Welcome to Cork

Hi friends, and welcome to my very first blog post! Last Monday evening I departed my beloved Pine Street in Philadelphia and flew from there through Detroit, to Paris, and finally landed in Cork, Ireland after about 20 hours of travel time for my semester at University College Cork. I made my way from the airport to my lovely little eight-bedroom townhouse, which I share with seven other international students. Four of us are American, two are Chinese, one is German, and one is Dutch, so it's safe to say that we make up a fairly interesting little household.

Arriving exhausted and starving on my very first night in Cork, I dropped off my things and made my first trip into the City Centre for a burger and "chips" at a local pub, the first of what is sure to be many nights spent in the pubs. The rest of the week was filled with orientation events and nights at the Old Oak, a pub in the heart of the city where the international students gathered every night during orientation for pints and dancing to slightly out-of-date American pop music.

I arrived in Cork without much more than clothes, and I found myself needing to do a lot of grocery and house supply shopping during my first days in Ireland. Most of my orientation days looked the pretty much the same: wake up and attend the orientation lecture, make the 1.5 mile (2.4 km-I'm trying to be better), trek into City Centre to buy bedding at Pennys or groceries at the English Market, head home for dinner, and walk all the way back to City Centre for a night at the pubs. My feet hurt from walking on hilly and narrow sidewalks, my abs and back hurt from dancing, and I have consumed almost exclusively scones, Guinness, and spaghetti since I arrived, but my first almost week in Ireland has gone by in a blur of fun and culture.

On Friday my American flatmates (look at me) and I walked to the nearest Garda Station (Irish Police) in order to file for Irish Resident Permits with Immigration, since we will be here longer than 90 days. We were required to bring bank statements, a matching debit card, our original insurance policy, a conversion table to prove we had more than 300 euros, a completed immigration form (in capital letters only), our passports, our student ID cards, and the immigration fee. Immigration at this Garda station was only open 4.5 hours a day, and we arrived right at the beginning of their two-hour lunch break. However, all I could think about during the whole hours-long process was how much more difficult this would be if my situation was reversed and I had studied abroad in or tried to immigrate to the US. I left the experience a temporary Irish resident and no worse for the wear.

I have, of course, noted a lot of little differences between Cork and home so far, and have learned a few (very few) things about life in Europe. The weather here is overcast, as expected, and is like stepping into an instant fall compared to Philly, with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees (about 15 Celsius) during the day. Unsurprisingly it rains a lot, and my flatmates keep having to remind me to bring a jacket when we go out at night. For the most part the Irish are as friendly as they were advertised to be, and I've had locals stop to draw me maps and ask if I am okay when I look a little lost and scared. I have trouble remembering to look the right way when I'm crossing the street because they drive on the left here in Ireland, and I've had multiple startling experiences where I've reacted to a driver texting and not paying attention as they approach a stop, only to realize it was actually the person in the passenger seat.

Rather than purchasing a sim card, I have been operating using only wifi in an effort to disconnect and be a bit resourceful, and I have been pleasantly surprised at the ease of access to free wifi in the city and in the stores and pubs when I need it, which I rarely do. On the whole, European boys at the pubs have been far more pleasant, polite, and sober than the college boys I interact with in the bars at home, and going out has been a low-key social experience where we can chat and leave our jackets lying out and come back to find everything in its place at the end of the night.

Overall, my time in Cork so far has been short but beautiful. Stay tuned for some more adventurous Irish travel in the coming weeks, and take a gander below for some pictures of the UCC campus, pubs, City Centre, and the English Market. Thanks for reading! Cheers! :)