Let's see where to start? Oh, ok I got it. So, she got in a little after 7pm on Thursday night. I have class on Thursday evenings from 4:30-7pm, so I had already told her that she'd be waiting a minute for me to get to her. I got outta class early, thankfully, and was on the search for a cab to the airport. It prolly took me a good 20 minutes to finally get a cab, cause I had to get cash but the ATM near school wasn't working & the convience store with an ATM was like 3 blocks away from me, but I finally hopped in a cab & was on my way. Anticipation at this point, through the roof. I gotta tell y'all though, the cab driver was listening to the radio on the way there & since I aint one to chat up cabbies, I listened as well. It was the most ridiculous interview I think I've ever heard. Some researcher at Oxford decided to study how Potato Chips taste based on how loud they crunch. Somebody spent a bunch of dough for this dude to sit around & watch people eat chips. And literally this interview went on for the entire 25 minute cab ride! But to his credit, there is a correlation between taste & sound, but I'll get scientific on y'all another time.
Got to the airport, paid the cabbie, hopped out like a little kid a christmas & rushed into the lobby area. Called up Farah, we talk, we're happy, we don't see each other though. I'm walking up & down this terminal looking for her, giving her landmarks to look for, reading signs out loud, but still no brown eyed girl. Finally, we figured out that we were on different floors & felt stupid, but whatever, nothing ever goes classically smooth for us anyway. We kinda pride ourselves on that. So I find her, we have a moment, then we're off to find a shuttle back to City Centre. Only problem is that I don't know where to catch the shuttle, nor do I know which bus to take back into town. Bear with me y'all, this was my first time at the airport since I arrived in Dublin & we had advisors to point us in every direction. After aimlessly walking around, trying to read maps with Gaelic town names on them, I put pride aside & asked for help (it was hard, y'all).
We get on the bus, get back into the city, & then saw the scariest thing I've witnessed since being here. We've just been dropped off in front of Trinity College, which is in the middle of City Centre, and we're waiting to cross over to Grafton St. (one of the busiest streets in Dublin). As we're watching traffic go by, we see the bus we rode on sideswipe one of these little mini Euro cars (small cars here are as popular as Hondas in America) as both cars made were making a left turn. Remember, drivers here sit on the right side of the car, so that means the bus crush the driver's side of the car! Luckily, the poor women inside was alright, even though her car was mangled. It happened so fast though, that we were stunned & in disbelief. People started rushing over to her as the bus continued driving, but soon we saw the bus driver come back & check on her, he just had to find a spot to pull over at. Imagine what Farah was thinking, she was only an hour and a half into her visit!
The next couple of days were really, really nice for the both of us. We visited a lot of sites around Dublin: Dublin Caste, Kilmainham Gaol (thats jail in Irish), Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Guinness Storehouse, Temple Bar, O'Connell St, & The Ha'Penny Bridge. A couple of these places I haven't been to, like the Gaol, so I really was glad to experience new stuff with her. We talked a couple times about how much better traveling is when you're with the right people. Obviously, being abroad you don't get to handpick your travelling buddies as you'd like, and both of us have had experiences where we've been frustrated with people we've travelled with. Its remarkable, in terms of the contrast, between travelling with nice people that aren't quite suited for you & the folks that have the same impulses & interests as you. Things were just so easy for a weekend, which was a blessing in the midst of this wonderful, yet challenging experience we're having.
It was extremely sad to see her go, but I'm going to Rome next month to visit her, so I can man up until then. Its hard having a taste of home though, because everything else pales in comparison. The next 2 days after she left, I wasn't interested in being around anybody in my program, cause they just don't measure up to her. Getting over that feeling is difficult cause it ain't fair to them, they're great people in their own right & you can't expect people you've know for 4-5 weeks to be as important to you as people who you have hundreds of memories with. I'm over my withdrawl now, so I'm back to being nice to others & enjoying my program again, but I'm also amped cause next week is our midterm break! This means your boy, Kev aka The Black Leprechaun aka The Jaguar (as someone in my program dubbed me recently), will be travelling to Amsterdam (Watch Out Now!) & London (Hi-Oh!). Expect bunches of pics & random stories from those trips. I'll blog about my plan for those trips soon. Here's some pics from the weekend & check my Facebook soon for the rest of them with captions & explainations & such:
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