Well . . . here I am!

Hello everyone! As you may have guessed, I landed safely in Dublin this morning and have since then made it to my Irish "hometown" of Bray! My pilots did a fine job, it was instead the non life-threatening mechanical parts of the plane that made it an extremely long flight. They announced that our in-flight movie would be Shrek 3 (sadly I was actually pretty excited), however we then discovered that the sound was not working . . . no in-flight entertainment. THEN at around bed-time, they discovered that the interior lights weren't working in the plane either - rows 25 through 42 were unable to shut the lights off - guess what row I was in?!?!?

Anyways, with all that said and done (and really not that bad), I met up with my roomies and we are all safe and sound in our adorable house in Bray! One slight change, we (all 5 girls and 1 boy of us) are in the same house now . . . rather than in 2 separate houses. While we all agree that it might get a little crowded at times, everybody seems to be really hitting it off already, most are planning on traveling on the weekends anyways, AND with much cheaper rent, we will now be able to do some things we wouldn't have been able to afford before. It's a win-win!

So, my first impressions of Ireland . . . it's absolutely beautiful, extremely green (big surprise) and the coast is breathtaking. If you get a chance you should Google "bray head" - it is this amazing coastal mountain/hill that overlooks my town of Bray, with a giant Celtic cross at the top. Apparently it is a full day's climb - so I think we are going to tackle that one tomorrow. I'll post pics ASAP! It's approximately 60 degrees and this evening we sat outside a local pub on the oceanfront and it was definitely sweater weather. Other than that, the scenery has been kind of a blur and with absolutely no sleep in the past several hours, I fear I cannot do this country (or what I've seen so far) enough justice with this post.

For those who were taking bets, I did cave in and get a cell phone! My advisor said it would be good to have when traveling locally, etc - so it's all his fault. Outgoing call rates are pretty steep on it, however I can receive incoming calls for free (get out those old, unused phone cards folks!) Anyways if for some reason you need to call, my number is: 087 2034209. I'll stay up to date on the Blog's and will most defintely continue to read the comments (thanks for those!) I also don't really have an address to share with you yet, they don't actually have numbers here - the houses simply have names! So I'll figure that out and post it when more accurate information is available.

I start school bright and early on Monday, so I'm sure I'll have much more to share then. Love and miss you all!