One month?!

Last weekend was quite uneventful weekend. It's nice to have some down time sometimes! My friend Silvia and I made chocolate chip cookies on Saturday. Silvia had never had homemade cookies and we brought some to my friend Johnny who had also never had homemade cookies.. WEIRD! They were a hit :) Saturday night we decided to try our a dance club we hadn't been to yet, Club Kharma. It was fun! All the dance clubs here are pretty similar, except we liked it Saturday because it seemed like there weren't as many young students out.

A difference I find between here and Concordia is that a lot of Irish students, especially first years (or freshers as they are called here) go home on weekends. More of the upperclassmen stick around, but I find it odd that the freshers leave. At Concordia I feel like a lot of students stay on campus and that is when I loved being there...not worrying so much about going to class and hanging out more with friends--amongst homework, of course.

This week was back to class! Yesterday I had to go to the immigration office. I was really nervous about this, because the man that came to talk to us during orientation was VERY intimidating and I wasn't sure if the bank statement I had was correct for the information that they needed. So on Monday I got everything ready...Shanon, Suzanna, and I walked to the office together. It was really confusing to get there and we had to stop and ask for directions 2 times--once at gun store where the man clearly could tell we were not looking for guns.. haha! I had to go first, but luckily the man that I worked with was SUPER nice and very chatty. I got all registered and now have another card that I have to carry with me everywhere. The garda (police) could ask me to produce the card at any time. Oh joy.. another thing to hang on to..plus is cost 150 euro and if you lose it 150 euro to replace.. YIKES! But everything went through and I'm not legally able to be in Ireland until December.

Today is societies day. I ended up signing up for more than I had thought, but we'll see which ones I decide to get involved in. I signed up for Choral society (which I plan on definately doing), International Student Society, North American Student Society, Christian Student Society, Dance Society, and Nothing Specific Society. I'm sure picking a few of these will keep me busy! Tomorrow is the volunteer fair and I think I'll take part in that as well!

Tonight the International Student Society is hosting a nightlife tour of Galway so I'm going to take part in that. It should be a lot of fun! Tomorrow is the 250th anniversary of Guinness. It should be interesting to see what kind of celebrations happen here, but they've been publicizing it for weeks (I'm sure longer) here, so I think we'll go to a pub tomorrow night and take part in the Irish festival of celebrating Guinness--Arthur's Day.

This weekend a few of us are heading to Cork and will be taking in some Munster Rugby. I'm pretty excited because Rugby is huge here and so it should be intense!

I can't believe that I've already been here for almost a month--Monday it will be one month exactly--time sure flies!