After a rough and short night of sleep, we were all up and at ‘em again. The up and at ‘em is a little difficult for some of my roommates since there are no coffee makers in Ireland. I repeat, NO COFFEE. Only instant… gross. So we all walked to the University for Registration caffeine deprived for registration. The four International Summer Program staff at NUIG first greeted us and then gave us a large information packet with dates and times for the rest of the summer. We then went on another tour of the campus, this one being a little more specific. We learned the layout of the library, the wifi information, where the Starbucks and our classes are on campus, and how many drink vouchers we will get for the University Bar. Yes, you read that correctly… my school pays for me to drink. Wow. When the tour was over, we got a free tee shirt because it was NUIG’s 30th anniversary of the International Summer Program, yay.
When registration was over, everyone was still dead tired from the night before so we headed for Starbucks to cure the caffeine headache. On the way we looked a little lost and a kind, old gentleman decided to walk us there. He was an Engineer and was very personable and kind to us. He even bought our coffee (even though it is cheaper here, it was so sweet) and gave us some thought provoking things to think about for the next hour. We sat in the campus Starbucks discussing everything from pharmaceuticals to Harry Potter. The conversation was serious and hilarious all at the same time, what is it about coffee that does that to conversations? Kelsey even decided to be super tweetable and hilarious after some coffee, thus naming this blog post about the importance of coffee.
The lounging around from the coffee set the tone for the rest of the day. We went grocery shopping, then to the mall, watched “Despicable Me”, cooked dinner, caught up on some planning and journaling, and talked to friends and family back home. It was a great and well-needed night in our temporary home. The best part of the night, from my point of view, was the book that Timothy del Risco sent me before my trip to Ireland. We all finally read the homemade booklet filed with interesting Irish fact and loved it! Supposedly, Tuesdays are the days when the most rainbows are seen and June 25th is when the leprechauns come out. So today in particular, we were looking for that pot of gold and unfortunately never found it. But we will. We will.