aannnnd we have arrived

So although I don't have photos to upload yet since I am on a school computer in the lab before registration, we have done a lot since i arrived.

Friday:
dropped off at our houses. the electric was off, but came back on shortly. I'm in Marie's House. (Me, Shelby, Lyndsey, Amber, Lena, Olga & Hannah). We have a peat burning fireplace which is wonderful and a very nice house in general by itself at the end of a lane with a fairy forest not too far away. We walked to the Spar (which when said out loud sounds a lot like This Bar instead of The Spar... coincidence?) and bought groceries and cooked ourselves dinner.

Saturday:
tour of Ballyvaughan, our town. then Lyndsey and I went on an adventure through the fairy forest out into fields, ran into some cows, got hailed on some more, oh, i forgot to mention the hail. and when we arrived at the airport friday morning it was snowing for about an hour. anyway we eventually found our way home by climbing over a wall into one of our semi-neighbors' back yards haha. It was really great though. we also all got adopted by a dog, Rex, who follows us around town and walks us home.

Sunday:
bus tour of the Burren. We went to Kilfenora, saw different kinds of tombs. The Portal Tomb we saw was made long before the Pyramids in egypt were created. Pretty awesome. We also went to the Cliffs of Moher, already. They were amazing. I took some short video so I'll try and get that up. My knee started to bother me. We then went to Doolin and walked along the limestone pavement, which is very different from what that sounds like. I got some pretty snail shells from in between the rocks, and pictures of the waves coming up over the cliffs. We were all pretty exhausted and drenched when we got home. The electricity went out 4 times. It sounded like a hurricane outside and i had to listen to my ipod to get to sleep.

Monday:
we got a tour of our school. the cafe is really great and has amazing food. Robert told us "Now don't go using your first aid kits on injured dags." (dogs). A famous story teller came, Eddie Lenihan, one of the greatest storytellers in Ireland, and he told us stories for about two hours. It was really amazing. I bought a book from him that is apparently out of print in both America and Ireland (woo-hoo for rare books) and it should be great. I went to the Spar again and stocked up on more food. Then tried to get to sleep early.

Eddie:

Eddie, obviously, is on the left.

Tuesday:
"settled" into our studios, although i have nothing much to put in mine. Now I'm waiting to register at 12:20. So far I've only talked to mom, dad & Brian (I'm paying Lyndsey back to use her phone) but hopefully I'll have a cell by saturday. I had thought we were supposed to have wireless in the studios, but apparently not till a few weeks from now (if that) so hopefully someone from the school has extra ethernet cables or i can find a cheap one somewhere. or i'll just use these school ones in the lab but there's only a certain number of them.




Practical information: When in Ireland, Brian told us, (Brian here, not my Brian), never ask someone "for a ride." Always ask "for a lift." a "ride" means something drastically different than a "lift" and you don't want to be misunderstood, if you take my meaning. you can figure it out.