Welcome to my travel blog! I've never "blogged" before, but I figured it might be a useful medium for sharing my experiences with people I might not be able to contact with regularity otherwise. I plan to use this as a journal of my (hopefully) exciting and crazy adventures complete with photos and links so that you can really see where I am and what I'm doing.
So here's the story so far:
I enrolled in American University in the fall of 2005 to study International Relations. I began taking Arabic. I wanted to solve all the problems in the Middle East. (Ambitious, right?) I met a lot of really smart and interesting people. But, I decided this past February that I don't have the mind, or more importantly, the heart for such a political career. I changed my major to Anthropology, (same multi-cultural idea, less politics). I had intended all along to study abroad in the Middle East and Europe.
I contemplated many options of places to visit this year, including Germany, Lebanon, France, Italy, Dubai, UAE, Australia, South Africa, Morocco, Scotland, and Spain. I settled on Dublin, Ireland for the fall semester, and Cairo, Egypt for the spring. I chose Dublin because a majority of my heritage is Irish and living in Dublin seems like a good way to get in touch with that. I'll be attending Trinity College. It has amazing Humanities and Sociolinguistics departments. Also, Dublin is fast becoming one of the most diverse cities in Europe.
So here I am, getting ready to move to Dublin for four months. My summer job as a lifeguard ended yesterday, so now I actually might have time to accomplish some things. I leave New York for Dublin Monday, August 27 at 10:05pm. I'll arrive in Dublin the next morning at 9:35am. I'm staying in the Four Courts Hostel on Merchant's Quay, (about 2.5 miles from Trinity) for the first four days because Trinity's dorms don't open until Saturday. I will be sharing a room and a bathroom with five other nomads. I'm not nervous about the hostel at all really. Everyone I've talked to says that I should be, but once you've lived on Leo 2 for two years you've seen just about every crazy weird thing that can happen among a bunch of 18-22 year olds. :P
I'll spend my first few days in Dublin getting to know my way around the city and accumulating various items that I refuse to waste perfectly good suitcase space on. Oh, and I have to get an Irish cell phone. I have tickets to the Regina Spektor concert at Tripod for Friday night. That's about all I know at the moment. I'm sure it will be a lot more complicated once I get there, but for now I'm enjoying thinking that this is going to be as easy as I make it sound.
So here's the story so far:
I enrolled in American University in the fall of 2005 to study International Relations. I began taking Arabic. I wanted to solve all the problems in the Middle East. (Ambitious, right?) I met a lot of really smart and interesting people. But, I decided this past February that I don't have the mind, or more importantly, the heart for such a political career. I changed my major to Anthropology, (same multi-cultural idea, less politics). I had intended all along to study abroad in the Middle East and Europe.
I contemplated many options of places to visit this year, including Germany, Lebanon, France, Italy, Dubai, UAE, Australia, South Africa, Morocco, Scotland, and Spain. I settled on Dublin, Ireland for the fall semester, and Cairo, Egypt for the spring. I chose Dublin because a majority of my heritage is Irish and living in Dublin seems like a good way to get in touch with that. I'll be attending Trinity College. It has amazing Humanities and Sociolinguistics departments. Also, Dublin is fast becoming one of the most diverse cities in Europe.
So here I am, getting ready to move to Dublin for four months. My summer job as a lifeguard ended yesterday, so now I actually might have time to accomplish some things. I leave New York for Dublin Monday, August 27 at 10:05pm. I'll arrive in Dublin the next morning at 9:35am. I'm staying in the Four Courts Hostel on Merchant's Quay, (about 2.5 miles from Trinity) for the first four days because Trinity's dorms don't open until Saturday. I will be sharing a room and a bathroom with five other nomads. I'm not nervous about the hostel at all really. Everyone I've talked to says that I should be, but once you've lived on Leo 2 for two years you've seen just about every crazy weird thing that can happen among a bunch of 18-22 year olds. :P
I'll spend my first few days in Dublin getting to know my way around the city and accumulating various items that I refuse to waste perfectly good suitcase space on. Oh, and I have to get an Irish cell phone. I have tickets to the Regina Spektor concert at Tripod for Friday night. That's about all I know at the moment. I'm sure it will be a lot more complicated once I get there, but for now I'm enjoying thinking that this is going to be as easy as I make it sound.
