Day 5: Orientation at UCC
Again with the 8am mornings...yeesh. Today was off to UCC (University College Cork) which was quite the hike away actually. Bout a 20 minute walk at a good clip. The orientation started at 9:45 and we didn't get out of there till 1pm!! And it was bloody hot down there too. They talked to us about academics, clubs, societies, and other stuff that was not incredibly interesting and we'd somewhat heard already at the orientation in Dublin *sigh*
Afterwards my friend Jack and I wound up separated from the rest of the group and decided to grab a quick bite and then wander around to see what we could see. We did find a beautiful little scenic pathway behind the college next to the north channel of the Lee (see picture below) and saw a ridiculous amount of Cork since we got horribly lost for about 1.5 hours. It was fun times though :)
Day 6: ID cards and musically-inspired adventure
Off to UCC again to get ID cards and a ton of free stuff from the club members. But that was just the start. We had some time between getting our cards and the academic walkabout (where the heads of each department were at tables to answer questions and get you interested in their class) so we decided to explore the library...you know, browse a bit. The library had a different idea. IT DOESN'T HAVE A BROWSING SECTION!!!!! AAAAHHHH!!! Do you realize how painful that was to realize? You just look books up in the online catalogue and someone gets the book FOR you *cry*
After the library fail we went to the walkabout, which was not very helpful or informative. Though I know what classes I want to take anyways so it didn't really affect me much. When Jack and I were done we thought we'd be smart and go in search of the Music building since we're both going to take music classes. We should've been tipped off when there was NO music building on the campus map...anywhere. Riiiiiiight. So, we went down to go ask someone in the International Student Office how to get to it (since we knew it had to exist somewhere) and ran into Bethany, who initially was just letting us know the ISO was closed...ugh. However, she wound up being a music student as well and came along with us.
Once we procured decent directions and a good map we were off on the hike of our lives. Gad zooks this building is far!! I don't know in miles how long it was but it was a fair bit (for those of you who know the Claremont Colleges imagine walking from the end of Mudd to the south end of Pomona...and multiply that by a neverending hill and a bit more distance). When we triumphed and reached the top we unanimously decided the view was worth the walk, since it was absolutely gorgeous. The idea of walking up there for 4 classes throughout the week however is quite daunting.
On the way back we came up with a perfect name for how one feels as a pedestrian in Irish cities: Human Frogger. If you think California drivers are bad/crazy, the Irish are 10 times worse. They take corners ridiculously fast (keep in mind their streets are about one of our lanes back home...only turn that into a 2 way street) and I feel like they'd just keep going if they hit someone.
Yay adventure!
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ReplyDeleteNo browsing section? That's harsh, dude. Also, curious now, since this is different ~everywhere - what do they consider the difference between college and university? College as a subset?
Mmm yes, I think it's something like that. Within a university there are colleges which you apply to individually. When you're a science major, all you take are science classes. Same goes for english or whatever else major. No broad spectrum reqs like in the states...which is interesting. So I'm doing most of my classes through the Music College, meaning the Irish students in my classes are all music majors and got accepted to the Music College.
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