Welcome to Limerick...

To start off, I'll describe my room for the semester..

It is orange. If you follow me on facebook you already know this, but if you know me at all, you know why I keep bringing it up. I hate the color orange, oranges, orange juice, orange flavors, basically anything orange. I show up to my room and the walls are orange, the carpet is gross, and an awful shade of orange, and the duvet they provided is... you guessed it, orange as well! I hate to be so negative, but the room is going to be my home for the next four months and I already cant stand to be in it. I signed up for a double bed, and got a twin. Keep in mind I have been used to a twin XL my last 5 semestes of college, and believe it or not, a twin is a lot smaller than a twin XL even tho I am 5ft tall, I noticed the difference. Maybe because the duvet doesnt cover the whole thing or because I had to share with shasta, but either way it felt ridiculously tiny.  (I am definitely going to add some 'taylor' to my space to make it a little bit more enjoyable :]

When I got into my apartment It felt like I was in Alaska. Granted they did not have anyone living in the village for an entire month. So I politely asked for them to turn the heat on. They said it automatically would come on at 17:00 (5pm). I smiled and said thank you until I realized it was only 15:00 (3pm). So shast and I bundled up in jackets, tube/fuzzy socks, sweat pants, leggings, gloves, sweatshirts, and layers of shirts to keep warm. By the time the room finally heated up, the radiator type heater in the room turned off. So shasta and I were wide awake and freezing again at 3am. Luckily CSI was on the 12" tv screen in the living room. 

Then I heard my computer receiving a skype call, it was grandma, totally shocked I was up at 3:30 in the morning. Kevin, Grandpa and Morgan came in to say hi on the screen as well, but mainly they wanted to rub it in my face that grandpa was making his ribs... Thanks guys! 

By this time all the birds in Ireland posted up outside my window and started to chirp and sing and fight with one another, I have no idea how but, somehow we fell asleep around 5am. neither of us set our alarms of course. We woke up at 11am and booked it to nearest bank (one in the student center on campus, yes!) before they closed for lunch from noon to 13:30 (1:30pm).

We made it on time only to find out that the exchange rate in Ireland is worse then back home (opposite of what Wells Fargo at home told us it would be- go figure, right?) But we needed to exchange our Dollars to Euros. 

Sounds simple right? Wrong... In Ireland they do not take $100 bills. So we are stuck with hundreds of dollars in American dollars that we can not put back into a bank or atm machine or anything to transfer into about 68euro. 

Neither of us were in any type of mood after that so we met a girl named Katy from Dc that will be attending UL also, and had lunch inthe student center. It wasnt too bad, but I did learn that there is no such thing as Ranch dressing in Ireland, awesome.  I got a pretty good laugh after I looked in the corner of the pub/bar/food place we were in (they are all seemingly bars that offer sandwiches or something, there is so much alcohol here!) anyways- in the corner, there was a dispenser that you can pay like 25 cents into and get candy at home, except in ireland it spits out a mini package of pringles. I am serious. it spins and everything like the ones you see with peanut M&ms, m&ms, mike n ikes and that kind of stuff, but it was like 5 different flavors of pringles. Then next to that was a machine for cigarettes. Welcome to Ireland.

Katy, Shasta and I hopped on the city bus for 1.50E to go to the regular bus station in "stab city" (Limerick's nickname- comforting, right?) ...Shasta and I didnt believe the bank lady on campus so we went to find out for ourselves in the Bank of Ireland if they really did not accept/convert $100 bills. They did, and so we got the problem figured out.

Once we got to the Bus Eirann station, we purchased tickets and headed to Dublin, originally to go to the zoo. Although the itenerary said it would take about 2 hours to get there, they forgot to mention all the stops in between making it last 3 hours and 40 minutes long. It was dark and the zoo was closed by the time we got to Dublin. Katy purchased a round trip ticket this morning and basically got off the bus, got a quick bite to eat in the station and got right back on the last bus back to Limerick. She had bad luck.

Shast and I walked around a lot and ended up finding a great bed and breakfast here. We are going to go to some castles in the area tomorrow, hit up the zoo and be back in Limerick before nightfall (17:00...aka 5pm) ((by the way, I am getting way better at my adding and subtracting between converting the Ireland time to normal time then back to cali time and nc time as well!)). 

I think we are going to get off the computers and go to sleep so we get up on time tomorrow to get everything done like we want it to (for once!). I am also really frustrated with the Irish keyboards. The space for a 'y' is actually a 'z', the @ symbol is where our quote signs are and the "s are where our @ sign is at home. The left shift key is actually the size of a normal letter key, so I keep hitting the \ instead of the shift key, or I hit caps lock.... so if I have typed something with a \ before it, just ignore it. Sorry!

This will take a lot of getting used to!

Shasta decided she does not like leaving the country, she hates being away from home and realized Ireland isn't like the movie Ps. I Love You, go figure. She might be coming home a few days early :[ Hopefully the castles tomorrow will convince her otherwise... I don't want my best friend to leave me so soon yet! (I am pretty sure her experience with the United check in lady stealing her money before leaving San Fran really set the mood for her trip experience before she even left :/ )

Miss you all 

<3 

Tay

PS pictures are coming soooooon! I havent had good internet yet to upload them, and when I do get good WiFi (like right now) I am in a bed and breakfast without my personal laptop. I will post what \i have soon, Shasta made an album on facebook already that you might get to check out!

Night (my computer says 00:15...how funny!)

PSS we have yet to hear someone say "top of the mornin' to ye" or see a leprechaun or any red heads for that matter. Gerard Butler is obviously hiding from us too!