When In Rome

Rome is beautiful! I know I've been saying that about everywhere I go, but it is. I feel like there's more of a culture difference here than between Ireland and the US. The weather here is just lovely and perfect. Although when you look out the window you'd think it's cold because people are wearing their winter coats and gloves, but a sweater is just fine. The sky is the perfect shade of blue and with the rich colors of the buildings, the pictures come out beautifully. Totally lovin' the windows, how they open, and the shutters! I really want to live here. I know I know, I am for 5 weeks. But still, at the same time, I'm leaving in 5 weeks and I don't know when I'll be back so I'm running around trying to do all that I can, not wasting a minute. So I've been getting sick a lot lately and I stay sick for awhile since I'm not really resting. If I were to live here, I can have more of a relaxing time, even if I tried to have a relaxing time, I couldn't because I just can't help it. My mind would be running around inside. It's just so gorgeous here I can't get over it!! And the food is amazing!! Pasta, pizza, gelato, everything! You can't go wrong. I've been having gelato everyday, after every meal. It's wonderful! :] Life is good. Sorry this post was kind of all over the place. I can't think straight because I'm just too excited about actually being in Rome. I wake up everyday and I'm like... I'm in freaking Rome! I just can't believe I'm actually in Rome. AHHH!! :D

Bye Dublin

A quick post. It's a bittersweet goodbye. My excitement is building as everyone is blasting music from their rooms as they're all packing for Rome and frantically weighing their bags and planning on wearing like 5 shirts tomorrow to make sure they don't go over the limit; but at the same time, I'm sad that this is our last night in Dublin. And even though I'm ready to leave, I can't help but feel sad. The bus is going to pick us up around 8am for the airport tomorrow morning. We leave on an 11am-ish flight for Rome, but it's a connecting flight in Switzerland so it's going to be a day of traveling. I'm going to look like michelin man tomorrow at the airport. It's gonna be a pain to get through security, but I'm not paying a cent for going over the weight limit. When I flew to Dublin on American Airlines, the weight limit was 50lbs and my bag was 48.5lbs and I have no idea what my carry-on bags weighed; but when we fly to Rome, it's gotta be 44lbs (20 kg) and the carry-on has to be a total of 18lbs. I can hear people in the corridors (hallways) discussing what to do about the weight on their luggage.
So to finish where we began, we're having dinner tonight at the Porterhouse then pub crawling.

Goodbye Dublin you were awesome! Hope to see you again!

Some more Irish lingo:
Pants are underwear and combats are pants.

(I think I'm going skydiving in Italy! AHHH!!)

The Beach House

I actually managed to find time to finish this book during this trip. It was a good book! Thank you secret Santa :]

Now for a short review, this book had its moments when my mouth would drop open at the surprises it threw at me, but the book wasn't amazing enough to beat my top favourites. I liked the way the author slowly ties in each characters relation to each other, yea it's one of those books where there are many characters that start out as strangers but come together to realize that they're all connected somehow. But I didn't like how she would switch from each character's point of view so drastically with no way of knowing it had changed until you read a couple sentences into the paragraph. At first I thought each paragraph was a different character, but that was not the case. I got used to it towards the end, but in the beginning I was so confused. Overall, it's a good book and a nice, easy read. I enjoyed it very much.

I want to make a blog solely for book reviews, if only I read fast enough or often enough :[

My Future Travel Plans

So I've officially booked my train ticket to Amsterdam from Paris on April 3rd to the 5th. And now my friend and I are planning our big spring break trip. We were hoping to go to Athens, Greece then Santorini, Greece then Cairo, Egpyt and finishing off with Casablanca, Morocco, but we might have to take Casablanca out and go separately as a weekend trip. I also have Barcelona, Spain, possibly Madrid, and Bruges, Belgium on the list of places to go while I'm here. I can't believe that I might be going to Africa during this big Europe study abroad trip, it's something I didn't expect. I could explode with excitement right now. AND I leave for Rome in 3 days!! IN 3 DAYS!! I can't believe I've already spent 5 weeks in Dublin. A week ago, I didn't want to leave Dublin, but now I can say that I've gotten enough out of it. I love it here enough to want to come back later but now I'm ready to see the rest of Europe. It's bittersweet leaving Dublin. We're just getting used to knowing how to get around and now we have to leave. But I can't wait to see all of Italy! I was talking to my mom over the phone earlier and when I told her I was leaving for Rome on Friday, she thought it was for a weekend trip or something, and she thought it was pretty fast that I already spent 5 weeks in Dublin too. Well bye Dublin, you were great and I shall be back soon.

It was such a beautiful day today so I went to the Dublin Zoo; it was cute! Small, but a cute place. There were many different kinds of monkeys and I loved the elephants, kind of mad that the giraffe wasn't there though. I want to go on a safari trip in Africa. Anyone down for that with me??

With all this traveling, I have this sudden strong urge to go to Korea. I'm considering going this summer and teaching English there, while also visiting Japan and China and maybe even Australia. Wishful thinking...

I absolutely love Ireland!

I can't get over how much I love Ireland. The people are so friendly and and... I just love everything about Ireland. I got a little sick over the week, but nothing too bad. I don't wanna leave Ireland! It's only been 2 weeks and it feels like it's been here forever but at the same time, I only have 3 weeks left and that seems so soon already. But I'm still excited for Rome.
OHMYGOSH Gaelic football equals AWESOME!! I can't sit there and watch a whole football game because I don't like how the plays can be short; I like the ball constantly moving. But soccer is such a low scoring gaming, which can get kind of annoying, and basketball is too much. Gaelic football is perfect!! I was so into the game the whole time. It's just a perfect mixture of it all.
I could totally be happy with walking away with just these 2 weeks of memories. It's been an awesome time so far. I couldn't imagine taking in anymore awesomeness from Europe. It's like overload already. If you can, I would totally recommend that everyone study abroad!! If I have time later on, which I doubt though, I wanna do an exchange program in another country and study at a university as an international student... no I just wanna transfer to a school here. This was quite a pointless entry about me just rambling on about how much I love Ireland... but I can't say it enough! I love it here!! I'm going to explode with happiness. I've been pretty good lately about not jumping up and down and going crazy with enthusiasm, like usual. I didn't wanna scare off my new friends. haha

People keep feeding my Robert Pattinson obsession just when I was starting to get over it all. And I love Perez Hilton for always updating on Rob and his whereabouts. Hopefully, he's still in London by the time I get there. Even if I see him from afar, my life will be complete. Here is the link.

Greetings From Dublin

I'm writing to you guys from the future puhaha lol

So I'm sure you've all heard about the U.S. Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday, January 15 at about 3:30pm. Well I was on the American Airlines flight that was just about to take off at around 3:30pm, but we couldn't because LaGuardia airport stopped all departing planes. So we had to wait there for a little over 30 mins, but we had no idea what was going on and didn't think much of it either. Gladly everyone was safe in the end. And while I was on the plane, I was honestly thinking about whether birds ever hit the plane. Oh, those poor geese. Then when I got to Chicago, it was -7 degrees F. I could see my breath as soon as I opened my mouth and even when I wasn't really breathing out either. It practically looked like I was smoking. Then the plane flight to Dublin was constantly delayed little by little and we ended up leaving 2 hours later because a passenger received notice that a family member had died. So they got off the plane and someone had to also find the baggage from underneath. And it wasn't just one bag, it was 5, so maybe it was a whole family getting off.

Well anyways, we arrived in Dublin at 10am, instead of our scheduled time of 8:30am. It's slightly warmer here than it is back in NY/NJ, and I guess a lot warmer considering all the freeze warnings that kept popping up on my desktop weather.com application, since it's still set for weather in that area.

It's beautiful here and the Irish people are so friendly and nice, such a drastic change from NY. Even though I've never been to Ireland nonetheless Europe, I knew I would love it and I do! So I know I'll love the rest of Europe. I love the small differences in culture and find it so interesting. For an example, if you don't have the exact change for the bus, after you pay you receive a receipt of how much the bus company owes you, and if you don't go to the bus company to collect it, they donate it to charity. Isn't that a nice idea? I like it.

I'm too excited about my future plans to travel the world practically that I'm gonna brag to you guys about it. Prepare to be pretty jealous... This weekend, hopefully, I'll be on the Paddywagon Trip of Southern Ireland. I'll be seeing... yea pretty self-explanatory, Southern Ireland, and Galway while staying at hostels. Then in 3 weeks I'll be going to London... to find my future husband, Robert Pattinson lol although I'm hearing that he's currently in L.A. boo, well whatever you never know. The restraining order must just be how he shows his affection lol . But yea, I'll be staying at a hostel in London too. These plans are pretty much set. The plane flight to London is booked, and was only 20 euros!!! that's $28, isn't that some crazy stuff?!?!, and the hostel was booked just now for around $100 for 4 nights. I'm quite excited! I hope you're jealous. Then there are some future plans to possibly go to Scotland, maybe Germany, and definitely Amsterdam!! I want to go to Spain too, but we'll see. (I'm saving Greece for you Kathy!) I wanna rent a car too and drive on the wrong side, on the wrong side of the road... or maybe I'll just take a picture in the car pretending to drive hehe.

URGENT NEWS JUST IN... Rob was spotted at a pub in London trying to hide out. [Source: Perez Hilton]

So back to Ireland, I've learned some new Irish lingo that I want to share with you guys.
Ossified means to get shitfaced drunk, plastered, hammered, etc.
Craic [pronounced like crack] means to have to a good, fun time usually with the use of alcohol. Ex: The craic is mighty. You can find good craic there. (This is my favorite.)
Massif [pronounced like massive] means gorgeous. So a guy may come up to you at an Irish pub and say something like, "I think you're massif."