Dissertations in Dublin: Expat Living

Getting set up to live in a foreign country is quite difficult. I used my 1GB of Data from Vodaphone in 4 days... and obviously that plan wasn't going to work for me. Ireland is a funny place. People's personal bubbles are a lot smaller, and although people are very friendly and nice, it seems like they're not ones to get to know you really. We've been in our flat for a week and haven't met anyone from the 14 other apartments in the building. That "internet" we were wired for is of course not actually internet, its cable. We talked with the company (UPC) and they said they can't wire us for internet, but other companies say that UPC has us wired and that they cannot come into the territory. That basically leaves us with a mobile hotspot as an option, but that's so expensive. We'll figure it out I suppose.

Claudio told me today "moving to the US was so much simpler" and I couldn't agree more. Apps like Localmint sure have helped though! There's a German grocer here called "Lidl" (pronounced little!) that is our favorite to shop at. Although it's almost a mile walking each way, the prices are ridiculously cheap. Like €1 for a thing of Italian ravioli, etc.

Church was wonderful. We're in the Terenure Ward, Dublin Ireland Stake. Our ward is basically the entire south half of Dublin County, but we were surprised how many expats are in the ward. First and foremost, Caroline Altom, fellow BYUH ICS grad is in the ward! How crazy is that? The ward is about 60% Americans, 10% Nigerians, 5% other expat (Czech, French, Japanese, etc) and 25% Irish. Most of the Americans are employees of Qualtrics, a surveying software company based out of Provo, Utah. From what I heard, the ward has so many expats because Dublin southside is very expensive to live in, and Irish families tend to move to other regions once they have families because housing is less expensive. I felt very welcomed into the ward, and everyone was so friendly. There's elder missionaries AND sister missionaries in the ward, which tells you how large of a region the ward covers. There's only about 2,000 members in all of Ireland, which is something completely different after living in Laie, HI and Provo, UT. As our letting agent told us "most Irish are recovering Catholics..."

Here's a few more pictures from the last week!