Fáilte!

I'm HERE.
This is what Ireland looks like.
Let's see: it's 4 o'clock p.m. Ireland time, which means it's 8 o'clock a.m. California time, which means that I have been traveling for 26 hours straight--the longest I have ever been awake. The pink elephants are  definitely beginning to march around my brain, but thanks to a coffee that the Irish barista deemed "strong"--which, in case it wasn't clear, means STRONG--I have no desire to go to sleep anytime soon.

Well, maybe a little.

Overseas travel is like the childbirth portion of study abroad. It's long, painful, and disgusting; yet minutes after arriving at your final destination, the hellish night just spent curled up in a twisty ball watching Toddlers and Tiaras while your neighbor snores (somehow managing to sleep like a baby, blockading the path to the bathroom which you will inevitably have to use no less than a dozen times) disappears from your brain, and when presented with the opportunity to do it again, you find yourself thinking it can't be all that bad. Or at least, that's the way it seems.

We landed in Dublin this morning at 7 a.m. Ireland time. The sky was still pitch black, and didn't break until around 8 a.m. when we took the bus to the hotel--the O'Callaghan Mont Clare, right in the middle of Merrion square. There is a big group of us, about 50 people (and about 99% female), all with awkwardly shaped trunks and backpacks--the dance in and out of the airport looked like a scene from Saturday Night Live. Now, as the 5 o'clock hour approaches, we're all skittering in and out of each others' rooms--to excited and caffeinated to sleep for more than an hour at a time--and comparing notes about our hometowns, plans for Galway, and miniature life histories. Tonight, we venture off into our first night of Irish food (how many meats can one put into one stew, anyhow?) and our first night on the chilly streets of Dublin. I suppose we could go to sleep, and be rested for tomorrow... but that would be too easy. Sleep is for the weak. Right?

Two things of importance:

A) I have never felt so American. I keep taking photos of bizarrely simple things, like "this is the first doorway I walked through in Dublin!!!" and "MY FIRST IRISH FRUIT PLATE." I almost got hit by a car for looking the wrong way while crossing the street. All I need now is a fanny pack.

B) In all my life, I have never felt so sure of a place. This is exactly where I should be, and I love it here already.