Orientation

Ok, so we went to orientation on the 13th of January. It was scheduled for 3pm and we got there at 2:45pm but there wasn't much of a crowd. Maybe they started earlier, who knows.

During the walk to Aungier St.

13 January 2015
It was in the Aungier Street campus (pronounced like baby in a manger with out the 'm'). We walked up to a very small table near the cafeteria where a guy named Arnaud directed us on what to do. It wasn't much of an orientation, really we sorta just went into an office, gave one of the ladies our student number, telephone number and street address...snapped a photo...then went back to Arnaud where he told us to meet tomorrow (14th of Jan) at the Kevin Street Campus at 10.00am. In all honestly we probably could've just done all of that online.

DIT logo in the front of the building.

14 January 2015
The 14th was waaaaay more eventful. We arrived at Kevin Street with about 5 minutes to spare. Everyone sort of awkwardly stood around with their groups from school until it was time for us to go into what resembled a middle school cafeteria with a stage (you remember those). They made us raise our hands so they could get an idea of who was from Europe, Asia, Africa, America, etc... Quite a few people gave presentations (or 'talks' as they were called) on various topics like how to navigate the DIT website, access internet, sports, clubs and societies and the school doctors.

Then everyone took a 15 minute break and came back to listen to more talks. They briefly went over how to cheaply get around Dublin, places of worship, the cheapest places to get good food, etc. It was nice. Then we had another 15-30 minute break where everyone had pizza and soda before breaking into groups (Bolton, Aungier, Kevin, Grangegorman, Cathal Brugha, and Rathmines).

Walking through the city

Arnaud (brown coat) and Alan (pointing)

Our Bolton campus Chaplain, Allan, along with Arnaud led the way from Kevin Street to Bolton and gave us some history facts. We stopped in Dublin Castle (which is absolutely beautiful and I need to go back when the weather is better) and learned Dublin got it's name from Norwegian Vikings.

Gloomy day in the Dublin castle

Okay so then we finally got to Bolton and took a quick tour of the campus. It's sort of like UCF's Engineering Buildings where there's one older building then they built another one next to it but the two don't line up quite well. Anyway there were maybe about 15 students (out of the huge group from that morning) who are studying at Bolton so we sat in this conference room and chatted and played an icebreaker to get to know each other better. It was fun and at the end we got free coffee from the cafeteria.

This post is getting kinda long and I'm sorry about that but I don't want to leave out anything.

So during orientation at 10:00am the folks at DIT invited everyone out to go to a couple pubs to hear some traditional Irish music and do some Irish dancing. I would say about 20 people actually showed up but it was soooo much fun.

Irish dancing at O'Shea's

The first pub was Cobblestone (which happens to be very popular in Dublin). I got there kinda late so I only stayed about 10 minutes before everyone went to the next pub--O'Shea's. I really like O'Shea's. It felt very warm and home-y. I don't know I had a great night and met lot's of people. A few of whom I hang out with very often:

Yoann - French student studying Business
Justus - German student studying Industrial Engineering
Sascha - German student studying Manufacturing Engineering

So yes, an eventful day!! I'll write about my first week of classes tomorrow or Friday.
-SX


**UPDATE:
Turns out there was a bus tour at the end of registration on the 13th that we completely missed. I jut found out about this yesterday, Sucks.