Day 1 in Dublin

Day 1: June 17, 2012 (Yes, I know that this is not the date of the blog post but I'm just getting around to putting it up now.)

            We arrived in Dublin at 10:21 am local time (that’s 5:21 am Virginia time for all of you back home). The plane ride over began with a kick, literally, the kid behind my row was kicking my neighbor and he freaked out a few times. Come to find out he's a neurologist, you'd think his nerves would be better than they were but guess again.. After that little debacle I decided to put on a movie and just block everything else out. 21 Jump Street was a great choice that kept me laughing the entire time. Dinner, which consisted of chicken, rice, and salad, was served about an hour into the flight. It wasn't bad, but nowhere near as good as the couscous we had on my flight to France my freshman year of high school (shout out to Crosby)! I then put on Act of Valor. And can I just say it was difficult to fall asleep during the movie because it was so bad ass but I managed to make it happen. I also managed to spill half a cup of water all over my pants, which was great! I ended up falling back asleep (wet pants and all) for about another hour or so. I woke up and my pants were dry, thank goodness! I decided to finish watching Act of Valor and by this time we were about an hour and a half outside of Dublin.

Once we arrived at the Dublin Airport we got our bags and headed to meet one of our professors. There were nine of us total from the group that flew over together, but unfortunately we were all spread out through the plane. We took a bus from the airport to Trinity College where we will be staying from today until Saturday morning when we leave for Cork. When we arrived at Trinity College we all got our room keys. The professor told us how the college is about 500 years old and to not expect much out of the rooms but we were all greatly surprised at how awesome they are! They are very clean, almost hotel room décor. I will post pictures soon. 

We started a walking tour of Dublin and walked down several of the main streets (Grafton, O’Connell, and Nassau) where there are a ton of pubs, shops, and other restaurants. We got lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Wagamama’s. It was very good! I got fried dumplings (not as good as the ones from Marco and Luca’s in Charlottesville) and some sort of vegetable lo mien type noodles. We then finished our walking tour by crossing over the Liffey River through the Ha’ Penny Bridge. After we got back to our dorms pretty much everyone took naps. We got up later and had a small meeting and tour of Trinity College and then the group split up. I was the only guy with all of the 11 girls on the trip. We somehow lost the other guys on our way out of Trinity, but we went to this pub called Bruxelles to watch the Portugal v. Netherlands. The pub was quite small and dark when we walked in, but one of the waitresses greeted us with a smile that made us feel immediately welcome. Going into any of the pubs with a large group is difficult, but they accommodated us very well. We were put in a back room with three older Irish ladies. They were so sweet and talked to us for a little bit while they finished up their drinks. After the soccer game we all went back and just went to bed because we were all still pretty jet lagged.