Week 3 - Life in Cork as Usual

Monday(01/19/2009):

I don’t remember anything about Monday. Therefore, ergo, I must have done homework.

Tuesday(01/20/2009):

Tuesday was the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, President Barack Hussein Obama. Shawn, Giorgio and I walked down to go watch the inauguration ceremony at The Old Bar, the UCC campus pub, around 4:00 PM. We stopped at An Brog on the way to get a cheap, €2.90, pint and talk a bit. We met Giovanni at The Old Bar, and got some great seats right next to the huge screen they had put up. The pub was already really crowded, and by the time the inauguration started it was packed to the rafters. I was so happy when Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero, Anthony McGill preformed “Air and Simple Gifts”. It was such a beautiful peace, and Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma are two of my favorite artists, not to mention I really like John Williams’ work in general. During the inauguration ceremony itself, it was still pretty exciting even though I was a quarter of the way around the world. The Old Bar was absolutely stuffed, and not just with Americans, but with people of all nationalities. It was really interesting to see people from all around the world take such a vested intrest in a historical moment in my country, and with Americans who were traveling from all over the world at that moment converging together at the pub, it was a time when even though we [the Americans] were scattered, we were still all united then. After the ceremony was over, the four of us walked back to South Mall Court, talking. One interesting thing though about being an American abroad, is once people that you’re talking to discern that you’re not Irish, they will usually, after a polite time into your conversation, ask if you are happy about having Obama as president, and what/how you think he will do. The Germans and French do this particularly, but they genuinely seem interested in your response. Germans are also very pleasantly surprised to find Americans that can speak German, even if you don’t speak it well, and seem to quite enjoy talking to us in German. This is great because my German is getting better, and it makes Shawn and myself items of interest at parties. That night was also Margherita’s mother’s birthday, so we had been invited up to Apartment 5 for dinner that night. So being good guests, we stopped on our way home and picked up two bottles of Italian wine to share, one from the region of Italy that Giovanni is from, and one from Giorgio’s region. We went up to Margherita’s and Laura’s apartment around 7:30 and they had prepared authentic Italian lasagna with the help of Margherita’s mother and aunt. It was so delicious, and piping hot, and when complimented with the Italian wine (both of which were excellent red wines, but I liked the dryer one *Girogio’s region* better) it was a wonderful meal. Afterwards we played an Italian version of Yahtzee for while, and then Shawn and I went back to our room to study.

Wednesday(01/21/2009):

On Wednesday I just went to class and then came back and studied for a while. On my way home I stopped by a cafe called Cafe Gusto that had a big "Mmm..." on the window and ordered a milkshake, something I’d really been missing, and was sorely disappointed with the result. I could drink the whole bloody thing in under 10 seconds. It seemed like they had put milk and a little bit of chocolate in a blender and decided that was a milkshake. So my search for a decent milkshake in Cork began. Shawn and I then walked to the Washington Street Kino (movie theater) to meet Giovanni and Eugenio @ 6:30 to see a documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It was a really interesting documentary if you like any of Hunter S. Thompson’s work, or have ever read/seen any of it. It was also a very well done documentary of the feelings of the American public in the 60’s as told by the American public, so I really enjoyed it. Great work. We then came back to Apartment 1 and Giovanni, Eugenio and I made a pasta dinner with cucumber and tomato sauce. Then back to studying.

Thursday(01/22/2009):

Nothing much really happened on Thursday, except that our internet slowed down to such a crawl that by 6:00 it could no longer load google. I ended up packing my stuff up and walking to the UCC library to use the wireless there, but for some reason the permissions they have on the wireless don’t allow you to use messaging applications like AIM and Skype, which sucked. At 10:30 they closed the library, so we all had to go outside and wait for the Quadrangle Study Room to open up so we could go back in. By the time I got back to South Mall Court around 1:00 AM the interent was working again, so I didn’t have to make any phone calls in the morning which was nice.

Friday(01/23/2009):

Friday passed without incident for most of the day. My search for a decent milkshake in Cork continued though, to Eddie Rockets, an American styled diner. This one milkshake was better then the one I had at Mmm, as it had visible ice cream in it, but it was still too thin. I’m still expecting a milkshake from Mary Ann’s or The Courier, where you need to wait a few minutes for it to melt a little before you can actually get anything out of the straw. I called up the Knights of Columbanus that afternoon, and tried to meet them for some charity event that night, but due to the Irish’s inability to give specific directions beyond “just walk straight after that one turn till you find it” coupled with their apparent hatred of street signs, as there are hardly any of them here, I never found the bloody place, and so got a very nice self guided tour of the city instead. :/ After I got back, Shawn and I went to O’Donnovan’s to pick up 4 pack of Guinness. I enjoyed one of mine that night while I worked on homework and read, and kept the other 3 in the fridge for Giovanni’s birthday party the next day.

Saturday(01/24/2009):

Saturday morning both Shawn and I woke up “early” (10:00 is early right?) and got to work studying and reading. We were happily interrupted around lunch though, as Giorgio wanted us to taste the pizza he had made, to see if it was any good or not, so we happily obliged. The pizza was pretty good. The whole day Giovanni was cleaning the apartment because he thought that we were going to have a party there like he had planned. That evening Laura and Margherita came down and made Italian pizza for all of us in Apartment 1, plus them and Eugenio and another of Giovanni’s friends. We all then made excuses to leave and sneak up to Apartment 5, where the real surprise party for Giovanni was about to take place. Margherita had invited bout 40 of Giovanni’s friends, so with Giorgio making pop corn like mad, we all squeezed into the kitchen, and then when we had all gotten there, we turned off the lights, closed the kitchen door and Margherita texted Giovanni that she needed his help reaching something on one of the kitchen shelves. When he came in and turned on the lights he was greeted by all of us, and a ridiculous amount of beer (plus the case of beer he had bought that day for the party he thought he was throwing). He was so surprised and happy to see all of us, he almost cried. The party turned out to be really fun. Just everybody socializing, walkling around, joking, meeting everyone, congratulating Giovanni and wishing him a very happy 25th birthday and so on. We had also hooked up an iPod to someone’s speaker system, so we listened to great music the whole night as well. Laura brought out the cake that she and Margherita had baked around midnight, and dear Lord, that was some awesome cake! It was cake, with a layer of cream of something, and then more cake with a layer of real chocolate frozen over the whole thing. It was so delicious and obviously went super fast. Shawn and I came back to the room around 1:30 or so, but Giovanni and some other people went out to the bars for a little while (crazy Italianas).

Sunday(01/25/2009):

Today I’ve pretty much just been doing laundry, eating, getting groceries, doing PY2102 and PY2103 homework, and writing the blog. I went to St. Patrick’s today for Mass, which was really nice. The cathedral was huge, with fantastic Irish architecture, and some of the highest ceilings I’ve ever seen in my life. The priest also spoke at a normal pace, so I could actually understand what was being said today, which was also awesome. Although, they definitely say the Our Father in either Gaelic or Latin or something, because that was not English.  On Saturday, I'd officially been in Ireland for 3 weeks, and it really doesn't seem like its been that long.  I'm almost a 3rd of the way through the instructional part of my courses, and it still just seems like I got here.  I know my way around Cork, and my room feels like it's my room and all, but it still just seems like time is flying by.  I guess I should try and do as much as possible then.

Week 2 - Living in Cork

Monday(01/12/2009):

I can’t really remember what I did on Monday, so it can’t have been that important. My Gmail account isn’t much help for sparking my memory either, as I have very few emails from that day and none that were really ground-shaking. I’d been in school for a whole week now, so I no longer needed to constantly be looking through my notebook for my class schedule to figure out what the room number for my class was in (which isn’t necessarily enough to help you as the room set up for some of the buildings is nowhere near logical).

Tuesday(01/13/2009):

Tuesday went by without much incident as well. I went to a physics lecture that evening @ 7 that was put on by the UCC Physics Society entitled “Hey Heisenberg, why is my interent so slow!?”, given by one of the UCC physics professors who was Canadian. It was actually pretty cool. We learned how data is transmitted via different mediums (twisted fiber, coax cable, fiber optic cable, wireless, etc) and the data retention rate/km associated with it. I never really knew how crappy it really was until then. But more importantly we learned about how using aspects of Hisenberg’s Uncertainty principle (the energy vs. time side of it) you could find the optimal data transmission rate for each medium, and then discusses the available remaining options for internet providers to expand their ability to keep the internet running at acceptable speeds, and the pros and cons associated with them. It was also presented in such a way that anyone who had ever taken an introductory quantum course could easily follow, so I understood all of it. What was perhaps even better was the fact that there was milk and homemade chocolate chip cookies provided afterwards. They were the first cookies I’d had in about 2 weeks or so, and besides the fact that they were legitimately really damn good, they tasted heavenly. I also got to know a few of the other kids who were in my physics classes and my Fourier Methods class. I also finally got a chance to talk to some Irish people my own age (*yay*) and got to know Heather and Rick (two physics club members my year).

Wednesday(01/14/2009):

Wednesday Shawn and I were awoken to the entirety of South Mall Court shaking from the vibrations of the construction crew drilling in the lot catty-corner to us, at about 7am. We were none to pleased, especially Shawn, who did not have class until 4pm that day. We also had to officially register for classes on Wednesday, so I signed up for AM2071 (Fourier Methods), PY2102 (Introduction of Quantum Physics), PY2103 (Electrostatics and Magnetostatics), and CC1112 (Celtic Religion and Mythology). That’s 20 credits here at UCC, but it translates to just 12 hours back at the U of I, which sucks for me, but oh well. Giovanni was very happy for Wednesday to come, as the essay he’d been working on incredibly studiously for the last 2 weeks was due, so after class we went to An Brog for his first pint of 2009. He loves Beamish, and since the Beamish factory here in Cork is being bought out by Heineken in March he’s vowed to pretty much only drink Beamish in that time period. I kinda wanted to hit him upside the head for a second though once we got there, as Shawn and I had been buying pints for €4.10 at all the pubs in Cork, as Giovanni had forgotten to mention that all pints at An Brog ar only €2.90 everyday until 9:00 PM. Which is awesome! Shawn and I also found out that Giovanni’s birthday is next Saturday, so we’re going to be having a party with him in his honor that night. He’s turning 25. One thing that has kinda surprised me since I’ve arrived is how much younger I am then everyone else, besides Shawn (who is still about a year older than I am). Giovanni is about to turn 25, Giorgio is 23, Claudio is 23, Andrea is 22, Joe is 21, the other Andrea is 23, and Laura is 21. So it kinda seems odd to me at times that I’m hanging out with people that are Jennifer and Greg’s age, but they’re all really nice people, and nobody seems to think that it’s weird that I’m only 19. After we had a few (cheap) pints at An Brog we went back to South Mall Court to make dinner, but Margherita invited us (Apartment 1) to have dinner with (Apartment 5) her and Laura’s apartment. While we were making dinner (pasta with potatoes and pesto) Margherita got out here guitar and played while we all sang different songs ranging from Red Hot Chili Peppers to early 1900’s IRA marching songs, to Led Zeppelin. It was great! After dinner Shawn and I went back to our apartment to do homework, when Chris, another American, from apartment 9 came to borrow our table and chairs because they were having a poker party in their apartment. Around 1am, we realized that due to the volume of the yelling and laughing that was echoing down through the courtyard that they were a) very drunk, and b) not going to be brining our table back before 7am like we asked. This was not good because I find that a table and chair makes eating breakfast a much easier task. So I put on some clothes and went to try and get my breakfast eating catalyst back. It was much easier that I thought. James, another American living in apartment 9, was still up and sober, so he was kind enough to help me reclaim my table. I was able to have a table to eat on the next morning, but the ocasional roars heard from 2 floors above didn’t stop until 2am ish.

Thursday(01/15/2209):

Thursday was just filled with class and homework. We went to a local pub to play pool, but besides that, it was just a busy day of work.

Friday(01/16/2009):

After class on Friday I went down to the Garda to officially register with immigration for the time period I would be studying. I was cursing the grouchy guy who only signed my passport for 1 month in Shannon, as I had to wait in line for an hour. I finally got up there, gave them my IGBN-1 form, passport, medical insurance cards, UCC student ID, Bank of Ireland bank statement and a mini statement from that day, and €150 for processing fees. They took my picture, digitally fingerprinted me, filed all my forms and then finally stamped my passport and gave me my Irish immigration ID. I only asked them to stamp it for the 16th of June, but they were kind enough to stamp me up until the 30th of September. So in case I really need to run back to Ireland over the summer, I’m good. I met Giovanni on the UCC campus at 5 and we walked over to the Mardyke Gym (UCC’s gym) to work out. It was very nice. They had huge fields for rugby and soccer, a nice track and then the gym itself was a little bigger then CRCE but was about as nice as the ARC. So it felt very similar to the U of I. It also felt really good to work out again, so I think I’ll continue to go work out with Giovanni each week. Some of Giovanni’s good friends came over to eat dinner with him that evening, and they brought with them some Italian wine they had bought which we were all happy about since Giovanni generously shared it with us. So my chicken that I cooked (which tasted very nice by itself if I may say so) was complemented by a beautiful red wine. Giovanni’s friends were German, so Shawn and I got another opportunity to practice our German with them (if I didn’t mention it earlier, Shawn took German in high school too). Things got better in a few hours as Margherita’s mother and aunt were coming to visit her from Sicily, and her mother was bringing homemade cannolis with her! Margherita brought her mom and aunt down to our apartment were we me them and then she also shared some of the cannolis with us. I had never had a cannoli before, but it was the most delicious desert I had ever had in my life! Giovanni said that cannolis are very hard to find outside of certain towns in Italy, and that he had only had one on two other occasions in his life (and he’s going to be 25 in a week). He also said that Margherita’s mom’s was the best cannoli that he had ever had, so I guess I should feel pretty lucky. Once they got their luggage up into Margherita’s apartment her mom (who speaks no english) and aunt (who speaks a little english) wanted to go out to the bars in Cork. So we all bundled up against the rain and went out to the Old Oak. Giovanni and I weren’t planning on drinking anything that night since Giovanni likes to drink in steps (dinner, beer, wine, liquour) and we’d already had dinner, red wine and whiskey that night (I forgot to mention that Shawn had gotten a few bottles of Jameson), and I didn’t want to spend money that day after buying groceries earlier but Giovanni’s german friends walked up to us and gave us both a pint of Guinness and nobody refuses a free pint of Guinness from a German so we decided we’d make an exception. Margherita’s mom and aunt were dancing, so Giovanni and I (as two of the only completely sober people around) occasionally had to make it clear to drunken Irish “gentlemen” that they were Italian, didn’t speak English, and that they should go bother someone else. Which was kinda amusing in some sense. Margherita and her mom and aunt went home after that, but Giovanni and myself went on to An Brog, which has better music, to meet some of our other friends from South Mall Court (An Brog and Old Oak are pubs, but all the pubs have movable walls and such so that later on in the night they can expand into night clubs with dancing and music and such. We stayed there until two and then headed back to South Mall Court (in the typical Irish evening rain) and went to bed

Saturday & Sunday(01/17-18/2009):

Saturday was very rainy, windy and cold out.  I basically just stayed inside, cooked, did homework and then went to Mass at 6.  On Sunday, Shawn and I woke up around 10:00 AM, went back to bed till around 10:40, finally got up, made breakfast, looked at the directions to Blarney Castle and headed out the door around noon.  We made our way out of Cork and along Blarney Street, taking pictures as we went, and then followed it until it split off into Blarney Road.  After about 800 meters the sidewalk ended and we had to hike in the tall grass and brush to the side of the highway (and having common sense and reached 1st class in Boy Scouts I remembered that we should walk on the shoulder of the road toward oncoming traffic, so they could actually see us).  It was kinda slow going in the grass, and we kept stopping to take pictures of the countryside and climb "small" hills.  In some areas though, the strip of grass, next to the stone walls that separated the road from the fields, was so small that we were forced to walk on the road.  However, the highway was far from busy (perhaps because it was Sunday?)and we could see cars coming from well over 1000 meters away, so we could quite easily be off the road and standing on what little shoulder there was by the time they reached us.  As we walked by fields and farms, you could tell where they had livestock (besides the dead give away of the tiny white forms of the sheep on the hills across the valley), by the smell of their manure in the air.  Shawn, seemed to be a little disturbed by the odor, but I couldn't help but find myself smiling, as it seemed that I was right back near the South Farms.  It was nice, and yet amusing, that this gave me the sense of security that a memory of home brings.  After walking for a little over 2 hours, and asking for directions from locals at crossroads (the Irish don't believe in street signs apparently) we reached the entrance to Blarney Castle.  However, we were soon confronted by the gate and the admission charge of €8 for students.  Neither Shawn or myself had enough money to pay the fee, so we went to the local tiny grocery store and found a Bank of Ireland ATM and got out €20, and then went back and gained entrance to the grounds.  We then proceeded to walk around the castle taking pictures and checking out all of the chambers.  The spiral staircase was ridiculous though.  The stairs were incredibly steep.  So much so, that towards the top, my next 5 steps would equal a change in elevation equal to my height.  We finally reached the top, took some pictures off of the battlement, and then kissed the Blarney Stone.  It's pretty far down so you really have to kinda back out pretty far over the edge of the castle to get at it.  They have a machine that takes your picture that you can buy for €10, but Shawn took a much better picture of me with my camera, and a picture that's not on my memory card really doesn't do me much good.  We toured the grounds for a little bit and then left Blarney about 3:30, as we didn't want to be walking along the highway in the dark.  We finally arrived back in Cork just around 5, and promptly made dinner when we got back to South Mall Court.  We were tired after the 16+ km we'd walked that day (and it wasn't a flat 16 km like in Illinois) so our dinner was very unimaginative.  For Shawn: beans, bread, cheese and Beamish.  For me: pizza and Beamish.  We got food though, so we were happy and went to upload our pictures and study for the rest of the night.  Shawn also streamed audio and play updates of the Steeler's game as being from PA he's a rather big fan, and I for the most part just read some of my Early Irish Myths and Sagas as I wasn't in the mood to do vector calculus at the moment.  So obviously, we both slept rather well that night.

*To take a look at other pictures albums of Ireland, most noteably Irish Graffiti go to my public Picasa Web Albums: http://picasaweb.google.com/MFeickert *

Week 1 - Adjusting & Finding My Feet

Monday(01/05/2009):

Monday was registration so all the international students met up on the 2nd floor of the student center to go through the welcome/introduction talk from the UCC International Education Office. After that there were speakers from the French, Religious Studies, Art, Celtic Civilization, Irish, Political Science, and Geography departments promoting modules in those sections for international students. For the most part this was a chance for me to look past them through the huge wall of glass that looked out over the college and the hillside portions of the city behind UCC and just admire the beautiful weather and scenery, as none of these departments, with maybe the exception of Celtic Civilizations (I haven’t decided if I’m taking CC112 yet), offered any of the modules I’d be taking. What I did learn though is that there would be a very long and interesting process to get my immigration papers taken care of. The guy at the airport in Shannon had been a jerk and only stamped my passport for 1 month as I couldn’t produce €1,500 immediately (which makes no sense, as a normal travel visa is good for 3 months). So here’s the process. To get my passport stamped for a period of time that allows me to stay until my return plane ticket I have to go to the Garda (Irish police) and prove that I have a passport, medical insurance (show them my international student travel insurance cards), my admission letter from University College Cork, and then a bank statement showing that I have a liquid €1,500. Now the bank statement is the part that makes the whole process a headache. For most international travelers, it takes a minimum of €3,000 to open up an account, but UCC has worked out a deal with the Bank of Ireland to allow UCC international students to open accounts for €1,500. However, to open up a bank account in this manner you first need to have a phone and a letter from UCC asking that I be given a 3rd level bank account (a student account). My apartment has no landline, so that meant that I had to get a cell phone and I couldn’t get my student ID until the day after registration, which was required to get the letter from UCC that was needed for the Bank of Ireland (which would be Tuesday). As a bank statement takes about a week or so to get to you, I basically had to get all of the other stuff done soon, so I wouldn’t be cutting things close at the end. It would really suck to get deported in the middle of the school year methinks. However, we were told not to stress out to much, and as the main speaker put it, “Don’t worry Loves, around here, things have a habit of working out in the end”. We then got handed packets that had had registration info, and numbers which split us up into group 1 through 8 which would corresponded to registration and ID picture times. I was group 3. Registration that day just consisted of going down to the computer labs in the basement of the library (which is probably the most freaking sweet library I’ve ever been in) and just getting our student ID numbers, which would also become out emails oddly enough, and pin numbers, and then verifying and entering various contact information. After that I grabbed lunch in the student resturant/pub. The line for the dinning hall on the ground floor of the restaurant was pretty long, so I just went up the stairs to the next floor which had a Quiznos and got a steak sandwich and Guinness. Then I went back to the student center for another 2 hours of talks from the Support Officer for International Students, the International Student Society, Students Union, Computer Training Center (the campus IT guys), Campus Chaplaincy, and Garda. On the way out I picked up a flyer for the campus Christian society, Iona, which seemed interesting, and extremely laid back. I then went back to the computer labs and tried to figure out time tabels and such for classes, and to get my password, activate my email, and try to get my MacBook Pro registered in their system, so I could use the campus’ wireless. I finally got back into town and made myself some dinner, and tried to go around to different cell phone providers in the area and figure out what plan would be the best for me, and then I head back to campus at 6 for the wine and cheese welcoming party that Iona was having. I was glad I went, as you were offered your choice of red or white wine, coffee, or tea upon entering (I had the red which was quite good for being free) and they had quite a nice selection of cheeses as well. It was also a nice opportunity to get to meet other international students and the Irish students who were active in Iona, and to find out more about Iona as well. Iona is the chaplaincy group on campus, and they provide an opportunity for religious and nonreligious students to hang out, plan trips for students around Ireland to different scenic, historical, or religious and heritage sites, and lead prayer and such on Monday nights. After getting to know people a little better I went over to some of the Iona members for Taizé prayer, which is singing Latin, Spanish, Hungarian, English, and German hymns in Honan Chapel accompanied by trumpet, guitar, piano, and tin whistle. After I got back to my apartment around 8:30, I resumed work on my schedule and time table dissection. Shawn came in and said that Margherita, Giorgio and their friends were going to go to be going out to a pub and we were invited, so Shawn and myself went to Micahel’s Pub with them and their other Italian friends Claudio, and Andrea (both of those are male names in Italian) were we played pool and talked about our favorite movies. It was really fun. On the way back Claudio, Margherita, Andrea and myself stopped by The Old Oak, right next to my apartment, where after asking me about Illinois, Champaign, American music, my views on Obama’s election and other such questions Claudio and Andrea (both of which have degrees in economics) started a debate/let’s-see-who-can-convice-the-American-that-my-views-on-the-economic-growth-and-long-term-stability-of-China-are-correct. This was very amusing, and very interesting. After a few hours of talking I excused myself, went back to South Mall Court (Mall is pronounced like pal by the way), and went to bed.

Tuesday(01/06/2009):

On Tuesday, I woke up, cooked breakfast and made my way over to the West Wing of the Main Quad to get my picture taken for my student ID (which turned out to be a pretty bad picture), then I went over to the International Education Office to get some immigration forms, and my letter for the Bank of Ireland. I then spent most of the remaining morning going into town, eating lunch, going around to cell phone companies and finally getting a pay-as-you-go (or Speak Easy as they call it) plan from 02. I then went back to campus to spend more time in the computer labs, buy a notebook for classes, and go to my AM2071 (Fourier Methods) discussion, which no one, and I mean no one including professor, showed up to, because apparently in the first week of class there are no discussions (or technicals as they call it).

Wednesday(01/07/2009):
I had my first real class on Wednesday, which was Fourier Methods. It was rather easy, and the lecture was just review of basic things that we all should already know by rote at that point. The odd thing was that the professor showed up about 10 minutes late to class and let us go at 10 to, so we had a 40 minute lecture. This seems to be a reoccurring thing throughout the University. Also, the room and class size are very different from the U of I. My largest lecture, Aspects of Irish Folklore(FL2111), is about 90 students, while my math lecture has about 35, and my physics lectures can’t have more then 12. All the lecture rooms are incredibly tiny compared to what I’m used to as well. Most are smaller then the size of a typical discussion room in Loomis Lab. So the FL2111 lecture is probably going to be moved to a bigger room. Going to Celtic Civilizations and then setting up my bank account with the Bank of Ireland took the rest of my afternoon. I ate dinner and then went out with some of the other international students who live in South Mall Court to the Welcoming Party for us. We went late, so when we got to the pub where the party was at we met another group of students leaving because they said there was no room in it for any more people. We went to another nearby pub, Bru, where we just talked. I met some German students there, so it was nice to have an opportunity to improve my conversational German a bit.

Thursday and Friday (01/08 - 09/2009):
Thursday was uneventful enough. I just went to class, and bought a lamp and bath mat for the bathroom. Friday started off the same. I just went to class and then got some money from the bank for groceries. After dinner Shawn, Margherita, Claudio, Giorgio, Giovanni, Laura, their other friend Andrea, and some of their German friends went out to Liquid Lounge (a local bar/club) for the International Students Society welcoming party and for Claudio’s birthday. It was very fun. The club was very clean, and had clean bathrooms to boot. The music was also much better then places like Joe’s back in Champaign, as the music was legitimately dance music, not just all rap. However, the music was also incredibly loud. When Shawn and I left, our ears were ringing for quite some time. It was a great time though, and it was fun because everyone was dancing.
Saturday and Sunday (01/10 - 11/2009):

On Saturday I got up around 9:30 and went to the English Market and got chicken, bread, clementines and some other really great fresh food for pretty cheap. I also went on a Heritage Walk of Cork with the Iona society which was great!  I got lots of great pictures and also got to know a lot more about the historical aspects of certain parts of Cork.  Shawn and I were going to try and walk to Blarney Castle, but when we decided to go around 1 we realized it would be pretty dark by the time we would be getting back. We just kinda hung out around the apartment and did work, cooked, cleaned and listened to music for most of the day. So far today, Sunday, we slept in, realized it was raining and so our 2nd attempt to go to Blarney Castle was thwarted. So now I’m about to do wash, do some math review, look at my physics homework, go to Mass and then just hang out and update things in these last two blogs that I forgot the first time around.

Getting There and Arriving.

Ok, so everything has been going pretty well on a whole.  The flight from Willard to O'Hare went fine, and the security at O'Hare was kinda hectic, but not horrible.  The flight with Aer Lingus from Chicago to Dublin and then to Shannon went well, except I didn't sleep, which actually turned out to be for the better later on.  My seat was comfy enough, but with my backpack under the seat in front of me, there was no comfy way to arrange my long-legged self so that I could sleep.  The person asleep in front of me was reclining, which did not help matters.  It still was quite beautiful to see the sunrise above the clouds from 35,000 feet.  The food on the flight was fine.  For dinner I had the beef lasagna, which was pretty tasty.  All the seats had monitor displays in the back of them, and each seat came with a disposable packaged set of headphones.  You could scroll through the on screen menu with either the detachable remote found in your armrest of by using the touch screen monitor.  You could listen to music from a respectably large library, watch TV episodes, movies, play some basic video games, and check the flight map/world clock.  These monitors were hooked to computers that were running Linux.  I only found this out because mine either crashed or I accidentally touched the restart button with my heel in mid-flight, and as my computer reloaded it became very clear what OS it was running.  As we were landing in Dublin it was kinda of odd.  Descending from the air the surrounding area looked very much like Champaign.  If it weren't for the fact that I noticed a round-about and that there were seemingly very few cars on the road for it being 8a.m. I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.  I didn't get off the plane when we landed in Shannon, but I did get up and walk around just to stretch and get some blood flow in my legs.  The bus ride to Cork was very scenic for the part that I was awake for.  I would slip in and out of sleep as our bus driver was driving the 80 foot bus down the small Irish roads like you would expect someone to be driving a mini-cooper or something.  I guess it's a good thing I slept.  It was quite easy to find South Mall Court after I got into Cork, and I soon was let in and had to wait for the landlord to show up with my key.  About the time she got there to explain to me that she had left them in my room and my roommate had locked them in there when he left to go out for the day, he returned.  My roommate, Shawn, is from PA and is a literature major, and a quite polite and agreeable sort of man with what I would consider an excellent taste in music.  I moved in and was quite happy to find that the closet had a blanket, two pillows and many hangers in it already.  Unfortunately for him, Shawn's luggage had gotten lost in France, and so did not arrive till the next day.  We spent most of Saturday exploring Cork and UCC.  The city is large to my standards and while there are no tall buildings, there are enough shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs packed into the streets to make up for it.  It was a bit of a shock to discover how expensive everything was.  It basically seemed like if one took the price of an object in the US and switched the $ to a Euro sign.  I was also rather surprised at the number of people who smoke.  It seems that at least 1 in 10 people have a cigarette at all times.  For dinner on Saturday Shawn and I walked around until we found a pub that seemed to have decent food, where I again got beef lasagna.  It was pricy, but very filling.  I had a pint of Murphy's Irish Stout with dinner and it was very good.  It tasted very similar to American Guinness.  I was still very exhausted after dinner, as I hadn't had any real sleep yet, so I went to bed at 10:00, and didn't wake up till 10:00 Sunday morning.  I woke up feeling completely normal, and totally over jet lag.  I at a protein bar I had left in my luggage and walked over to St. Peter & Paul's Church for Mass.  It was the only one I knew of, and the first one to come up in a google search.  The church itself was tucked away amongst modern buildings, but the front of the church was still very beautiful.  The inside had incredible ornate medieval architecture that was unmistakably Irish.  There was also plenty of very beautiful stained glass windows that let light come streaming in, and in earlier days when there weren't buildings blocking the sun's path, I'm sure there would have been no need for artificial lighting inside during the day.  It was also very cold.  I didn't take my gloves off all Mass except for Communion.  All of Mass wasn't that long however, as the Irish apparently see no need to breath during Mass and would prefer to go through the whole thing in one muttering breath.  Odd.  After Mass I went out exploring the city a bit more and decided to make my way to UCC to check it out.  It took me quite some time to actually get there though, as I kept asking locals on the way for directions to UCC, and they all told me rather different directions.  That was fine with me however, as I thus passed Cork's brewery, where they brew Beamish and Murphy's Stout, and St. Fin Barre's Cathedral (which gave me some serious cathedral envy...lucky Anglicans...).  After all that walking and such, I decided to rest my feet a little bit at one of the nearby pubs, An Bodhran, which had looked interesting earlier.  Upon entering I realized that I was the only one in the pub besides the bartender and his friend.  I said that I guess it was a little early, but I'd like a Guinness, and the bartender told me "Oh, tis never too early for a Guinness, neeever to early" and poured himself one to drink with me as well.  We talked and he introduced himself as Seamus, and told me that he was leaving for India soon, so I thought of JoJo and her trip to India.  So after my time in the pub, I was able to make the informed decision that Guinness in Ireland is better than Guinness in America.  It is sweeter and stronger.  Murphy's Irish Stout tastes much more like american Guinness, so it is still a very good deal.  Later on that night Shawn and I went to get groceries for the week at the local supermarket, Tesco.  I mostly just got stuff that had high protein in it so I wouldn't go hungry this week.  At the checkout they made you pay for you bag if you took one, and you bagged your groceries yourself.  I thought this was really cool, because it gives people a greater incentive to reuse their old bags, and thus decreases the amount of plastic that is thrown out.  The bags are pretty big, heavy duty plastic ones though, not like the flimsy ones back in Champaign.  When we got back we were soon greeted by one of our other flatmates that we had yet to meet; Giovanni.  He's an italian studying political science at UCC, and very amiable.   He had gotten back so late because due to delays his flight from Italy to Dublin got him in too late to catch the last bus, and so he slept outside the bus station to catch the 6 am bus to Cork.  We met our final flatmate, Giovanni's roommate, Georgo.  After getting everything set up for registration in the morning, I went to bed after making myself a quick dinner.

Pictures can be viewed either on facebook or at: http://picasaweb.google.com/mfeickert