So Sunday in the US was spent first on the lake doing more tubing. I think I finally got the hang of it and was able to go back and forth across the wake with out the tube annihilating me. I did manage to scrape all the skin off my knees in the process, which is rather unsightly. Regardless, very fun!
I then packed and got ready for the flight. I repacked a lot of my clothing and reconsidered a few items (do I really need 3 black dresses? 3 high heeled shoes? 15 tank tops.. the answer you can guess). I repacked my bags down to two checked and only carried my backpack on. Then began the longest 12 hours I can imagine.
The flight from Atlanta was delayed some, which of course delayed my arrival into NYC and sent me into a little panic about my connection. But my flight from New York was delayed too.. I lost track of how long we taxied and sat in the airport.. probably somewhere around an hour and a half to two hours. Then the flight across the Atlantic. I need to remember how COLD those flight get! I can barely sleep with all the shivers. Food was great (I selected a vegan food option before the flight) and the movies were hilarious. I watched Leap Year and Dear John. Then played some trivia and took some little naps.
I was convinced that I would miss my coach to Shanowen Square because the flight was so late, but I managed to de-plane, go through immigration, get my luggage and customs all within 30 minutes and met up with the coach and EUSA people in plenty of time. And I found Kayt!
Kayt and I met in a class at ASU in the fall semester and were so glad to find out through facebook that we were both going to Dublin! It was so great to see a familiar face after all that insanity.
It was about 2 in the afternoon before we got our keys for our apartment and started to get settled. I was able to connect to the internet rather easily through a LAN modem and Ethernet cord, but Kayt's computer was not as lucky. After multiple failing attempts we looked for an Apple store and took it in today (Tuesday).
We also went to Tesco, a grocery store, down the road a ways. It's in the closest shopping center called Omni. We only got a few things because we were so overwhelmed with the trip. I never realized how comforting familiarity could be until that moment. I was finally coming to terms with the reality of living in Ireland. There is no Target, no Morning Star Fake Chicken Patties, no Tom's of Maine. Even the things I recognized were in weird small bottles. I just wanted giant Dove Shampoo for Damaged Hair in the dark blue bottle. But no. Only little bottles with weird words. Retail therapy became a nervous breakdown pretty quickly.
After a dinner of pizza, water and diet coke, Kayt and I were still without our other two apartment mates and decided to get some rest. After a nice shower with my new small white bottles of Dove hair care products I finally got to sleep. As I laid in bed listening to Jason Mraz's song "Life is Wonderful," it hit me. This is amazing. Even the crap travel delays were amazing. I am doing something I always thought was out of my reach. But I'm here, buying vegetarian water and loving it.
I'm just so very, very happy to be here, living this new thing.
