Old enough to drink but not to chop.

Why hello there dear readers, long time no............write/read?

That was awkward, let's move on.

So this week has been pretty great. A little dull, but great nonetheless. I went grocery shopping on Tuesday and bought a whole lotta produce amongst other things.

There's basically 4 chain grocery stores out here, but the cheapest one is Aldi, so of course that's where I headed. I got roughly 10 apples, around 0 oranges, about 8 bananas, a large bag of carrots (I'm guessing 12), a medium bag of sweet potatoes (4), a bag of onions (3), a bag of garlic (3), a box of tomatoes (8), 2 boxes of tea, honey, bread, and frozen vegetables, for 18 euros.

That's $23.91, which is pretty decent considering all the fruit I got and that this is Ireland. I think the same trip would've run me about $25 at the bodega Mr. Coco's in Brooklyn, where I and most of my roommates do a fair amount of shopping. (Sam prefers Dr. Coco's.)

I know in California that same grocery trip would've cost me like $10 but I'm trying not to think about that.

After that great success I headed to Ikea because, believe it or not dear readers, roughly a month into my stay I still didn't have any pots, pans, plates or eating utensils that weren't plastic and stolen from subway.

So Ikea was awesome. I think it's actually cheaper here...I'm guessing because Ireland is closer to Sweden than America is...but who knows.

For 30 euros ($39.86) I got a set of 6 steak knives, a spoon/knife/fork set, a plate, 3 pots, 1 pan, a cutting board, a wooden spoon/spatula/large fork cookware set and a nice pillow (mine was lacking).

I love Ikea.
One strange thing happened though, as I was shopping for the knives I saw many notices that knives were not to be sold to people under the age of 21 as a measure to prevent self harming. As a 20 year old this worried me but as an optimist I just assumed this rule wouldn't be too strictly enforced. And, honestly even if it was I knew I could play the culture shocked American card and get out with the knives. That last sentence sounded slightly criminal but I'm not gong to rewrite it.

When it came time to check out I went through one of those self check outs and the machine stopped when I scanned the knives. I had completely forgotten the 21+ rule and just assumed my machine was being weird. I called to the self check out assistant and she said, "Oh you got some cutlery did ya, it just wants me to verify that you're 21." She said this without even looking at me, all while entering passwords and scanning her ID, then she walked away. Apparently this 20 and 10 months year old passed for 21 folks!

But then she had to come back to approve my credit card while I was paying, which mean she had to cross check it with my ID. She seemed a little thrown while she was checking my license, and it dawned on me as I was heading home that she probably noticed my birthday, and then I had the further realization that she probably thought it read December 4 rather than April 12, due to the backwards date format these Europeans use.

Either way that lady knew I wasn't 21, which means I can't go back there if I need more knives.

On the way back from Ikea I spotted a gas station.

€1,60 per litre.

^that's just about as European as it gets, allow me to convert that to American.

€1,60=$2.13

1 litre= .264 gallons

The conclusion: gas here costs $8.07 per gallon.

That's absolutely crazy, or as they say here, mental.

No wonder they don't have any large cars. Aside from their busses which are ginormous. The roads here are also very tiny, I've yet to see a single road that isn't only 2 lanes wide, and I'm in the city. The busses often drive on the sidewalks, which is mortifying when you're in them. I spend half my time in the bus just waiting for it to crash into whatever building/car/light post it's narrowly brushing by. The rest of the riders never seem to notice. I'm often reminded of all the times at home where I would pull into a parking spot and Kelley Hughes would freak out and start yelling "Oh my God! Oh my God!" and I would say "What?!" as I turned off the engine. To which she would reply "Oh you were really close there." Kelley would die in a Dublin bus, if not from fright then because all of the Dubliners would attack her for yelling.

Love ya Kell.

Also, I've noticed I'm funnier when I'm being cynical, so I'll try to find something strange for the next post. The problem with settling in is that everything seems normal here now and I'm not finding as much material to blog about. I would realllllly love blog suggestions if any of you have them. Like different cultural questions or whatever.

Come on people, why do I have to do all the work?

Just kidding. It's definitely more work reading these than writing them. So on that note dear readers, thank you for following my posts and goodnight.