Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

This is my last blog post from Ireland

As I type this post I’m sitting in my living room, where I’ve wined, dined, laughed, talked and enjoyed my life for the past five months. I’m still slightly feeling the alcohol from one of my last wild nights out in Dublin, and it’s oddly fitting that I should be typing up my last blog post as such. I think the Irish would be proud.

The time has come to say goodbye. I cannot believe how the past five months have flown. Literally flown. To Barcelona, to London, to Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Italy, and Budapest. I hadn’t even been out of the country before I came here. Now I’ve been to nine. I have friends, not only from all over the US, but from all over the world. I can’t believe how much I’ve grown in a short five months. Even though you might not notice it, I will come back the United States a much different person than when I left.

This last week here has been amazing. Our day trip to Dun Laoghaire and Bray was so much fun. The market in Dun Laoghaire was very cool and Harbor Bar, the number one coolest pub in the world, indeed lived up to its title. Our last trip to the west coast could not have been a more perfect way to end our stay here in Ireland. The Irish country side is one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever laid my eyes upon. I wish I could let you see it through my eyes and share the experience with you. It is one of the most incredible feelings to look out over the rolling greens, the handmade stone walls, the sheep and the cows, and just feel alive. No pretense. No technology. No modernization at all. Just pure, simple, beautiful Ireland. We went to The Cliffs of Moher which are just as heart stopping the second time around. We went to the Aran Islands and biked through the farm lands, stood at the edge of the cliffs, and marveled at the lives of the Irish who get to live on that gorgeous island. We saw the amazingly impressive Kylemore Abbey that was built on a foundation of rock and a lot of love. We drank pints and listened to Irish music in Galway with the locals who love their fair city like their own family. We stared for hours at the countryside. Our last view of it. I can only hope that I’ll lay my eyes on something so beautiful again in my life.

My things are nearly all packed. It’s going to be interesting trying to lug all my things through Dublin, the airport, the tram to the train, the train itself, and back home to 44 Euclid. Coming home will be the oddest mix of happiness and sadness I’ve ever felt. I am very very excited to see you all again! I think many of you have gotten to know me in a much different capacity through reading these blogs posts. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. But I will never really be ready to leave this country. It definitely has to be of the greatest places on earth.  The people here are so full of wit and Guinness and love, I’ve felt welcomed from the second I stepped off the plane. I hope I come back to see them one day.

Ending this blog post means ending some of the happiest times of my life. But I’ll get to take the memories and the lessons with me for the rest of my life. Luckily, those don’t weigh anything because I don’t think my suitcase can take much more.

I’m wishing this last post didn’t feel so rushed, but time has never been more of the essence than it is right now, and I’ve got a lot more to do before I depart. This time tomorrow I will be on American soil. I hope it remembers me.

It’s been an amazing five months. I can’t wait to talk you ears off about all of it. You’re going to so sick of me you’ll probably just want to send me back.

See you all stateside! Cheers friends!

The Final Countdown

Surprisingly, I had more time to write up blog posts when I was traveling around Europe than I have this past week while studying for finals. I’ve been suffering from eternal library damnation. It’s the price I’m paying for traipsing around Europe instead of being a student this semester. I am so not sorry about it.

Luckily my friends and I have been able to cross some activities off our Dublin bucket list between benders in the library. Last week we went to the Cake Café for breakfast. It’s this awesome little café tucked away in a courtyard behind a bunch of stores. You have to walk through a crafts store to get there. So cool! They bake all their cakes and pastries right there in front of you in their very tiny kitchen. It’s very cute and very colorful! We had a hard time dragging ourselves out of there. We’ve also crossed a rugby game off our bucket list! Just the other night we went to see Leinster duke it out with Glasgow. Leinster is an Irish team (I know, I didn’t know either) and they’re playing in the championship match this Saturday. If the Northern Ireland team wins this week in the semi finals, there could be TWO Irish teams playing each other for the title. Dublin will be on fire! Saturday will be the day after we’re done with finals so we’re planning on parking ourselves in a pub for the day and getting friendly with some locals. It’ll be great craic.

Speaking of which, this time next week I will be done with Trinity College Dublin forever ……. I’m going to need a minute to let that sentence sink in …… I cannot believe my time here is running so short. I’ll be honest and say that this past week in the library has been a bit of a drag. But in a way it’s a great thing, because by slowing down my last few weeks here in Dublin it’s given me time to appreciate my last moments in the homeland. We’ve got a lot of cool stuff planned for our last, post-final, pre-departure week here in Dublin. On Sunday we’re taking a train to Dun Laoghaire, where there’s rumored to be a great farmers market, and to Bray, where there’s rumored to be the #1 coolest pub in the world (I know. Bray?  I said the same thing.)That Monday we’re doing a three day bus tour that will take us to the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands, Connemara, and Cong with two a two night stay in Galway. We’ve been waiting all semester for our Galway trip! And we’re all really excited to take in the countryside one last time before we ship ourselves back home. I may very well never see grass this green again. I hope I’m wrong. Once we get back to Dublin I think the general consensus is to spend our last few days and our last few dollars in our favorite places, having pints, and reminiscing about the most memorable five months of our lives to date.

Speaking of coming home, I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to manage to lug all of my stuff back to America. It was enough of a project to get it here, and now there’s MORE of it. I sense overweight baggage fees in my future. 

Two exams down and three to go! I’ve got one on Wednesday and my toughest two on Friday. I initially had an exam conflict, and apparently they felt like the best option was to reschedule the exam for later that same day. So my last day of finals will consist of me taking a three hour exam, waiting for an “invigilator” to “collect” me from the exam hall and stay with me while I have a “supervised” lunch (in case I decide to call everyone I know and tell them the answers, or ya know maybe jump off a building or something) and then sit through my next three hour exam at 2:00. Needless to say, it’s going to be a long one. But to celebrate my friends and I plan on heading straight to campus pub afterwards for drinks. They will be MUCH needed.

So that’s all I got for ya this time around. I’m thinking my next post will be sometime after finals and before our Galway trip. I don’t have many more posts left before heading home! I got to make them count!

Until next time, cheers friends!

LESSONS LEARNED Part 3: Get Some Perspective

Hello again, friends! And happy Cinco de Mayo! It’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve finally got the time to sit down and unleash a few words onto paper (or, ya know, the internet). I’ve been spending my days holed up in the library on facebook … I mean studying … for my five finals I have to take before departure. I had my first final this past Wednesday, and let’s just say it won’t exactly be best friends with my GPA. But that’s all water under the bridge!

I’ve been waiting to write up this installment of my Lesson’s Learned saga since getting back from my euro trip which is now two weeks in my past. I can’t believe how the time is flying. I’ve got some great knowledge to throw at you so let’s get started, shall we?

Lesson 1: Check, re-check, double re-check, and quadruple check. Now, this is something that I know to do, but it’s those tiny instances when you forget to check the smallest thing and end up paying through the nose that drill this lesson into your brain. We had two instances of this on our trip. The first was in Prague when Lindsay realized at 11pm that her 2:00 flight to Istanbul was actually for 2:00 am, not pm. Whoops. We all helped book flights and connecting flights and trains and trams until a few hours, some stressed phone calls to mom, and a good bit of money later, we had her all set to go to Istanbul. What airline schedules flights at 2:00am anyway?? Such a small mistake, and yet so stressful and costly. But even so, everything turned out just fine! The second unfortunate instance happened as we were leaving Budapest. For whatever reason, my friends and I ended up with different flights home – theirs in the morning and mine in the late afternoon. I was sitting and enjoying a leisurely breakfast as my friends scrambled around packing up their things when I had the nagging feeling that I should check my boarding pass. Sure enough, my flight home from Budapest was schedule for April 8^th, an entire two weeks earlier. I started at the page in disbelief for about five minutes, and when the number still hadn’t changed from an eight to a twenty one I decided to pack up my things and head to the airport with my friends to see if I could catch their flight back to Dublin. Luckily, there were still spots left on the flight. When the lady who booked my ticket handed me the calculator to show me the price in euros I had to white knuckle the counter to stop myself from keeling over and bleating like a goat. I’d say it cost me an arm and a leg, but really it was more like an arm, a leg, a few organs, and a kneecap. All because I forgot to double check the date. Needless to say, it’s a mistake I will remember forever, and hopefully never make again. But even these financially agonizing setbacks weren’t enough to spoil the trip of a lifetime. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, mistakes included.

                 

Lesson 2: Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back at this semester there are only a few things I would have done differently. For instance, I could have branched out and taken a few general electives and possibly had a few less exams instead of taking an unnecessary five sociology classes. I don’t regret taking the classes I did at all though. It would have been nice not studying for five exams, but I really liked most of the classes I took, and have made some really cool friends because of it. I also wish I had had some insight about the small money waters that catch you before you realize they were completely unnecessary purchases.  For example: a €14 discount travel card that I used once (for a few cents off a large mocha latte), a €24 euro textbook that I didn’t even glance at (oops), a €10 lock that was supposed to be “the best for the gym lockers” but ended up getting cut off with a bolt cutter because it got stuck (I got another perfectly fine lock for €1), and a few other small items that proved to be unnecessary. That’s already €48 euro! That’s almost 10 pints of Guinness! But, you live and you learn, right? In the future I’ll be more careful about making sure something will be useful before I spend money on it.

Lesson 3: Do the things you’ll remember when you’re forty. I’m not entirely sure why, when I think of my future self remembering my youth, I think of myself as being forty. Maybe I subconsciously think I won’t make it past forty. Or maybe forty is just so inconceivably old to me that I can’t picture myself being older than that (my sincerest apologies to those of you who are now not speaking with me). But nevertheless, it’s my philosophy to do the things I’ll remember when I’m forty. When I’m forty I won’t remember how much money I spent here, I won’t remember what I got on my exams, I won’t remember the hours spent in the library, I won’t remember reading article after tedious sociology article, I probably won’t even remember my GPA. What I will remember is Paris, Prague, Rome, Florence, and Budapest. I’ll remember seeing original Van Gogh’s in Amsterdam. I’ll remember the best waffle I’ve ever had in Brussels. I’ll remember going out with my friends for pints and live music on school nights. I’ll (sort of) remember doing Irish car bombs on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll remember the time spent hanging out and exploring Dublin with my friends when I “should have” been studying for finals. These are the things that really matter in life. Not the money and the grades, but the friends and the memories. I may not have been a star pupil this semester, but when I’m forty, I’ll be able to look back on and very happily remember the semester that has forever altered my life.

So there’s the lesson for today: always put things in perspective, whether foresight or hindsight. As I finish up this blog post I’m sitting on my bed in a stream of sunlight, sipping coffee, and looking out my window at the passerby. It’s even the small memories like this one, the image of Dublin from my bedroom window, that I’ll keep with me forever. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by. In just twenty one days I’ll be back on American soil. WILD. I am incredibly excited to see all of you again! But I will be a little brokenhearted to leave the place that has so easily become my second home. Twenty one days means I’ve got a lot of memory making to squeeze in. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how I spend my last few weeks in Ireland!

 

Until next time, cheers friends!