busy week

Wow. I cant believe a week has already gone by. I know many people have been wanting me to blog for a while now and I told them I would so for those of you out there I apologize. My trip all started with an 11:00am flight out of LAX where I got patted down in security, and where I met Dana (my Ireland buddy) and we continued our four hour flight on to Chicago, O'Hare, Airport (getting an early taste of the Irish names) our one and only layover, thank goodness. Our two hour layover consisted of us eating and being lost. We ate at a Greek fast food restaurant inside one of Chicago Airport's food courts right before going through security for a second time. Having my luck of course I got dragged to the side and patted down...again. But after being patted down again they decided I look like such a threat to an international airport, TSA took out all of my stuff out of my well packed bag and run half of the items through the private scanner in the back while they swiped my palms for any evidence of suspicious residue. Then they had the nerve to just shove my things haphazardly back into my backpack so it wouldnt zip up. Off to our seven hour red eye plane flight from Chicago at 7:30pm to Dublin at 9:00 am. Of course I slept only about twenty minutes on each flight even though I purposefully slept only two hours the night before so I would fall asleep in the planes for the next days travels. We landed safe and sound in Dublin where we took a much needed pit stop to the bathroom before going to "baggage reclaim"(as was written in the airport) I found this amusing because I am used to people and signs reading "baggage claim". The airport in Dublin is extremely nice and modern with, as I say, magic carpets, or moving walkways. We were following signs to the exit, excited and expecting to meet my host family I turned the corner, and to my dismay was the horror of customs. How could I forget about customs? So Dana and I were the first ones, we walked right up to seperate windows because were big kids, and we greeted the officers and they did likewise and that's where the battle began...They drilled us with a series of questions I hardly understood half of what they were saying, partially because of my horrible hearing, and my first time being exposed to any form of an Irish accent. We stated our business, and common information you learn in kindergarten, who our hosts were, showed our notarized statements, but that "wasnt enough to let two foreign girls go by themselves" as one officer told us. So I was sent to the window where Dana was so only one officer could deal with us.Thank goodness I was with Dana, she was more prepared than I, but not enough for the guards, they wanted both our host parents phone, and work numbers, their email, and their home addresses. All I had was my host moms email, who wasn't even picking me up, her husband was but I still didnt have any phone numbers and that's where Dana saves my butt from being sent straight back home. Dana's host family wasnt able to pick her up from the airport so my host father was picking us up, Dana had the telephone number of her host mother who we called so she could talk to customs and call my host father to let him know the situation. When everything finally was sorted out and we were on our way to foreign exchange student freedom we had to search for my host father and sister whom I have only seen pictures on Facebook, once. The search was over within seconds, we exited the stuffy airport to the parking garage, Dublin smelled of the sea and it was just a little chilly with a gently wind and the sky overhead was grey and low. All I could think of is, I'm in Ireland, I'm in Europe, and that same thought just echoed and echoed through my head on the walk to the car. My thoughts were interrupted by the roundness and compactness of all the cars. We had assistance chucking our bags into the trunk of my host father's benz. I entered the seat behind the driver and I saw my host sister Ellie sit in the driver's seat which made me a little nervous to think a sixteen year old girl is going to drive us out of an airport, in a Mercedez-Benz, in Europe. And that's when I realized, were not in Kansas anymore! We drove through the city-centre, our equivilent of downtown, the city had extremely modern, sky scrapers right on the water. The roads are extremely narrow with a very old wall lining the side of the street away from the water, once again not used to the opposite driving, left hand turns made my feel nervous when he didn't pause a split second, but did for right hand ones. There are many round-abouts all throught out Bail-atha-clain (Dublin) county and all of the road signs have Irish as the top language.
Forcing myslef to get used to the time change with virtually no sleep in 72 hrs and thirteen hours of traveling was difficult! But I did it! Since it was Sunday I had school the next day, I retired early, at 8pm it was the latest I could stay up, but I was proud. The next days of school just flew by with the same repetitive questions and responses; "where are you from?", "welcome to Ireland", "so how are you liking Ireland so far", "what's it like living in California", "I see we have the two American students with us", and "are you Irish"(mainly pointed to Dana). But I must say everyone here is extremely welcoming, even though half of the students just stare at you even if you notice them, they keep on staring, but I admit I would probably do the same to a foreign exchange student. I live about a five minutes walk from the school. The shool here is as I like to say and have no other way of explaining it, four and a half stories with cement buildings connected on either side of a very old fashioned house with the walls knocked out to create hallways. There is also a gym and two "pitches"(fields), very well kept. The school is a two minute walk from the rocky beach, and from most classrooms you can see the sunrising above the grey, choppy Irish Sea around 9:00am. We can also see, well I seem to be the only one excited, the sunrise light up the green land and mountains in the distance for just a half an hour before it rises and disappears into the grey abyss of the quick moving clouds. The local public transport system is the DART which makes its way up and down part of the Eastern coastline from Dublin city centre, to Greystones depending on how far your travels are will dictate the cost of a ticket. Within only the first day I felt the liberty of the average Dublin teen. With my host sister Ellie and about five of our friends, we went to Dun Laoghaire on the DART right after school, which cost 1.45 Euro, a nice town with many shops and the only McDonalds for miles, the nicest one I have ever been to, with a Euro Saver Menu instead of the Dollar Menu, and hot tea instead of cold. I really enjoyed it there, we walked around for hours as I stared in awe at how old the buildings are, it kind of reminded of Boston. The cheapest department store around is in Dun Laoghaire it's called Penney's. It surprised me at how much people around here smoke, thankfully my host family doesn't. The next day I felt adventurous, I grabbed one of my friends after school, Mina, an exchange student from Japan who is staying with my host family's cousins, and I said let's go to the end of the tracks on the DART and get off and walk around. With much convincing we went, the end of the tracks we decided to go was all the way south, to Greystones. I also like it there with the many small shops and mansions with a view of the ocean, but it started to rain and get dark so we visited a mall in Greystones called Meridian, it only has about ten shops and was empty but it was very architectually modern. We finally went back home and Mina came to my house with me and we were welcomed with dinner consisting of prawns and roasted potatoes with string beans.mmmmmmm. Then the other weekdays passed by with delicious meals and learning Irish-English vocabulary. In school my favorite things so far have been learning Irish, studying physics, watching  The Pursuit of Happyness   , and going into the city centre to see an art gallery. Unfortunately I have been sick since the day after I got here, too much clean air and plants will mess with a Los Angeles' girl's lungs. Ellie is a dancer and choreographed dances for a panto at a local primary school, she was in a scene as well, and wanted us to be there so Mina and I went on the first showing, Friday the 4th, it was "Tom Thumb", I was pleased with the play and found it very funny. My favorite scene was when a teacher, a middle aged man, dressed as an old ugly woman, and started singing and dancing to Single Ladies, by Beyonce, and when another older man sang to Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. The next day, Saturday we went to a club for kids in an old rugby hall, this night was just for our grade. There are three classes in each grade; Alpha, A and Form. I'm in Alpha and we all got ready at one friend's house, and A got ready at someone elses house and Form at anothers. We rented a party bus which cost seven Euro each and was so worth it, the bus was blacked out from the inside so you couldnt see out, and so the lasers could reflect of the blacked out windows, the music was blasting and we stopped at the other two houses and picked up the rest of our grade, about 55 of us ended up going, was that loud! The club was very fun, I plan on going again before I leave. Unfortunately Ellie couldn't go because she had two more performances that night so I stayed with Mina and we got picked up at about 11:45pm. I wore my new black Forever 21 dress with the heels I wore to Homecoming. I woke up very late Sunday morning after dancing forever the previous night, and relaxed, and did a little bit of homework from back home. I was surprised by the amazing dinner Ellie's mom made for us, and of course, our friend Mina was over, shocker, we had cooked carrots and string beans, and the main course was delicious chicken in a creamy sauce with veggies and white rice, and a homemade baked apple treat with cream.mmm mmmm mmmm tasty!! And now I will actually keep up this blog everyday. Starting with today, today I watched the sunset again and watched the luminous grey clouds overhead move and clear out of the land and to the sea so it was sunny today but so windy I was getting pushed! I've never had so much win to the point where my legs were being pushed into eachother and have trouble even just standing. I went down to the rocky beach ad watched the wind just go right along the top of the water and carry it up into columns of heavy droplets and be released back down, it looked like a diagonal water fountain show over and over again. But I was happy the clouds were gone to let the sun just beat down on my cold windburned cheeks, then it started to rain!! I couldn't understand how it was raining in the sunshine, then I turned around to face Ireland and way far off in the distance and I mean pretty far, there were grey ominous clouds once again. But really, how can rain travel so many miles to a sunny area? Then I thought whatever Nature does what she wants, and on our walk back home I was talking with Ellie about the sunny rain and how I just couldn't get it she says its not uncommon and then she pause and said ya I just saw a rainbow. I couldn't believe this behind us there was a huge bright beautiful rainbow, with atleast the top half disappearing into the moving in clouds starting from behind our school and ending behind a hilly beach point, and I just thought of all the times I dont have my camera it would be the time it was sunny outside and raining with the best rainbow ever, which would have a better chance at having leperchauns and a pot of gold under it than the ones back home. So that was pretty much my day and week, oh ya and Irish people have no idea what corned beef and hash is, I asked alot of them, trust me.