Avalon House DUblin

I thought the adventure would never start...but silly me all i had to do was step foot in the sea tac airport and walla! My flight was canceled and three lines later i was off to san francisco where i then ran around like a chick with my head cut off trying to find the right terminal. Stupid airport is shaped like a U with the international terminals at each end! Anyway my flight mates were first the oldest gay couple i have ever seen that acted more like junior high girls then adults. Then I sat by a lovely family who's three year old decided to to scream NO NO!! over and over till i to wante to scream NO! I almost missed my flight to san fransisco becuase i wasn't payin attention...
But on the bright side I am here! I was so excited when we landed that i giggled the whole way out of the terminal. I think the passport guy was a little creeped out.

My first day in Dublin started with being lost on the bus....walking up and down the streets till i realized that i was walking right past my hostel over and over. Then Taylor took me to the park which is BEAUTIFUL! Then to Trinity college. I tried to take an afternoon nap but after you havn't slept for so long it is hard to start...your afraid you'll miss somehting fun.

Daddie I am happy to report that i did what you told me and went to church. Saint Patricks Cathedral service just this afternoon.

Momma i ate real dubliner cheese...it wasn't as good.

Seth everything here is green. It's like it rained green and Irelnad came out.

Jon I have kept to my word and not talked to any interesting Irish people!

Adam. YOu'd love all the accents. TOday on the bus this guy asked me if i was from the west side of the US. I said ya why and he said he could tell from my accent!!!! We have accents...who knew!


I love you all! It's hard for me to know when to call but i'll figure it out and be talking to you soon.

where i will be

Chapter 1

june 29 fly out of seattle arrive in dublin 8:40 am

june 30 Dublin (probably a day in the country..possibly galaway)

july 1 Dublin

july 2 fly from dublin to london

july 3 London

july 4 Train from London to Oxford

july 5 train from Oxford to Bath

july 6 London (matt leaves our humble crew)

july 7 excursion to Brighton

july 8 chunnel from London to Paris meet up with Kaitlin and Bekka

july 9 paris

july 10 Paris

july 11 MEET UP WITH Dr. Davis!!!

chapter 2

I have no idea...i will be everywhere in France. Taking 10 credits.

chapter 3

ash arrives!

august 11 meet up with ash in the de gall airport in Paris

august 12 paris

august 13 Fly from paris to Rome

august 14 Rome

august 15 Rome

august 16 Rome

august 17 Train Rome to Florence

augsut 18 Florence

august 19 train from Florence to Venice

august 20 day in venice then off to Verona

august 21 Verona....train to Munich Germany

august 22 Munich

august 23 Munich

august 24 Day in Munich then flight from Munich to Dublin

august 25 Dublin

august 26 flight back to AMERICA!

August 27 Claire and Reece get married!!!!

Tomorrow is the day.

Tomorrow i leave. I have been laying in the sun in denial which may turn out to have been a bad idea because i think i burnt my body. Great! I'll be in a plane for 24 hours burned and squished. Oh well.

I'm no longer nervous about the details of the trip but i am concerned about the details for when i get back . My house. Moving. The mentor thing i'm apart of. Pre law club. Or the LSAT! yuck. I posted my travel plans on my parents refrigerator so they can know my where abouts for the next 52 days. I also looked up internet cafe's in dublin in london...so i should be able to keep up with this blog. Hopefully get some more pictures up. I have been reading your blogs (mike, olivia and dave) so impressive! I hope one day my blog will be so majestic and high tech as yours. As it is i am having a hard time focusing enough on spelling to make this readable. I think i have ADD. Because my attention span only lasts for 20 minutes. Hmmm.

It is 70 degrees here in Washington state. The lake is sparkling. A perfect beginning to an adventure. You always read about Frodo and the other valiant characters leaving their home on a bright sunshiny day! With high hopes and full backpacks they start into the unknown! I think i need a valiant name. To be a character on this grave adventure. Its probably the most perils adventure you have ever read because there is no foreseen enemy or problem. Just a plan to go there....and back! I think I shall call myself LA LA. No not like the tell-a-tubbies. Silly people.

THe first line of my adventure will read...with steely determination La la sets off for the land of the lucky.

two more days

They are all there...all the friends i'm backpacking with. Taylor has been there for a couple days. Hailey and Tully just arrived and Matt is in the air! As i went through my normal, american, saturday morning it was hard for me to picture that for 52 days i will be in europe. I've gone through the excitement of the adventure and lows of leaving home for so long. I want to thank you for praying for me while i'm over there!

I am ALMOST done listening to Dr. Davis's lectures for the trip. Just three more hours to go. I really want to avoid bringing the lectures on the plane because i want to sleep and listen to music. I wonder if anyone interesting will be on the plane? Perhaps a writer, on her way to her villa on the coast of Ireland to write her next fairy novel. Or how about a performer who plays a leprechaun! I really really want to avoid watching those plane movies. Who wants to watch those anyway. Actually what i probably will be doing on the plane is studying for the LSAT. Yes, i'm bringing study material for the LSAT....a students got to do what a students got to do.

There are very few details i still need to get together. I still need to put a playlist on my ipod and charge it. I still need to put my schedule outline out for my family and friends. Yesterday I took care of applications for jobs next year. Next year might be more of an adventure then either of the other two years before! I have my rent in for my house and pretty much have my furniture lined up.

WOW! i am going to miss you chelsey! I hope you end up going to walla walla so i can see you when i get back. Thank you for all your advice on traveling.

Ashley!!! I can't wait to see you in Paris De Gall airport. Don't forget not to move. I'll find you! Lol. It is a grown up version of hide and seek. I guess we are like private investigators....trying to find one another?

i know lets get our legs waxed

So i had this BRILLIANT idea....i know since i'm going to europe for such a long period of time i should get my legs waxed! Ya! Then i will have these nice...smooth legs...and not have to worry about it at all. So i talk to my mom...and after much coercion she decided ok we'll do it together!

She makes the appointment for us and later thursday night we drive to this spa. Well in fact this whole journey started before that night because for the past two weeks i had to grow my hair long enough so it could be waxed. Let me tell you there is NOTHING more gross then living on a lake and growing your leg hair out. I felt like an ape...or a man. So gross. I don't know how men get up and do that every morning. When i put pants on, gross hair was there to great me. I had to wear long pants to the pool (to watch my brother swim), to the grocery store, even to bed (it is so gross to feel your hairy legs rub together)! After those two weeks i didn't think anything could stop me from yanking every hair out individually...myself! But no i waited for the professionals.

PFF!!! professional! I have never been in so much pain! There is nothing like the pain of having your hair yanked from its natural place in your pores by a hot layer of wax! It is so deceiving. You walk into the spa excited, a little nervous. A bright eyed lady greets you and tells you to relax it will only be a few minutes. You sit and let the enya music roll over you and your mind decides, "why nothing bad can happen in such a peaceful calm place." you sigh and look at a cheap gossip magazine.

A few minutes pass and another very clean lady comes out and leads you to a small room. She informs you to lay out on this warm, squishy table/bed. You lay there and sweet incense flows over you in time with the relaxing music. You sigh and for a moment you feel like you have entered heaven. The lady talks a few minutes about how you can't go into a pool and how you need to be hydrated. You sigh and nad. As she puts the warm wax on you your mind registers that although that feels good it might not go so well with your leg hair...then WHAM!!!! Your mind goes fuzzy your eyes water and you swear that someone has just skinned you! You look down to see if your leg has any skin left. The women who looked so kind, all dressed in white, says something about how that wasn't so bad. It is then that it hits you and your heart never stops beating above a techno speed...That was one very small section of your very long legs. Which means that you still have 99% of your legs to go. All the sudden the incense feels like it is clogging your lungs, the once calm music is hissing in your ears, and you swear that lady just grew horns. Every application of the warm liquid of pain is only to remind you that in ten seconds you will be realing in pain...pain you paid to have done to you. Your once vial leg hair now seems like the least of your worries. In fact you debate the whole time whether you could tell her you changed your mind. Have one leg waxed and one wonderfully hairy. But with each RIP you forget what you had decided. By the end of what feels like hours upon hours the lady smiles and says, "great lets put some oil on you! Now you are going to have to come in two more times so we can traumatize the hair follicles, but it gets easier after those two times." If you weren't so stunned that you still had skin on your legs then you just might give that devil of a women who trapped you in her suffocatingly squishing bed a hard right hook! But instead you nod and pray she lets you out of that small room.

I don't think i could leave that place fast enough. Two more times?! Please you'd have to be insane.

So now? Now i still have to shave every morning. I shave my entire leg because there are only patches of places the hair is growing back. So now instead of the silky, soft, hairless, legs i dreamed of i have patchy, peach fuzz hair to shave each morning. Thank you SPA and devil women.

If you are ever to get your legs waxed, 1) get medicated 2.) bring something to bite or hold on to 3.) bring head phones 4.) realize...you'll still have to shave.

bad dreams and random thoughts

Last night i had a strange dream. It was one of those dreams you usually have before a trip....the one where everything goes wrong. The plane is late which makes you miss your connection. Every restaurant you walk into doesn't serve people dressed like tourists or is charging 100 dollars a plate. All the French are mean and the British trick you into walking into the wrong part of town. You wake up in the middle of the night with bed bugs running around your legs.

But then i woke up. I think it is good to dream those things so they don't actually happen. Like an alternate reality. The one that takes all the bad things that can happen plays them out so they don't happen in reality.

My mom bought me a portable coffee press today. This should be good for my addiction and my wallet. I'm hoping that i have a coffee a day. Sitting on a grassy hill in Ireland or by Big Ben in London with a warm cup of coffee.

I think i have my bag completely together. I have decided to bring a lot of food for the airplane. 24 hours of me myself and my ipod. I'm going to be so people deprived that i when i get to Dublin I'm going to talk AND talk and talk!!!!

My most recent dilemma is whether or not to bring a towel....and whether or not to bring a warm jacket. If i don't take a towel and the hostels don't have towels how am i going to be clean? Dry myself with the few clothes i have! Lol. If i do bring a warm jacket and it ends up being really hot then i'm lugging around a heavy unnecessary weight. Oh jeepers!!! One does not appreciate ones closet until one knows they will not have access to it.

oh dear homesickness is hitting me already.

Yesterday as i sat with my family laughing, i realized....i am going to get SO homesick. I feel like a lot of people have been telling me this but i didn't realize how much i was going to be homesick while in europe. I imagine that this blog may just become a whine spot for me to vent my frustration of being so far away from home.

Another scary thing i realized. I'm not going to be able to eat as much as i eat while at home! Sure it will be nice to loose weight but man i love to eat!

Train tickets came today for the train between verona, italy and munich, germany. This cheered me up slightly.

pre trip jitters

June 16, 2009 11:59 pm

In 12 days i will be in Dublin IR. I am both extremely excited and a bit nervous. I can't imagine what i'll be doing....well I guess eating, sleeping, and seeing the sites are a given. But it is a europe for crying out loud! Will i love it?

I know the first thing i'm going to love. The accents. I'll be like a speck amongst the swirling jigsaw puzzle of accents! It helps that the first country i'll be in speaks english. It is going to be interesting to see how Ash and I do when we need to navigate italy....

I'm also looking forward to the hostels. All the blogs i have been reading have said that hostels are so much fun. You meet people from all around the world that are backpacking just like you! Although i have been warned that many hostels in europe have bed bugs.... If there are bed bugs in my bed there is a strong likelihood that i will not sleep the entire trip. All i hope is that if there are bed bugs then they stay out of sight and bite other americans...i'm sure they taste a lot better then me. I hope anyway.

I'm very excited to spend time with the first group; taylor, hailey, tully, and matt. We are all very different people but i think we balance each other out. It has been fun to have each of us plan different parts of the trip. Then there is chapter 2 with Dr. Davis and crew. I can't believe rodelio is coming!!!! Then the last part of the trip chapter 3 with ash. That should be the most adventurous. I hope christina and bekka find a way to make it over....we'll see i guess.

I have decided that i will wear dresses throughout all of europe. In fact that is all i am packing. I do not know whether this is the smartest decision i have ever made or in fact the worst decision i have made. One thing is for sure i'm going to look good in all my pictures....

Oh europe what do you have in store? One fear i hope is not realized is my luck with public transportation. Every time i get on a bus it seems to go a different place then I had planned on going.

I guess we will see.