Kerry, Part II: the quaintest little town...and some more churches

On Saturday, a few lone seagulls joined me as I watched the buoys bobbing at sunset.

Back when I was looking at colleges, my mum took me on most of the campus visits.  (Ironically, I ended up at one of the three schools that I visited with my dad...and the first time my mother saw Union was the day I moved in.)  We had a joke, Mum and I, that grew out of the similarities between all of the Connecticut colleges.  (When I say "all"...I should explain that I applied to eighteen schools, and visited more like twenty-five.  I've since become a lot less insecure.)  One afternoon as we drove through central Connecticut, it occurred to us that our experiences were all beginning to blur together.  Each college town seemed to have cobblestone streets and vintage streetlights.  Each campus seemed to have identical sets of verdant lawns and an easygoing, peaceful vibe.  One, in fact, called its academic requirements "General Education Expectations", as if it would be just fine if a student didn't finish all of his coursework before graduating.

And then I ended up in a program choc-a-bloc with requirements and limitations and rules.  Figures.

Hakuna matata

When one of my friends (who studied abroad here last fall) found out that I had chosen Ireland, too, one of the things he told me to expect was an Irish housemate.  American universities, it seems, have figured that a good way to make American students mingle with/learn from Irish ones is to have them live together.  So Teresa and I waited, and Conor arrived on Sunday.  Now, I have to say that I wasn’t crazy about the idea of living (i.e. sharing my bathroom) with a boy – my closer friends know that this is just one of those things that I’ve always been very particular about.  Thankfully, Conor contradicts a lot of generalizations I often make about boys.  How, you ask?  He cooks.  He cleans.  He won’t allow either of us girls into the kitchen to help him.  He even fixed the three of us tea last night, before bed…and he does all of these things of his own volition.

I must admit…I’m impressed.

Please don't stop the music!

(That's right, friends...I did just make a Rihanna reference.  What can I say?  The woman's got style!)

Riddle me this: one class, seven books.[1]  How does that make sense?  I guess this is a taste of what it’s like to be an English major.  Being a Biology major, I’m used to buying three or four textbooks for an entire term – and sometimes, I can use one book for two different classes!  Crazy, I know.  Oh...I should also mention that as a Biology major, I'm also used to teasing English majors :)

Down to the wire...

Hello, friends!

Here’s my story in a nutshell: my name’s Sonika, and I’m a senior at Union College (Schenectady, NY) studying Biology and Music in the Leadership in Medicine (LIM) program.  This fall, I’m going to be studying abroad at the National University of Ireland, Galway.  This joint-degree “straight med” program is the main reason I’m going abroad at all…but more on that later.  First, a few tidbits about me: