That'll be 3,000 Euro, please.

Small personal victory today...I went grocery shopping and to a book store today and no one said anything to me about being American! Okay...so it was Sunday, and cold, and rainy, and quite possibly no one cared where the heck I was from. But it was nice to go somewhere without instantly being pegged as American. Not they anyone is necessarily mean or rude because you're American, there's just a kind of "oh...you're one of THEM" attitude. But, I try to think about how we treat people in our country who are obviously foreign and obviously haven't quite gotten the hang of things yet. In comparison, they are far nicer to Americans in their country then we are to foreigners in ours. So far everyone has been very patient with my inability to decipher between euro coins and obvious inability to understand exactly what's being said.

Another interesting tidbit we've picked up in the last few days. Smoking in any public place will cost you 3,000 Euro. For anyone unfamiliar with the exchange rate, that's a little less then $4,500. That's no smoking in public buildings, restaurants, bars, etc. The fine, a whopping 3,000 Euro. They REALLY mean, take it outside.

Now the fun stuff! Pictures! Same drill as yesterday, click on the picture for a bigger view.

They take forever to load, so you're only getting a few at a time. But the top picture is the view from Molly and Marissa's balcony (they live on the top floor of my apartment building). Next is the path from the main gates of campus up to where we have class. And lastly, this castle like structure is the Main Quad, we actually have class in here, on the inside it looks like Hogwarts :-) But don't walk on the grass! At least that's what they told us at orientation, apparently that's how they know you're an international student and they'll make fun of you. Figures, in America we would have put up a million ugly signs that say don't walk on the grass. In Ireland they'll just laugh at you.