L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire.

Today was the first day of classes at NCAD, I took the train in to school and, after getting slightly lost, I made it there at 10:20. The school seems tiny from the street but today the big gate was open and when you walk inside you realize the school is huge! It’s probably 3 times the size of Emily Carr University.

I met with my tutor for the semester, as well as some of the students in my year. Their system is much different from ours at home, instead of having classes with separate teachers each year is assigned one tutor who keeps tabs on you, mostly though bi-weekly meetings. There are also lectures you are able to attend, as well as technical seminars (so I gather). The media department seems quite small- I think there are only 16-20 students in my year. There are only 11 fourth year students. This might be because the media department here is fairly new- I think the program is about 6 years old.

The students seem very nice, I was surprised to learn that there are no other students on exchange from Canada- I think there is one girl from the US though. Apparently most students come here from Europe only- because its closer to home. I had lunch today with two exchange students from France, they were both very nice, and hopefully I will meet more people from school as the week carries on. Our café at the school is downstairs in the basement, the food is pretty gross- mostly potatos and beans and sausages- so I think I will be bringing my meals with me or eating somewhere else. The café looks like it’s a subway station- pretty cool. It’s all brick and there are little oval alcoves with glass block skylights above- you can see people walking on the street up above.

After school, I walked back to my Luas stop, taking my time and enjoying the sights. I stopped for a bit at Dublin Castle, which is beautiful and also right in the middle of the city!

Like my school, from the outside, the castle doesn’t look like much, but once you walk through the gates . . .

. . . you  realize how huge the place is! It’s really beautiful just to walk around outside and admire the architecture. What I like about Dublin is that there are loads of beautiful old brick and stone buildings, and then right next to them you can see brand new, modern glass and steel structures. It’s a great combination, I think.  Walking around Dublin is really nice, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble crossing the streets. It’s tough remembering which way to look for oncoming traffic- even though at some crosswalks they have arrows painted on the streets to show you where to look. There are walk/dont walk lights at the crosswalks- but they take forever to light up- and no one seems to pay attention to them. Everyone jay-walks and crosses whenever they can, I felt like a bit of a dork standing at the corner waiting for the walk sign. As if crossing the streets weren’t bad enough, the buses here are double-deckers and its insanely terrifying to watch the bus come hurtling towards you on the road, especially as it turns sharp corners onto the tiny little one way streets that cover downtown.

Tomorrow I think I might go on a bus tour of the city, maybe it will help me get my bearings a little bit more. I’ll leave you with some photos of my walk to and from school to my house in Milltown. Today started out grey and windy but by mid-afternoon the sun was able to peak out of the clouds! I haven’t even had to use my umbrella yet! If you would like to see more photos of my trip you can visit my Flickr page, here