Mountains, Boats, and Pubs Galore

Here I am, made it through the first weekend! After orientation we went to this pub for dinner called Bodega which was so cool! It was more trendy than I expected, but the decorations were kind of bizarre and reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. There were massive random origami cranes hanging everywhere, and then all of the artwork had different themes. Besides the odd decorations the restaurant was really cool and delicious. So far the weirdest aspect of the food to me is how they use mayonnaise as a dipping condiment, similar to ketchup.

Saturday during the day we went to Kilarney national park for a tour/hike. The day started off with a two hour bus ride through the lakes, which was really beautiful. I was very skeptical of the ride considering it was a large row boat with the tiniest motor I have ever seen, and the boat driver starts the trip with "you all can swim right?" In the end it was beautiful and we all got to sport super cute neon orange lifejackets that smelled like body odor for two hours. After the boat ride we did a 10 mile hike through the mountains, yikes. This was to see the Gap of Dunlow that was absolutely beautiful, unfortunately we still had 5 miles post-Gap to get back to our bus. I am happy that we did the hike, but was not the happiest camper during the hike.

I forgot to mention before that our bus driver Liam is amazing. He brings us everywhere we go in Cork and is the nicest guy. Unfortunately we cannot understand his accent at all, yesterday he said something to a couple of us as we were walking out of the bus, then just walked off the bus that was still running. We were left with jaws dropped wondering if we were supposed to watch the bus while he was gone. Overall though, he is so nice and a great person to have.

During the evening we went to two new places that we haven't been to before. One of them was called the Brogue that had lots of dancing and the best part, lots of American music. After that we went to "The Wash" (that's what the locals call it) and it was 70's night! I knew it was the place for me when I walked in and the Grease theme song was playing. The music was a lot of fun and everyone in the bar was wearing Afros and disco clothing.

Tomorrow I start my early start class so I should probably should go to bed! Goodnight!!