1 month in Ireland

May 10 – Day 29
Boxes arrived from home!!! Yeah! It’s crazy, but it is so nice to have familiar items. I was trying to figure out how I would get 2 boxes weighing a total of 33 pounds home. They only deliver boxes if you are home, so I had them delivered to my office. I had something delivered to my apartment and I had to take a train during business hours to get to the post office and it was quite crazy. Much easier to have stuff come to the office. But then comes the dilemma of getting the stuff ½ mile to the train station, on the train and then from the train to my apartment. I was very fortunate that a guy I work with offered to drive me home. He lives north of the city and has to drive fairly close to my place on his way home. He had to leave early on Thur. so, I left work a bit early and got the boxes home. I am very thankful! He helped bring one of the boxes to door and then I literally kicked them on the carpet through the entry and into an elevator. It had to be quite a funny site. I was home so early that I decided to go for a walk and try to find a grocery store. I walked for about 40 min and found a grocery store and decided to buy ranch dressing for a salad, only to learn that they do not have ranch dressing here. :( I walked a bit more a bought a couple things for the apartment and then decided to have dinner before I hiked back. I found a TGI Fridays and had an appetizer. My bill came and it was converted to dollars and it was $23 for an appetizer! It’s hard to explain how expensive it is here. I was talking to my mom and explained that a pint of ice cream at the grocery store is equivalent to $7.50…she was surprised. It took another 45 min to hike home. I was wiped out by the time I got back to my apartment.

May 11 – Day 30
I went out after work for drinks with a couple girls from work. One girl is from Canada and the other from Malaysia. It was very interesting to talk with people from different countries about their cultures, family relationships, jobs, etc. The girl from Malaysia is Muslim and has lived in London for a few years. All three of us are single girls between the ages of 28 and 31. It was an interesting evening.

May 12 – Day 31
I can’t believe I have been here for a month! I arrived on April 12 so, it’s been a whole month. I am finally getting settled into an apartment and I’m working on getting pictures uploaded to yahoo for my first month in Ireland and including pictures of my apartment. Please send me an email if you would like for me to send the link to my pictures. I don’t want to put my email address here and I think anyone reading this will know it. If not, post a comment on the blog and I’ll get you my address. I want to warn whoever looks at my pictures, that the apartment is fairly standard compared to American apartments, but it is quite a luxury in Dublin to live in a 2 bedroom apartment by myself. It is also quite rare to have a building that is only a couple years old very close to the city center. I even took pictures of the 2nd bedroom and bathroom to hopefully entice visitors!