Our First School Function

Yesterday morning I had my first official meeting on Trinity's campus--it was the first-ever orientation for post graduate international students. I have another meeting (the orientation for all post grads) on Friday, but it was nice to hear information directed at international students specifically. We got several welcomes to Ireland, jokes about the weather, and a lot of information on safety policies, important phone numbers, the counseling and health centers, and the bank of Ireland. Once the meeting was finished, we all went down to the front to pick up free pens and a raffle ticket for later that evening. Last night they had a tour of the campus scheduled for just us internationals, as well as a reception following. I emailed a few days earlier just to make sure it was okay that Aaron came on the tour and to the reception and they said that would be great. It was wonderful news to me because I would have been pretty nervous going alone.

When we got to the tour, it began to rain on us. We met in the front square of the college and sort of waited as the group gathered around, and people started asking questions. One girl asked about tips (apparently you don't tip in Ireland because everything's overpriced anyway and servers and waitstaff get paid minimum wage) and we immediately recognized her American accent. Once the tour started, we moseyed our way up to meet her. Once we started talking, another guy turned around and said "Oh, staters?" And all the sudden we had an American clique forming! She was from Kentucky, he was from Connecticut, another guy from New York. Later that night we would meet a girl from North Carolina, one from New Jersey, and another from Michigan. We seemed to be magnets for each other. During the reception, we would just walk up and introduce ourselves and two seconds later we would all be freaking out: "Oh my gosh you're American! Where are you from!!"

We also met a really nice guy from Sydney, Australia, whose name is Liam. He talked comic books and history with me for quite a while so he's a stand up guy in my book. :)

The girl from Kentucky that we met at first is actually married, and her husband is with her in Dublin. We were so excited to find another married couple! And better yet... she's in my Popular Literature program! So we'll be seeing a lot of each other I'm sure. The girl from New Jersey is also in my program, so we were all very excited to meet each other and talk about our varying interests in popular literature. All in all, it was a wonderful evening, and we walked away with many names to add to facebook and to see around the city. It's been nice having "us" time for a whole week but we were ready to make friends!

The married couple got off the plane yesterday and are currently staying with a friend while searching for apartments. They had an exhausting day yesterday looking at four and then doing the tour and reception. Please keep them in your prayers if you think about it--it's tough looking for an apartment, especially after you've just arrived. We were reminded many times last night how lucky we are to have the apartment that we have.

Monday, I'll show up on campus super early and register for classes, and then we're over to IT services to see if we can finally get internet in our room. Maybe then we'll finally be able to skype, add photos, and email more regularly.