Week 1 complete: Sunday May 15th

Today marks me being in Dublin for a week. Another 5 weeks left to explore Ireland :)

I spent much of the morning reevaluating my money/spending situation as things are kind of expensive. I knew that things were going to cost more....but I guess I didn't think I'd lose quite so much in the money exchange. For $500, I only get about 340 Euro...which is a bit sad. After a week of not packing a lunch, I've realized that I can't afford it so I will be packing most days...at least thats the goal.

In the afternoon, Elaine (woman I live with) and I went to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary) which is located along the cost of Dublin. We walked along the pier which was quite beautiful but REALLY windy. I haven't experienced such a strong wind in a really long time. There were quite a few yachts on the harbor which Elaine says wasn't the case before the time of the "celtic tiger." That term is used to describe the economic period from the mid-90's to 2000s that saw a huge economic boom. According to Elaine, during this time banks were giving out loans to basically anybody for pretty much anything. So people borrowed money to pay for houses, cars, yachts, everything. Then things collapsed and people are finding themselves buried in huge debt without any way to pay it back.

Elaine's friend stopped by after dinner and we chatted a bit. It was interesting to hear about the Irish way of life and family issues. They also started the conversations about hospitals in Dublin which was a new topic for me. Because many of the hospitals are public hospitals there is an extremely long wait for procedures...which makes many people opt for the private hospitals like UPMC Beacon. We drove past the Beacon Hospital and I have to say it looks amazing from the outside. I've never seen a hospital that looked so nice. But anyways, another big problem in the hospitals is infection (ie. MRSA)...so some people look at infection scores to pick which hospital they want to go to. And patients often opt to leave the hospital earlier because it's safer to be at home than in the hospital...which I thought was a bit scary.