Reunions and Robots

The sweetest float in the parade, complete with crazy scientists and a rock band...

Spending a fair amount of time in English speaking and ‘westernized’ countries after my time in South America has definitely helped me to realize quite a few things: 1. Despite an economy that happens to be on a steady downstroke, we, as United States citizens (we aren’t the only ‘Americans’ you know), actually have it pretty good in terms of the costs of living 2. People who speak English are rude and rarely cheerful, and 3. How civilized are we really if we always expect people to know exactly how to do things, or to know exactly what they want? Anyway, I know that I always talk about money related issues, but I did study economics in school, and I also know that the last item was a question as opposed to something tangible. I figure that the answer can be inferred.

But I digress... When I got into Dublin I was tired and nervous. I was meeting up with my girlfriend, after five months of not seeing one another. Why in the hell would I, a 23 year old kid, stay in a relationship while going abroad for however long? It’s a good question, and to be honest, I’ve wondered it a lot myself. I think the answer is: I like her, ya know?

My flight was scheduled to arrive a couple hours before hers, and I was pretty content with waiting around the airport for those couple of hours considering the time. I got there, and sat in customs for about an hour and a half, and figured I’d probably see her in the line the way things were going. The trip through customs took that much longer when the agent claimed that he couldn’t find an open page in my passport for the Visa stamp--the empty one was stuck to my visa sticker for India... I’m glad the event happened though, as it reminded me to stop at the embassy in Dublin to snag some extra pages. But I finally get out of customs, snag my backpack, and proceed to go stake out a spot and wait for Jess. After two intense hours of thinking that I’m watching intently, I get up to use the bathroom, come back, and then ‘BAM!’ This 5’3” brick hits me, and she proceeds to tell me that she’s been waiting for an hour and a half about 10 feet away!!! Anyway, to make a long story short, we wasted two hours before making way to our accommodation on the outside of Dublin.

We spent the next couple of days exploring the city and taking a train ride out to the Blarney Stone after missing the first train, then missing the bus to Blarney, only to miss the return bus to Cork, and finally deciding to go back to the train station instead of eating where we found that the last train was in 15 minutes... I can’t say I’m not used to occurrences of that nature, but being with Jessica has definitely helped me realize I’ve let go of perfection with regards to travel (This theory has not yet been tested with anything else). Oh, and of course, we took in the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Monday. I honestly have to say too, that the countryside was easily the most beautiful part of the country. Though, as I found in traveling with my mum, the nature and the history of English speaking countries are the absolute best part. Especially when you juxtapose the people of a country like Peru with those of England or the U.S.--there is no doubt in my mind as to who I have more to learn from and who is just plain friendlier (it’s the Peruvians by the way).

On Tuesday morning, before I left the country, I stopped into the high security embassy of the good ol’ US of A in order to get more of the aforementioned Passport pages. It was about 8:30, and I figured I would be able to get things going pretty quickly since I had arrived so early. Only they had to have my cell phone (I use it to keep time), my camera and pens. Then they needed me to walk through the security scan, then scan me again even though I didn’t beep when I walked through the scan, and then gave me a badge, so I could walk to the door to be let into the actual building, to be scanned again after taking out my wallet and everything else. After finally making it through, I found out that there were about 30 other people already waiting... It made me wonder if we really needed that much security. Why is it necessary? Why isn’t it? I have my own thoughts about it, and of course my own questions--though I won’t put them down here... Just some things for you to think about.

Now, it's onward to Portugal and the city of Porto--one of the world's wine capitals, if I'm not mistaken.