DAY ONE

My first day in Dublin was amazing. Getting there was not. After I left my mom and sister at Intercontinental in Houston, it was the start of my first international trip alone. The flight to London was fine, the trouble began when I got to Heathrow airport in London. I was passing through customs and even though my mom told me to read things a million times I didn't know what to say when I go to the desk. Apparently they don't take kindly to people who don't have letters from their study abroad school. I honestly thought that I wasn't going to be able to come into the country. She finally let me through and I got lost in the maze that is the airport. The annoying thing is that you're supposed to just know that all flights to Ireland leave from gates 77-86. What does that mean? Oh I will tell you my friend, it means that you have to wait till about 30 minutes before to know exactly which gate you're going to. It's a madhouse. I then got on the plane and discovered that there was a food menu and since I didn't have any euros I just went to sleep.

I got to Dublin and honestly, Brad Love was right. People would look at my legs and instantly give me a disapproving look. I quickly went to change and went outside to look for my bus. I was feeling like I was never going to get there when a girl from our group spotted me. Thank God. We rode to the Ballsbridge hotel together and then proceeded to walk up the street to the Ariel house which was down the road. I was wheeling my 100 pounds of luggage in and Brad Love looked at it, shook his head and said glad you finally made it. I checked in to my room and found Ashley thankfully, and my day was instantly better.

As a group we walked towards St. Stephens green, stopping to get a little lunch at the Doonselbery....maybe... deli. Brad Love paid for all of us which was really nice of him. This is also when I told him my customs story and I got chastised for not reading everything. We then walked to St. Stephen's green which is the Irish version of Central Park right in the middle of the city. We were allowed to split up so of course Ashley and I went together. We were walking around aimlessly and then decided to go try and find the old University College of Dublin as that was the one thing we were told we wouldn't be seeing the next day on our guided tour. We began walking the perimeter of the park and assumed we would just run into it. We stopped a police officer and inquired as to where it was. He seemed to now know what we were talking about but advised us to see the beautiful church inside. Since it said it was a Carmelite church I assumed it was catholic and we went inside:

It was really pretty actually, and I lit a candle and said a prayer for my safe flight as well as Allison and mom's. We thanked the police officer outside and I thankfully snapped a picture of the name as we were leaving.

We continued our trek around the square, asking literally everyone where the old UCD college was. People either didn't know, pretended like they knew and told us the wrong way, or asked us if we were sure we weren't talking about Trinity college. We managed to figure out that it was called the Newman building, and we thought we had found it when we went on an awkward tangent off of Grafton street. We were told that it was never a University though, and we ended up circling the park twice. On one of the shops we actually stopped in was a liqour store:

We tried a sample from the bottle on the right. Smokey Irish whiskey. Wow. They do not mess around. We both looked at each other and thought the same thing: we probably should have taken a shot of this, instead of sipping this shot so our throats are on fire. Oh, I'm sorry, are smokey. We looked at our watches utterly disappointed upon seeing that it was time to meet back up with the group at St. Stephen's green. We were trudging along when...

Bonus points if you can guess what we're doing in this picture...

Anyways, we got back with the group and flopped down on the grass. Brad Love asked us how our day had gone and we told him. We found 4 churches, the Topshop and the H&M, sampled some lovely alcohol but had no idea how we missed the old UCD campus. He told us the story of how Trinity College was originally a Presbyterian school. Even though 90 percent of the population was Catholic, they were not allowed to study at the University. The Neuman family realized this and decided to build a school where the Catholics would be allowed to study, conveniently in a Catholic church. Wait I thought to myself, the Newman Church...Newman building. I quickly scrolled through the pictures I had taken to find the name of the first beautiful church we went into

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Ha, so we had gone there first all along. I was so happy, I didn't even mind the mile walk home.