So Far...

So. I'm in Dublin!



I've been here a week and a half, and it couldn't be better. The kids are nice, the city is beautiful, and the classes are fun but long.



I can't really catch up on everything that's happened in the past week and a half (that would be a freakishly long post)



How about the roommates first, eh?

Katie Ventimeglia (I think that's how you spell it) is the one I'm sharing a room with. She loves being outdoors and is always the first person to say "It's not that far, let's just walk!" but it almost always is far but we almost always do it anyway :-) She loves listening to classical music and jazz and my non-drinking friend. We end up sticking together when a group of us go out.

Rachel Roderman is one of the girls sleeping down the hall who is amazing. She and I have ended up hanging out more one on one. We seem to have a lot in common (besides our coast, she's a New Yorker-ish... Although thank GOD she doesn't like the Yankees. We would have had problems...). Shealso loves Eddie Izzard. How much better does THAT get? It's nice to have someone who seems to share interests with you and share things and stories from home. It makes me miss home less...

Stephanie Jordan is the roommate that I know the least, although hopefully that changes because she seems wonderful. She was born in London, lives in France and her father is from Columbia. Yeah. She speaks 3 languages fluently and I'm jealous.



So those are my roommates, and I got incredibly lucky!

I can catch you up on the past couple days:

Friday:

Scavenger Hunt day. Rachel and Katie and I went to IES for our follow-up orientation where we signed up for the field trip to London. €220 for a trip to London. While that wasn't unexpected, it still hurts. Rachel and I are staying a few days longer because Dublin has a Bank Holiday on the 29th and we were scheduled to come back on the 27th. Why not? I'm going to hopefully be able to stay somewhere near Sandy (or with her, I haven't asked yet) because I miss her. ANYway, there was a scavenger hunt after the orientation set up by IES. That sent us competely around the city to places that we never would have seen had we not done the hunt, but still, lots of walking :-) We found this really cool place called Moore Street which is apparently an important place in Ireland history (1916 Easter Rising) and it now has all these cool little veggie/fruit and flower stands every day of the week. Here's how far we walked. The different colors represent the different stages of the walk. Just kidding. The picture isn't uploading... It will be on Facebook for anyone who wants/cares to see it.
That night Rachel and I were wandering around freezing and hungry, so we went to Captain America's for a salad and some warmth.

Saturday:
Our new roommate, Stephanie, arrived on Saturday. She came in and was instantly filling the room with laughter, noise and an incredible accent. I'm glad she's here! The dynamic between my original two roommates and I is nice. But Stephanie throws in this whole different vibe and it's a lot of fun. Once she arrived we all walked into St. Stephen's Green, split up then soaked in a little sun and warmth before we got cold and walked into Butler's for some incredible hot chocolate (no expensive habits, no expensive habits).

Sunday:
We went (as an IES group) to Kilmainham Gaol, or one of THE most important places in Ireland because of the 1916 Easter Rising. It was fasinating, gruesome, and AWESOME. I'm going to try and get around more (that might be a lie).

Today:
School for 10am-6:15pm, dinner out because we didn't have time to go home before seeing an INCREDIBLY BAD, EXTREMELY POOR PRODUCTION of Trojan Women in this amazing space in Temple Bar. The show was absolutely terrible, the acting was garbage, you couldn't understand what was being said some of the time, and the dialogue was trash. It was a Greek play rewritten by some man who thought that throwing curse words into a classic makes it better. Anyway, I'm home and we're watching South Park (uh... yeah, South Park) and I'm going to bed because we have school at 9am, leave at 8:15, get up at 7. Yuck.


Goodnight/Bon Nuit!