Updates!

     Well it's been a little while since my last post and I figure I had ought to catch everyone up.

Our bus

     For starters, Galway is AMAZING. I absolutely love it. It is big enough that you know you are in a city, but at the same time it seems really friendly, cozy, and accommodating. There are loads of neat places to find, good food to eat, and things to do. I am just realizing that I haven't really posted anything about the time I've spent in Galway so I guess I will start with the first day we arrived here.

     Well we left Dublin early(ish) that morning on a charter bus. There were several groggy eyed Americans who piled on filling whatever seats weren't occupied with people with loads of stuff. We took a wonderful 3.5 hour drive across the center of the the country and got a great overview of the countryside. Pictures were difficult to snap from a moving bus, so I just gave up after a few attempts. It was absolutely beautiful. We got to see the lush green hills that are on every postcard from Ireland EVER, which was nice, along with herds of sheep, large and small kept in by stone and hedge fences.


     My favorite part was getting to see the medieval buildings in various states of decay. They dotted our trip on the way through just nestled in with the landscape, or near a farm, or just wherever like it was no big deal. Most of them were probably older than our country, with centuries of history, war, strife, and whatever else and they were just there. It seems to be a pretty common theme here in Ireland. The modern and the old, side by side illustrating, quite literally, how big of a role history and tradition play still in day to day life.

     Getting back on topic, once we finally got to Galway and made it to our apartment complex thing, we got an hour or so to unpack and rest before Paul and Dermott took us to Dunnes Store right across the road to pick up some essentials. Dunnes is sot of like a JC Penneys mixed with a Wal-Mart and scaled back a bit. We all had to get pillows, blankets, towels, food, and the like. Food was my first stop (of course) and as soon as I got to the food section, I got extremely overwhelmed. I guess buying food to live off of sort of drove home what I had gotten myself into and I panicked a little bit. A lot of the stuff seemed just familiar enough to tempt me, but I ended up running around for 15 or 20 minutes and only came out with a handful of things.

     After we all got settled there, we headed back for another couple of hours. Paul and Dermott took us all into town so those of us who didn't have a phone yet a chance to get one. This was the first time most of us had seen City Center, the main shopping portion of Galway, and that too was pretty overwhelming. There were people everywhere, shops everywhere, street performers everywhere, and just a lot of stuff. After everyone was finished there, we headed back for the evening and went to sleep.

     Over the next few days we had quite a bit going on, both as a group and independently trying to figure out the city, what classes we were going to take, and going to various orientations at the university. at some point in there, I went to take a nap at around 5:00 one evening and ended up sleeping for 16 hours.... I felt soooo much better afterwards, but it was so long. We had pretty much been doing something since we landed in Dublin, along with the jet lag which ended with a very tired Austin. 

     Well I have class in a little bit and need some food, so I will be back shortly with pictures from our walking tour of Galway and stories from the first week of class.
Cheers!