First Night Out

OK, so I knew I was tired... but geez. First thing I heard in the morning was the plumber clunking around in the bathroom. Don’t remember going back to sleep, but Ian woke me at 1pm. Erm, yeah. Ate a bowl of Honey Shreddies for ‘breakfast,’ then a tasty roast beef sandwich for ‘lunch.’ (“Did you know Shreddies are knitted by nanas?” the box asks, next to a picture of an old lady with grey curls. Yup. I see how it is. Using cheap labor from the elderly to make your cereal, and then you have the guts to advertise it?! Heh.)

Ian and I drove through Lisburn, dropping off Andrew for a haircut. I exchanged some cash for pounds sterling, and then went to the Elms Village to grab my room key. When we got to the room, my key wouldn’t work for the front door. Apparently they should have given me two keys, and they didn’t. There’s one key for the front door, a key code to type in for the next door, and then a separate key for my room. Good to know the security seems pretty tight.

The room seemed alright, I got lucky in getting one with a window facing the street. Not sure if the other rooms on my floor have windows or not. Only major problems at Mount Charles so far are the kitchen and the wireless. The kitchen… was a complete disaster. Someone had had a party in there and just didn’t clean it up. Empty beer bottles, half-eaten rice bowls, dirty dishes everywhere. Gross. As for the wireless, I had the ridiculously long network key, but my Dell didn’t want to connect. -sigh-

Another surprise was the fact that Mount Charles is self-catered, meaning… I will have to go buy food and cook it to survive here. There is only one tiny little refrigerator in the kitchen, so I won’t be able to buy much at once. Not sure where the closest grocery store is. Ian refused to let me try and cook in that disastrous kitchen, so he dropped me off for a while to let me unpack and picked me up later for dinner with the family again. Ohhh, and was I ever grateful! Susanne even gave me some fruit and cereal for breakfast the next morning.

I fell asleep on the couch as I knew would happen, and woke up long enough for the ride back to Mount Charles. As I climbed the stairs to my room on the third floor, I heard some people talking in the kitchen, so I popped in to say hello, and was quickly invited on an outing to Lavery’s bar and club. Dawson was the first one I met, followed by a bunch of his German friends who will all be leaving the country tomorrow. There were a couple others who were staying, John and Andrew, who I hope to catch up with later. We hung out downstairs in the bar for a while, everyone sipping a Guinness, and then went up to the club area for a couple cheap beers (Carling’s) and some dancing! I was amazed how many songs I knew—there is a strong American influence here in Ireland. Out of 10 songs I would know maybe 7 of them.

By the time I got back to the room (2 maybe?) I was ready to drop, but the bed was so uncomfortable that sleep was not possible for another 45 minutes. One of my first priorities when I go shopping will be to buy a mattress pad and a foam topper of some sort.

Tomorrow I’ll be having lunch with Dawson before he heads out on a 10-day trip to Spain (he’ll be back, though), and then will probably spend some time exploring the area. Also going to try and get the wireless problem fixed.

Huzzah!
~Catherine