From Dairy to Daniel Day-Lewis

no, i did not see daniel day-lewis, before you freak out. however, he does live in glendalough, which is the monastic ruins site i visited today, and goes jogging in the wicklow mountains, which is where glendalough is nested. so, technically, i was in the same town as daniel day-lewis. although irish people aren't that interested in celebrity, so apparently the town makes no note of it; which is funny, because in america, we put signs like "JOE BLOW, 2ND RUNNER UP IN THE FFA COTTON JUDGING REGIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP" up at the gate to our hometowns. glendalough was incredibly beautiful. the variety of plant life here is amazing, which i know sounds random, but some of the mountain looks like colorado, some like seattle, some like the east coast. there are rolling hills of heather, and huge placid lakes, and we even saw some irish stags--they're really dark, and apparently pretty rare things to see. the town is very quaint, and everything looks straight out of the tour book--the pictures i'll eventually have online don't even do it justice.
irish tv is a thing to behold; monday marks the season premiere of 'rick & steve,' a show shot with lego people about same-sex couples. right now, we are watching 'alan carr's celebrity ding-dong,' and the last challenge was a taste test where the last tasting was edible panties. we were also watching the irish-language channel and it basically sounds like gibberish. one of the ies staff members, who are all airy, beautiful irish women, is from county kerry and her native language is gaelic--her name is spelled siobhan, and pronounced 'shavonne.' dun laoghaire, the next town over, is 'dun leary.' i don't get it.
the subtle difference are starting to appear. meals here are about twice as long as the states. IES took us out for dinner (and lunch) today, at a very nice restaurant, and it took about 3+ hours. when we went out for lunch yesterday, they didn't bring the check until we asked for it. the people are incredibly friendly and always willing to talk: extensively. and maybe this is just because i've never been out of the country, and this is a common european thing, but everything in the city is very compact: the streets are very thin, the houses are jammed together (the only way to tell whether the owners are wealthy is to look at the cars in the driveway, and how much of the block they own--there's no difference in the housefronts, and there aren't any distinctly wealthy neighborhoods, all socioeconomic classes are mingled), the stores have no room for shopping carts and are small to begin with. but then you drive just a bit, and you're in expansive country side with free-range cows and sheep. there's also no skim milk--when you ask for skim, they just give you 1%. and there's a much weaker craze about health, calories, or lack thereof, aren't advertised all over the place. but i love it so far, and i can't wait to go to our school and the city centre tomorrow.