Hello Blogger!

Hello all! This is my blog from Ireland. I'm going to write in it so that I don't have to tell all the same stories over and over again and everyone can be updated on a day-to-day basis if they'd like. Anywho, so...where to begin? Well it's 11:10 AM right now and I woke up in the living room on the mattress from my bed that I had moved there last night at 4 AM when I decided it was time to go to bed. Needless to say, it was a wee bit confusing at first. I tried to go back to sleep but my body wasn't having it. I'll probably take a pretty solid nap later but for now, I'll stay awake and write.
Yesterday was a lot of fun. We woke up and went to the farmer's market they have in town every Saturday. It's SO cool. I wish we had more of those near us because not only do they have locally grown fruits and veggies, but they also have tons of other stuff like cheese stands, crepe vendors, people selling breads, tarts, fish, donuts, pretzels, other baked goods, etc. And then of course you have the people who are trying to jewlery, clothing, candles, bags, etc. and ALL of it is either hippieish or very traditionally Irish. Basically, it's awesome and I'm in love. Too bad we're not going to be able to go to it next weekend or the following one because we'll be in Dublin & then Dingle. Oh well, both of those trips should be pretty sweet as well. At the farmer's market I got a crepe with mixed cheese, ham, fried onions, and dijon mustard on it. It was absolutely delicious and very filling.
When we got back, I started making hot tea that I was then planning on putting in the fridge in order to get iced tea because the water here tastes really bad and dirty and I'm becoming dehydrated because lots o' beer + crappy tasting water that I don't want to drink = not a happy, hydrated Dianna. So I'm microwaving these cups of water and all of a sudden, the fire alarm goes off in the building. Now I start freaking out because I thought somehow I had done it. (Note: our professor/the landlord of the building have both warned us time and time again about not setting the fire alarm off because someone did it last year when they put potatoes on the stove after a pretty drunken night and fell asleep and the fire trucks had to come and she had to pay 150 euro and I REALLY didn't want to do that because I'm going broke as it is so that would really burn a hole in my wallet.) So we're waiting outside all hoping to God that it wasn't something any of us had done to set it off because anything can happen in these ever-so-lovely-and-definitely-not-faulty apartments. After about 20 minutes, one of our TA's came back and shut it off and everything was fine. Someone was cooking bacon and didn't put the air vent on I guess. Definitely required evacuation.
Anywho, after that a bunch of us walked over to "uni" (that's what they call college here) and played a game of ultimate frisbee on the big lawn they have there. It was a lot of fun. I am so jealous that they have that huge lawn right smack dab in the middle of their campus AND that their campus is horizontal rather than vertical. It's nice not to break a sweat walking to and from places everyday (the daily rain and overall nippiness may factor into that a bit as well).
After the game which my team, Flower Power (not by my choosing, I swear), lost, we all headed back and a bunch of us came into my room to watch this Irish movie, Once. We borrowed it from the film school that I'm interning at along with the DVD player we watched it on and a ton of other "fil-ems" as well (that's how they pronounce it here). It was an interesting movie. I think I'd say I liked it, mostly because of the great music that was in it, but I'd definitely have to see it again to decide how I feel about the plot and all because I probably missed some vital dialogue simply because I couldn't understand what they were saying. Here's the famous song from the movie that apparently won some big award: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoSL_qayMCc
It's really beautiful.
After the movie we made dinner of pasta & sauce with sauteed string beans which was tasty and finished the remainer of Adam's birthday pie which the TA's had bought for him (he was there so it's ok). Before going out, we hung out with some of the other people on the trip that we don't hang out with much so that was fun and then we headed to The Quays. Although we do really like that place, we were heading there mostly to see this guy play who we had heard the previous night but when we got there, there was a DJ set up. I guess there was a lack of communication and we got to the wrong place or time? Who knows. So we left and headed to The Kings Head which was a lot of fun. My friend Sarah was with me and we ran into the trainer from our gym who set up a personal training routine for both of us. He's 20 and is going to America, specifically PA, in a week. He is studying physical fitness education or something at school and is co-oping for the summer and tried to get a job at Lehigh, small world huh? Anyway, we ended up hanging out with him and some of his friends for the rest of the night. After we finished at The King's Head we headed to my 1st club of the trip! People have been going to them since we've been here but I've never ended up at one so Cuba was my first. It was...interesting. Very loud, very dark with flashing lights, kiiiinda Eurotrash but fun still. Overall, a very good day/night. Well, that's really all for now. Suprisingly the internet is working very well right now so I'm going to go try to upload some more pictures while I still have the opportunity.
Until next time... :-)