If Ireland were a person...

...they'd be bipolar. There are days here, when it is beautiful. You wake up, the sun is shining, big white clouds are floating across the sky. You walk outside and realize it's about 50 degrees with a light breeze and you go back inside and put your jacket on your bed, and walk to class in your zip up hoodie. Then, you walk out of class, and it is about 30 degrees and raining. Ireland is one big weather mess. It is totally bipolar. It's beautiful one minute, and then completely horrible the next. It changes within minutes. I will go back to my room after class, eat lunch and then go back to campus and it's wet. I never know when it rains. It's just randomly wet at times. I honestly don't know how you could ever have a career as a weather man in this country. You'd be wrong constantly. You couldn't just say, 'Okay, tomorrow, brisk and cool in the morning, sunny, then warming up in the afternoon with some spotty clouds moving through, and then cooling down again for the evening, maybe a shower passing through late, but chance of precipitation is only at 30%.' Here it'd be something like, 'Okay, this morning at 8:01, fog, hail, wind, then later at 8:02, we're gonna see some sun rolling in, at 8:03 possibility of a hurricane, somewhere around 80 degrees, bring the umbrella just in case, etc.' You can't predict it. I don't know who the newspaper is trying to kid. I see it everyday, on the last page, like they are trying to hide it. Weather: a rain/sun symbol over every city and region in Ireland. Haha, it's ridiculous. Today, Ireland was in a bad mood. Unlike yesterday, where it was sunny and nice for most of the day, today it was cold and rainy the entire day. And when it is rainy here, the country just really stinks. It's damp and cold, you end up soaked no matter what. Ireland needs to get some Prozac or Zoloft or something. This weather is driving me insane. I'm envious of everyone back home right now. I want snow! My God how I want snow. You don't realize how awesome snow is until you come here. I can't remember how many times I've said 'Ugh, I wish it was snowing' in the past 3 weeks I've been here. It's so cold that you'd think, 'oh this should be snow' but it isn't. It's just miserable.

So today, I slept in. I woke up at around noon, debated on taking a shower, decided not to, and then went to the international office to get my GNIB card scanned. That's my Irish citizenship card. Then after that I went straight to the gym for the first time, and ran for about half and hour to 45 minutes on the indoor suspended track. It was good. I figure, if I'm gonna be drinking beer, I should be combating that with exercise. I worked out all the time back at home, but it's a pain here. The gym is a 25 minute walk. That's a workout in itself.

So after the gym I just came back and made myself some lunch. Lounged around, played on the computer, whatever. I didn't have class today, it was gross out, I just chilled. Some time during the mid-afternoon Pierre stopped by and told me that he had heard I was having computer troubles. He told me he was a geek and he wanted to see if he could fix my problem or at least get all my files off my hard drive. So I went over there for about 2 hours and he tried to boot my computer from a flash drive, but it wasn't working. So tomorrow we are going to go and buy an external hard drive adaptor, so he can take out my hard drive and put it into his computer, and then scan it from there. He has a main hard drive and a secondary one, so it's easy for him. We couldn't do that today though, because my hard drive doesn't have the right connector slots on it, so we have to get an adaptor. It's like 10€ for that. Pierre helped me out tremendously though. It was really nice of him to do that for me. And he also let me dump my pictures from Galway and the Cliffs of Moher onto his laptop. So I created 2 folders for both days of my journey last weekend, and dumped my photos into both folders. Then I just drug those folders onto my flash drive. So once I get my new computer, and I'm able to touch up my photos and what not, I can put them online. Until then though, I'm just going to store them on a flash drive or on this temporary computer. My Mom told me today that I may not being seeing my new one until 2 or 3 weeks away. I go to London in two weekends, so it'd be ideal to have it by then. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Today I also received a card from my Grandma and Grandpa Fiorentino! That was exciting! It said that they missed me and were thinking of me. I was so happy when I read that! It's been great,the last two days I've heard from a number of my family members! That makes me happy. Especially because I've been so pissed about my computer troubles.

Tonight after trying to fix my computer, Jeremie and I set out in search of some food. At first we decided we were going to call this Chinese place and order from there. However, we quickly learned that Jeremie had only 20 seconds remaining on his phone, I have an American phone, and we didn't know how to use the in house phone. It just makes this dumb disconnected sound. We have to read the manual that we have. We stood there for 10 minutes just hitting buttons. So then, we decided Chinese was out of the equation. So, we tried to go to another Chinese place just up the road next to the Spar. So we went down the road and instead decided to hop into Spar to see if they had anything before we spent 12€ on Chinese. So, we went into Spar and saw Andrea there. She goes to Slippery Rock. She is the one that told us there is a manual for the phone, so that was good lookin out on her part. Jeremie and I looked around Spar for a little, and then I decided, BREAKFAST! We are going to have breakfast for dinner. I mean, who doesn't love that. We all do it. When we ran out of food, or we are too lazy to think of something else, just make breakfast. So I asked Jeremie if he wanted breakfast. He seemed confused. I asked him if he ever ate breakfast for dinner before. He said no! In France, they never eat breakfast for dinner. So I was like, holy crap, Jeremie has never had breakfast for dinner, this has to be good. So I just bought some rashers(Oh yea, two packages for 2€, still tons left over just for me) some sausage and some ketchup. We had eggs and bread. So we went back and I made dinner for us. We had pile of rashers, sausage links, scrambled eggs, toast and OJ. It was great! I was actually impressed with my skills tonight. Haha. I made Jeremie's meal first. During the first meal, I was able to use two skillets. We have two, but one of them is kinda dead. Nelson burned something last week and the pan is just deteriorating. Black flakes all inside the pan when it gets too hot, but it was fine for one cooking. So, I threw two rashers and 3 sausage links in that pan first. I cooked those almost to entirety, and then I cracked my eggs. I wanted to make dippy eggs. So Jeremie put down his toast, and I tried to make my first dippy egg. I cracked it perfectly, I had it frying, but when I flipped it, I broke the yolk! So I just turned it into scrambled eggs, and then just added two more and made a bunch. So Jeremie was set. However, I quickly realized that our kitchen room was filled with smoke. Pretty thick. It was extremely hazy. I had to open both our windows to let it all out. I guess I didn't realize how much the burner was killing our already half dead skillet. So, I decided not to use that one for my meal. So, I just used the good one for the entire meal. I just threw my rashers and sausage in, cooked the rashers to completion since they finish fast. Put them on my plate, left in my sausage, put my toast down, cracked my eggs into the skillet, tried to avoid hitting the sausage, grabbed my toast, and then put everything on my plate. Then I added a ton of ketchup. Generic, not Heinz(Heinz costs like a euro more, so screw that). It was pretty good. Definitely filling. I'm just glad Jeremie liked it. I'm also glad that I am finally learning my way around the kitchen, and I'm also pretty glad that I have yet to get salmonella, or food poisoning from any of my meals.

Tonight I stayed in and talked to Emily online. I'm excited for her to visit in May! Ahhh, can't wait! I didn't feel like going out to the pub. Just wasn't in the mood. Plus it gets expensive to drink all the time. It's far from America in terms of great deals on beer. I can go somewhere and get Miller, Coors, or Yuengling on tap for a dollar depending on the night. Here, everything is 3.50€ and above. And that's for their domestics, like Guinness, Beamish and Smithwicks. It sucks.Also, I was never really a big beer person. I like rum. So rum and coke's were my drink of choice back home. I could go out to Santino's in Berks and get a rum and coke for somewhere around $2.90ish. And they poured the rum on hard. So you only had to drink 2 or 3 to be set. Here, rum and coke's are about 5€. Which translates to about $7. Seven bucks for a jack and coke? That's absurd. I refuse to pay it. The same with shots. You can't get a shot here without paying upwards of 4€. In the states a shark bite or a buttery nipple costs about $3. It'd be close to $6 here. That's ridiculous. Getting a shot over here isn't even worth it anyway. They don't know any of the shots we know in America. It's a completely different drinking culture. They didn't know what a Washington Apple was, they didn't know what a 4 Horseman was, they didn't know what Shark Bite was. Nothing. A Buttery Nipple is actually called a Butter Balls over here. I learned that last week. However, I don't think I'll be drinking too many more of those.

Now I'm just getting ready for bed. Thank God I have a working computer at my fingertips. Even in a different country, it's boring without one. It's not like I can go travel in between classes. It's harder than you think. During the week you just can't afford to leave and go somewhere. So you need something to keep you preoccupied in the middle of the afternoon when there is nothing to do between classes. Also, I now get to watch Seinfeld before bed again. So that's definitely a plus!

Oh, also. Tonight I booked my flights to Denmark for Spring break!!! Yes! Finally! After years of telling Pernille 'I'm coming to Denmark one of these days,' I'm actually doing it. I cannot wait! I wanted to study abroad there so bad, but it was too expensive. But now I get to spend a little over a week in Copenhagen with Pernille and her friends! I'm so excited. I got a pretty good deal on the flights too. It's impossible to find flights from Ireland to Denmark and vice versa. So, I found a flight on Wednesday, March 24th at 11am to Copenhagen. I'm just going to skip Wed. and Thursday classes. They are only lectures so I'll just get the notes from people. It was either leave Wednesday and pay 30€ for a ticket, or leave Friday and pay 107€. So I'll be leaving on Wednesday and staying until Saturday, April 3rd. My return flight cost 80€ from Copenhagen straight to Dublin. However, this is a really good deal. Every round trip flight I found was somewhre around 170€. I found one site that said 88€ for the round trip, but when I looked into it the deal wasn't that sweet. You'd fly to Copenhagen for 30€, which I am already doing. Then returning you'd fly for 30€ to London, have a layover, and then fly London to Dublin for 20€. However, after taxes, the two returning flights didn't average out to 50€, they combined for 70€ after taxes. So I figured, for 10€ more I can just go straight to Dublin and not have to worry about layovers. Also, the flight out of London didn't return to Dublin until around 10pm. Then I worried about getting a bus back to Limerick at that time at night, and realized buses would probably be done running. So, I'd have to stay in a hostel, which would be abut 20€. So that'd be an extra expense. The 80€ flight gets me to Dublin by 10am, so I have all day to catch the bus back to the University.

Schedule coming up...

Feb. 12-14: Dublin?
Feb. 19-21: London for the weekend!
Feb. 26-28: Birthday weekend! No idea what we are doing yet?
March 7 to whenev: Sara and Christina are gonna visit me!
March 24-April 3: Denmark for Spring Break!
Month of April: TBD
May 6-18: Emily is here!

So I have a lot to look forward too! Just gotta get this computer so I can get the picture situation updated and in order!

Ok that's it for now!

PS. The Capitals will win the Stanley Cup this year. They're on fire.

Cao!