Cén t-ainm atá ort?

Overall, there's not a lot of culture shock coming to Dublin. They are a modernized city, eat similar foods, and speak the same language.

Usually.

I had my first I'm-in-a-foreign-country experience last Tuesday night when a friend and I decided to hop over to the Gaelic Society meeting where they were holding a free traditional Irish dancing session (my friend, Kathryn, has actually taken Irish dancing in the States). The first thing we heard upon arriving was "Cén t-ainm atá ort?" (hear: http://www.daltai.com/sounds/phrases/page02/p201.wav). Kathryn and I just looked at each other, then promptly had to confess we were Americans and knew absolutely no Gaelic. However, we still spent the next hour trying to learn Irish dance steps simply by looking, because we couldn't understand a word of what the guy with the microphone was saying, and everyone else had apparently done this at least some time before in their childhood. Fortunately, traditional Irish dancing bears a striking resemblance to American line dancing, so my trip to Wild Country at the end of the summer really paid off.

Latest perk to studying abroad: going through Freshman orientation all over again - but just the good parts: a huge activities fair, students back on campus (finally!), and, of course, free food. I even managed to totally forget about the "mandatory" orientation meeting which ended up being completely worthless, per all my friends who remembered to go...

Not that I was being unproductive at the time. I had, in fact, been meeting with the head of Trinity Genetics department, trying to figure out their crazy science curriculum.

Quirks in a nutshell:
- You can't just study "Biology" here, you have to specialize. And it's really complicated to study in more than one school at once. Thus, Genetics.
- I'm the first international student they've had in the Genetics department in 3 years. Hence, we're all figuring this out together.
- If I were to take the full Junior Sophister (3rd year) Genetics curriculum (which I don't plan to), I would be enrolled in 15 different courses, each meeting once or twice a week.
- Exams aren't until the end of the spring term. When I'm not here.
Needless to say, things are a little crazy scheduling-wise, but fortunately all the people I've met with to figure this out have been super friendly - not a surprise in Ireland.

Since studying abroad (and freshman orientation) are all about trying new things, I decided to do just that, and on Tuesday night I found myself at none other than... the Juggling Society. Yes. More than just juggling though, they do pretty much any type of circus/carnival-type trick you can think of, including unicycling and balloon-animal making. I learned how to juggle bean bags, clubs, and do tricks with a diabolo (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabolo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JZEAjIhykc&feature=related - this is one of the simplest videos I could find, trick-wise, and I'm nowhere near as good as these kids). I signed up for a number of other societies as well (they don't call them 'clubs' - 'societies' sounds way more sophisticated), including the Food & Drink Society (so appropriate for Ireland) and the Biology/Medicine Society (not pre-med, medicine - you can study it as an undergrad here).

Classes start on Monday, but before that, I'm planning a day-trip with a group of people to Kilkenny, one of the two counties who competed in the All-Ireland Hurling Finals, to see the town, a cave, and a castle. Details and pictures certainly to come sometime next week.

Oh, I almost forgot - we baked a cake for one of the girls downstairs' 21st birthday (not as big of a deal here, unfortunately, so we tried to make up for it). However, the only place you can get frosting is the American Food section in the local upscale grocery store, and it's way overpriced. So we frosted the cake with Nutella. It was grand.