MacKat in Ireland

We’ve made a new friend here in Kilmurry Village – a spider we’ve come to call Brutus.  Brutus is enormous.

Brutus was extremely shy when we first moved in.  He kept to the right side of the second stair in apartment 52, hunched up against the wall, afraid to be seen.  After a few days he still hadn’t moved anywhere and we started to worry about his health, specifically if he was alive or not.  The next day he must have summoned all the courage he had because he moved about half an inch toward the center of the second stair.  Again, he stayed there for about 36 hours before moving again.  Then things went crazy.

After getting back from our shopping trip today we noticed that Brutus wasn’t in his usual spot!  This provoked a shriek of terror from Katherine who immediately backed up to the wall.  All was well, however, as Brutus had simply moved to the other side of the stair where we couldn’t see him as soon as we came in through the door.  This was quite the accomplishment for Brutus and I think he may have regained his strength.  We’ll be expecting him to continue his trek up the stairs next week.  Maybe one of Katherine’s roommates will crush him; we can only hope.

From information online and by looking at maps it’s been well documented that UL is situated in the Castletroy suburb of Limerick.  Today we witnessed that first hand when we got on the bus to head downtown and ended up getting off after only a few blocks because there were so many shopping outlets closeby.

Our first stop was a grocery store, and a real one to boot.  We found enough food to last us an entire week (despite Katherine’s never-ending hunger) and we spent less than €50.  At this rate we’ll save enough to take another trip later on in the semester.  More to come on our trip-taking schedule later.

After returning the food we went back to suburbia and found a large sports store, large electronics store, Wal-Mart-type store, and a Sears-type store.  It felt, for a few minutes, like we were back in America, home of capitalism.  I knew in two days I’d be back on campus seeing an abundance of ‘UL Socialist Youth’ flyers.

We have failed again at finding an adequate beverage.  Katherine picked out a 3 liter jug of orange juice (non-carbonated), hoping it would be better than the lemonade – which we’ve just recently finished off.  Judging from the sound Katherine made after drinking her first sip I knew this orange juice didn’t live up to its billing either.  It tastes more like grapefruit juice than anything else and diluting it with water makes it tolerable.  Three liters later we’ll try again.