Welcome to my Diary! I am going to be writing about my trip to Ireland. I am working for a company in Dublin, Changing Worlds, and will be spending 2 months in Ireland. I am going to keep a journal of my trip so you can see what I have been doing!
May 2nd. I have returned to Kansas City after a very eventful trip for my final interview with Changing Worlds. I left on Thursday, April 26th to go to Dublin. I had interviews/meetings scheduled for Friday. You just can't count on air travel this time of year! My flight was delayed in Kansas City for 4 hours, and when I arrived in Chicago, my flight to Dublin had already left. I spent the night on a cot in the airport. (a picture of the cot city is in my photo gallery!) I call it a cot city because there were at least 200 people that missed their flights and slept in the airport. It looked like a homeless shelter! I booked another flight for Friday to London where I spent 4 hours. I didn't get to see anything in London but I can say I was there! I caught a flight to Dublin Saturday morning and arrived, without my luggage, around 10:00. Changing Worlds re-scheduled my interviews for Monday. Even though my schedule got changed, the great thing about it was I got to spend the weekend in Dublin. The people were wonderful and really love America! I had to go shopping because I had been wearing the same clothes since Thursday, and since my luggage got lost, I didn't have anything else to wear. I went to downtown Dublin and went shopping on Grafton Street. It was beautiful and I had a great time. (Pictures of Dublin are located in my photo gallery.) My luggage finally arrived on Sunday, just in time. My interviews lasted all day Monday and I flew back to Kansas City on Tuesday. I should hear from Changing Worlds on Thursday to find out if I got the job.
May 3rd - Waiting is the hardest thing to do! I finally got a call from Changing Worlds this morning. I got the job!!!! I will be going to Ireland in a couple of weeks and will spend 2 months there working at the office in Dublin. While it will be hard to be gone from home that long, I am very excited! I will be adding entries to my journal to chronicle my trip, and I will be adding photos in my gallery of the places I go and the people I meet in Ireland.
May 15th - Well, my plans are final! I will be leaving for Dublin on May 26th, begin work in the office on May 28th, and I am currently scheduled to return home July 7th.
May 27th - I have arrived in Dublin! My flight was very long and very crouded, but I made it. I got to my hotel, got settled in a bit, and Terry called me. I met up with all her crew in Downtown Dublin and had dinner. It was great seeing all of them. I think they have had a good time although it has rained and has been quite cold the entire time they have been here.
May 28th - I started my new job today! I was taken around to meet all the people that work here at ChangingWorlds. I am pretty certain I won't remember half of their names but I will have plenty of time to get to know most of them.
May 30th - I am starting to get into the swing of working. I take a very nice walk every morning - about 7 minutes - from my hotel to the office. I do keep my umbrella handy at all times! It does wake me up! The weather has been quite cool and it has rained a bit but it is still very pretty. I think I am almost over jet-lag! The first couple of days have been a blurr, but everyone here has been very nice.
June 10th - Well I have been here 2 weeks! The weather this week has been very beautiful. It is summer here in Ireland and the temps are in the mid to upper 60's. I am learning a lot at my new job and I am getting excited about being back home helping get the company started. Some of the people at the office play in a TAG Rugby league so I went with them for the match. It is a very interesting game, much like flag football in the states. I took some pictures (they call them snaps) of the games and will be putting them in my photo album. The best part is going for a pint and a burger afterwords! I got a chance to get to know some of the people a lot more and being with them away from the office is a nice change. I went into City Centre (Dublin City) to do some shopping yesterday. Two of the people I work with, Kevin, and Sheila, went with me and helped me find the best shops to buy presents. The company is made up of people from many different countries so it is an interesting time trying to understand all the different accents! Anyway, it was very warm and the streets were very crowded but it was a great day. I take the LUAS, which is a light-rail train, into town. It isn't very expensive and I can go just about anywhere between Leopardstown (located in Sandyford), where I stay, into Dublin. I am planning a bus tour to Glendalough next weekend so I will have some pictures of the Irish country side, an old monestary and part of a castle, which will give a completely different view of Ireland. This trip goes through the Wicklow Mountains and from what I am told it is quite beautiful. I just hope the weather next weekend is as pretty as it is this weekend.
June 14 - We had a company outing last night. We all went to the racetrack close to the office and watched horseracing. You can actually see the race track from my office window. They had a bbq, which was very good, and after the races a band called Boogie Nights played 70's music. It was a lot of fun! I don't like betting on horses but they are sure beautiful to watch. The weather today is rainy and quite cold so I am really glad I had my umbrella! It is hard to believe that I have been here 3 weeks already. I have 2 more weekends and I will be coming home! I added pictures I took last weekend in City Centre at a park called St. Stephens Green. It is the place everyone goes on the weekend when the weather is nice. Everyone is out sunbathing, reading and having a picnic or just walking around the park. There was a group of musicians playing true Irish music which was really pretty. Work is going very well and I am getting up to speed on what the company is all about so I will be ready to represent them when I get back home. I have been going through Induction Presentations over the past couple of weeks. They are introduction meetings to all the different departments in the company which has really given me a good background on each of them and also has given me a chance to meet all the different Managers in the company. 3 new things that I have learned about Ireland. 1, people here walk really really fast. 2, cole slaw is served with almost every meal and many people put their cole slaw on everything. 3, chips (french fries) are served with just about every meal.
June 17 - Well, it has rained all week and have been quite cold. I planned a bus tour to Glendalough and the Wicklow mountains and even though it was cold and rainy, I wasn't going to miss it. I met the bus at the Dun Laoghaire Ferry Terminal which overlooks the bay and the English Channel. A lot of people come here to take a ferry to England. There are also a lot of seals that sit on the rocks and hang out by the port because the fisherman feed them. You can make a seal sound and they all come swimming over to you! As the trip started, we saw where Inya and Bono live. They both have homes up in the mountains and they were very pretty. We then headed to Glendalough. Our first stop was at St. Kevin's monestary. This was built in the 7th century! It was pretty amazing! The remains of the monestary, the round tower where the monks and priests lived, the cemetary where St. Steven is buried as well as many others from the 7th century up to about 100 years ago are there. In the monestary, there are a lot of headstones that are laying on the ground. They are really old and over time had started to fall over so they were laid down in the monestary. There was one marker that said the man was 124 years old! It was from somewhere around 1100. Really old! St. Stevens kitchen is fully intact. It was actually where the monks lived but they used pork or beef fat on their torches for light, which made them last longer, and when people approached the building it smelled like food was cooking so that is where the name St. Stevens Kitchen came from. St. Stevens Cross, which is believed to be the place where he is buried, is quite beautiful. There is a tradition that if you can put your arms around St. Stevens cross and touch your hands on the other side you would get to make a wish and it meant that you would return to Ireland. I was able to do it! Many of the markers are Celtic Crosses and even though they are very old, you could still read a lot of the dates and that was unbelievable! The round tower is pretty cool. There is a tradition that a married couple could hold hands and walk around the round tower 3 times and they would stay married forever! An old couple from Dallas were celebrating their 75th anniversary and walked around it. Being married that long I don't really think they have anything to worry about, but it was so fun to see them do that. We left there and went to see the 2 lakes. Glendalough means 'Glen between 2 lakes' and it was so beautiful. We had an hour to walk around the lakes and through the forest where there was a pretty brook and a waterfall. We left there and went to a pub for lunch. I had a traditional Gunness beef stew and a pint, which is what you are supposed to do in a pub! We went through a lot of small villages. In Ireland, the way a village can be called a village is it has to have 3 things, a pub, a church and a post office. It doesn't have to have any other buildings but as long as it has those 3 places it is a village. We left there and went to see Guinness lake and the Guinness house. The lake is named Guiness lake because from a distance it is black and the beach looks like the foam head on a pint of Guinness! The lake is black because the stream that feeds it runs through a peat bog. The bog is black soil and it runs into the lake making it black. This lake is where the movie Excalibur and the Lady of the lake was filmed. We left there and our next stop was overlooking the bog. It goes on forever! It can't be farmed because it is too rich with minerals and you can't build anything on it because it would sink. People still cut the peat into strips and store them and then use them for heating. A lot of pubs still have peat fires. It smells kind of sweet and like incense, and it burns a long time without making a lot of smoke. Even though it was a movie about Scotland, the move Braveheart was filmed here. There are no roads or buildings on it, and it is actually a no-fly zone so the film crew didn't have to worry about airplanes, cars and stuff messing up their scenes. By this time it was really raining and was very cold but it was the end of our tour. It took about an hour to get back into Dublin but the scenery was so pretty even in the rain and fog. We drove past a huge estate in the country called the tea house that is used as a place that world leaders who are having disagreements can come, have tea and try to resolve their issues. It is a kind of neutral territory to have a dialogue. Many world leaders have come here to do just that! There was also a place we saw out in the country that celebrities can come and stay. It costs 40,000 euro a week to stay there! Celebrities like Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson have stayed there several times. All in all it was a fabulous day and well worth taking. I have put a bunch of photos of my trip in the photo section so I hope you enjoy them. I have now reached the mid-way point of my time in Ireland. It has gone by very fast but I am really looking forward to being home!
June 30th - This is my last weekend in Ireland! I know I have been away for quite a long time but it seems as if I just got here. I have met some wonderful people here in Ireland and have many new friends that work at Changingworlds, so while I am really ready to be back home to be with all my family again, there will be some sadness when I leave here. The great thing is I know I will be back again, and I will be working with many of them when I get home. It has rained quite a lot the past 2 weeks and has been quite cold, but this weekend has been grand so I decided to take a short trip to Dun Laohaire, which is a harbor town not far from Dublin. Here is a short bit of history about Dun Laoghaire: Dún Laoghaire gets it's name from the Irish Translation, Fort (Dún) of Laoghaire. King Laoghaire was the ancient High King of Ireland before the Vikings arrived. When the English came they renamed the town Dunlary (Dunleary) to suit the English tongue. In 1821 it was renamed Kingstown by King George IV of England to honour his visit to the town that year. It remained Kingstown through Victorian times until in 1921, one year before independence, the town council voted to change the name back to the ancient Irish name Dún Laoghaire. The person most responsible for this was the Irish Martyr John Moran who was commemorated with the naming of Moran Park. I have created a photo gallery of my visit showing the harbor, the fort that guards the harbor and the really long pier that you can walk out overlooking the harbor as well as pictures of the town.
This will be the last entry in my journal as my trip is coming to an end. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed telling the stories, and I hope you have enjoyed my photo galleries. I truly love Ireland and will always remember with great fondness my time here, all the new friends that I have made, and I do look forward to returning.
