The Troubles...

So for many, especially in this part of the world, "the Troubles" would refer to the armed conflict in Northern Ireland between the nationalists, the IRA for example who all sought a united Ireland, and the royalists, Northern Irish military and those who wished to remain a part of the British empire.  Ironically, "the Troubles" could also refer to some of my first few days here.

It started Wednesday night, the day after the arrived.  Some of my friends and I spent a long night in the pubs, perhaps a little overzealous at taking advantage of the Irish lifestyle.  

We ended up back at our apartments, having one of those great "getting to know each other" chats that I miss so much from freshmen year in college, and just as always happens, by the time we exhausted the usual topics (or just as we finished up with politics) we noticed that the time was right around 8 am in the morning.  Obviously we did just about everything that people say not to do to adjust to the jet lag, but looking back it was probably worth it.

Anyway, we made the decision that since we had orientation for school at 9 am, we should take the long way to campus and watch the sunrise over the bay at the docks.  Again in retrospect, I like the pictures that I got, but I doubt it was a good idea given what happened after.

To make a long story short, I fell asleep after orientation and woke up to what I thought felt like the worst hangover I've ever had.  In reality it was probably only half a bad a hangover, and and half a pretty bad sickness that apparently the rest of my family got a few days before me.  So basically I spent the next 24 hours straight in bed.  I missed all of my class orientation the next two days, which has contributed to my being relatively clueless about anything that is going on in school.  There's no reason to go into any detail here, but suffice to say it was a rough few days, and I don't think continuing to go out after the first night was a good way to treat myself.  It definitely made my first week rougher than it had to be, but I'm over it now, and back to having a lot of fun.You can decide if the sunrise pictures were worth the 24 hours or so of suffering.

Cheers.