The Little Things

Well, classes started this week. And I am having a hard time.
Today has been a rough day for me, and I would just like to talk about some details that have been bugging me since I got here. 

First of all, the money. I'm finally getting used to how the money works, with all their different coins. And I kind of like it. The bills come in 50, 20, 10, and 5, and get larger as the denomination gets larger. The coins come in 2, 1, .50, .20, .10, .05, .02, and .01. the 2 and 1 Euro coins have a gold outer ring with a silver center, and the 2 is larger than the 1. the .50, .20, and .10 are all gold, and the .05, .02, and .01 are all copper. All of the coins are different sizes, mostly based on denomination, and all of them have a different pattern on the outer rim. Using the money is not the problem, however. It's how often I have to use the money.
Now, you're probably thinking, well everything in the states costs money. Yes, that is very true. But not at my school. At my school, you could go to events for free. You could join clubs for free. The food was much less expensive. Here, I have to pay for all of those things. Food is expensive, even on campus, at an average of 7-9 Euro for a small meal. At a cafe. I'm sorry, but a sandwich and a cup of soup should be 4 Euro, all the time, anywhere.
Another thing that bothers me, the class set up. Let me start with some background. I am used to small classes, about 35 people max most of the time, closer to an average of 15 for my acting classes. BW has 3500 undergraduate students, 4500 total. The campus (only one campus), even though mixed with a suburb, is not large, and doesn't have too many academic buildings. In class, we don't do lectures; we do discussions. We ask questions, the teacher answers with another questions, and lively debates spark.
UCD is basically the opposite. I have lecture classes with at least 100 students while the professor stands up front under 3 huge screens, talking at us while we scribble furiously in notebooks. There are 3 different campuses, and living on the graduate campus, I have to take the bus every day to and from school, making it nearly impossible to stay anywhere past 11pm unless I want to pay for a cab back home (again with the money thing...). Then, once I get to campus, I can expect about a 15 minute walk to get to one of the nearest buildings to the bus stop. There are always people everywhere, and there is never any quiet time anywhere. The few restaurants on campus are always crowded and loud, and they don't serve much of a variety of food like BW always does.
My biggest peeve is my phone situation. I can't use the Internet unless I have WiFi, since when I got here, I decided not to pay for a data plan. But WiFi here isn't quite as common as it is in the states. Yes, the school has it, but it's not very strong and you can only get it in academic buildings. It's not in the bookstore, it's not outside at all, and it's very touch-and-go in the residence halls (at least mine). But if I'm downtown, and I need to check the bus schedule, too bad. I have to just go to the bus stop and wait until the next one comes around. I guess I don't really realize how much I rely on my 3G to get me through the day. But right now my first world problems have quite a hold on me.
Not to mention that on my first day at school, I took the time to go get an Irish phone to be able to stay in contact with my friends while I'm here. But as of right now, I'm the only one who actually has one. None of my other friends have gotten phones yet, making it very difficult to communicate with one another. Sure, we have Facebook  but again, we can only access each other when we have internet.

There are a few other peeves I'm having about being here. Like the fact that nothing is open past 7pm. Or that the only bus that goes from my residence to main campus doesn't run on Sundays and has a very limited schedule on Saturdays and evenings. Or that bathrooms aren't every few feet as you walk through a mall. Or that I have to share my kitchen and my stovetop doesn't work very well and we all have freezer space of about 2 square feet to share.
 But I suppose these are just things I will have to get used to as part of living here. Everything I encounter is part of my experience, and will shape my life in one way or another. Everyone has their likes and dislikes, and who knows. Maybe by the end of the semester, my dislikes will become my likes. These are all little things. Nothing is a crisis. Only an experience.