Americans Love Castles

A brief recap of the last week: we still have no jobs. To give ourselves some credit, we’ve had a couple trials (which is a common thing to do here, it’s like a test run to see how you do) that didn’t go especially well, and we’ve had some temp assignments… not the most thrilling but at least it’s a little bit of money coming in. Ultimately though, we still don’t have anything permanent, but have some promising interviews this week. Fingers crossed!

So now we’re all moved in. Besides the mold throughout the room, the leak in our entrance, the freezing cold showers and room, the kitchen being constantly messy, and not having a key to our entrance, everything’s “sound” (as the Irish say). In reality, it’s not actually too bad, and we’ve met some cool people so far. There’s:
-Stephanie, the laid-back Belgium girl
-Andrea, the German Chemistry student (who, when we invited her to see Trim Castle with us, grunted and said, “Americans love castles!”)
-Wellington, a chatty Brazilian who sings when he cooks
-13 Spaniards
-David, the South African groundskeeper who lives across the hall from us
-a few others that pass through who we haven’t gotten to know yet
One night we all hung out and had a characteristic scene out of a movie (L’auberge Espagnol for those of you who’ve seen it) where we all drank and had a guitar sing-a-long. It’s been fun so far and seems to be a good atmosphere where everyone gets along.

Yesterday we went to Trim Castle, about a 45 minute bus ride Northwest of Dublin. It’s the largest and oldest castle in Ireland from the 12th Century! We wandered around the grounds and took a tour of the castle where we got to go up on the roof and see some pretty views. Apparently a lot of the movie Braveheart was filmed on the grounds, which is strange considering the movie takes place in Scotland, but cool nonetheless. It was really awesome to see the castle and it actually didn’t rain until we had finished the tour, which was pretty lucky. Afterwards we walked around the sleepy town (which took about 5 minutes, and nothing was open because it was Sunday), so we got some coffee and then took shelter in a nice hotel while we waited for our bus to arrive. Pictures are up on Snapfish of the weekend!