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!

Why Irish People are Nicer

This is the first in a series of posts called "How You Can Tell Irish People Are Nicer Than Americans"

How you can tell Irish people are nicer than Americans #1: There is no "close door" button in elevators, only an "open door" button.

Look what I found

Hey guys, look what I found in Galway.

Grocery Store Blues

I feel like I am starting to get used to many aspects of life over here. I think I've got a pretty good handle on the time difference. I know how to use the boost to get a nice hot shower. The euro system really isn't that hard. I can order a beer without embarrassing myself and I can order a panini at my favorite sandwich bar without even looking at the menu.

But grocery shopping still feels like an exercise in futility and painful tourism.

It's bad enough that I still can't figure out what kinds of snacks I'm interested in eating. (Other than chocolate, which I've pretty much mastered.) But I decided to get stuff for making sandwiches and it is like making sandwiches is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE over here. They don't seem to have grape jelly. Okay, no big deal, strawberry is fine too. They also don't have any cheeses that any normal person would put on their sandwich, such as provolone or swiss. I don't want sharp cheddar on my sandwich and I don't even know what Edam tastes like. As much as it makes me feel like a dumb tourist, I buy American, although it is not labeled as American or in fact anything other than "CHEESE." Okay, cheese it is. I go to the deli to get meat and realize I don't know how much I want to order because it is priced by the 100 grams and I have no concept of how much ham is 100 grams of ham. There are also like three choices of meat at the deli so I cut my losses and decide to get packaged meats... which are sold by the slice?? There is a sale being advertised, €4 for 14 slices of ham. (?) Then the cashier lady speaks at me in an accent that barely sounds like she is speaking English and suddenly I just want to go back to sleep even though I just slept for like twelve hours.

Moral: Apparently grocery shopping is the bane of my existence.

Kicking the Crack in Galway

Before you get worried, "kicking the crack" is slang here for having a good time. But it's not just any good time, or so I've been told. It's referring to the BEST kind of good time, the uniquely Irish kind, that you can only have when you're in Ireland. Or at least that's how the Irish explained the phrase to me.

So, I spent my first couple days here pretty much asleep in bed, but since then I've started to get some time to explore the town! It's pretty wonderful. Shop St is a few blocks away from where I'm living and it's pretty much the city center as far as I can tell. There's this whole series of walking roads with loads of cute little stores and sandwich shops and pubs. One of my friends commented that it looked like what Disneyland is trying to be like, haha. But I guess it's kind of true. It's just so... quaint! I haven't explored the entire city as much as some of my friends, but I've got a pretty good handle of the four block radius or so around Shop St because I've spent a lot of hours walking up and down around there. I'm sure the bay is really pretty but it's so exciting to walk around where the people are. There are street performers a lot of the time and I love them. There were african drums and one guy slumped against a building playing Bad Romance in a thick accent. There was a full band playing original music on the street yesterday. The band consisted of a guitar, a double bass and a banjo and they were awesome, I hope to run into them again. Also there are bands in all the pubs like every night. There are so many musicians! My favorite band so far plays at the Spanish Arch twice a week. I think they're called Alale and they played like pretty traditional Irish music, I liked it so much.

I've been trying to try out a lot of places because there are SO MANY places and I want to see which ones are good! Although the atmosphere seems pretty good to me everywhere here. Also the Guinness is good, hee hee. Some of my friends don't like it but they are obviously not MEN'S MEN like I am, hahahaha.

Speaking of my friends, I have been making friends! So far I have not made any Irish friends, I have only made other American friends. Obviously I've been hanging out with the other people from Canisius and we're all having a good time. But one of our roommates is from St. Joes in Philly so I've been hanging out with the group of girls from St. Joe's too and they are really fun.

So I'm pretty pleased to spend time with them, but I'm hoping to meet some Irish people soon! I mean, I've talked to Irish people at pubs and stuff and so far everyone seems really friendly, but I'm hoping once school starts I will make some good Irish friends who will want to go out and do stuff with me. I had a few orientation things this week but school starts for us and the local students next week. So I'm more or less looking forward to it starting. The campus is really nice, though I don't have as much of a grasp over the sense of direction within it as city square. But I can get there and back effectively. It's not too far and the walk is nice.

Took that on my morning walk to school. I decided to take Irish language and I'm pretty psyched about it. It's more bilingual here than I expected, actually. And the professor who teaches the beginners Irish seems really amazing. Here's a story about him. I've been welcomed to Galway about a billion times, but when this professor started to welcome me, he stopped and asked me if I was Irish, if my family was from here. I told him yes and he said, "Well in that case, welcome home." (b'awwwww) There's still stuff to get used to, obviously, but I'm starting to feel kind of at home. A bartender last night told me it seemed like I'd been here a while. I thought that was a pretty good compliment actually.

Now it's time to see what a weekend in Galway is like!

Arrival

So to put you out of your suspense, I did make it to Galway! The process was kind of painful but in theory everything went pretty smoothly with my flights being uneventful and on time and everything. I'm still kind of confused about the days, because I didn't leave yesterday, I left two days ago. So on Monday I was headed up for the airport. In a final homage to my city, my mom and I stopped on the way to the airport at the Albright Knox to see the Stanley Cup, I couldn't help myself. But then we got to the airport super early and I had a couple hours to hang out with my parents and Gabe, who came to see me off. They couldn't go through the security. It was really hard.

I made it to New York City and met up with the whole group of Canisius people going. We had a pretty long layover so it was low stress. The main problem for me was that I didn't sleep at all on the international flight. And it landed at like nine in the morning local time. So I was just pretty exhausted and we had to wait in this really long line for customs and trying to change our money over and everything. And we landed in Shannon and had to take a bus to Galway, but we missed the first bus because it was full so we had to wait for another hour. Eventually we made it here and found Niland House with its orange balconies and made it up to our room. Which is very nice but I don't have any pictures yet, maybe tomorrow.

Pretty much I was just tired and miserable and angry at everyone else even though they didn't really do anything wrong. So I didn't go out last night or anything, I just slept. I saw a couple streets of the town only so far but it seems really cute. I want to do some more exploring today but there's a lot to get used to. Like how I woke up at 7am and it was still completely dark. It's a little after 8am now and starting to get a little brighter but I guess the sun doesn't rise until almost 9. Also yesterday I went to the grocery store for the first time and it was just stupidly overwhelming. I can't figure out any of the food. I ended up buying yogurt only. Everything is weird brands and all their chips are weird flavors like bacon or chicken. I mean crisps. See what I mean? I'm hoping if I go back today after having a night of sleep, simple tasks like picking out food will seem less overwhelming.

I just feel very far away from everyone I know.

Happy New Year in Buffalo

I have to admit how pleased I was with 2010. Yeah, it certainly had its ups and downs. Spring semester certainly brought some difficulties, but even during it all, staying up for all hours every night in the Palisano computer lab, I was happy. A month in El Salvador was horizon broadening. Summer in particular was the best on record, loving every minute in Elmwood Village. And this semester, though it's been pretty rough academically, has also made me feel very lucky, mostly because I've had such fantastic people to spend it with, between George Martin House, Phi Sigma Sigma and a certain special someone. Now I'm eating my Coldstone ice cream (cinnamon, butterfingers and raspberries!) in my room surrounded by all my crap and reflecting on the past year. Yeah, it was pretty great, but so far 2011 has been pretty darn great too. Rang in the new year with my boyfriend Gabe and all my stranger-neighbors in the city of Buffalo downtown at the ball drop. Damn, I love my city.

So that's two things I'm going to miss. There's loads of others. I said goodbye to my beloved roommate yesterday morning too...

I'm excited though. Preparations are well underway. As they should be, I guess, since tomorrow is my last full day at home. Woah. I packed my suitcase today. It's huge and I could probably fit my whole house in it but it has to be under 50 pounds for the plane. So I just stuffed a bunch of stuff in it and figured I'd weigh it and then take stuff out when it was inevitably over. But it weighed in at 49.9 pounds! Hahaha. I still have to pack my carry on suitcase, which is small but gonna weigh about a million pounds. At this point, it's a lot of little things I'm trying to think about. Like finding both of my sonic screwdrivers and putting my Kairos cd in my laptop and charging my DS so I can play Pokemon on the plane. And spending tomorrow watching movies.

I'm still nervous but on the first day of the new year, I feel like the luckiest person in the world.