first complete week!

our first week is over! and a long week it has been. this place really is starting to feel life home now. im sure i'll go thru all that home-sickness shit later on, but im really good at NOT missing home. lol. its actually 7:30 am here; i have trouble sleeping past 5 am and jake gets cranky when i bug him so i thought i would get up and be productive with my life. yesterday i made us a huge salad for the rest of the week, cut up a ton of veggies to pack in our lunches (yes, we pack our lunches. isnt it precious?) and made jake breakfast all before 7. i also ate a bowl of rice for breakfast somewhere in there while talking to carly podbielski (^_^) the only one i know with as rando sleep schedules as me. yesterday we had class until about 3 pm, it wouldnt be so bad if we got to switch rooms. we're in the same room for 4 hours straight...needless to say it gets hard to focus. but afterward we got to take a tour of...i forget the name but its the american equivalent of the white house. we didnt know that the (i cant spell it but i can pronouce it) T-shock (it means like chief or leader in Irish) would be forced into questioning WHILE we were there. i guess it was some huge bank scandal that took a LOT of money, like 85 billion euro, from the Irish people, sky-rocketed their national debt, and basically ran the country back into the recession that they just pulled out of. (sounds familiar to us americans, doesnt it?) we actually got to see the court thing, it took about an hour and a half. some people were falling asleep but i thought it was super interesting. our FIE leader (FIE is the program i went through to come here) Genevieve said that it was the same as when clinton was forced to be questioned by congress. kind of a big deal to the irish people, and i though it was so cool that we were there to be a part of it and see it. i have a housing meeting today at 9:40; jake wanted me up at 8 for it. PHEW good thing i have an hour and 40 minutes to prepare! i guess living in dorms is the same in every country. today we have class again and might go out tonight, as we have no classes on friday here. EVER. so nice. im really, REALLY going to try to make my schedule to only have class two days a week. *fingers crossed* i also skyped lina yesterday and kelly a couple days ago, it was so nice to see my lovers faces. now to get my BUD girls online....
anywho, i guess we're all going balls-to-the-wall crazy on saturday, this irish kid paddy is taking us to actual clubs and not just pubs. im. excited. i may be flat broke by the end of the month. this creepy old buddy at the pub on monday called me over, told me i had "beautiful breasts" then asked me to send a picture to his phone of them. YEAH, lemme get right on that. LOL it was funny tho. he didnt even buy me a drink! i was like....lookin aint fo free!. haaaa, but seriously. my foot is SO much better than it was, it bruised and swelled up outta nowhere on...sunday? yeah sunday. it hurt. SO MUCH. but the swelling went down and i ace-bandaged it up, and its almost completely better. its hard to "stay off" an injured limb when you have to walk about 3 miles a day! its all good, its better so jake doesnt have to hear me complaining about it anymore.
im going to have start talking to my other soon-to-be international students, i want to start planning my trips to other places. through my program we're going all over the country, but no where else. i aint just staying here!
alright well, its almost time for a thursday in dublin to begin. ima make some breffess (breakfast) for bunny and me...tata!

first couple days...

ok so. i put up some pictures from the first couple days on fb...they are of a ton of rando things and people but i wanted to make sure that anyone who saw them got a feel for the entire city. it definitely reminds me of new york city..on a MUCH smaller scale, but still with the same general feel to it. theres some pictures of jake and i before we left...theres a couple in the pub called glimmermans the first and second day we got there...and then the rest are kind of from the bus tour we went on today around dublin. its great here..all my friends ask me if people are nice, and the irish people are, but about half the people here are international, and the international ones are the ones who arent friendly. everything is so expensive! like i was telling my mom earlier, breakfast [an amazing breakfast that it was!] today cost 6E, which is about 8 or so dollars. its really difficult to not eat out for every meal, because everything is such a far walk (and we walk EVERYWHERE) and americans have a habit of waiting until we're absolutely starving before we eat, which leads us to either snack on a ton of food while we wait to cook our food or leads us to grab alot of food on the go. this gets super pricey super quickly. i also noticed there arent any like 5 hour energy shots, no energy drinks, (and if there are, its probably an american targeted audience). its because no one stretches themselves as thin as we do. we need things like that and we need food on the go because we have a mind set that we got shit to do and cant be waiting on silly things like, you know, sleep. so jake and i are going to have to cook our own food, which in itself should be interesting....lol. but i figure if i buy in bulk and cook a really big portion of a meal i can eat for a couple days...i would need to cook my food right away tho because there is hardly any preservatives in anything so nothing will last. jake and i have been eating oranges and apples for every meal, and walking about 2-3 hours a day, so i/we should lose some weight! whooo! Dublin is EXACTLY how it looks in all the pictures and videos and things...keep in mind however that im in basically the new york city of ireland, so its a big city with a ton of taxis that seem to only want to run us over...(and it doesnt help we keep looking the wrong way before we cross!) sometimes walking is faster even when you're going about an hour's distance or two because of the traffic that prevents buses and taxis from going anywhere too quickly. our rooms are TINY. like...TINY TINY. its really not bad if you keep in mind the fact that we're in europe now, and personal space is never taken into account. (ha) the irish are very conscious of energy and wasting and things like that. they charge you for every plastic or paper bag you need at stores, and our rooms have these energy cards...its basically like an energy debit card, and it takes the money out of an energy account. we have to not only turn everything off but unplug everything, we even have to turn our heat off when we're not going to be in our rooms. our hot water heater isnt like in the states with the copper coils or anything,...its basically one big oven-pot of hot water. the water lasts about what is long enough for a speed shower and about one leg shaving. (ha!...no but seriously. only one leg) so it gets a bit uncomfortable towards the end. my roommate is super nice, and ive made a lot of friends already. all the people here are great and my two study abroad "mothers" have made us all feel so comfortable. jake and i are starting to figure out where everything is and kind of get our bearings when it comes to direction.

as to some of the pictures, theres one in there that i HAD to get for my daddy...the my goodness the guinness!one that jake and my friend ben are in. he has those things everywhere in the bar! the rest are from st. patricks cathedral and just driving around town, we drove past the guinness factory and everything. (side note about guinness, i had it here, i didnt get a full pint because its just too heavy for me, i ended up drinking bulmer's cider [amazing] instead. but the beer itself tastes ALOT fresher here, it doesnt have so much of the coffee-ish flavor that it does in the states, its alot crisper tasting too. i know thats hard to imagine just by me telling, but if you knew then youd know. lol! its also less expensive than say liquor or imported beer, its about E5 when a beer like coors light [yes, theres actually coors light] is like E7. one of my friends, who of course is a girl and made us all look retarded, asked for an irish, light beer. the barman just looked at her...ugh some people. ha. ) but ANYway, my favorite picture in this set is the angel statue one, you'll know which one im talking about. i was quite proud of my artistic skills ^_^. but thats all i have for now, its actually almost midnight here, so im going to put my things into my budget template and head to bed, i have a long day of cliff walking in Howth tomorrow that should be AMAZING!

love you all!

The Night Before Leaving

hi errbody! so this blog is mainly for me so i can keep like a diary of everything that happened so i dont forget, but its cool if you read my inner secrets ;) ANYwho, tonight is the wee hours of the 5th of january...its about 3am, 3:04 to be exact. im still at home for now....FOR NOW!!! my family is actually leaving at about 6am because i fly out of ohare (chicago) at 7pm, but my fmaily has to be back in marinette, wisconsin by 5pm. they own a bar and my dad has to shoot pool and my mom works. so early morning tomorrow....i dont plan on sleeping. i took a 5 hour energy at about 10 pm and a nap at like 1pm...im good! im hoping ill sleep on the plane. im ok with flying, but i still get a little nervous at take-off and landing. im FUH-REEZING in my house; i can only imagine how cold ill be in the nearly unheated, "environmentally friendly" apartments ill be in in Dublin. i saw who my roommate(s) were today in an email, i only saw the name of one. shes either from Cameroon or North Carolina....lol, one of the two. it took me literally three days to pack, but i think it all fits! my bags weigh 48lbs and 42lbs....if our scale is right. hope so! im watching mean girls and reorganizing everything in my head to make sure i have everything. im sure jake will tell me if im missing anything. jake is my bf, my devastatingly handsome and oh-so sweet teddy bear ^_^. i call him bunny. or bun buns. or bunny-lover. its so weird i know. we'll see how the international community takes to the name calling and mar-mar noises. we may have to stop until we come back. im so nervous! im kinda freaking out but not really but still sort of. lol.  on the way down im either going to sleep or write thank-you cards from the going away party i had. hopefully ill be doing a combo of both. ive never had a blog before, so we'll see how good i am at keeping up with this. we'll also see how good my budgeting skills are while im abroad...i have it down to 100E a week. if i dont spend that it can roll-over, or i can save it to travel later! mark, matt, and jacky ("the boys") are in rome, alyssa yakel is in florence, logan is in manchester, and a bunch of people are a bunch of places....so im thinkin we're just jumping from country to country. we'll also be testing my skills at being calm and handling the fact that i wont really have a million things to do like i do here. i mean im sure i'll be busy, just a different kind of busy...like do what i want busy. i miss everyone already; angelina, audra, carly, danielle, my sisters, all my BUD ladies,  and a few miscellaneous boys...lol :P i hope everyone keeps in touch! my skype screen name is marissamarie25, so if anyone wants to add me in, go for it! i just made one for my parents today...ill be so proud if they figure it out. anyway, thats all for tonight, im going to go find something else to keep me away from the next 3 hours or so. thanks for reading! <3http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1640026235163&set=a.1518176188988.72622.1072001883#!/profile.php?id=1072001883