the entire thing. The lady was HILARIOUS! She was like the Irish version of Rachel Ray. It was really great. She taught us how to make chilli con carne, green thai curry, mackerel pate, and hummus. After she finished we all got to taste everything to see what we liked and would be interesting in making. It was all so good. I’m really not much of a picky eater so I enjoyed all of it.

Speaking of foods I did get asked earlier about what I’ve eaten so far over here. Dinner the first night I had some kind of chicken with yellow rice all marinated in a red wine sauce and for dessert Baked Alaska. Honestly the food we ate at the hotel is food that I can’t say I ever imagined I would actually try at any point in my life. There was also some kind of soup of the day that tasted like chicken, potatoes, carrots, onions, peas, and other things all mixed together. It was kind of a creamy broth so you couldn’t look at it and just tell what was there, but you could certainly taste certain things. This morning for breakfast I really couldn’t figure out what I wanted. There were the hot foods like eggs, bacon, hash browns, white pudding, sausage, and something else. Then there were all of the cold foods: fresh fruits, cheeses, breads, granola, yogurt, spreads, etc. There’s a picture somewhere in the slideshow of what I had this morning. Lunch today was a squash/pumpkin soup and assortment of sandwiches. I should have taken a picture because it looked so pretty how they arranged it all on the plate.

After lunch we moved into our apartments. Of course I end up being the first person that the lady talks to about how the whole system works. So I got to awkwardly stand there while she talked about all of these things that were written on the paper in front of me and the rest of the group was behind us. I lucked out in that in the apartment there are 3 of us living there and 1 of the girls is in the program with me. Her name is Vanessa and we’ve gotten to spend quite a bit of time figuring this whole thing out together. It’s pretty cool. In our apartment we all get our own bedroom and bathroom which are separated by their own doors on the outside. So basically when you walk into the apartment it’s a hallway with 4 doors. 3 belong to our separate rooms and the other one leads into the kitchen/living room area. It’s a really nice living arrangement. The only thing we have yet to figure out is how to turn the heat on. There are heaters but it’s so hard to figure out how to use everything because there are all kinds of switches everywhere and it’s just a mess. I’m pretty sure I’ve flipped every switch in my room multiple times and I still can’t tell you which one turns on which light or what it does. So for now we’re dealing with layers of clothing and blankets.

We went into town again so that everyone could get sheets, hangers, towels, etc from one of the department stores. I really wasn’t interested in having to go buy all of that stuff so I brought it with me, which was helpful, but also didn’t exactly work out the way it was supposed to.  The beds are basically squares. They are too big to be twin size, but too small to be full, so the sheets were kind of awkward to put on. They do but they don’t fit on the bed. Pretty much I made it work. So there’s this air bubble that’s sitting on top of the mattress and I’m just waiting for the sheet to decide it’s going to come off. So when we went into town I didn’t actually get anything, but if I need to I now know how to get there. Everything is basically in a straight line. You just follow the sidewalk. The one thing we learned about the stores in town today is that at 6 pm they all start to shut down. We walked out of a store at 6 and it was all the sudden dark in most of the shops. So we headed back to our apartments since there really is nothing else to do in town once everything is closed.

As far as the elevators go, well they’re just very friendly and helpful. They always tell you what they are going (opening/closing the doors) and they always inform you of what you should be doing (picking a floor). It’s a little weird and if I don’t have to I won’t use the elevators.

I should probably attempt to make these posts a lot shorter than they are. I’ll figure out how to do that at a later time, but this is it for now.

With Love Always