my new sweater smells like an animal.

and so begins week three. but who's counting, really? i still feel a lot like a lost and confused american tourist, yet i could have sworn orientation was months ago. le strange. this week wasn't anything too special - just a whirlwind of classes, hunting for books in secondhand stores, and learning how to use the ginormous library. i had quite the encounter with the library security guard. he called me an imposter (and i laughed - imposter, really?) because the back of my student id wasn't signed. i told him it was the access card to my apartment too, and that it didn't have a place for me to sign. he then grilled me about what i was doing at ucd, and how long i'd be here, etc. he really was pretty aggressive for a library security man. glad he takes his job seriously though. anyway, i was shocked to find that people for real use this place. at home you can stroll into one of the libraries, search for your book, and like 95% of the time it's there. but here there are waiting lists, and reserved lists, and a whole lot of other lists that generally make it impossible for you to check out a book. kids here often don't buy books - they just take them out for like 3 days, photocopy pages/take some notes, return them, and then reserve them for later. not so much my style, but i guess i've got to get used to it. 'it's not bad, it's just different' - thanks, lindsay j.

aside from this boring nonsense, i finally booked a few trips for the semester - woot woot! hello paris, edinburgh, and copenhagen! i'd like to point out that my flight to edinburgh was like 14.99, yet taxes were 35... hmm, guess little ryanair has to make some money one way or another. but i think my sweet guidebook and i are going to be bff for a while - gotta find the good (ie, cheap) places to go. sadly, oktoberfest got nixed. apparently that thing is like 90% booked up by june. i did not get that memo. meh, maybe another time. i have friends here that are going, so at least i can live vicariously through them.

but let's please discuss this past weekend. while we were doing all the hunting/booking of our other trips, kathleen, grace and i spontaneously decided that going to galway this weekend was a good idea. our other friends martha and teddy were already planning on going, so we knew we could meet up with them and tour around the city. so we looked up the train schedule and booked a hostel. ohh the claddagh hostel. more to come about the claddagh hostel. on friday we were all packed and ready to go, but ran into a minor printing issue. a sweet first-year from galway told us that the train was a waste of money, and we should just take the gobus - it's 18 euro round trip and is non-stop dublin to galway. perfect! so we looked online, and figured it was probably best to buy it on there. we went through the whole process, thought we were a-ok, but then discovered we had to print out our tickets. small issue. we were planning to leave ucd at 3 to make the 4:15 bus, but due to our running around merville/trying to work the printers on campus, we didn't end up leaving until 3:45. oops. we got off the bus on o'connell st. at 4:13 and literally sprinted to the other bus stop, a good 8 blocks away. we show up and the bus is miraculously still there, so we wave our tickets obnoxiously at the bus driver, hoping he'd let us on. didn't happen. so we turn around and waited with the 50 other gobus hopefuls, hoping we'd catch the next one at 5. thankfully we made it on, and then were lucky to endure the coldest, most miserable 3 hour ride of our lives - literally sat there and shivered the entire time. rough. when we made it to galway, we defrosted a bit and walked over to the good ol' claddagh hostel. it smelled a lot like incense but seemed legit enough. we put our stuff in the locker and headed out for dinner. we had the greatest fish and chips ever, by the way. after that, we stopped in the king's head and heard a sweet cover band. around 12:30, we got back to the hostel and were ready to hit the hay. issue - our stuff was still locked in the locker and there was no one around to let us in. we banged on the door, pressed some buttons, turned the nob. nothing. guess we were sleeping in our clothes, awesomeee. the cherry on the sundae was sharing a room with 6 dudes since kathleen and i got split up.

the morning couldn't have come fast enough. we finally got our stuff and then headed out to tour the cliffs of moher and the burren, both about two hours away. seriously one of the coolest places i've ever been! we drove around the bay and through the burren, stopping first at the aillwee cave. it's this monster of a limestone cave that some farmer discovered. neat. after that was lunch in this little town called doolin, and then it was cliff time. like an idiot, i forgot my camera but this place was remarkable. they're the third highest cliffs in ireland, but probably the most well-known. and fun fact, they're in latest harry potter movie! COOL. it's just stunning though - there are these beautiful green pastures all around you, and a mini castle on one end, but then you look down and oh hey, there's the ocean 700 ft. below you. definitely a place i'll never forget. we moseyed on back to galway after that, sat and chatted in a park by the river, and then hit up a pub called the quays. we learned our lesson earlier and were actually able to put on our pj's and brush our teeth when we went back to the hostel.

today was just a lazy day walking around the city and getting souvenirs. i bought a comfy, wool sweater that was made in the aran islands, about 1.5 hours away. it legit smells like they sheared the sheep yesterday and made the sweater right then. heck, at least i know it's authentic. i also bought a hat at the market. it has the little ear-flappies and is quite sexy if i may say so myself. kathleen and i also bought a claddagh ring - they were originally made in galway so we thought it was very fitting to buy them while we were there, even though they're all over ireland. good little keepsake. we made it back on the gobus this evening and never have i ever been more excited for a shower in my life. dang, had to wash all of the claddagh hostel off me. in retrospect, it really was a fun little adventure there, just a new experience haha. and galway was definitely worth the spontaneous decision. highly recommended to any future ireland travelers :)