And down I went

January 7, 2010 5:18 pm

I had my first fall today..hence the title of my blog. My roomates and I were walking to orientation and on the sidewalks is about a 1/2 inch layer of ice totally covering them. It is about a half hour walk to the buildings where classes are held but with the ice it makes it a 45 minute walk. I was leading because I knew the way (everyone is surprised i know, I was surprised too!) I was looking both ways to cross a street and all of a sudden my feet weren't on solid ground anymore. I caught air time as Jessica Fischer would say haha. It didn't help that there was a huge group of Dubliners right across from me and saw everything. It made me feel better because my roomate Meghan D. fell literally right behind me. A man crossing the street stopped in front of me and said, "Oh, I am sorry," with his Irish accent and kept walking haha it was pretty funny! After a couple more people fell, we made it to the class (twenty minutes late) but a bunch of people came in behind us!! The head lady said she was very impressed that all of us even made it because Ireland hasn't experienced any type of weather like this in over 30 years and they don't know what to do about it. I guess they dont believe in street and sidewalk salt?? The orientation was good, we learned a lot and met lots of people. My roomate who is sick currently went to the doctor right after it and discovered she has tonsilitis how awful is that?! Hope she feels better soon!
After the orientation Kristen and I went grocery shopping again because apparently we do not get two meals a day as we were told by our study abroad advisor. But, we bought a bag of pasta and pasta sauce that should last us twenty years so I think we will survive!!
Tonight we are going to go eat supper and hang out with some girls we met today that live below us and another girl named Katy from UNI. That should be fun!
I guess I probably should have explained yesterday before I started talking about today though. Yesterday morning I woke up to scary sounds coming from my window (my bed is pushed up against it). Upon investigating after putting my contacts in I discovered it was hailing and snowing like Iowa! It quit hailing long enough for us to make the 45 minute walk to the DBS building we were meeting in thank goodness! Upon arriving, we had our pictures taken and were given our student ID's. Afterwards we were put on a tour bus and sent off on our way to tour Dublin. The bus driver was a funny man and made jokes while we were riding along. It started hailing again and at one point we were sliding backwards down a hill because the breaks couldn't get any traction on the ice...that was scary!! We drove past many sights of Dublin in which I will be revisiting so I will take pictures then! But, he let us get off the bus and get back on to take pictures if we so desired or to just get off at a stop. By the end it was just me, my roomates, and a couple other girls left. We got off the bus at 2:00 and went shopping to get our nccessities such as a duvet cover, towels, blankets for our freezing apartment, toilet paper, groceries, and vice versa. After getting food we started attempting to make the about two mile track back towards our apartment. Due to us not having our reusable bags with us we had to put all our groceries into the bag we were carrying our blankets and things in. About halfway to the apartment i put down my stuff to look at a map to see where we had to turn. After figuring it out (or so we thought) I went to pick up my bag and heard a rip...the whole side of my bag had ripped open so I had to cradle my bag in my arms to walk back. I had an old Irishman look at me and laugh asking if I had bought enough stuff...I started laughing and pointed to my ripped bag in which he just started chuckling more. Meghan D's bag then proceeded to rip as well and by that point we were lost. We asked some people how to get to our road and when we walked away we could hear them laughing at us. If my arms hadn't been so sore from lugging everything around I probably would have laughed at us too. So here we were, four American girls trying to keep our balance on the thick ice, all the while balancing about seven-8 pounds in each arm. I thought we were going to die before we made it back, but we didn't! After unpacking our stuff (which took forever because for the first ten minutes no one could feel their arms!) we all attempted to take naps for a little while. After getting up we all just sat around in sweats and talked. We had the intention of going to a pub to listen to music but the first time we looked at the clock it was 10 and the pubs close at 11:30 and we didn't want to get ready. It was really awesome though getting to know the Meghans more, they seem really cool and we all get along pretty well. One of them thinks she has ghosts in her room and as she was explaining this to us our electricity card was used up so our apartment went black (scary!) Somehow we all ended up in a corner almost holding onto each other. Meghan M. was brave and ran to the end of the hall and opened the door so we had a little light and then we reinserted an electricity card.
Those cards are messed up! We have 50 units of energy on each one and each of us was given 20 cards. One card is supposed to last two days and the cards heat the water for us, heat the rooms for us, and give us electricity in general. We finally had warm water last night, but this morning when I got up our electricity card was out again! Which is so strange because no one used electricity last night because we were all sleeping, so we don't know what is going on. Therefore, I didn't get a warm shower. I took my louffe and washed my body down in the sink and washed my hair. I feel like a pioneer!!