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