Thursday, March 18

Today has been a nice day so far. When my alarm went off this morning I wasn't quite ready to get out of bed. Unfortunately the desire to sleep in follows me where I go. I made myself get up though, because I didn't want to be in Jamie's way in the bathroom. I went to dry my hair this morning and for some reason my hair dryer was bright orange on the inside! It looked and smelled like it was going to explode. Hayley let me borrow hers, but she definitely had comments on how bad the stunk up the upstairs. I'm just glad I didn't catch anything on fire. Looks like I may have to buy a hairdryer with a European plug in, which will be no use to me in America, darn.

This is what plug-ins and outlets look like here. Actually, they don't even use the word outlet. I mentioned one the other day and Hayley asked me, "What's an outlet?" I can't remember what they call it though.

I packed a ham sandwich for lunch, the ham I bought is sick. It's slimy and smells weird, but everything here is more expensive so I'm trying to use it up instead of wasting it. The bread I bought isn't so great either. I am excited to be done with it so I can try a new type. I managed to find some Laughing Cow cheese and melba toast to spread it on. I wanted some string cheese, but for some reason it's about 5 euro for a regular size pack, which is about 7 or 8 dollars, no thanks! Pringles are common here too, so I bought some of those as well.

Anyway, I made my way down to the bus stop. This is the first time I've ridden the bus to school. When I got there I learned it only comes every 30 minutes, and I had just missed the last one. So I stood there for about 27 minutes waiting. It was okay though, I enjoyed the time I had to think to myself. The bus fare is 1.60 euro each way, grr! It's not even that far of a ride, I don't know why it's so expensive. I'd rather ride though, walking isn't so safe.

I spent another day in Mr. O'Dwyre's class. He has a pretty thick accent. When the kids aren't behaving he often says, "Oh dear!" It's funny. At one point in time he said, "That's cheeky!" to a student who was being rude. The kids' uniforms are gray. The boys wear gray pants and sweaters with a white-collared shirt underneath and ties. They have to be told several times to tuck their shirts in. The girls wear the same on top, and they have skirts. Today I learned that erasing is called "rubbing," and an eraser is called a "rubber." Interesting. I also learned tape is called "salitape." I have never heard that before.

The first lesson of the day was about the Last Supper. The kids are so cute when they talk about Jesus and his friends. Afterwards the kids shared their "news" about St. Patrick's Day. They wrote what they did in their journals. They are expected not to have errors in their writing. If they don't know how to spell they have to attempt it in a tiny notebook they each have. Then they come up to a teacher and ask how to spell it. If it's correct the teacher just checks it, if it's incorrect the teacher will write it correctly. This is a neat way for students to be able to go back to remember how to spell a word, and it is differentiated for each learner (sorry, teacher talk). I think I may use this in my future classroom!

When school got out I went to a few shops just to look around. I ended up buying a Twix and a Diet Coke. For some reason the Diet Coke tasted awful, but the Twix was good. I wanted to buy a more European type of chocolate, but the ones we have in America are cheaper (two for a Euro), so I went with a Twix and a Snickers. They look at little different and my mom has asked that I take pictures of things like that, so here is my afternoon snack.

Okay, I know I've mentioned a lot about bathrooms, but they're just so different! Today I saw a student-made sign in the hall that said "save water in the toilet, push the green button." I of course was confused as you probably are now, but I figured it out. In the school the restrooms have a little green button on the other side of the flusher. Apparently if you keep the green button pushed after you flush the toilet, it will save water. I thought about trying it out, but I was afraid I'd mess something up. Good old me, an American coming to Ireland and being wasteful.

Check out the flusher on the right side instead of the left. It's things like this that are hard to get used to.

There are several things I see that I'm not sure what they are. Here is one.. does anyone have a guess? I had to ask Steve and Diane what it was.

Here is another thing.. they have an oven with a smaller looking oven on the top. I asked Diane and she said it was a grill. I told her we have grills outside. She was confused so I explained what a grill is and she said, "No no! That's a barbeque!" She was surprised we didn't have what they call a "grill." When she was explaining what the purpose of it was, Steph said, "Oh, we have something similar, but we call it a toaster oven." Diane said, "No, it's not like a toaster at all." So then we had to explain to Diane that a toaster is different than a toaster oven. Little things like this are what makes it difficult to communicate, but it's fun to learn.

It's a bit rainy here today, but only a mist. It's the kind of rain that people in Indiana would probably get their umbrella out, but if people in Ireland did they would be considered wimps. So I roughed it and wore a hat instead.

I have noticed myself starting to think with an Irish accent in my head, but not out loud. It's odd.

Things I learned today:

-Tape is called "salitape"

-Checkmarks are called "ticks"

-A period at the end of a sentence is called a "full stop"

-There are letters in the Irish alphabet with accents over them. They are called "father i, father e, and father o." There may even be a "father a," but I'm not positive. Lots of names have these.

-The "th" sound is not pronounced so heavily by many people here. For instance, Thursday sounds like "Tursday."

-When they say "math" it sounds like "mats." I can't decide whether they are saying "maths" or just "math." Maybe I'll find out within the next 10 weeks.