Orientation Night

First off, here's me. In case you forgot. This is what I look like after my orientation day. Sorry MJ, you cant see this picture unless you make the difficult journey to getting online. Otherwise, you may imagine what I look like :-)

So I gave myself plenty of time (so I thought) to walk down to get my refund check but that's not so correct. By the time I actually got on the Luas, 30 mins had past, giving me 30 mins to get to my orientation. I decided I'd have to wait til Monday to get my check, but I did stop in and get my travel card changed from "Kelly" to "Kerry". Once that was done I slowly strolled to my area of campus.

When I arrived at my dept I found the blonde lady who had been helping me last week. She walked me up to my room. I would have had to have the code to get thru the door anyways - which I got in orientation - so it was just as well to have gone to this lady.

One thing that I'm finding true about the Irish is that they are not on time. Ever. Usually, this is GREAT for me!! I dont tend to be on time. But when I'm new to something, I show up early. You dont wanna walk in late if they've already started!! But for instance, when I showed up early to the CU, they asked why I was incredibly early, even tho it was only 10 mins early. They figure everyone will show up about 15 mins late - meaning I was really 25 mins early!

Well I was the first student to arrive at my orientation, beating 2 of the 4 professors!! That's fine tho. I got to talk to the ones who were there and they got to know who I was, and that cant hurt to have the professor know who you are!! Well, only 2 other girls showed up!! And apparently they said there are only 5 or 6 who are in the course!

But each of the profs got to talk for a little bit and gave us class schedules. I'm excited about it!! I have film screenings each week - and Dad, you'll like that on week 9 we'll watch The Quiet Man!! haha awesome huh? We will visit theatres and archives. Even one of the classes will be a tour of all the libraries that we'll need for our research. How perfect is that?? I'm really looking forward to this. There are no exams either. Just writing (which isnt great, since my writing isnt great... :-/ ) I usually have 1 class on Mondays but for the next 2 weeks we wont have our Monday class. So my first school week starts on Tuesday, and I'll have 3 classes that day. I'll be starting off my week with a bang!!

We then found out where we will be screening our films, and also our lectures the next day on the film will be in the same room - good deal, less places for me to find!!

The Director of our course is also the Theatre prof and she gave us a photocopy of one play we need to read before class Tues morning at 9am. Then she gave us the name of a book of modern and contemporary plays, one of which we'll need to also read by next Tues. Thing is, there was only 1 book in stock, so I bought it and I'm going to read it by Sun afternoon, when I will pass it on to another student so she can read it, since the rest of the books wont come in til Tues or Wed. The first one from that book is Pot of Broth by WB Yates. Doesnt seem too long.

One of the foreign students and I then wandered around Grafton Street for a bit, and she asked if this was the road where they filmed "Once". I realized that it was. 'Once' is this Irish film that of course Steve showed me a couple of years ago, cuz that's sort of an indie film, right? nothing that was super publicized, as far as I remember... (i dont usually know of films that didnt come out on the big screen at Columbiana Grande) Sean you saw it too, maybe you'll remember. I think it's great that I got to see it cuz I bet that will be a film we will talk about, and it's something I know of, and it was a film that was filmed right outside my school!!

We had a wine reception after the orientation with the other "M-Phils" like the drama students and film students (See? I am all three - film music theatre- not just one. I like the idea of that!!). As soon as I walked in the course Director found me and introduced me to another girl in my course who hadnt made it to the orientation, so that made 4 of us so far who I've seen who are part of the course... She was sweet. Two Irish students, One Chinese student, and ME! The last one I met I talked to for quite a while. She actually did the undergrad program for Multimedia at DCU, which was what I had an interview for in the Masters degree. Basically the Masters program would have been the 4 years of undergrad degree in 1 year. But it sounded a lot like what I did in my undergrad - as far as making films and videos and having audio projects. So I would have been prepared for that program had I went ahead with the interview, but I like the path I've chosen (That the Lord has put in front of me).

Coming home, I grabbed a 6in sub from subway and an iced mocha next door from Butlers - this is chocolate you should expect from me for Christmas. It is sooo tasty!! (yes yes, I admit it, I bought a whole chocolate bar to go with my mocha!!)

Then I grabbed the Luas back home, got a seat - yey me - got back to Hall (trinity hall), found my computer and walked it over to the computer place. Here are the results. 1. the guy played around for a bit so that my iTunes will connect to the internet and I've already watched the 2nd week of ANTM, and in fact, i prepaid for the entire season! I'm so fieeeeeerce!! (Thanks Tyra) So I'm set!! 2. Most Macs can not get skype on the wonderful server that is my university. Great! But, there is a slightly more pricey solution. As you skype users have found, there is virtually no cost - unless you need to buy a mic to talk into your computer. Other than, the use of skype is cheap. Well, I can go to O2 - where I get my phone service from - and get one of these plug in drives for 20e the first month and 10e each mo. after that, and then I'll be able to use skype. but still, that's not bad! I probably was going to give myself 50-60e a month for phone service, so say I spend 40e on my phone, and then 10 on skype? Yea, that works!!!

So that's my story of my day.

I need to get on with reading the play in my book so I can be prepared to hand it off to someone else. But tomorrow they have something called "Screening the irish in britain'. It'll be an all day event, luckily something you can show up to at any time and leave at any time, so I may not stay from 9:15am-7:15pm!! But apparently a lot of the speakers are writers of my books I'll be reading, which is kinda cool. (I should definitely be there for when Dr Holohan from Trinity speaks around 5pm!!)

So that's the my idea of what might happen tomorrow... We shall see :-)