First Friday

Hello all!

On to my super adventurous Friday! In fact, all the days of the week are sort of meshing together right now as all I'm doing is checking my e-mails, sending e-mails to potential landlords, organizing school stuff and trying to figure out what's going on with my luggage! I AM running low on the ever-so essential socks though and my feet are hating me for it!

The three of us got up early to make it in to school for a FREE international student breakfast! Never thought I'd see the day where I would actually get up early, get dressed and go out in the cold in order to get free food! It was a good networking opportunity, however, and I got to meet a number of the other exchange students. Despite 50% of them being from the US, there are also students from France, Germany, Thailand, Sweden,  Moldova and Russia. We even got "maple syrup" with our pancakes... Ah how I should have brought a little can of it from Canada to show the Irish what REAL maple syrup is like.

Natasha from Moldova and Samuel from Qc City!

After breakfast, the school had organized a guided bus tour of the city, which took us all around the most historic sites for 2 hours and provided ample opportunity for beautiful pictures (we sat on the top floor of the double decker of course). The driver was quite witty and somehow managed to provide us with a guided tour and not flip the bus or run over any pedestrians, which I consider to be quite an accomplishment. As might be expected, the smell of the Guiness Factory hit us some time before we actually caught our first glimpse of it! Fun fact: the psychiatric ward was built just down the street and this is where those who had mental and physical ailments, namely alcoholism, were sent there to be taken care of. Imagine trying to overcome a drinking problem with the smell of malt in the air 24/7?

In any case, following Irish custom, we went out for drinks at 5pm on our first Friday night in Dublin... and the bars were already packed! ;) Judith and I later met up with our personal tour guide, Alex, who brought us to JJs pub where we were the only 2 girls among a crowd of much older Irish men! I am happy to report that we started with a shot of Jameson, per Alex's request and continued into the night with smooth and tasty draft Smithwicks. All in all, a fairly successful first Friday night in Dublin I think! And my liver is not hating me too much... yet!

More news to come shortly regarding our trip to Irish farmland!

Cheers!