Settling in

I've been mostly spending my time getting settled and getting to know the city of Galway. It's awfully nice here. Everything is nice to look at. I love just walking around. The shops and houses are quaint, colorful and close together and there's always interesting people on the streets. Galway bay is beautiful. The rivers are peaceful. I haven't explored the campus as thoroughly yet as some other parts of the city, but it's awfully pretty. Some of the buildings are really old and nice. The quadrangle in particular is viney and really awesome looking. There's also a really nice path that you can take to walk to school that kind of winds right between two of the rivers and I just love it. I thought that walking to school would be kind of crappy because it's like twenty minutes away and I'm not used to that, but... I love walking to school, haha. This morning I was walking next to the rivers with my english muffin and I felt so great. Classes started yesterday but my first class was today. The whole class schedule thing is kind of weird here. I haven't actually signed up for any classes yet, but some of them have already started, and some of them don't start for another couple weeks. I'm kind of just going with the flow.

But I'm definitely starting to get used to living here. Knowing the routes, things like that. Even grocery shopping is getting easier! I had to pick up bread and milk today and inadvertently found FRANKS HOT SAUCE. So obviously I am extremely excited about this. For lunch today, I had a sliced chicken sandwich with gouda cheese and Franks on a french baguette. I am probably going to eat this every day for the rest of the semester because I feel like it enhanced my entire life.

We have also just been generally having a fun time! Like I said, I've been hanging out a lot with my friends from St. Joe's. We also have a friend Patrick from California but he has already lived here for like six months so he is pretty Irish. Like last night, a few of the girls (me, Melissa, Shannon, Kelsey and Christine) went over to Patrick's house and met his roommates and he and Shannon cooked a really tasty pasta dinner! We are calling this tradition "Family Dinner", haha. 

Patrick also took a couple of us down to the bay the other day. I got some really nice pictures. (Click for slightly better, but these aren't full res.)

The last one is from Shop St. I'm going to take loads more pictures while I'm here, though. Galway is so photogenic, I'm getting great shots.

And as much fun as I'm having with my friends right now, I'm also looking forward to making some Irish friends! Tomorrow is my first big step towards that, I think, because tomorrow is the societies fair. (Societies are like clubs, because here clubs means sports.) Galway has a couple socs that look really cool, there's like an anime one and a science fiction one. Also like photography and film. So I'm excited to see which ones look cool at the fair and all the kinds of cool people I'll be able to meet! People here seem really nice. I met a few fun Irish people at the pub last Saturday, they were just so friendly and happy to talk to me. So I might also text them (Shona and Tadhg) sometime soon and see if they want to hang out with us too.

But in the meantime, it's really starting to be like I live here. I posted a letter today! It's for Gabe. He posted mine yesterday so we'll see how long they take to get delivered. (Actually, Gabe doesn't post letters. He mails letters. I post letters.) Keeping in touch has been pretty easy, I got to video chat with Gabe last night on his new netbook and I was very excited to see him! But I do miss everyone, and I'm sure I'll miss them more once they go back to Canisius together. But I'm so excited to be here, meeting a new city!