Galway! I'm here! I've been here for more than two weeks at this point, and it simultaneously feels like I haven't been here any length of time at all, and like I've been here forever and a day.
Practicalities to know:
- In Ireland the hot water for showers works through what's called an 'immersion'. Basically you need to turn the immersion on 15-30 minutes before you shower and turn it off again after you're done, to conserve energy. I was also repeatedly told that showers here are typically shorter, only like 5-10 minutes, but that's about what I average anyway, so I didn't consider that a big change.
- Grocery shopping! If you want really cheap food, Lidl and Aldi are both owned by some company which is like, industrially cheap. Dunnes and Tesco are both also pretty cheap, and I've been doing most of my shopping there because while I find it odd that pink lady apples are a brand name, I still crave them. The packaging on the fruit is kind of weird? Berries come in like a little plastic bowl with a plastic seal you peal off (think boba but like a flat rectangle and no smoothie or boba, just berries), and it's so hard to find apples not in a bag. How am I supposed to save the environment when everything is overpackaged??? (Hint: maybe I should make it to the farmer's market someday).
- I've been a dark chocolate person for the past 7 years or so, and I was a little worried about how big Dairy Milk is here. Except now I can't stop eating the Cadbury's Oreo bars, so I really can't say the situation resolved itself (they do sell dark chocolate here, there's just a little less selection), but I ended up happy anyway.
- Bedding: I'm a big fan of the difference here. The program I'm studying through, Arcadia, they bought us a comforter and pillow already, so we had to get our own comforter case, pillow case, and fitted bed sheet. Which is how the sets come anyway. You can get a loose sheet, but it's not in the big set, which personally I'm a fan of. I did buy a throw though because the comforter I got is a little small, and also the beds here are twin instead of twin extra long.
- Laundry is pretty awful though. This is largely because the student housing I'm in has absolutely exorbitant pricing. It costs 6 Euro to wash and dry a load. I'm really glad my roommate and I decided to buy our own detergent, because it cuts down on the pricing a little bit. It's still a bit ridiculous but part of that could be that Mudd has spoiled me with their pricing.
- Clothing here is a little bit fancier, I will be honest. But it's also not that big a deal? Like, sure there are people dressed better than me, but there are also other people around wearing jeans and hoodies. Today I followed a girl to class who was wearing a tardis backpack. I don't think I've seen anyone wearing like, sweatpants, but my advice would be (if this is something you're worried about) to just dress how you're comfortable. I mean, that would be my advice anyway, but while some people will be wearing really fancy clothing it's not going to be everyone. Penneys has cheap 'fashionable' clothing if you get to your study abroad experience (and it's somewhere where Penneys exists) and panic about your lack of fancy clothing.
- Ordering things from Amazon is... well, I've only done it once at this point and I ended up setting up an amazon.co.uk account. That's because there are weird restrictions on purchasing some items through the US. Video games in my case (I just wanted the next Professor Layton game!!!!). But even though one of the games I tried to buy was technically from the UK I had to go through the UK site for it to be able to be shipped without weirdness happening.
- Water fountains are not a thing. I have found one building which might have a water fountain, but since I've never tried to turn it on, it could just be an odd art installation. Even sometimes when I've asked at like, Subway, if they could fill up my water bottle they said no. Is everyone here dehydrated? I'm really not sure at this point.
- For purchases I've just been using my American debit card, which does have a chip but I still have to sign my receipt every time, so self-checkout isn't really by myself. But also my experience has been that I just get a 1% charge on everything for international processing, and if I use the ATM there's a little bit of an extra fee as well. It's not a bad system.
- I haven't gotten an Irish phone/phone number but people keep giving me their phone numbers whereupon I sigh heavily and then debate what to do with my life.
- You don't actually need a visa if you're a student studying abroad in Ireland for the semester, but you do have to register with the Garda, or GNIB. They're the Irish police system (their name translates to Guardians of the Peace), and NUIG is small enough that they have assigned us all times in which to do this. I'll let y'all know once I've actually gone (my appointment is later this week), because that's a pretty important detail.
I can't think of what other practicalities I can give advice on, though if you have any questions about anything in particular, feel free to comment! I'm going to move on to talking about some of my adventures though.
It's probably bad that I can't remember what I did the first weekend I was in Galway, and means I really should be blogging more consistently, but it's highly possible that I just watched Brooklyn Nine Nine (If you didn't know: Netflix selections are different in different countries) so we're going to move on. The first week of classes was pretty fun, if a little confusing. Most of the first classes were just handing out of syllabi and going over them, so that was a nice comforting detail. I also did end up finding a math class I want to take (oops), so am in the process of trying to get that approved on this end because it's not in the visiting student course currently.
Wednesday night I decided to "go out" with my Irish house mates, who are really very lovely. I went to a birthday party with one of them and it was just a bunch of people standing in a room socialising, so that was about what you would expect in America as well. Probably. Not sure I've actually been to a Birthday/House Party before. But then we tried to go clubbing, except the queueing was just awful, so actually we just stood outside for 90 minutes before realising that it was getting late before we'd even made it in, and that maybe we should give up. The thing to do here is go to Supermac's after a night out, so we did still do that, and I actually feel pretty satisfied in my experience anyway.
On Friday night was an Arcadia event called Fairies and Folklore where they bought us dinner and we listened to a local storyteller tell stories. Honestly it just made me sad that I hadn't stayed up all night to try and register for the literature class I wanted (it was much more competitive than I expected) because I started analysing all the stories for narrative cohesion as well as gender politics. So, you know, typical me. But then the next day we went to the Aran Islands (Inis Mor, in particular), which was just grand. Honestly, everything was just stunningly beautiful so I wandered off alone (and almost missed the ferry back) and just walked through the countryside. I'll include a few photos because I think they'll speak more prolifically than I can.
Isn't that all just gorgeous???? Except I possibly went to the Fairies/Folklore event with wet hair, and so walking around Inis Mor in the cold for four hours (even if it wasn't raining) was not my brightest idea. Suffice it to say that I got sick. For an entire week. I doubt y'all need a blow by blow of that experience, so just imagine me coughing and blowing my nose a lot, if you really must.
This past weekend I had a homestay experience in Cork. I didn't find it exceptionally different from Galway, but I also haven't spent a whole lot of time out and about in either (whether due to illness or time limitations). If you do find yourself in Cork, I thought wandering around the English Market and related areas was fun, and I ended up rooming with a girl who's studying abroad in Burren right now, so now I have somewhere to stay when I end up going there.
Overall everything is a whirlwind of technicalities so far (am I supposed to be taking out my own trash? How frequently should I be grocery shopping? Where's the student health center? How much is a reasonable chocolate budget?), but it's also a lot of fun. There are so many people to meet and places to see that it can be overwhelming, but also astounding to think about how many experiences there are in the world.
Did you decide on a chocolate budget??? ;)
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