There has been some developments

January 1, 2010 4:48 pm
I'm here!!!! We all made it safely to Dublin after many crazy hours! Yesterday at 9:30 a.m. (back home) my mom and I were sitting waiting for the O'Connor's to come pick me up to head to Chicago. We set out not realizing it would be such a crazy eventful day. We reached the terminal in Chicago in one piece after trying to figure out their crazy airport. Kristen Granzow (one of our friends who is studying in Cork in Ireland) was supposed to meet us their at 3:30. We found her twenty minutes before we were supposed to board, the poor girl's flight had been delayed 2 hours and she barely made it, but she did and the Kristen's and I got to sit next to each other. We were supposed to take off at 7:30 p.m. but due to a life raft in our plane having a hole in it we didn't take off until 8:30 p.m. after that things went smoothly, we saw glaciers in the arctic circle and lots of clouds! The airplane food was actually kind of delicious (weird i know). Things went smoothly until we actually reached Ireland, we just flew right on past Dublin. Everyone in the plane was extremely confused until the pilot came over the intercom saying that Dublin's airport was closed down due to a snowstorm (nothing like Iowa's!). It would reopen in 2 hours (11:30 a.m. Ireland time), but we only had an hours worth of fuel left. That thought terrified us but we landed in Manchester, England to wait out the snow, refuel, and get the ice removed from our wings. After 2 1/2 hours of waiting there we were on our way and landed safely in Dublin! After a twenty minute wait on the plane we got off and took our first steps in this beautiful country! After gathering our bags, Kristen O and I hugged Kristen G goodbye and set off to find a bus. After buying our tickets with the crazy monopoly look-a-like money Europeans use, Kristen and I set out for our hotel we will be staying in for five days due to our apartments not opening up until January 5. We were dropped off about 1/4 mile away from our hotel, it was quite the experience trying to finangle 3 huge bags on icy sidewalks for that long. Yet, the whole way there Kristen and I marveled at the European life. Everyone walks here! And everything is so quaint and cute! I can't wait to keep this life up and learn all that I can from it!