I'm in Dublin! Friday 6/15 and Saturday 6/16

My flight left Las Vegas at 9am on Thursday morning. We left the house around 6am to get me there two hours early. I didn't have a reserved seat on that flight because British Airways and American Airlines don't talk to each other so I was a little nervous about that. It ended up fine and I got an aisle seat. It was a 3.5 hour flight to Chicago. It wasn't bad at all and was over pretty quickly. I had a 4 hour layover in Chicago.

During my layover I got some lunch at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. As I am eating my beet salad I decide to crack open Fifty Shades of Grey. That was the fastest four hour layover of my life. lol! I kept thinking, OMG, I should probably hide the cover of this book so people don't know what I'm reading (now that I know what it's about). My flight from Chicago to Dublin was 7.5 hours. It was pretty rough. I was really uncomfortable and slept maybe a total of an hour. That was not good because I landed at 8am local time and needed to stay up the whole day to avoid the jet lag and get on local time asap.  Being 5 months pregnant made it harder to get comfortable and I had to pee a lot. I should have tried for the business class upgrade. It was not very fun. I'm kind of not looking forward to the 10.5 hour flight home.

Once I landed it only took about 30 minutes to get through customs then I took a bus to Trinity College. I was surprised how cold, gray and wet it is here. It's pretty constant. The bus drops you off right in front of Trinity College but somehow I turned the wrong way and there I am, all preggy, dragging two suitcases around the outside of the campus in the rain just trying to get inside. I had to stop and catch my breath like three times. I finally got inside to the Accommodation Office and got my apartment. It's pretty nice and the bathrooms are bigger than the ones in London. The bedroom is smaller but it's fine for what I need. It is a two bedroom apartment with a kitchen. It's nice to have a little fridge in there.

Desk area

Bed

The view from my bedroom window to the left

View to the right

Jim and his wife, Karen did a great job of keeping me up all day. We spent about 4 hours walking around Dublin exploring the city. We stopped for lunch at this modern bistro and the food was good. I had an olive and artisan bread plate to start, then some mushroom risotto. It was yummy! I took an hour nap then joined Jim and Karen for dinner. We went to this little Italian place right by the College. Everyone there spoke Italian. The food was really good. After dinner we went back to the dorm and I checked my email and crashed. I made it until 9pm and literally could not keep my eyes open anymore.

My risotto

Cute market we found. Everything smelled so good!

 On Saturday morning, I met Jim and Karen at 8am for my first breakfast on campus. Carina was here as well and joined us. Carina is an MBA student at UNR and was on the London trip last year, too. I am really happy she came again. The dining area is nice and the food was good. They serve cereals, eggs, bacon (but it looks like ham), sausage, scones, croissants, oatmeal (but they call it "healthy porridge") juices, coffee, etc. There is baked beans at pretty much every meal, same as London.

After breakfast Carina and I spent a few hours walking around and found two malls. We walked through and did a lot of window shopping. The professors and most of the students will be arriving today. We ran into Alex, Micki and Michelle (3 of my students) just before lunch and Brett Simmons, one of the UNR professors. While my students settled in, Jim, Carina, Brett and I went to The Porterhouse, a pub across the street. This place is so cool! I think it may end up being our hang out spot. They are a microbrewery and the others enjoyed a beer. I miss beer. A lot. It looked like they had good fish and chips....

After The Porterhouse we met up with Karen at KC Peaches and had lunch. It is a little salad and sandwich place. I had a salad and some tomato soup. It was really good. By that time, I felt like I hit a wall and decided to go back to the dorm to take a nap. I slept for about an hour and a half and got up in time to meet Jim and Karen for mass. I really like to see the differences in each country. There were some weird little differences like when the priest came out before the mass started and went up to the altar and sang a song with everyone. Also, communion was like a free-for-all. There was no order. People were getting up to stand in line before the priest came down to the front. There were weird lines coming from different areas cutting in front of the main line. Overall though, it was a nice experience. The church was very pretty. There was a eucharistic convention in town so there were priests and nuns from all over the world there.

This is he dome above the altar

The altar

After church we met everyone for dinner at 7:30. We went to one of my favorite places from when we were in London, Wagamama! There are two locations in Dublin and we wasted no time finding one. I had the Gyoza (pot stickers) and the Yasai Yaki Soba for an entree. So good!

Gyoza (on the right). Steven's chicken wings are on the left. They were good, too.

Yasai Yaki Soba

Group shot. Some were back at the dorm sleeping and the rest will arrive tomorrow

On the way back from Wagamama, there was a street musician playing. Alex stopped me and said, "OMG, is he playing THE song?!" Holy crap he is! When we were in London last year we heard this particular song literally everywhere we went. It was like it was following us around. Even after I left, my students would see someone playing it, take video and send it to me. It's "Hallelujah" (think Shreck). We laughed so hard and I told him to make sure to let our Londoners know! We stopped for gelato on the way back. It was good, but it was no Scoops. :)

Once I got back to the dorm, I Skyped with Marco and gave him a tour of the apartment. He got Bella in his lap and I was talking to her. She kept trying to jump out of his arms and run to the door. She just kept looking over his shoulder at the gate, trying to find me. She didn't get that I was on the screen and she could see me. She just kept hearing my voice and was trying to find me. It was really cute. 

That's all for now from Dublin!