Day 1

I flew to Ireland with my Ma on continental airlines January 7, 2010. The flight was to leave at 7:50 pm, we got there around 5. After a massively long line to check our baggage, we had our boarding passes and were ready to go. Security wasn’t an issue, but when we got to our gate, there was only a half hour until we were to board the plane. We almost switched our tickets to the next flight because we would receive 400 dollars each for traveling, but we decided against it when we found out the next flight would be the next day.

The plane ride was smooth, I watched “Up” (which probably wasn’t the best movie to watch on an airplane…) and reached a high score of 30,000 on bejeweled! I eventually tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, the lights went on and they started serving breakfast. I was okay with this, because I love food; however, the flight attendant accidently spilt an entire cup of orange juice all over me and my Ma. We weren’t exactly thrilled… Funny no doubt, but everything got really sticky…

We rented a car when we got to the Dublin airport. My Ma hasn’t driven on the left side of the road in a long time, so driving in Dublin was very difficult, especially since it was snowing. There usually isn’t any snow in Dublin, so most of the drivers were driving very haphazardly. Also, there isn’t a good system of street signs in Dublin. Sometimes there is one on a building, but sometimes there isn’t. To make it worse, sometimes the street you may be driving on changes names... multiple times. All of this together made our short drive to an office and to my house a lot longer than one would expect. It took us about an hour to get to an office to pick up my keys. But the 5 minute drive from the office to my house, took about an hour and a half… At least we made it eventually…

I have to say, the first day in Dublin was exciting, but also the hardest. I got a phone, and got settled in, but this is when it finally hit me that I was going to be living in a foreign country for four months. It was lucky I was so tired, otherwise I’m not sure I would have been able to sleep well that night.

my room before everything was unpacked...