It's good to be home

Well, maybe I should say it's good to be at my sister's home. While I was in Spain last year, my parent's cleverly seized the opportunity to sell our family home, so I don't actually have a home right now. Much to my relief, my sister has taken me in. I don't really know how long she'll put up with me before I'm back on the streets, but for now I'll just enjoy having a bed to sleep in and not think about the inevitable.

My plane flew in to Seattle night before last at about midnight. So by the time I got to my sister's place, it had been 25 1/2 hours since I left my brother's place in Spain. That may seem like a long time to be traveling, but my bags had it even worse. They just got in about half an hour ago.

I love traveling. There's nothing like that thrill of excitement that you get when you first enter a new country. It's strange, but I forget about that rush until I'm actually entering the country. Then it just kind of hits me. This past month was the first time I had ever been to Morocco or Ireland, and in Morocco I had the added thrill of being in a new continent. I think I'm addicted to travel. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go anywhere right now. I'm perfectly content to be back in C-town relaxing and getting some rest (oddly enough, though, I've only slept a total of about 10 hours in the last two nights- go figure). However, I know that in a couple of months, all I'll be thinking about is that next hit..er..trip. While I was coming home, I had a layover at JFK in New York. At the airport I popped into a Starbucks to get my usual Iced Caramel Machiatto and a pamphlet caught my eye. It was about some contest that Starbucks was running where the winners get a free trip to the country of their choosing which has a Starbucks in it. The brochure was old; the contest ended a few years ago. I looked over the list of countries, though, and I started getting excited thinking of all of the places on the list that I wanted to visit. I definitely have an addiction. I'm planning on going to England over spring break, but that's not for another 8 months or so. I could be a wreck by then. I'm hoping to get a car in the next few weeks, though. If I get it off of Ebay, it will probably involve flying somewhere and driving it home. Maybe that will help stave off the cravings. Oh well, for now maybe I'll just go unpack my bags. After wearing the same clothes for the last month and a half, I'm pretty excited to rediscover my clothing.

Driving on the wrong..er..left side of the road

I arrived in Dublin two days ago and met up with Hannah, Roman, Robert, and Daniel. It was late by the time Hannah got there, so we basically just had dinner and called it a night. The next day we decided to hire a car so we could travel around Ireland and see some of the countryside. As I still don't know how to drive a manual, Roman was going to drive. But when we went to hire the car, we found out it would be a lot cheaper if the driver was 25. Roman turned 25 today, so we decided to stay one more day in Dublin and rent the car today. But when we got to the car rental agency, we discovered that Roman's driver's license expired today. This meant that I was the only one who could drive. It also meant that we had to rent an automatic, which was much more expensive. How many times have I wished I had learned how to drive a manual? More than a few.

Once we rented the car, we had to go back to the hostel to get our luggage and find out where to leave part of it. It doesn't sound that complicated, does it? But we managed to make it extremely complicated. I'm not going to go into all of it now, but 3 hours later, we were finally out of Dublin.

Let me just say that driving here was and is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It's not that big of a deal driving on the opposite side of the road, but having the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car is extremely weird. Getting a sense of the distance I have on each side of the car and parking are the main problems I have, but I'm getting better.

We're staying in Kilkenny tonight. It is a lovely little town with a river running through it and a castle nearby. Everything is a lot cheaper than in Dublin, as well. If we had more time, we'd probably stay here longer. But we don't, so we won't, so I need to leave now and go enjoy the city!