Euro Trip

About a month from now, we get a "study week," which is a week of no classes. I figured this would be the perfect time to not study at all and go somewhere in Europe. Although I wanted to visit Spain, I know next to no Spanish. So that's out.
I do have an amazing command of the French language, thanks to three years of coasting on my sister's coattails at NDCL. Right now, I'm looking at either Paris, Marseille, or Montpelier. Marseille is my top option right now, but we'll have to see which flights are the cheapest :)
And so begins my blitzkrieg on the French language, relearning as much as I can this next month. Fortunately, Arlette is almost as good at French as she is at English, so I have a conversation buddy.

Accommodation:

I'm living in Rivers Apartments, one of three on-campus accommodations provided by NUI Maynooth. My apartment building (Erne) is three stories high, with three apartments per floor (I'm on the ground floor, which made moving in really easy. It was even easier considering I only had two suitcases and a backpack.) Each apartment has a hallway, five rooms, and a common room. The rooms themselves are smallish - about the size of a room in Founders or Stuart. All of the rooms are singles and we all get our own bathrooms. (Although the bathrooms are pretty tiny. My shower is a pipe coming out of the ceiling and a drain on the floor.) The common room has a few couches, a coffee table, a dining table, and a kitchen. We've got a stove, microwave, fridge, and high-tech kettle (for the tea, of course).

I really like the way they serve the tea in Ireland. Thomas, one of my roommates, demostrated the proper Irish way - adding sugar and milk. It's quite delicious.

I'm rooming with two Irish guys (Thomas and Kevin), a guy from China (Hawkins is his English name), and a girl from Switzerland (Arlette). Arlette and Kevin are working on their masters, Hawkins is in his third year, and Thomas has just started college (although he is 24 years old, instead the standard Irish 17). Thomas has a real infectious enthusiasm for the whole college experience, but we'll see how long that lasts :) He's majoring in music (vocals, guitar, and sax) and I get to borrow his guitar. We also jam together every so often (me on guitar and him on saxophone).
The cultural exchange that happens with us is something unique and enjoyable. Fun fact for the day: American culture - the accent, the sports, the music, the food - are all very popular in China, particularly amoung the youth.

Campus and Classes

This was my first week of classes. I've been pretty busy, as you might imagine. I did manage to find time for a photo tour of campus. Hurray!


This is the apartment building where I live.




Pope John Paul II and his library. People here are crazy for the guy. The Pope John Paul II Society has even more members than the Harry Potter Appreciation Club.


The Aula Maxima. Lots of musical performances in here.


The campus chapel. Currently unused except for the Christmas choir concert. It's really beautiful inside.















A poorly shot panorama of St. John's Square in the middle of South Campus (the cool, old part of campus). I only have one class (History) down here.



A few shots of Maynooth Castle, which is about twenty feet off campus. It's not that impressive these days, as only the keep and the gatehouse remain intact.


I'm taking six classes this semester (the equivalent of 15 credit hours in the States). Mostly, I'm taking gen eds, but there are a few classes related to my majors.

Advanced Topics in Computer Science - This is the topic I'm most excited about. Every six lectures, a different professor comes in and teaches a subject they currently do research with. I'll be learning about things like information theory, multiple view geometry, and other cool things.

Graph Theory - Higher level math. Seems like a lot of fun so far.

Microeconomics - The teacher reads Powerpoint slides for an hour. Luckily, these slides are available online.

Biological and Developmental Psychology - Seems like an interesting topic (and definitely an interesting professor). However, I think this class will be the least useful to me, career-wise.

The Irish Sociological Imagination - Although we'll be examining a few Irish issues, this class isn't as focused on the Irish as I expected.

Ireland Since 1800 - This class, on this other hand, is. I haven't been to this one yet. This lecture is only once a week and I had to miss the first class so I could register for classes. Did I ever say that Maynooth does things at the last minute? I meant they do it a few minutes afterwards.

Interestingly, Maynooth does not seem to be a liberal arts college. You sign up for a 'major' and your classes are almost exclusively in that subject area. Internationals are exempted from this, but it means I'm taking most of my classes with freshmen. Ever been in a lecture theater with two hundred kids fresh out of high school?

Luckily, I was never like that :)

Skype Address

I'm using Skype to keep in touch with family while I'm overseas. If both people are using Skype to make the phone call, it's free - something us college kids are always excited about. Feel free to grab it yourself and call.

When I'm on, it will probably be from 3:00 to 6:00 EST. My Skype name is joshua.galecki.

Trip to Dublin

I have internets again :)

It's been a fairly busy week for me over here. Friday night there was a ceili, even though it was pretty much only international students there. Apparently, most Irish students go home for the weekend and go out to the pubs Monday through Thursday.

Saturday, I met up with some girls from Dayton and we took a train to Dublin. We saw quite a bit of the city. We hit up St. Steven's Green, Trinity College (including the Book of Kells), the National Gallery, and the Post Office (site of the 1916 Easter Uprising). The Guinness Brewery will have to wait until next time :)

After a day's worth of walking around, we headed over to The Celt, a small Pub north of the river. It was wonderful there - very cozy. I've become rather partial to Guinness this past week. For dinner, I had a pint along with 'beef and Guinness stew'. There was live music there afterwords (a kind of Irish rock band - two guitars, bass, and a fiddle), which finished up the day quite nicely.

Select pictures:

St. Steven's Green. The sun even came out for ten minutes, so we all celebrated.

Molly Malone. This statue is also known as the tart with the cart.

Random church-ish building.


Trinity College, plus a closeup of the statues in the spire in the square.



Right outside the old library. This had the Book of Kells exhibit, but I felt this paled in comparison to the awesome Long Hall of the library.

Department of the Taoiseach, the Irish Prime Minister.

Any questions about the trip?

Internet trouble

As some of you may know already, I've been having some problems connecting to the Internet. I hope I can fix these soon, but posting frequency will be less frequent until I can solve this (Right now, I have to lug my laptop across campus to get online.)

I did write up a blog post after getting here, I just couldn't publish it... until now. (cue timpani) Hopefully, this appeases you.

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I landed down in Ireland today. While traveling through Dublin, I noticed several differences from cities in 'the states'. In no particular order:

Everything is fenced. I have yet to see a house that does not have a fence, hedge, or tree-line of some sort. Some have multiple fences, one behind the other. In case the Mongol hordes break through the first, I suppose.

Dublin is an old city. Practically, this means Dublin is a short city. I saw less than five buildings in Dublin over four stories tall. Almost every street had small stores on the first floor.

Ireland is just as politically crazy as we are. There’s a controversial vote on the EU’s constitution coming up. Every street contains signs either for or against ‘Lisbon’, often plastered over each other. The both seem to imply Ireland will cease to exist if the other side wins.

There’s a lot of graffiti in Dublin. I don’t see this as a bad thing. I think it lends the otherwise boring walls some color and life and vibrancy.

Everyone speaks Irish. This probably seems obvious, but it didn’t really hit me until I heard “And here’s yer traffic and weather update” over the radio, with the Irish brogue.

I met up with Dan (friend’s brother) today, and he gave me some sad news. Apparently, it pretty much stays in the 40 – 60 degree range all year long. And I won’t see the sun again until I leave. I refuse to be completely disheartened. I’m seeing trees start to change colors, and that makes me feel better.
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Pictures will come later.

One week from Ireland

Hello to everyone, welcome to my travel blog. I've somehow been accepted to the National University of Ireland in Maynooth (NUIM). It's located about half an hour west of sunny Dublin. I'll be keeping a record here of all of my Irish adventures and exploits.

There will also be pretty pictures.





These ones were stolen from NUIM's website. I'm not really sure what these buildings are for, or if they actually are in Maynooth.

Feel free to ask any questions or leave other comments.