This is the first thing that I see when I walk into my dorm when I first got here. And I think to myself, "How in the world is it possible that Ireland is having a water shortage problem?" All anyone has told me about this place is that it rains every day. If you look down further it says not to flush the toilet, not shower, and not do wash. Sounds to me like we are going to have some smelly Irish people. Well, nobody follows that advisory here. It seems to me that people just do their normal routine.

But I do see why they may be having the water shortage. I have been here for 10 days and it has only rained one time, and this was a short rain. It is misty about half the days, and the ground is always wet. All pants have mud up to my ankles from walking on the grass

and my duck shoes have been the most useful things ever. I am not sure if you can tell in this picture, but they are quite muddy. You would think that I would learn to walk on the paths but I am all about the quickest way from a to b and often times that does not include pathways. There is mud everywhere. And where there is not, there is a small amount of grass growing on mud so that when you step on it you sink and get a little stuck.

When I first tried to get in the shower here, the water was like ice. I asked a girl from Germany who had been here for a couple of days how to work the shower and she just said to let it run for 10 minutes and it will get warm so that is what I did only for 25 minutes, and it still was not warm. At this point I felt very bad in light of the sign posted on the door, let alone my own green consciousness. I went to the front desk and told the girl working there what happened and she looked at me like I was the dumbest person she had ever encountered. She told me that I have to turn on the immersion. I am not even sure if I am spelling that right but I had no idea what she was talking about. Well after some language barrier slang, I found out that here they turn off the water heater when they are not using it to save energy. Well my green mind likes this but my convenience mind does not as to get hot water you must leave it on for an hour before you need it. So I was dirty for a day or two until I figured out how to use it. I hope I did not create a stereotype about smelly Americans!