Happy Spring!

Yes that's right, today marks the first day of Spring for Ireland. I wish the weather would follow the calendar, because it's been freaking freezing here over the past few days. Of course since it's been so cold, I've taught Jeremie a new phrase..."It'z cold az ballz." What? Everyone says it in the states. I'm just teaching him US pop culture. I love that kid!

So after my very eventful weekend I had a very uneventful day.

I woke up this morning and got ready for my 9 am. Walked out my door and down the path only to realize I forgot my book bag. So I had to go back and grab that. Went to Irish studies and took 50 minutes worth of notes. Boring.

I decided grab something to eat in between classes. So, I went to this restaurant on campus called "Paddocks." It's just your typical grab a tray, stand in line, and then tell the people behind the glass what you want. I went by myself since everyone else goes to another class or goes back to their room. I'm such a lonely person, right? Haha. So I grab my tray and step up to the line. They eat some weird stuff here for breakfast. I saw toast, ok, normal. I saw huge sausage, about 3/4 the length of a hot dog. They had poached eggs but they looked ridiculous. Way too flappy. Almost looked like squid or something. Then they had some type of waffle like sticks the size of someones finger, mini waffles in triangle form, gravy with tons of mushrooms in it, and baked beans. What ever happened to a bagel? Or maybe some pancakes. I decided to order a rasher and sausage sandwich. It was on special, and literally every time I go to Spar somebody in line orders it. It's like a thing here. So this guy takes two of the huge sausage links, splits them both in half, and lays them down on a piece of white bread. Not toasted, just plain white bread. Then he took two rashers, which are basically thin Canadian bacon, and laid them on top. Then he put ketchup all over the other slice of bread. Presto, a rasher and sausage sandwich. I really didn't know what to expect. Who eats ketchup on a sandwich? Well let me tell ya, rasher and sausage sandwiches are a new Matty Werner favorite. It was so freakin good. The heat of the sausage and rashers combined with ketchup on white bread was amazing. It's such a mishmash sandwich, but it was great. Definitely going to buy some for myself so I can make them at the apartment. Oh, and also...Irish people don't eat breakfast alone. Literally everyone was with at least one other person. I was the only person sitting by myself. That's very common back in the states, people do it all the time. Not here they don't. I feel like Paul Rudd in "I Love You Man." "I need some F*#@$! friends." Nah, but I got some.

After my friggin stupendous breakfast, I sat through 50 minutes of hell. That's right, Politics and Government of the EU is going to force me to stab myself in the face with a sharp projectile. Holy crap, I've never been more bored in my entire life. I honestly think it would make watching paint dry a great adventure. Ah, where to even begin? Okay, so the lecture is in a huge lecture hall. Two enormous sections split by a set of stairs down the middle. The professor looks like a student. She's a very young, I'd say early 30's. She's pretty, but she kinda looks like a librarian or one of Hitler's female aide's. She just looks like she's a bitch. There's no other way to describe her. So she rolls into class 10 minutes late and immediately jumps on the computer at the podium, which is centered to the right of the room. The big white wall dead center now turns into a computer screen and within seconds she had the first powerpoint slide up. She starts whipping through slides, talking ridiculously fast. She's one of those professors that loves to just continue on to the next slide right away. Like staying focused on one slide for more than 30 seconds is sac religious. So I'm just speed writing, trying to get all this crap down. She doesn't explain anything. Zero. She has like 8 to 10 bullets per slide, and they are all complete sentences. She reads each sentence, then reads a line or two off NOTE CARDS she has in front of her, and then when she gets through her bullets after 3.4 seconds, she goes to the next slide. Not only that, but she speaks in an Irish monotone. It's painful. Also, there are tons of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and verbal confusion all over her slides. It looked like something made by a high school student who rushed in homeroom to get a presentation done before his first class. I almost got the sense that she was either A. On drugs, B. Hung over from her holiday that she was on last week and just didn't feel like putting any effort into it, or C. Is actually legally retarded. It's as if she didn't even know the subject matter. If you have a good professor, they know what they are talking about. Sure they use a paper with notes outlined so they can make sure they hit every topic they wanted to discuss, but then that's it. They teach you. They don't talk at you off of note cards. Unreal. Then she couldn't even give us a straight answer as to when our first tutorial was, and she just bounced immediately after class. Took like 3 questions while putting her coat on and then walked out with everyone else. I can already tell I'm gonna hate this chick.

So after my 50 minutes of torment I grabbed lunch at the Stables with Kara and Jess. I had a hot chicken roll. The same thing I always get at Spar. It was at that moment that I realized, hot chicken rolls are also an Irish thing. If I had my way, it'd be sausage and rasher sandwich for breakfast, hot chicken roll for lunch, and Irish stew for dinner. That'd be a great day of food.

Oh, today I finally bought a notebook so I can take notes and not bum paper off of the kids in my class. I still refuse to buy textbooks.

My 1 pm lecture on European Society and Governance was actually pretty cool. The teacher is this old dude who just talks. Doesn't have a powerpoint or write on the board, he just sits there and talks. A thousand times better than the Hitler chick. I think that at the end of my next class with her I'll recommend she steps into this class and watches how a real professor teaches. This dude was great. Very funny old guy, really knew his stuff. Spoke kinda fast, but repeated stuff several times when focusing on a main theme. He talked to us about the societal consequences of WWI. My notes are perfectly organized, because the way he spoke, he was perfectly organized. You could tell when to make a break in the notes. He wasn't all over the place and he never got off topic. That should be an interesting class.

After my classes were over I came back to the apartment and then tagged along with Kara, Jess and Jeremie to Spar. I just got some milk, cheese, etc. And I got custard creams, which are basically vanilla wafer cookies with custard in the middle. I've eaten nearly the entire pack already.

Tonight I decided to start cleaning up and defragging my computer because it is running so slow. It's bad enough to have slow internet, but when the entire computer is running at a snails pace it just makes me impatient. I hopped over to Jess's house to eat at like 7. Turns out they were just making french fries out of potato's that they chopped up themselves. After 20 minutes of eating several half cooked potato crisps, I came back to talk to Emily. I think we've decided that when she comes to visit we are going to visit Paris for 3 days. Fly out of Dublin Thursday afternoon when she gets here, arrive in Paris after a 2 hour plane ride. Spend Thursday, Friday, Saturday night in Paris and then return to Ireland on Sunday evening. I'm so excited! Paris with my girlfriend, how cool is that?

After talking to Emily I decided to attempt making myself dinner. I didn't just want a sandwich, so I got out my steak and potato's. It took me an hour to make 5 potato's and a piece of steak. First, the oven is separated. There's a top and bottom. I turned on the bottom oven. My steak was in the top. So after 15 minutes of wondering why my steak wasn't cooking, I realized my mistake. Then I put the potato's in a pot on the stove. Turned up the heat a little bit. The burner started pouring smoke. So I turned that off immediately. Moved it to another burner, that one did the same. Meanwhile, my steak is just chilling, not being cooked. So finally the burner isn't smoking, so I keep the potato's in the pot just sitting there on "2" heat. It goes up to 5. I turn the oven up to 5 to really get this steak burnin. Now, the stove is kinda old, so you can see through the burners down into the oven. It's electric, so the oven heats rods and that cooks your food. So I'm watching my steak cook, and it starts to crack and hiss. I have no idea what this means. So I get a spatula, plastic, and start poking at this steak. Don't worry, the steak is on a piece of tinfoil sitting on the oven rack. So, as I start to poke the steak it just starts dripping juice. Now, it's been in there for like 10 minutes, I flip it over and the under side isn't cooked at all. Soooo, I've got a cooked top and not a cooked bottom. Meanwhile, the potato's are splashin water everywhere, so I just shut off the burner. So I flip the steak over but there was so much juice on the tinfoil it just slid right off and down into the oven floor. So the oven is burning this juice like crazy. Smoke everywhere. I put the kibosh on this steak in the oven idea and resort to plan B. Turn off the oven. So I turned off the oven and let it sit for a little. I have no idea what is going on with the potato's. I pull out the steak and think maybe a new piece of tinfoil would be better? I was wrong. In the meantime, I am trying to take the previously used tinfoil with juice sitting on the top and walk it to the trash can without it leaking. I did that. No problem. But then when I turned around I knocked a glass of water all over the counter and spent 10 minutes sopping that up. Meanwhile, my steak is popping and cracking, I thought it was going to explode or something, so I just took it out of the oven. My potato's are still just sitting on 2 in a pot. So I get out a pan and stick it on a burner. I crank my potato's up to 5 and the pan up to 5. I throw the steak into the pan and just fry the other side of it. So I had a nicely grilled side, and a pan seared side. Like Hannah Montana, the best of both worlds. So the steak is done, actually looked pretty decent and my potato's were boiling, so I figured they were done. I didn't really care. Not like I wasn't just eating half raw potato's an hour ago. So, I take out my potato's, throw some spice all over my steak, crack open a Kilkenny Stoudt and sat down to eat. It was actually a pretty good meal. And the potato's were soft and hot, so it all worked out. I flipped through the channels, found some channel that plays all popular American shows, and enjoyed my meal while watching an episode of Friends and then an episode of Glee. All in all, the journey was worth it.

Now I'm sitting in my room still defragging my computer. I still need to upload the 600 pictures I took over the weekend. Eh, it'll happen.

I'd also like to briefly explain the coin collection I've got going on in my room. Ok, in Europe they use the Euro. Duh. But what a lot of people don't realize is that each country has it's own set of coins. It's sort of like the state quarters back home. Only, it's the state quarters on steroids. It would be like having a state quarter, dime, nickel and penny. Ya see, every coin looks the same on the side that shows how much the value is. So it'll say 5, 2o, etc. But on the back, the picture is different depending on the country. And not every picture is the same. Some countries have a different picture for every single coin. Some countries like Ireland for example, have the same picture on every coin. A big harp that says Eire over the top of it. Because I won't be seeing every country in Europe, I've decided to collect sets of coins from all the countries in the EU. It's harder than you think. Depending on the country, it's very hard to get another countries change. If people from Italy don't visit my part of Ireland, it may be hard for me to get Italian coins. In Galway however, because it is a tourist city, I got a ton of different coins. I've been collecting coins from any country I come across. I'm trying to collect every value coin from the nations. The Euro uses 7 coins, so I need 7 coins for a complete set of a country. For example, in my Spain collection right now, I have every coin but the 2 and 1 cent piece. For Austria, I only have the 2 dollar piece. It's pretty neat. It forces me to look at the coins every time I get change. It's a fun little game. I get excited when I get a new coin. Once I have a coin that I don't have, I keep it unless I find the same one only a little more shiny. So far I have (2) Belgium, (3) Germany, (4) Italy, (5) Spain, (3) France, (2) Greece, (1) Austria and of course all of Ireland. Jeremie also told me that they make special coins. Like the bicentennial quarters or the new Lincoln pennies they are producing. Jeremie told me they are extremely hard to find and very rare. So far I have collected two of those coins. The other day Jeremie gave me a 2 dollar Roma coin. It was made a few years back to signify the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Yesterday in Galway I got a 2 dollar Irish piece that has just been released. This year marks the 10 years anniversary of the EU, so the countries are making 10 year anniversary coins. They aren't for circulation, and you have to go to a bank to purchase them. That takes the fun out of the hunt though. Somehow, I got one in my change yesterday. I was ecstatic. I honestly love receiving change more than I love shopping for things. I'm going to be so bored once I come back to the states and see the same 4 coins over and over again.

Oh, and last before I forget, I called my regional coordinator for TFA today at like 5:30. Basically he told me that everything is fine just as long as I have a letter that says I will be graduating before my school year starts. So I am for sure teaching elementary in San Antonio now. 100%, no doubt about it. I had to laugh when he said, "If you don't mind me asking, why is it going to take so long for your grades to transfer if they are going to be in on June 14th and you did all the paperwork already." I said, "Because it's Penn State. And nothing at Penn State is ever simple." I can't wait to be done with the no response back emails, the "sorry talk to this person" responses and the money for nearly everything.


Alright, 4 classes tomorrow, so I'm going to head to bed.


Goodnight y'all