New Ways!

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been a while since I posted last, things have been kind of crazy here, but I'm not sure how much of it is actually going to be interesting to read about. Last I left off, we had just gotten back from Galway and the Bills had just beaten the Pats. Since then, I’ve left pre-school (so termed by Kate), and now I’m officially back in college once again.

School's a little weird here, I know it’s been a long time since some of you were in college, but you’ll get it. At Albany I’m in classes as big as 400 people and as small as 25. Here, I have one class that’s over 20. The rest range from 15-4, and that’s including me. This makes the teaching and learning systems completely different than at home, it’s very personal. So I’m in the spotlight in class (which most of you know I put myself in anyways) and the flow of the class is run just as much by the students as the teacher. In fact, my friend Amber and I are in one class with 3 other girls and the 5 of us talked just as much as the professor did in a 3 hour class, which I’m sure he didn’t expect. This is just another thing that’s different between the two schools, but this way of learning is already really helping me and it has only been 2 weeks.

Last weekend was my friend Susan’s birthday. She is a southern girl and is awesome. For many of us, including me, our 21^st birthdays are going to happen while in Dublin, so they run the risk of being less eventful. Of course, we weren’t going to let that happen to Susan. Clever Amber made a sign. 

Now, you should know that Susan is not the kind of girl who harms or loses her dignity. But on your 21st birthday.... well you get it. Anyways, we made the sign so that Susan would loses her "dignity" (the sign) in whatever bar we went to, and then she'd have to go around asking everyone in the bar if they had her "dignity". It was going really well until we lost it behind a couch at the end of the night in some tiny 

club. Nonetheless, a successful night by far. 

Then this week we had presentation due for one of our preschool classes, so I worked on that all week, and last night my friend Tory's (remember, from buffalo?) aunt and uncle were in town and they took us out for a wonderfully delicious dinner that we had all really been craving. Shout out to Tom and Laurie!

They and Tory are now on their way to Berlin for the Sabres game tomorrow night!!!! Ugh, and then this morning came and I found out what happened with my boys last night. I won't go into the devastation, but it's ok yanks, we'll get them next year. 

I hope everything is going well at home, whatever part of the country that means for you! Maybe some of you can come visit over the next 8 months and I'll show you around all of these fun places I'm finding in Dublin. 

Next blog post will include details of a day trip somewhere in Ireland!