TiKi'sphotoBar & Blog

Today is January 21st, 2010, and it is wild to think that it has already been 3 weeks since I have been living in Ireland! Time is flying and it is bitter sweet!

Hmmm… Well tonight I am staying in because it has been a busy week, full of partying, school, and working out! Ireland has been treating me ‘grande’ and I am finally settling in. School is going great and seems to good to be true. I only have 6 lectures throughout the week and have Wednesdays completely off! I am taking a consumer behavior course, a macro-economics, global marketing, and a information systems management course! Four business classes, all which will transfer back to my college in Colorado! I am still looking into adding another course for an elective credit.

This week of class was a lot different from last, as most of my lectures filled up with irish students. It was wild to see a lecture hall,
completely filled with about 200 students all doing the same thing, trying to listen and digest the professors wisdom. I have never experienced such a huge lecture hall, and it really made me appreciate my small class sizes back in Colorado, where you are a name and not a number!***

As for extracurricular activities, I have been keeping up with my work outs and drinking my protein ‘muscle milk’ powder haha. I have a lot of free time and I find working out is a lot more productive and healthy than sitting on the couch watching the idiot box. I have found that a bunch of Irish kids love the television and don’t make it out too much because of the rainy weather and the hang overs that follow from the night on the town before.

I have been playing a bunch of hockey, I had no idea I would be out here, but it’s great. It is really cool to be playing hockey with some of the pioneers of the sport, because no one out here knows what it is. The Hockey Club here at NUIG was founded only last year, and there are only a select few that play. The sport is so young and new here, it’s really cool to see it starting to take off! There are only 2 hockey rinks in Ireland, because the sports of gaelic football, rugby, soccer, and hurling seem to overshadow everything else.

I went out to play with the Galway Bay Lightning Hockey Club the other night and couldn’t believe how “ghetto” and different it was. Here I thought it would be a legit and big club, with a decent rink or basketball court to play on, but I was dumb founded. As I took a bus 10 minutes out of the city to the Mervue community rec. center, I met the 7 other kids that founded and participate in the club. This was a great experience, because before we even played, I really gained an appreciation for what I have and what I was brought up skating on. As my friend Casey, who I met from the college hockey club, and I entered the dark and run down building, we knew that we wouldn’t be playing on any sort of rink or court. Inside the old community meeting area, there were two “ghetto” locker rooms, a bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned in years, and a small rectangular cement slab, nearly half the size of a legal basketball court, which we ended up playing hockey on.

From the moment we walked in I had no idea what to expect, the place was so beat down, with every other light missing and paint coming off the walls, I felt that we were gonna get mugged. The court was so small we could only play 3 vs. 3 hockey, with the 1 goalie we were fortunate to have. The goals were indoor soccer sized, and the place was definitely not meant to play hockey on. Although the venue was beat to shit, I would say that was one of the wildest, eye-opening experiences I have been to. All of the kids were so stoked to be able to pass around a puck, and to be invited to play with them was a treat. We played for a solid hour, before the local rec center guy shut off the lights on us. With such little resources and equipment these kids are really pioneering the hockey revolution in Ireland, and I am stoked to be taking part in it!

Besides that Hockey tangent, I am actively involved with the Surf and Mountaineering Club. I am going on a surfing trip next weekend, and I cannot wait! There are over 50 kids going, all to share the same passion for the ocean, partying, and exploring! Last weekend I went on a 8 mile hike through “The Burren” in County Clare with the mountaineering club (See Link Below). This was really great to finally get out of the city and explore the country and “Real Ireland.”

The internet has been treating me welll, as it has allowed me to keep in touch with family and friends through online chatting and video sessions! I purchased a cheap phone and plan out here so I can contact any local friends I meet, now the next thing is trying to remember my phone number.

Pretty stoked, I talked to the head distributor of Roaring Lion Energy Drink in the UK. Alan Boyd, gave me a call and we chatted a bit about delivering some product out here to me in Galway. Their distribution center is up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but he said he will send a bunch of cases and product for me to distribute and market. It is cool to see how much marketing is involved in town, as there are local pub and club reps that will harass you with stamps to ‘free access’ to their special club deals. The other night I was in a pub till midnight when they were closing, and two cute girls ran in and around the pub with promotional stamps, telling us to go to Club K when we were done with our drinks. The marketing, or manipulating business is quite prevalent in and around town, and so is the Taxi business, for all the drunk kids not willing to make the trek home in the rain.

Well that is all I can think of now, all is good here, I’m looking forward to upcoming club events and sporting activities. I’ve been meeting people from around the world and it has been a great eye-opening experience so far! I am off to eat my leftover pasta and then head to bed early for one night! Good night all and hope everyone is grande!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain