Well, week 1 of being a resident in Ireland is in the books, and it’s been a crazy week for sure! Tom and I managed to open a bank account, get him a PPS number (Ireland’s social security program), and we are both now official with the immigration department. It has not been an easy week, between getting adjusted to the time change, figuring out how to work European appliances in the apartment, and figuring out where to get groceries, pet supplies, etc., but every day has certainly been an adventure. We learned that none of our streaming services aside from Netflix work here, and that Ireland has UK outlets, not European outlets, rendering all of the converters I purchased before we left, useless. Luckily the correct ones were pretty easy to find. We also learned that TJ Maxx exists in Ireland, but is called “TK Maxx.”

Why the company would change the name by one random letter, I have no idea, but I’m grateful that there is one place I can shop that will remind me of home.

It’s been in the 60’s and partly cloudy most days: perfect fall weather.

Our temporary apartment is so close to St. Patrick’s cathedral we can see the steeple from the entrance to our building, and can hear the chimes on at the top of every hour. The chimes continued to play most of the day on Sunday as well.

See more pictures from my walk around St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The kitties arrived on Wednesday, and it feels so good to have them here. I immediately felt more grounded, and the whole experience started to feel less like a vacation, and more like a real move. We discovered shortly before they got here that cats actually aren’t allowed at our temporary digs, which was a surprise to us since Tom’s work set up the accommodations and knew we have cats. We’re in talks with a realtor now and I’ll be going with her to view some apartments on Monday. I also have my first prenatal appointment on Monday and another on Friday. Lots more exciting “getting settled” errands to do next week!

My days have mostly been filled with running errands, researching how the healthcare and immigration systems work. and figuring out what/where to eat. I cooked my first dinner last night. Trying to figure out how the oven works was a comedy of errors, similar to the combo washer/dryer unit. All of the appliances use symbols for their settings, not words for some reason. Thank god for Google!

This weekend will be a pretty normal weekend for us: running errands that require more than two hands to carry things, get brunch somewhere, and go out to dinner for date night somewhere. I’m hoping to get to visit Pheonix Park as well and see the deer! Have a great weekend!