Sleep is a Tricky Thing

Monday April 10, 2006

This entry does not belong to one day only. It technically belongs to 3... you’ll see what I mean. Well it all started Sunday night. I am glad to say that I pulled of writing my history essay! Of course to finish it and print it off I had to stay at the university library till about 10 pm. Still I think I finished it with quite a good bit of time. Anyhoo, I had to walk back to my accommodation cause it was so late- fun times. When I got back I packed up all my stuff and got ready for IRELAND!!! I finished packing and doing everything I needed to at about 1 am. We were supposed to be picked up at 2:30 am. So what to do till then? Well as I lay on my bed I thoroughly decided it would NOT be to sleep. If I went to sleep I would never wake up in time. Next thing I know I am waking up! AHHHH!!! I look at my watch and it proclaims 2:45 am! Um you could imagine the "oh shit!" that went through my mind at this moment! So I jump up, grab all my stuff, and run out the door. We were told we were going to be picked up at our accommodation so I went over to the main Gilbert Murray house. No one was there. So I wait until about 2:55. At this time you can probably imagine the extent to which I was flipping out! Let’s just say I nearly had a heart attack. So I decide the next best thing to do would be to go around the corner to the Stanford hall so I could drop off my key. When I got there some girl was standing outside. Ok its 3 am so I asked her if she was going to Ireland. YES! She was! And here is when the relief starts to fade in. We got picked up about 5 minutes later and headed to one of the airports in London. Our flight was too short- we wanted some sleep! But we were excited when we arrived. I mean come on! Its IRELAND!!!! There is only 5 us here by the way, so it’s a small trip. But it was cool- when we went through passport control on our way into Dublin they put a cool stamp in our passports. Hehe- the little exciting things in life! At the airport the 3 of us girls went to get breakfast- McDonalds, while the 2 guys went to suss out the situation with the rental car. I had a nice sausage egg mcmuffin with a coffee. Did I tell you guys that I know love coffee? Yeah, strange- I come to England and get like completely hooked. You would think if anything I would get hooked to tea, but actually the English seem to drink both equally. Anyhoo- it was a crappy coffee. I got WAY spoiled in Italy I can tell you that! When we were finished with breakfast the guys came back and we set out for our hostel. On the way we got a chance to listen to some radio. It was quite hysterical and very entertaining while sitting in the early Monday traffic. We had quite a laugh as the two guys were talking about "Mr. Bunny". Who Mr. Bunny is, we never did quite find out. : ) A cool thing I noticed during the drive was that the street signs were in two languages. After a thoughtful reflection I realized that the other language was Gaelic. So this entry’s did ya know- Did ya know that almost everything here is in both languages? Pretty cool. So I just had to nab an example for you guys, and hey what do you know? I found one with Hueston station on it! Hehehe!

Anyhoo- It seemed to take forever to get to our hostel but we finally arrived. It’s located in the city centre so everything is a close walk from here. One of my first stops though was to the post office- I had to actually post my paper because that was the only way for me to hand it in. The 3 of us girls split away from the two guys and we ended up walking around taking in the sites. I really like the feel to this town. Its big and yet small at the same time. I don’t know why though. Well anyways, in our wanderings we happened upon Dublin castle so we went in. The chapel was small but very cool. Then we went into the main area. It cost 3.50 euros to take a guided tour of the state apartments so we decided to do this. It an actually working building too- just thought id mention. I was actually quite glad I did this. They gave a nice history of Ireland in the process so that was very cool! The staterooms were surprisingly small, but very nicely decorated of course. An interesting little thing about the castle- most of it burnt down once and has since been rebuilt. We did quite a bit of wondering after that. We went to Trinity college, but we didn’t go in. It was quite sad because they have the book of Keels there. But they charged like 7 euros to get into see it! These people really know how to work their tourists! We went to Christ’s church as well, but there again it was like 5 euros, so we just sat outside and went "oooo… purdy". We then decided to find St. Patrick’s Cathedral… easier said than done. : ) We had a crummy map and were extremely tired. We did happen upon quite a big church though and it was quite nice inside- Augustine’s church I think. A few "fake St. Patrick’s" churches later and we finally found it. Of course it was like 4 euros to get in, but we decided to go for it. It was quite nice inside I must say. It had a lot of cool historic thing to read about too, so that was good.

After that we went to see the Potato famine memorial. It’s a bunch of statues outside on the side walk. After that we headed back to the hostel. It was almost six and the guys were already there in our room asleep. I decided to lay down and take a quick nap too while the girls stayed awake and read a bit. I was planning on waking up in a few hours cause we had talked about going out last night. So a quick nap was certainly in order. I woke up a few times and took things off my bed, then got under the blanket because I was cold. Next thing I know I am waking up and looking at my clock on my phone- 6:54… in the am!! I was like wha?!! LOL!!! Yeah! I completely feel asleep! I didn’t even get the chance to change much less take off my shoes!! LOL!!! Hey- I only got one hour of sleep the night before and that was a stolen hour anyways. : ) Hehehe. Well that’s my story for the first day. Off to write about today…