Dublin, Ireland

Today is my last full day in Ireland. The past two days have been both exciting and exhausting. Arriving in Dublin at 6am the morning of the 26^th, I spent the rest of the day getting acclimated to my new surroundings, by walking O’Connell St. (the main street of Dublin) and checking into my hostel. The hostel was an interesting place. The staff are the friendliest people I’ve met in Dublin, and I had some interesting men living with me. I was in a room about the size of a small hotel room that had four bunk beds packed into it. One of the guys that I met from the London area was just here for the weekend; I asked him what his plan was and what he’s doing in his time in Dublin, because I didn’t have too much planned out for my 3 days here, but he said that he just came here to relax and didn’t like plans. His only plan was to get to the Temple Bar district at night and have a good time. When I told him I was from the US, he asked what I thought of Washington DC. He said it’s his least favorite city that he’s visited. This man has darker skin and a beard, and he said the looks he got in DC, made him feel extremely unwelcome; one person even went as far as to point at him and call him a member of the Taliban… it sounds like he had a rough time.

One of the other men I met was from the London area too. He was a big guy; a construction worker, about 40 years old, and when I told him I’m from CA, he said he was just recently there. He spent 5 months in the US and Canada, hitchhiking from San Diego, to the Gran Canyon, and then up the California, Oregon, and Washington coast into Canada, and then back to southern CA. He travels alone, so he can do what he wants, and just stayed in hostels (which I didn’t know there were so many of in the US), or on nights when his hitchhiking left him out in the middle of nowhere, he had a little tent in his backpack that he’d set up for the night. But he ended up overstaying his visa, so he’s not allowed back into the US for 5 years. The hostel is a pretty interesting place. There are people here from all over the world, and the crowd staying here is definitely a lot nicer and more open to conversations than anyone else I’ve met in this city so far.

Philadelphia

Today was my last full day in the US; tomorrow I fly out of JFK to Dublin. I've been at Kelly's house outside of Philadelphia the past 3 days, and we celebrated her birthday last night in Philadelphia at a fancy Asian restaurant that looks like it's from an action movie where the FBI are about to break in and arrest all the drug ring leaders who are playing poker in the back room. But they didn’t. After that we walked around Philadelphia and up the Rocky steps outside of the Art Museum. Please pray for safe travels and good organization skills as the journey really begins tomorrow!