Hi Everyone,

Sorry it's taken me so long to write again..

First off I have been so bad about getting my address out so for reference it is:

Lisa Koth
B-14-6-3
Belgrove Student Residences
UCD
Belfield
Dublin 4
IRELAND

...the Irish love their separate lines apparently.

I started class this past week and so far it has not been too bad. My classes seem much different than back at Madison. First, each class only meets once a week for about 3 hours. On top of that, only about half the students show up and of the students that do show up at least half of them are international students. From my understanding, the low turnout results because there is a shortage of housing on campus and students who live less that 2 hours away are forced to commute each day. In my first class last week, the professor showed up 30 minutes late and then proceeded to answer his cell phone 5 times during lecture. I was so confused and almost offended at this lack of professionalism; however, the rest of my professors were punctual. We have spent a lot of time discussing the U.S. in each of my classes and it is very interesting to get an outsider perspective of the financial crisis/recession.

I only have class Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I finally was able to go grocery shopping on Thursday. I'm hoping my meals have a bit more diversity than toast and spaghetti. I found this great little market that sells fruits and vegetables 10 for 1 euro. They had everything from clementines and bananas to peppers tomatoes. I'm not able to choose which ones I want, so after taking out the bad ones its really more like 6 for a euro--but still a great deal.

On Friday, then, I ventured to the city of Cork with a few friends. Cork is the second largest city in Ireland and the city centre reminded me a lot of Dublin. After arriving at our hostel Friday night I realized my wallet was missing--which included almost every form of identification I had in Ireland, all my credit cards and money. I went back to the bus station in hopes of finding and luckily did. Needless to say, I will carry my wallet somewhere differently next time.

Saturday morning, we headed to Blarney to see the Blarney Castle; it is only about 20 minutes from Cork. We lucked out because it was an abnormally gorgeous morning for Ireland. The sun was shining during our whole tour of the Blarney Castle. I had heard the castle was a bit of let down, but I loved it. My friends made sure we covered almost every inch of the castle--including an underground tunnel/cave, murder hole, and kissing the blarney stone. It was really enjoyable and I took a ton of pictures which I will try and post to this blog. I thought of my McCarthy relatives because one of the signs talked about great craic (fun) and how the McCarthy's were great entertainers--I decided there must be some relation!

After the castle we ate traditional pub food [which I am still not sick of] and then headed to Blarney Woolen Mills which is a huge shopping store that carries anything and everything Irish. We then headed back to Cork and decided to make dinner at our hostel. While our hostel was actually quite nice, the kitchen had a few shortcomings. In order to keep the oven closed we had to prop a chair up against it. In addition, it was a gas stove. I had one in Madison so I did not foresee this being a problem. However, in order for the stove to be lit we had to turn on the gas and then start a fire with an outside flame so we ended up having to borrow a lighter from the guy at the front desk. Even if it took an abnormally long time to make the dinner, it ended up being quite fun and delicious. We met a lot of people in our hostel and then ended up just hanging out in the common room that night watching the top 50 hits of the 90's in the UK--it was great craic.

On Sunday then, we wanted to ring the bells of a famous church in Cork -- it has a huge golden fish on its steeple. We soon learned what should have been obvious -- Sunday is not the day to tour Churches. We were going to sit in on Mass then, but we weren't sure of the times and arrived half way through. After that, a few of my friends headed back to Dublin. The rest of us continued to walk around Cork. We had really only walked around the first evening and so I had not seen much of the city in the daylight. It was beautiful. I love how every church is an architectural phenomenon and I also enjoy the random statues and monuments constructed in the middle of streets. One aspect of Europe that I love is that everything is so old. One of the churches we walked into had a sign saying Christian gatherings had been held there for over 1000 years!

After grabbing an amazing lunch which included hot chocolate from Butler's chocaltier [a candy shop on the same scale as Vandewalle's) we headed back to Dublin. I really enjoyed the bus rides [both ways] because it allowed me to a lot of the Irish Countryside. The beautiful landscape is something I do not see in Dublin and definitely not in Wisconsin--although I did see many cows.

I don't have any crazy travel plans for the weekend because there is TradFest in the city centre. I believe this is a fairly large festival and there will be many cultural activities and Irish musicians playing. However, I did book a trip to Spain at the end of February!!! I will be visiting my old roommate, Maria, and am so excited! I will be spending a few days in Madrid and then heading also to Valencia.

I hope you are all doing well; although I am having a lot of fun, I miss you very much so please stay in touch!!

Love, Lisa