Golfing and Class

Galway Golf Club

View from the Tee on One

Clubhouse

Walking along the Water to the Second Tee

View from the Second Tee

Walking over to the Fourth Green

Walking to the Seventeenth Green

Class has started and it’s much much different than in the States. In general, it’s just much more laid back. Of course, engineering is still stressful. The other mechanical engineer from Villanova, Julian, and I have a course called Vibrations and Control Systems. The professor wouldn’t let us leave until the class asked 2 questions about his lecture. He ended up keeping us ten minutes passed the time it was supposed to end. So far thats the only bad class though. I’ll be taking International Relations, Ancient Philosophy, Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, and Irish Studies while I’m here. The Irish Studies class is with only the other Villanova University students. They don’t really get homework here from what I’m told so I feel like I’ll have lots of free time once things settle down and I get in a groove. I also have off Thursdays which would explain the gorgeous pictures above, but I’ll go into that more later.

We’ve gone out a few times this week because this is the first week of school. All the Irish students are going nuts. They don’t really go to class this week apparently. Actually, most Irish students go home on the weekend to work a weekend job and wash clothes and such. It’ll be even more empty this weekend as our group is going to take a trip to County Mayo to see a few things for our Irish Studies class. We’re going to be taking an Irish Step Dancing class while there too. More on how it goes later. One of my roommates had her 21st birthday on Wednesday. It’s a really big deal (even here when it doesn’t actually mean anything) so she had a little party and then went out to a club called Central Park (CPs). A few of us stayed here and wandered around the apartments meeting more people and then got a group to meet our roommates at CPs. It was a really fun but pretty late night and luckily I had off on Thursday.

I slept in a little bit and soon after waking up Julian called me up. We have a similar schedule so he has off on Thursdays too and he asked if I wanted to go golfing. This was one of the things I definitely wanted to do so of course I said yes. We went to the Galway Golf Club which overlooked the Galway Bay. You could see County Clare from some parts too. It was a gorgeous day. The course was really hard, and I shot a 123, but Julian’s played golf much more than I have and he shot a 120 so I wasn’t too disappointed. I rented a set of clubs and in all the round and clubs cost 60 euro. We grabbed a coke at the clubhouse bar in the middle of the round. It was a fun day and something I’ll never forget.

When we got back I made myself some ravioli which was awesome. I went over Bill and Tim’s apartment where I hung out with them and their roommates for a while.

Thats it for now. I’ll update about our weekend trip to Mayo on Monday.

Until then cheers.

Mike