The "Day" of Jan 1st/Jan 2nd was quite a day. After lunch at an overpriced café, said goodbye to the family. Found out later they got a flat screen TV ten minutes after I left. Damn. So I found my way through the TSA, which was made me nervous. We boarded the plane to Amsterdam at 3pm. The sun set so quickly! My friend (and a soon-to-be recurring character of this blog) Mattie and I watched Despicable Me on the TV screen and then listened to the annoying sounds of Norwegian babbys crying. Also, I could not sleep. So we got to Amsterdam after a very long, leg-numbing break. They gave us really crappy cheese-in-biscuit sandwiches. We were there at 6 am and since only Andy and Matt slept on the plane, we were all varying degrees of tired. Our bodies told us to go to sleep even though our minds said that a full day was ahead of us. Crap, that sucked. So after wandering around the Amsterdam airport for 3 hours marveling at the 45 euro food places, we set off to Cork. I was trying to fall asleep the whole time, but to no avail. The damn radio was playing Christmas songs before and after takeoff/landing, so we had "Rockin around the Christmas tree" stuck in our heads. At last we got to cork! The best thing was, though, as we were landing, we got a glimpse of the beaches of Ireland and the curvy farms. It was very pretty. Then we unloaded our bags. Everyone must smoke in Ireland, because the airport employees instantly smoked after they exited the plane. Then, we paid 4.50 euro for a bus into the city. I couldn’t use the plastic card, so I luckily had that 5 euro bill with me. As we drove towards cork, I noticed something. There were palm trees occasionally scattered throughout the town. I thought that was interesting. But I also noticed something that my uncle mentioned earlier- Ireland was very commercial, like the United States. We saw Michelin, McDonalds, and Floor to Ceiling store. Later on, we saw GameStop and a bunch of familiar brands of cereal in Tesco, like Frosted flakes (called frosties). We got off the bus in Cork city, and I was immediately nervous. The place was freaking huge! The tallest buildings were only 10 stories or so, but the city just sprawls all over the place. I was thinking that this was going to be terribly difficult to adjust to. We found and ATM and I withdrew 150 Euros, which showed up as 200 dollars on my account. I guess that is a pretty good exchange rate, at 1.33 to 1. So then we started walking to the apartments. I noticed something about a bunch of the buildings in Cork- they seem to be kind of shabby and dingy. Is this because the Irish are poor, or do they just not take care of them? Huh. When we got to leeside, we met Josephine. She looked kind of like Joy Hemmesch! Mattie, Matt, Andy and I then decided to go get some groceries, as we were all starving. Tesco was just like a Cub foods here. A supermarket. The only differences were the huge liquor aisles and the brands of course. I was pleasantly surprised at the prices! Milk was 1.44 euro for 2 liters, and bread was 1 euro for a loaf. I bought Peanut Butter, Jelly, Bread, Hand Soap, Hot Dogs, Shampoo, Pasta, Pasta Sauce, and Oatmeal. It came to 13.55 Euro! That’s like 18 bucks for all that stuff. And they weren’t even small sized things. I think the prices here may be even cheaper than the good old USA. After shopping we decided to get our phones activated. We wandered around looking for the store, and I noticed just how big and expensive the city center was. Cork is not different than Chicago in this regard; there are plenty of stores for rich people to go to. Walking around the city center may not be too high on my radar; I didn’t see much that appealed to me. If I am going to not be bored during this trip, I may have to go to the pub every night and volunteer/do University stuff a ton, along with take buses to other towns. I hope the outer parts of Cork are more interesting than the center, because it was all shops and expensive pubs that I don’t see myself going to, or taking pictures of for that matter. I hope my first impression is wrong, but Cork doesn’t seem to be the most photo-worthy place!
