Touchdown in Ireland!

Getting off the plane, I found out that there were two other UIP students on my flight and another one who arrived on a different flight at the same time. So after getting through customs easily (they had psyched us out and gave us all these documents to present and then customs didn’t care), we waited in the airport. That’s because it was 5am and the building where we could get our keys wouldn’t open until 9. Two more UIP students arrived at 7 and then we all got a taxi at 8 to head over. I’m very glad we did that because we met James, one of the nicest taxi drivers I’ve met. He was very helpful, gave us lots of tips about Ireland and even gave us his number if we ever needed a ride (if people were out late at night or something like that). It took an hour to cross the city (the airport is in the north and the University College Dublin (UCD) is in the south). When we arrived, we found out that our rooms weren’t ready and wouldn’t be until 1pm. We walked around, I finally ate a scone (very good – Mom’s been raving about them), and waited for our neighborhood tour to begin. Honestly, UCD looks like any other US college and much of Dublin itself even looks like a quaint town in New England, but something is slightly different. Here's some photos:

rivers run through the city

gated front yard

what some of the houses look like

Cool Church among modern buildings

They DO have Leprechauns! 

We saw lots of Irish flags flying (because it’s soccer season) and the doors of houses are differently colored (like all red or all blue). 

The doors also sometimes have their names engraved on the outside

Even their fashion is similar to ours – lots of people have that punk dress, but the rest seems like ours, just slightly different. I can’t put my finger on it just yet, but it’s not quite the same. But there are still old people running around UCD, so I guess some things are similar (there are many fit older folks in c-ville who run around and who would put me to shame if I were to run there).

Anyways, our dorms are very nice. There are six single rooms on a long hall, each with its own bathroom and one kitchen/living room. The beds have a cover and duvet = mattress topper and comforter because apparently they don’t really use sheets (kind of weird but whatever). Here's what my apartment looks like:

My room

rest of my room

bathroom (shower is on right)

kitchen

living room

After getting settled, we went to downtown Dublin to explore. We got off kind of early and walked along the street, then went through a beautiful park. 

Archway marking entrance to gardens

Inside the park

cool lake with swans

We came out on the other end at a kind of downtown hub, much like downtown c-ville where there is a cobblestone street and lots of stores for people to walk around in (and not through traffic because it’s basically for pedestrians). There we found TKMaxx and Penneys (knock-off of ours? or is it the other way around? haha).

NOTE: Jet lag stinks. Terribly. I’d been told that you should power through, stay awake, don’t nap and go to sleep when the locals would and that would set you on the right clock. This basically meant for me that I would have to pull my first all-nighter since I couldn’t sleep on the plane (or in any public place for that matter). So I’d been doing pretty well until we started walking around and by the time we hit the park I was brain dead. Literally. If my brainwaves were mapped on a heart beat monitor, they’d have flat lined. I was barely talking and walking around in almost a stupor, so I couldn’t quite enjoy Dublin as I would have liked. But it was worth it. We went into a pub looking for food, but there were so many people there we couldn’t find a seat. So we went to another pub and finally got some food. There’s quite a bit of American food around, so it will be hard for me to find real Irish food. It’s funny to see everyone there glued to the tv screen though. Finally, I made it home, took a shower and passed out. This is why I don’t pull all-nighters.  But yay! I’m in Ireland!