A Fixer Upper

Upon arriving in Galway, the first place myself and the other kids went to was our apartments. I was assigned to live in Menlo Park Apartments, an apartment complex that hosts only university students. The complex is about a 15-20 minute walk from the university and Galway Center and is about a 5 minute walk from multiple shopping plazas. 

The outside of the complex.

The outer gates leading into the courtyard (and my door in the top corner)

To get an idea of what the apartment looks like (don't judge the mess, we are still getting settled!):

 The foyer right inside the front door.

My bed

My desk

The living room 

The kitchen/laundry room

About 144 students total live in Menlo; there are 5 of us in my apartment: myself, a friend from UMass, two other American girls, and my roommate, who is studying abroad here from her home university in France. While we have begun to settle into our new place, decorating it with pictures from home and making "family dinners," we have also had some...surprises...that have led us to affectionately refer to our apartment as "the fixer upper."

First, upon immediate arrival, we noticed an unpleasant stench that was unmistakably something gone bad in the fridge. We opened it up to find vegetables and other perishable items that hadn't been thrown out before the previous tenants had left for winter break. Once we ran out and got a bunch of necessities - including air freshener - my roommates and I braved the mold and threw out all the items that had gone bad. Once that crisis was averted, we all decided it was time to shower after a long trip. One by one, we realized that we had no hot water and no power coming from our outlets. A quick call to the landlord brought a plumber and electrician within the hour, and we thought we were in the clear. We thought wrong!

Over the past 72 hours or so since our arrival, my roommates and I have experienced mold (on ceilings and in the fridge), strange odors, no hot water, several blown fuses, lack of heating, and a start to our semester that I am sure we won't easily forget. It has become a running joke, as we play a guessing game of what we will have to work on next until our "fixer upper" is 100%. We have learned that living in Ireland is a lot more different than we expected, with heating up water via a boiler two hours in advance of taking a shower, using heat sparingly because electricity is at a premium, and other things I know that I never think twice about using or doing back in the United States. But all the differences are part of acclimating to living in a new place and I am finding already that some of the "inconveniences" are not really that...it's just another person's way of life. So until I get used to five minute showers and cranking the boiler, I think it's best to laugh it off and chalk it up to part of the experience.

Love and laughs,

Haley