We arrived, cleared customs--the customs agent was very nice-and then went to the luggage carousel. Not gonna lie, I was getting nervous. It took a long time for my luggage to come around. I was starting to think it didn't make it, but eventually, success, there it was. Another flight with students from our program was delayed so we had about an hour to wait at the airport. Two people who are running the program (or assisting with running the program) met us after we cleared customs and took us to the bus to drop off our luagge. Then we went to get coffees and breakfast or in my case water and breakfast. We also took touristy pictures and got to know each other a little better. A little later, the delayed flight arrived and we were off to our accommodations. It was about an hour bus ride from the airport to Galway so I think we got in around 9:30 or so. I was tired as I had slept for approximately 5 minutes of the flight to Galway and I kind of wanted to sleep, but I also kind of wanted to take in the scenery. We passed some sheep, horses, and nice houses. What struck me about Ireland is how truly green everything is. You just drive some of those roads and look to the sides and it really is green as far as the eye can see--not trying to be cliche, it just is. It seems strange to say, but parts of it reminded me a little bit of Italy because we went by quite a few green spots there too. Anyway, got to the dorms (or as one of the signs said "luxury student apartments"--they're nice, but I'm not sure I'd describe them as luxorious especially as it was cold that first night and none of us could get the heat to work). Basically, there are four of us in an apartment. Two people have a private bath (lucky them) and then two of us share--which has been fine. We all have our own bedroom. There is a shared kitchen/living room area too. The bedrooms are simple, but sufficient (closet, desk, bed). It's fine for me, but I do wonder where the college studnets put all of their stuff. My college dorm room had a dresser in addition to the closet. So I unpacked a bit and then decided to nap for a while. No one from my apartment was here yet so I went to bed and slept for two hours, woke up when someone arrived, briefly met her then went back to bed. I met one of my other apartmentmates (is that the right word?) a little later in the afternoon. I finally dragged my lazy self up around 1:30 or so. I straightened up a bit-there were a couple of things I hadn't unpacked--read a little, etc. At 3:30 I met everyone from the dorms in the lobby area and our program hostess lead us to campus for our welcome meeting. The staff welcomed us and told us just a little bit about the program, then they took us to the campus bar (yes, there really is a bar on campus, we did NOT have that where I went to college or grad school--only saw that when I did a semester in Canada), where we had complimentary snacks and complimentary drinks. I had Orchard Thieves Cider (no beer for this girl), which was good. After that, two other girls who I've gotten to know a bit these first few days (I'm writing this on my third day here even though it's about day 1, oops) and I wandered around town a bit, stopped at a pub called Monroe's for dinner, where we had fish and chips--yummy. Met a couple of locals who were very nice and offered suggestions on parts of town to visit. We peeked into a couple of shops--I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of you that I purchased a purple t-shirt. Then we tried to make our way back to campus and got a bit lost so we finally just took a taxi back. And then it was time to crash. Unfortunately, I woke up after two hours and took over an hour to fall back to sleep. Jet lag? Who knows! And it was freezing, but unfortunately you need to be an engineer or an electrician to work the heater so I just put on a sweatshirt and tried to go back to sleep. Aside from that though, it was a good first day.
Airport (above). Galway and the apartments (below)
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