Irish classes

In an effort to completely overextend myself while here in Ireland, I started Irish classes.  I have had two lessons so far - the course meets on Fridays at noon.  My Irish teacher is incredibly cute AND he is a barrister with a Ph.D. in Medieval History!!  So naturally I have been trying to get my single friends (especially my Irish neighbor Deirdre) to come to class and meet him!  But back to the course itself... I feel very overwhelmed by my lack of language acquisition skills when I am in class.  Especially when a question is asked orally - it takes me a few seconds to figure out what on earth was just said to me!  

We learned how to say a traditional Irish greeting which is Dia duit. which means God be with you.  Then the response to that is Dia's Muire dhuit. which means God and Mary be with you.  If there are more than 2 people in the conversation each consecutive person adds a new figure - the next in line to add is Saint Patrick.

In addition to the greeting, we learned: Cad is ainm duit? which means What is your name?  And the response is: Jessica is ainm dom.

The most interesting piece we learned on the first day was: aon craic?  which is how the Irish (especially those in Dublin) ask if there is any news.

It is difficult to give too much more here because I have yet to figure out how to type the accents used on so many of the words in Irish.  

What amazes me the most about the language so far is how random the pronunciations seem to be in connection to the way the word is spelled.  An example:  the word dtabharfaidth (which is a conjugation of the verb to give in the future tense) is pronounced something like 'doorhe' in my own weird phonetics.

Slan anois! (Go safely now literally but used as Goodbye)