Continuation...

As a continuation from yesterday... After Clarissa got me out of my room we all met up in our student center here in the center of the like apartment/dorm buildings. Decided to wonder down into downtown Belfast, which ended up being a ton of fun. It was raining for part of it.. cold as hell with the wind i mentioned before. We wondered around a bit lost, got everyone else cell phones. Thank god. not being able to get a hold of anyone was just driving everyone nuts. found a mall and inside was the Pound store! Best store ever!! equivalent to the dollar store, it was so useful for all the nonsense you dont want to spend money on. Unfortunately having a ton of bags with a long ass walk home is not particularly comfortable... i need a massage for sure. But at least the rain stopped. Finally got home with all my goodies, planned to unpack and put stuff away... however as my last post shows, i more or less just talked on facebook with a few of you and then passed out.

Today was another long day, although I am hoping to make it past 9pm. Woke up at 7am to use my new en suite shower! froze myself while trying to get out and figuring out how to turn it off... always fun. Also, for the life of me I just cannot figure out how to use sinks that have separate faucets for hot and cold. Either your hand is on fire or its numb. and splashing the water to the middle just does not seem to work! any ideas?Anyways, met everyone to walk to our main campus. Absolutely beautiful. photos soon. I feel like I am going to school at Hogwarts half the time. Sat through MORE orientation stuff, then had my advising appointment! I am officially registered for classes!!! So excited :) I am taking Irish Politics, The Religious and the Secular in Modern Political Thought, and Negotiations of Conflict Resolution. All are level 3 or like senior level courses except the first one is level 2. Met a couple other cool kids from the states but didnt connect with them like I have with the ones from my program.

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It is now about 6hours past when I started writing this post because I had to go out for a while and eat and whatnot. We got to go on a Bus Tour of Belfast and see the whole city including the city hall where we met and chatted with the Lord Mayor (nice lady). After that we came back to our rooms where I initially started this post and then left to finally go into a pub and get food, I ordered a veggie burger. Interesting lesson learned, vegetable burger in Ireland translates to bad potato latka patty more or less on a bun... It wasnt bad after you added mayo and ketchup and vinegar and anything else to actually have flavor... I was starving though, so i ate it. After that we went to this thing our program put on called a Ceilidh. I still dont know how to say that but its supposed to be traditional Irish music and dance. Well we got there and I had a flashback to Sock Hop days in elementary school with slightly more diversity, aka a lot of asians. People were learning how to Irish dance on a big floor like line dancing and everyone else was huddled in their comfort groups. You ALLLL know how I feel about dancing in general so obviously i wanted to leave right when we got there. But to be polite and not those arrogant Americans who think they dont need to attend the cool kid events, we stayed and watched, took some pictures and video and then left. Went into this pub called Guinness Times or something like that, sat down and just hung out. As it got later the pub started getting super busy and I have not been more entertained with horrible outfits in a long time. This whole new fad of extremely tight dresses that barely cover your ass is in.. but ladies seem to forget that it makes them look like kangaroos with there gutsbeing squished together and very obvious. Were in a tiny pub in Belfast and these girls are all dressed like we might as well be in the heart of NY. Even more baffling was when we got up to leave, there was a huge line out the door in the POURING rain where girls are waiting to get into this not that great place in there dinky outfits with no coats. I would not be that dedicated no matter what ever. Anyways,this is how I officially made it past 9pm but am now exhausted again. We have more meetings tomorrow and a campus tour with some other interesting activities. I discovered how to text internationally today also and bought a Queen's University sweatshirt so I feel like a real student!