Tag Archives: Grocery Store

“You have to go to the pub, it’s like our community center.” –Orientation

This first week has been incredibly hectic. 

The flight was fine.  No crying babies.  Watched Easy A and tried to sleep (but failed quite miserably).  I’m almost positive a little over half of the plane was going to U of L (about 65 people?) which made getting past customs and finding our shuttle quite simple.

I arrived at U of L around 10AM.  Once dropped off at reception in my village (I’m living in Kimurry village), we had to fend for ourselves.  We weren’t given any directions on where to get food or what to do.  I was not used to this type of survival at all.  I was in a strange place with no direction.   After getting lost a few times, I found a grocery store and picked up very few items.  This is where I learned that you are supposed to bring your own grocery bags to the store.  I guess Ireland is green in more than one way.

It was then time to sleep.  And sleep.  And sleep.

The rest of the week was a lot of figuring out where everything is, orientations, pub hopping, and figuring out my class schedule.  I start my first day of classes tomorrow at 9AM.  We’ll see if I like it.  The cool thing is that we (international students) have two weeks to test out any classes we are interested in.  After two weeks, we pick our final schedule.

I really like all of my roommates.  I have one from Finland, one from Canada, and the other three are from the states.  No Irish roommates, which would be disappointing if my roommates weren’t so cool.  We had some nice family dinners, and I seem to be the head cook of the household (which may seem funny to some).  We don’t have a microwave in the kitchen, so my other roommates are actually learning how to cook!  Yay!  Life skills!

So, the Irish are a bit crazy.  And when I say a bit, I mean there are people screaming, “I’m on a boat!!!! I’m on a boat!!!!” outside my house right now.  The guys are very forward, so I am learning to get really good at rejecting people.  I’m not quite sure how they wake up in the morning after drinking so much.  I’m pretty impressed.

I am currently streaming the Steelers game and planning on staying up ’til 3AM to watch the whole game.  The time difference is a bit crazy, because it’s usually the middle of the afternoon when I skype my friends who are just getting up in the morning.  Also, fun fact:  Hulu doesn’t work in Ireland, so that was a huge bummer.

Photo time:


^Blue skies the first day. Love it.


^My first Guinness in Europe.


^Family Dinner #1


^We ventured into the city of Limerick and found this.


^My roommate Meagan, and myself. She’s from Canada and brought all of the roomies awesome Canada mittens :]
^At a pub on campus called Stables.   Fun friends :]


^Family dinner for Fleur’s birthday!

Will write later this week about my classes.

Cheers,
Melanie


Location: Limerick, Ireland

Preparing for Census Day in Argentina

A long line of Argentines at the local Chinese grocery store, baskets in hand loaded with food in preparation for — you’d never have guessed it — National Census Day.

census_food.jpg

Tomorrow, nearly everything will be shut down in Argentina, from grocery stores to restaurants to pharmacies to kiosks, and public reunions are prohibited, from sports events to classes to weddings. Only the bare essentials will be running, which includes such services as public transportation and hospitals. This is to allow at least one person in every household to await the arrival of one of 600,000 census workers, who will conduct interviews and fill out a questionnaire of typical census questions that involve age, level of education, marital status, etc.

So with the whole country on hold — gasp! — people need to prepare. And it felt great to be alongside my fellow residents, waiting in line to pay for my groceries, preparing for the national holiday.

On a related note, I finally feel accustomed to measurements in the metric system, at least when it comes to ordering from the deli. The people in line tonight had a good laugh when I ordered 1.5 grams of ham.

Some businesses took today off, too, effectively giving them a mini vacation.

As for me, I’m looking forward to catching up on some homework tomorrow while buckling down with my census day supplies.

P.S. I’ll be back to talking about the Argentine student movement shortly.


Location: Avenida Paraguay, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Wednesday: Czech Television & Charles University

On Wednesday morning we all slept in before beginning our day. Breakfast in the Czech Republic is very different from what a “typical American breakfast” might be, consisting of mostly meats, cheeses and breads to choose from. I thought everything was absolutely delicious, but found myself becoming hungrier for lunch much earlier in the day than I typically did at home. After breakfast, one of Elavsky’s friends whose name is Martin came to meet all of us and take us to Czech Television for a meeting with one of their employees. Martin is a professor of Charles’ University, one of the oldest and most esteemed universities in Prague. Martin took us on a hike through the rain to Czech Television, where were able to go on a tour of their studio and learn about the ways in which their television company differed from ours in the states. I was pretty amazed to see that almost everyone in the studio spoke English, an observation which would only be reaffirmed throughout all of our travels across the Czech Republic. After visiting Czech TV we stopped by a grocery store to find some quick lunch and purchase some snacks for our rooms. In the Czech Republic, you have to pay for plastic grocery bags!! After eating a quick lunch we met back up with Martin and he gave us a tour of Charles University. He is a media/film professor so we were able to see the university’s studios and even work with their film editing programs. We then went visiting Old Town Prague, and went to dinner there. I must admit that by the end of the day I was almost just as exhausted as the first night and was very pleased to crawl into bed.