2/29

Alas, I’m here. I woke up at 13:45 today (hehe…1:45pm)

The flight was long and uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep and my personal tv didn’t work so I couldn’t enjoy the lovely Ben Stiller movies on the plane. I made it into Cork and have already been hit on by four random girls. FOUR! It’s awesome being “that foreign guy.” I’m new and I have things to talk about and opinions to share that nobody has heard before. It’s neat. I can see why people love moving to foreign lands. Nobody has said anything about an accent yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s obvious that I’m not from around here.

I’m sleeping on Fei Fei’s floor in her dorm room and her roommates are all cool. We’re all the same age and get along fine (at least I think so.) I didn’t spend a lot of time yesterday venturing around Cork city much on account that I was so sleepy and my head was spinning. I calculated it out, and aside from the hour of sleep that I got on the plane, I was up for a good 36 hours. When I flew out of San Francisco, it was 2pm, broad daylight. It quickly got dark as we flew over Canada and then as soon as we all started to get comfy, it was bright and sunny again. That sucked.

I’ve already noticed an abundance of cultural differences, but I think my favorite one was a newspaper headline in regards to a local man protecting his children by “beating off a bad guy.” I chuckled to myself literally for about five minutes. It was on the front page in big, bold print even.

Last night I followed Fei Fei’s friends to this public underground parking garage where they were having this rave of sorts. It was a big party in a parking garage full of people relatively my age. Met a lot of people. Shook a lot of hands. I had a good conversation with a German, 3 French kids, and a bunch of Americans. One girl who lives here in Fei Fei’s hall even used to live in Seattle. It’s crazy how the world can be so small. Get this: her boyfriend back home literally lives down the same street I used to. Literally. She knew the exact location when I told her 45th and Stone was my old house. Yeah, nuts. Apparently there’s a guy who lives here from Reno. I haven’t met him…but I’m just befuddled.

I haven’t taken any pictures yet. My head was hurting really badly yesterday and was in no mood to slow down foot traffic by stopping to take pictures. I’ll get to it soon. We’re going to see the Blarney Stone today and I’m really debating on whether or not I wanted to kiss it. I could only imagine some dumb teenager peeing on it trying to be funny.