None of us were in any shape to wake up on Saturday at 10am for our planned tour through Waterford. We got up around two and went out to get lunch at Gino's pizzaria. The pizza was ok but the ice cream they had was incredible. My flatmate will go on special walks to Gino's just for a milkshake. After Gino's we walked around the city center to find some steaks from a butcher. We then made our way to Tesco's on the way back. We picked up more food for dinners. We usually pitch in a couple euro each for our meals and it's much easier that way. We had grilled cheese on Saturday. After dinner around 7:30p we walked to the greyhound race track to watch the races. We stayed there for a couple hours; watched about 6 or 7 races. I'm not too great at picking the winning dogs but we didn't bet anything so no harm no foul. We walked back to our building and on our way back there was a parking lot FULL of souped-up cars waiting to race. I don't think street racing is legal in Ireland, but they didn't seem to mind. No one gave any of us straight answers on anything so we couldn't figure out when the races were gonna start. We walked back to our building and got ready for the rest of the night. We went out around midnight to Doolan's again to see a different band. The band was on their last few songs when we got there. They too ended their set with the Irish national anthem in Gaelic. We left Doolan's to go to Ruby's Lounge for a while. We left around 3am to go back to the apartment. I hung out with some of my group from Brockport, another group from Clarkson, and a couple girls from Austria(?). I may have gotten to bed around 4:30a but others didn't get to sleep until later. We lounged all day today and cooked steaks with mac & cheese for dinner.

Again?

Went to T&H Doolan's tonight to check out some Irish band. The band was great. We were immediately introduced to a couple of older gents who bought us drinks and chatted us up. Thirty minutes later and I was on the dance floor with Mikey spinning and tapping my boots on the ground. This happened both times I've been to the pubs. I love this place. It depends on the pub you visit but the smaller pubs are the best ones. I met Tom tonight who owns a pub up in Ballybricken (which is just up the hill - things are broken up into neighborhoods here), sells fruit, and has a horse ranch. How much of this is true, I don't know. (Apparently one of the main crops in Ireland are strawberries. I wouldn't have guessed with the weather conditions but we'll see how they compare to Cobblestone Valley come summer.) The band ended by playing the Irish national anthem in Gaelic. Everyone in the pub stood up for the song and the pub closed once the band finished. We then went to another pub but it couldn't compare. Tomorrow we are planning on going to a hurling game in Upper Ballybeg. We'll tour Waterford tomorrow since our plans to go to Cork fell through. There is some sort of Viking settlement here that I want to check out. There are also rocks similar to stonehenge here that I'd like to visit. A lot of this stuff would be exponentially easier should we own a car.

Average: 44 degrees :)

It's springtime everyday here. The ground is soft and the birds are out every morning when I walk to work. My walk is only about 15 minutes through a couple different housing communities. The past couple days I've just gone in to work and helped kids with their homework. My group work with the kids will start next week and in the first week of February. The kids are still real interested in Obama. Adam is the most interested and mentions Obama everyday. Adam is also teaching me some Irish. Sloan = goodbye. It's pretty slow progress. I met Eva yesterday; she will be working with me at the agency. Eva is 20 and from Austria. She's been here since September and has been looking for a jogging partner. I have been taunting myself every morning waking at 8 for a run but somehow falling back to sleep. Tomorrow we will jog around People's Park which is down by River Suir I believe. (Modestly speaking of water, there was a humpback whale recently seen off the shore of Wexford which is about an hour from where I am. It made big news here since it's extremely rare to see, and from shore nonetheless.) We'll see how the run goes; I haven't run in quite some time. Eva also wants to get involved in a women's soccer league here so if she finds one I will join her in that as well. I JUST got a text from a buddy here who mentioned "caomgie" or hurling for women. Hurling is some Irish sport where (this is what I'm told) people hit eachother with sticks up and down the field. YouTube it. I'll look into it and perhaps I'll join. The placement that I'm in is getting easier. I have about 80 pages of work to do; 40 for Brockport and 40 for Waterford. Most of it is overlapping so hopefully one college will give in and take the other's paper. I'm real disappointed in Brockport's social work program and how they have dealt with those of us studying abroad. One of my issues: having to pay $400 for my Brockport advisor to come out and check up on us. (Biggest issue here being that we all paid that much - total of $2000- and Diane will only be here for two days, spending the rest of her time vacationing in London. Oh yeah, and that my plane ticket cost around $200 one-way. Not $1000 one-way. Ugh! Ok, enough ranting.) Things are what they are and I'm making the most out of it. I'm meeting a lot of great people here. Another big culture shock is that EVERYONE smokes here. It's rare to find someone who doesn't smoke. It's quite awful being stuck in a room with four or five people who smoke. (They allow smoking in the rooms here if everyone is OK with it.) Thankfully no one smokes in my room so I don't have to deal with it if I don't want to. I made dinner tonight for all the Brockport kids. We had porkchops, chips, and peas. There are a lot of butcher shops around here so we're going to get some steaks this weekend and cook those up. Should be great fun.

2nd day

Jordan is becoming a handful. He punches people and pinches them. I have not had either happen to me but I don't stand for his verbal outbursts let alone his physical outbursts. Megan has the most beautiful blue eyes you could imagine. She doesn't like me helping her on her homework. Jordan said he doesn't want me helping him with his homework because I voted for Obama and that America bombed Ireland in WWII. False. He then asked me why I wasn't black if I was from America. Aren't kids cute? They pick on me because I don't know what blaa is. One child was asking me all about my nose ring which I had forgotten to take out today. (I later asked and it is OK to keep my nose ring in while I'm working. It is also apparently OK to wear track suits to work...) There were only 6 kids at homework club today and there was no game room afterwards. Yesss. Homework club ended at 4pm and I waited until 5pm for the next group (the Baybeez) to come in but they never showed so I got to leave early. I didn't need to get to work until 2:20pm today. This will be a daily occurrence aside from Mondays when I'll get to work at 1pm for staff meetings. I think I'm really going to enjoy the free tea and toast that I get at work. After work I walked home and made some food. At 6:30p us Bport kids met up to go to Immigration to make it legal to stay here. They gave us an identity card to use when we leave/enter the country. Mine expires in late September. We went looking for food but everything closes around 7pm so we were out of luck.

1st day at my placement

Wake up and shower. I chose to wear black pants and a nice sweater for my first day. My college advisor in Ireland, Joe, picked me up at 10:30a and he drove me to my placement. We talked with my placement advisor, Pam, at the agency I will be working at. I will be working with kids who have typically refered by a juvenile justice system. I will be helping them with social skills to help them cope with their anger issues more effectively, their communication skills, etc. As soon as Joe left Pam and I got a cup of tea and talked some more about the placement. She mentioned that I may be working with the "Angels" group which is a group of girls who are phasing out of the program so I would help them in the phasing out process of group work. I think this would be a lot of fun as I can help them with self-confidence measures and helping them become more independent. I immediately started thinking of ways in which I could help them do this. I wrote down many of my ideas as soon as I could so that I could try to implement them. After we talked it was about 1pm and at that time on Mondays there is a group meeting with the workers and we go over what happened the past week and how to better the program or the methods. I worked nearly all day with Elizabeth who is maybe in her early 30's who has twin 11-year old boys at home. After our meeting at 1pm we waited until 2:30 when the kids would start arriving from school. All the kids in public schools wear uniforms. Adam was first in and once learning I was from America asked me who I voted for in the presidential elections. I had to ask Elizabeth if it was OK to tell him that since that same question may have struck a cord with someone in America. So I told him I voted for Obama and thereafter when someone came in he introduced me as Kate and that I was from America and I voted for Obama. He then went on to tell me that he loved when "George Washington" had a shoe thrown at him by a reporter. I helped kids out with their homework for a while. One girl told me that I didn't know how to spell because I was from a different country...witch maks cents. I could help them with everything except for their Irish lessons. I don't know any Irish so Elizabeth helps them with that. At 4pm we had the games room open which was the worst. I don't bode well with screaming kids. In fact, I'd like to say that I avoid kids at all cost between the ages of 3 and 13. Not too fond of that age period. Luckily I'm working with kids 8-16...phew. So I stood in the game room with more tea for an hour until the next group started. This group, "the Gangstaz," consisted of a handful of boys. We made chocolate muffins. I had the chance to grate a candy bar to use as chocolate chips. I ate the remaining pieces that were unable to be shredded. The chocolate just isn't as good here and it is in one of the most obese nations in the world. I miss America. So the muffins I'm sure didn't taste too good. While they were cooking we played Spongebob Monopoly. I have never played and hopefully never will so I sat and watched them cheat their way through the game. After that was...game room. Dear god. This time it was worst. Jordan, a fiery Irish kid, would swear all the time. If he missed the cue ball while playing pool: "oh bollocks...for fuck's sake..." I was told that they all swear though and it's not a big deal. I'm not comfortable yet to reprimand kids but I have a feeling that Jordan and I will have a lot of face time. The other kids were pretending to be sea monsters or aliens or something. I have no imagination when I'm tired and was not pumped that they were throwing balls at eachother and all around the room. The music was up way too loud and I seemed like the only one who cared. Thank god for Skips who came in and we started making scones. I've never had a scone before and it was delicious. I think I'll make them here sometime...though it was disgusting watching them make the scones. There is something about sticky children hands that makes me nauseous. After all that was over I cleaned up and was talking to Ursula who is in a running club in Waterford. Stefan, another worker, also runs. I think next Monday I will take my running clothes with me and Ursula and I will head to the track to run for a bit. Ursula is maybe 60 years old and will probably kick my ass at the track. Stefan brought me back to my building on his way home (which he will do when I leave in the evenings). I got home around 7:30pm making it a 9hour day today. It was supposed to be another two hours but I opted out of it. It would have been another hour of sitting around and at 8pm would have been another game session. Once home I slipped into my moccasins and cooked up come chicken patties with a bowl of peas and some french fries. People here love their chips. Love them. Always the big steak fries, too. You can buy the thinner fries for 60 cents more at Lidl...not worth it. My roommate Lisa was cooking chicken curry with white rice. It. Was. Amazing. Had she not been sitting there I may have eaten it all. I took out my shorbet and ate the rest of it. Since then I've been "chillaxing" (a word that Pam uses 100% too much) in my room. I'm tired but I don't have to be at my internship until 2:30pm tomorrow.

Lidl trip

I woke around 1pm and got ready to go to the grocery store Lidl. The Lidl is about half a mile away from where I'm staying. I bought quite a bit of food today to stock up for this week. The shopping cart wheels at Lidl turn in all directions. All of them. It took a while to get used to it but it is much easier than the front-wheel-drive carts we have in the States. I took my groceries back with me in my enormous reusable bag and made room in the fridge/freezer for my stuff. I had dinner with the social work students from Brockport; we had hamburgers and fries (chips). I came back to my room where I met my neighboring roommate, Lisa. Lisa is from Cork and has a great accent. She is a first-year nursing student at the college. She's real friendly and will talk your ear off. She loooves TV and ran through her weekly schedule of shows she likes to watch. Personally, I don't care too much about the Irish soaps. I was asking her about Cork because us Bport folk wanted to go to Cork this next weekend. The Jameson factory is there, which I'm sure we'll visit among other things. While we were talking Darren(?) comes in for less than a minute and I am told he's my other suitemate. I shook his hand and that was the extent of our meeting. I was invited out on Wednesday with Lisa and her nursing buddies. Let's hope it was just as entertaining as Saturday night was.

What?!?

I don't believe my day so far. It's about 3am and I'm just getting to my room from the pubs. But I'll start at the beginning...

9:55am: We boarded a bus to Kilkenny but missed the stop so we caught the next bus Southbound from Carlow to Kilkenny. Lost an hour. Once we got to Kilkenny we ate at a restaurant that Rick Steve's Ireland guide said was the locals' choice: Langton's. It was delicious. I had a turkey/bacon sandwhich with tea. I tried my tea with milk and sugar and it just didn't compare to regular ole' straight up tea. After lunch we went to Kilkenny Castle and toured the inside. On the outside there was a display of decorated angels on the lawn which were pretty cool looking. There was one with an Irish flag and a golf flag that reminded me of my grandpa. The castle was great. Not much else to say about that I guess. After the castle we walked through the town. I wanted to find a pint glass so that I could start collecting them from each city that I visit in Ireland. We found one. We searched the town and found a cathedral of St. Canice and the Black Abbey. Both were interesting looking. We went to a pub for a drink and watched the Manchester United game in which ManU scored three goals in ten-ish minutes. After the pub we headed back to the bus station to catch our ride back to Waterford. Once back we all met up in Elizabeth (another social work student from Brockport)'s room to make grilled cheese and tomato soup. The meal was ok. In another hour or so we got ready to go out to the pubs. We went out to Kazbar first where I ordered what would normally be a $7 drink and it came to 12.50 Euro (maybe $16). Not pumped. We then went to the Wacky Apple where Jenn (another Bport student) bought me a couple more drinks. Some guy we had been talking to gave Garrett an apple which the female bartended took and threw at the man. The man took the broken apple and threw it at the bartender and it hit her in the face. The bartended then came around the bar and took the guy out and got him on the ground as she put the apple in his mouth. This was all in good fun and laughs were shared. What?! Did that really happen? I hadn't barely put my coat down when a guy (Joe) came up and asked me to dance with him. I took his hand as I'm not one to back down and we went dancing. We joined a conga line and jump/hopped/Irishly danced  to the traditional music playing. I was the only girl in the line but held my own. Many people here are just as aggressive as stereotyped. I don't fit in with the girls at the pubs here but I'm thinking that I don't care too much. I've had the time of my life dancing with the locals in an Irish pub so I'm not too worried about how (un)aggressive I am. Once we all came back to the building we ate chicken pattys and now I'm about to go to sleep. Today was an great day but it has tired me out completely. Tomorrow I will grocery shop and sleep. I'm certain I'm forgetting things from this night but perhaps that's for the best.