I had to check out of Trinity this morning. I got up really early to walk around Trinity a little bit and relax this morning. I finished packing up my room and then went to breakfast to enjoy a cup of coffee and scone.
The weather this morning was actually very similar to the weather when we arrived. It was hard to believe that it had already been 2 weeks in Dublin. I thoroughly enjoyed living here in Dublin and I am really curious to see if Belfast stacks up to Dublin.
I got to talk to Will this morning on Gmail chat. Since phone calls are so expensive, Gmail has come in handy to cut down costs. I am hoping that there is internet in my room in Belfast so that I can use my laptop and webcam!
I put my suitcases in the lobby and then turned my key to Building 38 into the office. On my way back from the office I ran into Eric (the Italian I met the other night) and we chatted for a minute before I had to catch the bus.
Got on the bus at 10:30 and had a 3 hour bus ride up to Belfast. I could see changes from Dublin just from the bus. The houses were bigger and the street signs no longer had the Irish language on them. As we got closer and closer to Belfast I saw more and more of the Union Jack, the flag of the UK, flying above houses and buildings. It definitely felt and looked different.
We got a little lost on our way to our accommodations at Queen’s University. The professor is great, but he definitely isn’t one to plan things out and he does not always have the most information. So he got off the bus and asked a local where we needed to go. We finally got to Elms Village which is about a mile from campus. It is a nice, new student apartment complex made up of red brick buildings. Most of Queens is made up of red brick- it is very Victorian. I unloaded my bags into my room and then as a class we all went into the city centre. At the heart of Belfast is the giant city hall, complete with a statue of Queen Victoria herself, a giant Ferris wheel (kind of like the London Eye), and many beautiful buildings. Since we were travelling during lunch, the professor took us to a local coffee shop/café and bought us lunch. I had cous cous salad with chicken and a cappuccino. It was delicious and I was so excited to actually get some protein! While we were in the café, I met a guy named Paul. His Mohawk caught my attention earlier and then another student Daniel struck up a conversation with him and we ended up talking to him for quite some time. We even got some recommendations on places to go out in Belfast. He was very nice to talk to! I was only in Belfast for 2 hours and I had already met a local! Talking to them is one of my favorite things to do!
After lunch it was still pouring pretty badly. We went to go walk around with our professor and class, but the 3 gals (incl. myself) got separated from the group somehow. So we just walked around on our own, found a grocery store to buy some things for dinner, bought our bus pass (which I thought would be included in the program costs…), and then came back to our apartments around 6pm or so.
We all were pretty tired from travelling and it was still raining, so we decided to stay in and just cook dinner and hang out. There is a TV in our common room so we watched that for a while. So different than our TV shows! It was hilarious to watch the Olympics with a UK bias…they apparently took gold in cycling (which I didn’t even know existed). I also got to watch the University Challenge (kind of like Jeopardy for Oxford and Cambridge students) and we were trying to shout out answers…let’s just say we didn’t get many of them right. But we did pick out our future husbands…haha…there was the dorky guy who answered everything, the slacker who never answered, the girl who only answered the easy ones…their personalities were hilarious. And then there was “The Hairy Bankers”- a show where 2 big, hairy bankers ride motorcycles around the world cooking food. The title was an interesting choice…
It is a lot of fun in the apartments here. We are all in the same building this time and my floor is great. I have Catherine, Tara, Lindsay, and Maggie in my wing and we all just prop our doors open, put on music, and have fun. We ended up putting on music and having an impromptu dance party in the hallway. It was a lot of fun!
Tomorrow is our first class at Queen’s so I’m off to bed. I am looking forward to exploring and getting to see more of Belfast!
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