Yes, I realize this is true - it was my first week here, you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats to hear about it and live vicariously, and there has been nothing but a great silence in the cyber-world. I extend my sincerest apologies to you all. But let me tell you about it now. I started classes last Monday (the 19th), and while they claimed it was just an introductory week (and mind you the rest of campus didn't start classes til yesterday - the 26th), they still dished out field trips and assignments, scientific articles to read and essays to write. My classmates are wonderful - only 17 in total - but we've got a good sense of comraderie already. We've got a vast array of backgrounds and experience (both academic and personal), so there's a lot to be learned. I was somehow voted class representative without running.....still trying to work that one out. And I hit it off with a really interesting girl named Vivi (short for Vivienne) who's from Finland. We love a lot of the same activities and places, so it looks like I've got a new travel buddy. As part of the more relaxed life style here, class doesn't actually begin until 9 o'clock or later, and large parts of the day are unscheduled to allow you time to get work done - but I can already tell these are not to be wasted. Last Thursday we went a little south to County Wicklow to a national park where we slugged through the bog and hiked up a nicely sized hill and examined rivers and streams to learn about the Irish landscape. It was nice to get a break from the city. But of course we can't just go to the park - we have to write a short paper about it, too. Welcome back to school, Brenna.

I didn't take an apartment right when I got here, but decided to extend my hotel stay shortly to look at more apartments in person. However, I finally made a deposit on one and will be moving my things in tomorrow! (Amidst the paper writing and lectures, of course.) I will be sure to post pictures, though maybe not until I get a chance to decorate a bit. Also, my phone has been working well for the most part. Except when it hasn't. It seems I can receive text messages, though people in America do not receive mine. People in Ireland, on the other hand, do. And usually when I call back to the States I get through just fine, but every now and again I am "unable to connect". I will do my bes to get this straightened out soon, but if it's really important, I suggest you e-mail me. I get all my e-mails.

And of course, I couldn't go more than a week in a new country with new germs without catching some sort of cold. So I am going to go complete tonight's assignment and get plenty of rest before tomorrow and all the moving.....!

Things around here haven't been particularly exciting, until today. Today was the All-Ireland Football Championship, and it was played just a few blocks away in Dublin. There's regular football here (i.e. soccer), and then there's Gaelic football. This would be the latter. It's worth googling a clip of. You use your hands, you have to dribble, there is a lot of punting, and there are sort of field goal posts and a net. If you get it in the net, that's a goal. If you punt it between the posts, that's a point. One goal is the equivalent of 3 points. There are 2 halves each 35 minutes, and it is very physical. This match was a particularly big deal, because the Dubs (team from County Dublin) haven't been in the final in 16 years, and they were playing against County Kerry, who is one of the best teams ever in the game. Last night while I was in the pub I met a family of Dubliners who had all come back to town for the game and were celebrating just being in the final. Irish people sing in the pub all the time, and this was no exception. They were singing all sorts of songs, Irish and American, and having a noisy, fun-loving time. So of course I had to join in. But back to the big game, no one really expected Dublin to win. It's fairly close the first half, and ends with Dublin up by 1 point. Into the second half, Kerry pulls ahead (like everyone expected) until they are 4 points up on Dublin, and it starts to look like the games over. But then Dublin scores a goal, and Kerry is only ahead by one.....and naturally there are only a few minutes left on the clock. A minute later Dublin nabs another point, and the whole game is tied up. With maybe 20 seconds to go, the Dublin goalkeeper gets to take a penalty shot of sorts and it goes right between the posts, meaning Dublin won the All-Ireland Championship. It was a lot like being in downtown Pittsburgh when the Steelers win the Superbowl. The city just went crazy.

Tomorrow (after all this excitement) starts the first day of my program's (or programme's as they spell it here) introductory week. It doesn't count for anything, but there are some lectures and I will get to meet the other students in the program and my professors. I'm excited to finally be getting started. Better get a good night's sleep....

After traveling 34 hours (not including the 9 time zones I went through) since leaving Igiugig, I finally arrived in Dublin, Ireland at 7:24 Wednesday morning. The customs officer approved my stay until October 14th, and I will need to meet with the Immigration Beareau at the Garda (police) station with appropriate paperwork by that time to stay the full year. My baggage also made the journey (whew!). The university has started a meet-and-greet program for students new to Dublin, so a girl (whose name I don't think I can spell correctly) from the university met me on my way out and helped me grab the bus to Trinity. She showed me a couple of key places around the university, and I got a taxi to my hotel. I was able to drop my luggage off, but like most hotels check-in wasn't until 2 pm. So I found a coffee shop, explored the city by foot, and tried to figure out which stores would have the things I will need to buy shortly (sheets, towels, a hairdryer, food, etc.). Other than Burger King and McDonalds, I don't really recognize any store names, and the concept of a store like Target has not arrived in the city yet. The shower I took once my room was ready was one of the best of my life. And I slept really well that night.

This morning I had a large breakfast of toast, scrambled eggs, rashers (bacon), cheese, yogurt, tomato, and coffee. I definitely wasn't hungry for lunch after that. I am now a fully registered, student ID-carrying member of Trinity College. I am halfway through opening a bank account with the Bank of Ireland, though that process takes a little while. And now I am off to see a guy about my apartment. Tomorrow is the postgraduate orientation, so I should get to meet a few more people then. So far, so good.

Once again, fair warning not to look at the pictures if you don't like moose heads. Well, moose heads without moose bodies, that is.

So while we were having rotten luck with boats, Andrew's friend Karl (that we had gone moose hunting with earlier in the week) goes out and bags a moose. Sunday morning Andrew and I went out with Karl and his wife and 2 kids to collect the rest of the moose - including the head because some people eat the nose. Kinda cool, kinda weird. It's just amazing how big moose are. Katy showed me how to make yogurt that afternoon.....if you want yogurt in the bush, you better make it yourself. And that night she took me for a steam, which I was really glad to get to experience. Alaskan steaming is sort of like a sauna, except a whole heck of a lot hotter. There's a giant wood-burning stove in a room with wooden benches to sit on, and basins of cold water. When water is in short supply, this is how a lot of people bathe - you sit and sweat to high heaven, then use the water in the basin to wash up. It works really well and is incredibly refreshing.

This morning I had to pack up and say goodbye to everyone. I made sure to take some pictures of the school and the kids. They are actually planning a trip in May to Boston and Orlando for 2 weeks. Half the kids have never left Alaska, or swam in salty water, and none of them has ever ridden a rollercoaster! So in Boston they will get to learn more about American history, give a cultural presentation at a school, see the harbour and some museums, then take a train to Orlando where they will visit the ocean and Universal Studios. The school board just approved the trip. It sounds like a great experience for all the kids to me. They are working hard doing jobs to help earn money, making things (like the flies they tied last week) to sell, and running a school shop where you can buy snacks. If anyone is interested in donating, click here to go to their website.

As for me today, I grabbed a flight on the bush plane back to Anchorage, borrowed Andrew and Katy's van to do a little sight-seeing, and ate at a place called the Bear Tooth Pub and Theater. You order your food and they bring it while you are watching a movie. There's also a bar in the back of the theater that sells local brews so you can refresh your drink without having to miss anything. Very neat. I returned the van to the air field, called a cab, and made it to the Anchorage airport where I am waiting to head to Seattle, to Chicago, to Dublin. Time to go.

Andrew is not having such great luck with boats lately. Before I got here, he lost the propeller off the boat. So he got that replaced, but when we tried to take it out on Thursday there was a problem with the gas uptake. As in we shoved off from shore, and the boat had started okay, but then it just ran out of gas after about 20 seconds. The Kvichak River has a really strong current, so Andrew and I started going downriver, fast. Andrew restarted the boat, headed upstream, and then it died again. This went on a few more times, we had almost made it back to our landing, but this time when Andrew went to start the boat, the pull-cord came out, but it didn't go back in. The retracting mechanism had broke, too. So we paddled to a small island in the middle of the river, and some other fisherman came and gave us a ride to shore where Andrew got some help to fix the boat. That was Thursday.

Friday, a guy from the village came to the school and taught the kids how to tie fishing flies. All sorts of education is needed in the Alaskan wilderness. That afternoon Andrew and Katy's friend Karl was nice enough to lend me his sea kayak, so I got to go out on Lake Ilimna for a few hours. There's definitely some fantastic paddling opportunities out here. While I was off enjoying the view, Andrew made some repairs to the boat after some helpful suggestions/parts from Karl. A better day in the world of boats. We also squeezed in a bit of practice with a bow and arrow. I haven't done that in a long time, but it was a lot of fun. Friday there was also a contest in the village over berry picking, where everyone brings the biggest and the smallest berries they've picked, and the winner of each category gets $20. Not bad for berries. That was followed by movie night at the school.

So on Saturday, all three of us decided to take the newly repaired boat out and down to Kaskanak creek where we could fish and hunt for moose while floating down the creek. I remember Katy and I asking if the boat was really fixed before we started off down river. The response was, "It should be." Always comforting. The motor started up just fine, the pull cord retracted, and the squeeze ball on the gas line hardened, just like it's supposed to. So we start off down the river, and a good ways down the motor is still running, but there are some copious amounts of smoke coming out of it. Andrew tinkers with engine, none of us have any ideas that seem to work, and we make it partway up the creek we were aiming for, but not to the spot we really wanted (i.e. where we know there are lots of fish and some moose). We tried the fishing without much luck, Andrew went ashore even and tried the hunting without much luck, and after a while we decided to start to motor up and head back to the main river. But the engine keeps, well, skipping might be the best way to describe it. It'll go, but only about 6 miles an hour, and it skips the whole way. We made it out of the creek, and started against some of the gentler current of the river, but it took forever. And by forever I mean about 2 hours, but it only took us 20 minutes to get out there. At 2 hours, we are only about halfway back to the landing, and now the current is stronger so we're not getting anywhere. Luckily we had made it back to where there were other people and buildings every now and again, so we went to the Alaska Sportsmen Lodge to ask for help. Andrew knows a guy there who knows more about boats than any of us do. They were incredibly nice, invited us in for coffee, cooked us a delicious dinner, and took a look at our failed boat. Andrew's friend Matt said something about it benig an electrical problem with the coil, which he couldn't fix right then, but towed us back to Igiugig. Definitely an adventure. And I think I'm done boating with Andew for this trip.

Alaska is great. Tuesday afternoon Andrew taught me how to fly fish, and I landed a trout. Then we took the four-wheeler on a tour of some of the trails down by the lake, and while we were driving we rode right past a grouse just walking along the tundra. We grabbed a shotgun and stalked down the bird and a few of his friends - I got 2 and Andrew got 2. I even learned how to clean my own birds that evening. Dinner was some delicious salmon with mayonnaise and spices an tomatoes that I would never have thought to put together, but I guess people who eat a lot of salmon come up with a lot of interesting ways to cook it. That evening I got my butt whooped on the Wii by Andrew at just about everything, but Katy killed us both at basketball....she's got the 3-pointers down.

Wednesday I took the four-wheeler out for a bit myself during school, and I didn't get too far before it started to pour. It was a rather short-lived adventure. But that night we did go moose hunting, after eating the grouse we shot the day before. We didn't get a moose, but I got more than my fair share of bugs. If you sit still swarms of them surround you. They are awful. I made a face shield from my jacket and a beanie hat, which was fairly effective, but wretched if one got stuck inside. The vegetation at this time of year is starting to turn red and beautiful to look at, but not so much fun to walk on for long. It's like a giant sponge, and every now and again you sink in up to your knee. We also rematched on the Wii, and I held my own this time....just for the record.

I left Pittsburgh yesterday morning at 6 am on a flight to Minneapolis, then on to Anchorage, Alaska. The first flight was pretty short, but the second flight took a little over 6 hours because of a strong headwind. Once I got to Anchorage I grabbed a taxi over to Merril Air Field where I took the bush plane to the village of Igiugig where I will be until next Monday. It was a windy day which caused a fair bit of turbulence, and believe me you feel it a lot more in a small plane. My cousin, Andrew, and his wife, Katy, picked me up from the landing strip and gave me a tour of the village. It's pretty small - about 50 people - but a gorgeous place and right by the water. We did some berry picking and went back to their house and they made some great pizza for dinner. We mostly just talked and caught up (as I was a bit tired), but Andrew went out moose hunting in the evening. They are having about 12 hours of daylight/12 hours of dark at this point of the year, lots of rain, and a low/high of about 45/60. Right now I am sitting at the village school where Andrew and Katy are the only teachers. They have 9 students of all different ages in their school, and are going for the one-room school house style of teaching. It seems to work really well. I'll be sure to get some pictures up before too long, but for now I'm going to find out what the afternoon holds.....