To the Emerald Isle

I've arrived! At last I am in Ireland. The 37 hour journey until I could finally sleep begun at Newark, NJ International Airport. I loved watching the Irish tourists board the plane with me, as they looked very out of place as much I would be in Ireland. Many were wearing random sports teams jerseys even though sometimes the colors were a bit off. I very much enjoyed watching 3 young irish children tossing around a green american football, although I'm going to just pretend it was for the Eagles instead of the more probable Jets.

It was my first time flying since I was a child and knowing that the first time ended up with me tossing up onto my Mom, I was hoping for a better result. The trip boarded on time but we had to sit on the runway for about an hour in order to de-ice. I sat in an Isle seat next to two Irish men a few years older then me, but they weren't very chatty... in fact they didn't move the entire time. Instead they both watched Spiderman a few times, which I felt for bad for them. The Contenital Airlines have these touch screens with lots of movies to choose from, I went with Eagle Eye and Casablanca. There was no sleep to be had on this trip, but the flight went fine. We landed in Dublin at 10:20am. It is surely beautiful from above.

I made my way off the plane and was greeted by Sarah and Caroline, two of the IES staff. I let them know I was immediately disappointed that Dr. Phil was on the TV above us. After meeting my future roommate Joe, we split a cab and were on our way through Dublin to our house. Joe gave me the worst news anyone could receive before coming here, that the two week long stomach medicine he was on couldn't allow him a lick of alcohol! We were met by Terrance O'Neil the older landlord at the house. He greeted me by saying through the door, "We don't allow Americans in here!" with a heavy Irish Brogue. He was very kind and funny. When he introduced himself through the brogue, I thought he said "Clarence" to which he jokingly took great offense, saying that's a fairy name and making a limp wrist. We were shown all around the area and the house is great. I'll write a seperate post on the house, as it deserves as much.

Joe and I shopped for a bit and were terribly out of place. Shopping is an entirely different experience in Dublin and yet again deserves an entirely separate post also to come later. We got some toiletries and ingredients to make ourselves some pasta at home. Our third roommate Dave showed up afterwards. In the evening we joined the rest of our program at the Barge for a pint and we met plenty of great people. The pints were a bit pricy, at about 4.5 euros for a guinness, but there is no tipping in Ireland so it's not so bad. After getting a bit confused on our way home which was already a 30 minute walk, we waved down a taxi which brought us about 2 minutes from where we were to get back. We wrongly tipped the taxi which we later learned but all was well. Finally, after being awak for nearly 37 hours, we got a short bit of shuteye at 11:30pm (GMT) which is 6:30 EST. Day one complete.