Day 1

After waking up at 8am, I tried out my shower and new hair dryer. I went to the kitchen for breakfast and Cecilia had gotten up early and set the table for us but didn’t know what I would want to eat, so cute! We chatted about what we expected from the orientation over my bowl of cereal and her breakfast. Elodie and Cecilia made sure to tell me that they were counting on me to explain things to them later if people started speaking too fast at the orientation. Our orientation started at 10am in the Quinn building. It is a very nice building with lots of windows and open areas. Once we got there though we saw that the US Study Abroad students were in a different room from everyone else, ahhh! So I said good luck to my roomies and went into my room. It was very interesting how it was set up. It was stadium seating and the seats were connected to the desks behind them so if you were sitting in the middle the only way to get out was to have everyone on one side get up and out of the row!

We were introduced to 6 or 7 different people from the University and each gave us their little speech. We got a crash course in computer setup, campus safety, schedules, etc. My favorite was Dorothy because she is in charge of our trips! We got a list of events she would be taking us to, starting with the Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour of Dublin tomorrow! I also finally met Nuala, the lady I have been emailing for months with silly questions. I apologized for all the emails but told her I was very impressed with how prompt she was!

After the orientation they had some sandwiches for us. I ate it because it was free but it has cole slaw on it, yuck. The water and Cadbury milk chocolate bar was good though! Then we had a campus walkabout (tour, haha!). After that I had quite a list of things to do from the orientation so we got to work on the list. I got my student ID card, had my computer wired for the Quinn network, bought a cable to connect my computer, and got money from the ATM (didn’t have time to open my bank account yet). Along the way I met a bunch of other students and they were all very nice, I am sure I will see them around.

Then it was phone time! Miranda, Ally, Jackie, and I took the bus to Blackrock and got new plans. The first store we went to had a jerky guy so we left and went to a place around the corner. That guy was very nice so we decided to buy our things there. I got a new pay as you go phone and topped it off with 20 Euro. As long as I top off 20 Euro each month I get free texting to Irish numbers, which is really nice. While we were waiting for the bus to come back to campus Ally and I got fries at McDonalds. We couldn’t resist!

Once back on campus we got changed and headed out to the City Centre for dinner and our first night out on the town!