Hello from Ireland!!
People have been asking me millions of questions about my adventures in Europe, which i love talking about, so i decided to start a blog to make it easier to communicate and tell my stories rather than a million individual emails!! woot!! so far so much has happened so I will have to get you guys up to date!! my amazing room mate kellie is helping me with this blog cause this is my first time and its a little nerve racking!! haha
and so it begins,
The first day I was very nervous and scared about leaving home having never travelled alone before i was unsure about what to do where to go and what to expect when travelling! but i got on the plane, nearly forgetting my million dollar brand new raincoat, with plenty of time. The flight was uneventful although the plane was huge, but other than that it was your typical airplane ride with the "yummy" airplane food, that is until the engine stalled. Two hours away from frankfurt our right plane engine stalled out and the turbulence began, not to worry though the pilot got the engine started up again but it was stalling and kept randomly stalling out so the pilot decided to turn the plane around and we were re routed four hours to Toronto!
We made it to Toronto alive at about 2 in the morning toronto time and were hearded around the airport which was dead empty!! they got us a new flight for 8 in the morning and until then us passengers were given food vouchers, used to buy lots and lots of coffee, and we sat in the waiting room for a couple hours!! But i did make friends with a very cute boy from saskatchewan who was headed down to saudia arabia for a couple months. The silver lining haha jk
We finally made it to frankfurt 12 hours later than we were originally supposed to which means most of us lost our connecting flights so air canada stepped up and gave us more food vouchers and a night in a five star hotel.
Now at the hotel in Germany I had some issues with turning on there lights... its alittle different in the hotel rooms at home where you just flick a light switch.. haha
Thursday I made it to Ireland at last and it was beautiful! The shades of green here are so vibrant its unlike anything Ive ever seen! As soon as we started to decent
Once I got off the plane i went and checked into the hostel and immediatly met up with Kellie, a girl who is also here with swap, we found a subway (woot) and got to know eachother, she is really cool and will be an awesome room mate! Than she was on a bus to Galway,and I was stuck in Dublin! When I got back to the hostel I was so tired and was getting a bit of a cold I passed out in the bed for a good ol 14 hour sleep! waking up refreshed i went and registered myself at the garda immigration center (garda=police) and went to my orientation with Swap. The orientation was extremely helpful they taught us where good places are to live, which places to avoid, and have us warnings about boys in places like limerick and other small towns in southern Ireland but I'll talk more about that later but for now lets just say they only have one thing on their minds.... and no it is not what you think it is , its actually marriage! hahaha
We were also taught how to speak some gaelic and learn some of there slang which is completely different than in Canada foe example wheres the craic (crack)? really means where is the fun!
Dublin is a really cool city but the crowds reminded me of the streets of new york and st stephens green was a lot like central park, a beautiful park in the middle of a big buzzing city!
I was lucky enough to meet a student in Dublin named Ben who was my tour guide for my one day in Dublin so we just wandered the streets checked out the ocean and temple bar! I definitly have to go back because there is still so much to see like the guiness factory and a ton of museums and castles!!
Saturday I headed out to go meet Kellie in Galway it was a short 3 hour bus ride across the whole country (Ireland is insanely small it is only 8 hours from top to bottom!!) it was a beautiful drive the irish country side is amazing! Galway is a really cool city! it is like Irelands banff! It is right by the ocean with cobblestone streets and irish music playing in the pubs! it was so cool walking down the streets watching all the street performers and just knowing that we were in Ireland!!
that night we made friends with an aussie girl named Sarah and decided to hit up the club scene! so we went to a pub for dinner, which was really yummy, than headed to a bar called coyotes which was american texas themed. They played American music but they also played some irish dance music such as the folk song tell my ma but in a club style!! the clubs are so different here they dont even start to get busy until the pubs close at about 1130 and than everyone is on the dance floor dancing like crazy!! They were doing some pretty crazy Irish dancing and running around! here we made some friends with some boys from limerick who were here for a bachelor party and a couple of locals!!
sunday was a quiet day for us we were exhausted from travelling and our previous night and still pretty sick so we just hung out in the hostel and fell asleep at about 830 lol because we are that lame!
Today we went apartment hunting we looked at three properties. The first was ridiculously over priced and was an old b and b with a funny smell but it was super close to downtown. The second place is about a half hour walk from down town and is a ground floor apartment at a very affordable price which we were able to haggle and get it 25 euros cheaper lol and the last plaace was exactly what we wanted but we were thoroughly disappointed to find out that we needed the name of an employer and bank before we could apply at the third place! so we said good bye to the perfect property and decided to go with the 2nd property! we are tired of living in hostels and sharing rooms with some pretty wierd foreigners including a girl who likes to walk around naked... lol
Anyways thats the adventures so far haha I promise I will get better at this blogging thing, remember its only my first time!!
