After posting about all of my travels around different countries in Europe I noticed that I have been neglecting to post about Ireland. So here goes. Things are beginning to pick up in school, in fact this Wednesday I have a final for my Early Start Musics in Ireland class I took in the month of August and half of September. The official semester began on September 21st and I am enrolled in European Framework, an elective for my political science major. I am taking the Philosophy of War and Violence, which will fulfill the ethics portion of a USD core requirement and finally plant diversity for my biology major. Normally back in San Diego I would take a few more classes although USD restricts the number of UCC classes I take to 5 which includes the early start class and the lab portion of plant diversity.
The weather in Cork has been relatively nice since I have been here. I expected it to rain heavily almost every day, but it normally only mists occasionally in the mornings and there has only been a strong downfall about three of four times so far. But for the most part the weather forecast goes like this. "The high today is going to be about 17 degrees Celsius, mostly cloudy with a chance of rain, and a slight breeze coming from the west." Needless to say the weather has not been that bad since I arrived but I do miss the sun.
Here are a couple differences from the United States that I have noticed since I have arrived in Ireland.
1. Ireland is expensive! For instance in Ireland you can not find a news paper for less than a Euro, however in Germany we couldn't find a newspaper for more than 1 Euro. Also at fast food restaurants $1 menus or 1Euro menus are unheard of. In fact fast food restaurants cans sometimes be more expensive than normal restaurants.
2. Grocery stores do not provide bags for your groceries. You are expected to bring either a backpack or some other form of bag.
3. Food does not last as long. For instance milk will only last a max of 5 days, although the meat and eggs do taste much better here. One of our rules for buying food is that we try not to spend more than 1 to 3 Euros on a single item with the exception of meat. For meat, fruit and vegetables we go to the English Market where farmers bring there items to sell and it tends to be much cheaper than at Tesco, the Irish grocery store. But they do not sell Mac and Cheese here and their Ramen tastes funky.
4. The Internet is soooooooo slow!
5. The Irish tend to have bad hygiene and some tend to smell very bad!
6. Every night is a party night in Ireland. The Irish love to go out and the pubs are packed every day but Sunday. On Sundays the Irish can be found at mass.
7. The Irish are the friendliest people. They really will go out of their way to help anyone especially us lost Americans.
8. The Irish have their own native language and it is written almost everywhere except I have yet to meet a person that can speak it fluently. Most know enough to have a short conversation and read the street signs but thats it.
That is all of the differences that I can think of now but if I remember any more I will be sure to post them.I noticed that I haven't put up any picture of Cork and my apartment so that will be my goal for my next post
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