For those who care, I did arrive alive and well despite only having about 3 hours of sleep across 3 days. I kind of scratched my head when I had to fly to Philly from Laguardia to catch the flight to Dublin because there are 3 huge international airports in the NYC area. And, might I just say that it is probably the silliest flight ever. It's a grand total of 35 minutes with 26 passengers and the plane doesn't even get high enough to be allowed to use an iPod. We had to walk out onto the tarmac and up the stairs on the plane door to get in which was probably the only cool thing.
The next flight wasn't anything special either except that a large a majority of the people were actually Irish. Let me just say, the Irish accent is BY FAR my favorite in the whole world. I'm going to be here for 5 months and I can confidently tell you now I will still be just as excited to hear someone speak at the end of May as this first day on the plane. Needless to say, I definitely looked weird and creepy when I would grin and stare at people whenever they spoke.
Since I flew into Dublin I needed to take a bus down to Cork. It was actually very convenient and only took about 4 hours. The woman on the plane who I was talking to (she had an accent!) seemed to think it was the end of the world being on a bus for 3 or 4 hours. I decided not to tell her that I had once spent 16 hours on a hot stuffy bus from Dar Es Salaam to Nairobi or that I regularly take 8+ hour bus rides home for holidays and she just kept yammering about how she could never do that. I guess everything's different travel-wise when your country is the size of Indiana.
One thing I have noticed is that Cork really is very similar to Pittsburgh and it's actually getting to the point where it's kind of weird. Living on the top floor of my building? Check. Having to walk 15 minutes to classes? Check. City made of hills? Check. City surrounded by rivers? Check. Tons of bridges? Check. A street that seems to have nothing but bars/pubs? Check. Cathedral/church on campus that people get married at on a regular basis? Check again. There will probably be more and I might keep a list it's getting so ridiculous. On the bright side, I guess that makes me feel more at home.
While we have our big university orientation tomorrow, we had orientation for my API group today. Our resident director, Deborah, ran it and she's the one that in charge of us troublemakers while we're over here. We did also get a tour of the campus and the city center (or centre as they spell it) today. I have to say, I'm usually pretty good with figuring out where I am if someone is leading me around, but boy did Deborah have us going in circles. I couldn't really tell if it was the streets, or the path she was taking, but I'm sure it was a bit of both.
Alright, this has been quite the post with no distracting picture to break up the words. Because we're all children and want books with pictures. I'll hopefully post more often and have pictures for next time.
Alright, this has been quite the post with no distracting picture to break up the words. Because we're all children and want books with pictures. I'll hopefully post more often and have pictures for next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment