Brenna's Semester in Dublin

After a week I can honestly say that I love Dublin! I have been in the city many times now and it is very exciting to say that I sometimes know where I am! I actually took the city bus from campus by myself the other day and found my way to the Jameson Distillery without getting lost ( I did have to ask several Dubliners for directions though). I am also finally learning the tricks to not being a "dumb American," but I will always be a tourist because I cant help but take pictures haha. One trick that I learned from someone here is that I need to trick the cab drivers. My school is located outside of the city so when we go into town we must take a bus for 2 euros, but usually by the time we come back from the pubs the buses are no longer running. For the first week what my friends and I did was ask the cab driver how much it would be back to UCD and usually we would pay around 4 euros each. However, I am no longer a rookie with the cabs and now what we do is tell the cab driver we only have 3 euros a person because we spent all our money on food and drinks and most of the time they say they will bring us back!  The irish cab drivers are definitely the nice ones and they usually just laugh at us and take us back for our negotiated price. I think the weirdest thing about Dublin so far is that it is really hard to adjust to the life of an Irish student. The Irish students here usually go out Monday-Thursday and then they go home on the weekends to work with their families. They even travel 3-4 hours to go home every single weekend!!! What this means for the study abroad kids thought is that we also go out Mon-Thur and then on the weekends nothing is really open... opposite of what I am used to back home. My classes start later in the day which is good, but I can never keep up and always end up staying in to sleep at least one of the nights #americanproblems. As far as my classes and roommates go I have absolutely no complaints! My roommates are awesome and I am so happy that I get to spend these months with such energetic and fun people! I love talking with my Irish roommates and meeting their Irish friends! My classes are not as easy as everyone said they would be, but I have only had one week so I will see how things go!! It's Sunday night though and I need to sleep since I will be going out tomorrow night to the pub where P.S I Love You was filmed (Whelan's)  Fingers crossed I find my Gerard Butler (; Goodnight!!! xoxo