Ireland and Chinese Chicken

Horray! I finally made it! After two days of traveling, three flights and many shuttles later, I'm finally here in the lovely "Emerald Isle"! My goodness is it beautiful. The first thing I thought once I landed (after the initial laughter on of the fact that I probably just saw more sheep flying over Ireland than people in Heathrow airport) was, "Yes, I could definitely call this place home for the next couple months". We landed in great weather I thought to see our first glimpse of Ireland, no rain! The Irish students that were there to pick us up said it was the perfect day to arrive as well, "Its like a sunny day!" they said with clouds covering the whole sky, which made me laugh. (Oh and a little fact about Shannon airport: it literally goes from sheep farm right to airport runway. Hope those little guys don't ever get squished, there's not even a fence!) Anyway, like i said before, it is truly and genuinely beautiful here. From the history you pass by on a simple ride through town, to the warmth of genuine kindness, to the soft deep GREEN grass and foliage everywhere. I don't care how cool Crayola thinks they are with all their new cool crayons and markers these days they don't do the color green any justice. One of my favorite sights so far was taking the shuttle across the Shannon where we got to pass through the massive King John's castle to enter Limerick. Definitely will be going back to explore more in person because just a short drive by is not enough for me! Another new experience was witnessing cars driving on the opposite side of the road and seeing the drivers on the other side of the vehicles. For some reason they look so smushed over on that side, but they seem happy enough... I'm sure since its normal to them. Next stop was Plassey Village where we got our apartment assignments and room numbers. This was an easy and quick process besides the part of dealing with my spasticly cranky little fob. Seems to not enjoy letting me in. It keeps pretending to unlock the door and re-lock it before I can get in. Its probably its silly little welcoming trick it likes to play on new international students..crazy thing. Hopefully this fun will end and it will learn a new trick...like turning into a pot of gold, that would be nice..and very fitting. :) But the apartment is nice, and very cozy. I've only met one of my 7 roommates so far, a friendly fellow American girl from DC and she seems to be very informative about things on campus even though shes only been here a day like myself, but its certainly helpful! After unpacking we had a meeting in Plassey Village Hall for all of the AIFS students. Basically it was a time for them to tell us very tired Americans a bunch of very important information we need to know for through out the semester all at once. Then they told us everything will be emailed to us. Thank goodness for everyone looking so exhausted. But it was after that discussion that they proceeded to tell us they were taking everyone out to dinner and we all perked up at seeing the light of food coming in the near future. Especially since most of us hadn't eaten since the muffin at 2 am on the plane. Now here comes the funny part. I was all excited to go eat thinking this is awesome: free food and a chance to try the local Irish food already! But oddly enough we spent the evening at Chung's Cuisine, a lovely Chinese restaurant down the road.haha It was a very nice place will very delicious food. And when I say nice, it was very nice and beautifully decorated. The food was great but it certainly made us laugh that our first meal in Ireland was Chinese food. Although, like I said in my first post, maybe I should have been expecting something random on my first day. Never thought it would be Chinese chicken that would be giving me a laugh though. But as for now its time to catch up on some sleep! Tomorrow, I explore Limerick!