Commute to Dublin!

The past two days have been crazy hectic. I'll give you a breakdown with my adventures. Hopefully it doesn't bore you too much.

Friday 1/8/10
11:30 pm
Leave my house for the Syracuse airport. Proceed to have a meltdown in front of Sbarro's with my mom. Totally classy...

12:30 pm
Board my jetBlue flight in Syracuse for JFK. Flight goes well, and I arrive in JFK safely.

2:00 pm
Picked up my bags from jetBlue baggage claim, walked roughly 1,000 miles to the next terminal, and checked my bags in with Virgin Atlantic. Argued with Virgin Atlantic forever about the fact that I didn't want my bags checked through to Dublin, but only to London (as per my travel agency), and then discovered that they weigh your carry-ons and mine were extremely overweight (by 13 lbs.) So I proceed to start unpacking my carry-ons and throwing things into my checked baggage. Included in these items is all the extra pairs of clothing that I brought in case my luggage got lost.
Hang around in JFK for 4.5 hours. Buy internet access because I am THAT desperate.

6:30 pm
Check in with my group leader, Brian, by Virgin Atlantic. He gives me my immigration letter, and I go through security which takes roughly 40 minutes (but they told us it would take 4 hours). So now I get to sit around for ANOTHER 3 hours. At least I bought the Internet...

10:25 pm
Begin boarding my Virgin Atlantic flight to London-Heathrow airport. It's an enormous plane with comparable-sized TV screens on the backs of the seats. I watched (500) Days of Summer, was served some dinner (beef and mashed potatoes, yummy!), and then they turned off the cabin lights so we could sleep. However, the flight kept deciding to have major bouts of turbulence whenever I try to fall asleep. Oh yea, and did I mention the goody bag we got? Virgin Atlantic gave us a goody bag with: headphones, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a sleeping mask, and a pen. Very random indeed.
Around 3:00 am EST, they turn the cabin lights on and serve breakfast. Muffins and juice. Hooray, hooray.

10:25 am (5:25 am EST)
Arrive at London-Heathrow airport. Proceed to baggage claim only to find out that... oh yea, they lost my baggage. Luckily, however, I'm not alone. They also lost 11 other peoples' bags from my group.

10:50 am (5:50 am EST)
My group leader gets a call from Virgin Atlantic. Apparently our bags just got lost at the airport for 20 minutes. Lovely. So we have to go back through security to get them.

11:15 am (6:15 am EST)
I am frantically unpacking my bags in the middle of one of the world's busiest airports so that my bag for Dublin isn't overweight.

11:30 am (6:30 am EST)
My group leader informs us that the Dublin airport is closed due to a blizzard, and that we are going to hang out at the London airport all afternoon in case it gets better and they send out some flights. Our flight was originally scheduled for 2:00 pm (8:00 am EST).
Luckily, some of the SUAbroad London staff was there, and they offered to watch our bags while we ate because we were all famished. A bunch of us went to a little restaurant to eat.  I got some tasty tomato soup and discovered it's rude to tip in the UK. I also discovered that in Europe the beer is far less carbonated, but the Pepsi is far more carbonated. I also discovered (via a CNN news report on TV) that apparently there was a bomb scare in the London airport while we were there and they arrested three people. Lovely.
We returned to our bags and started playing a massive game of cards in the middle of the airport, when one of our guides told us that she could board us two at a time onto a flight to Dublin, but we might not all be able to make it. I was one of the first ones to go because it was done alphabetically. We ended up all making it (hooray!)

4:55pm (11:55am EST)
Boarding our connecting flight to Dublin via Aer Lingus. Frantically wrote two papers for my class, and arrived in Dublin 50 minutes later.

6:00 pm (1:00pm EST)
Baggage check in London. One of our boys doesn't have his baggage. Oh, just kidding. There it is...
Meet up with our crazy Irish bus driver outside of the airport. He proceeds to tell us that everything we pass is "less than 10 years old" and also tells us all about the recession that Dublin is having. He also tells us that this is the worst weather they have had in 40 years, and that he doesn't stop at any red lights because of it.
Random facts learned from bus driver:
- You cannot make a left on red. Red means red. (Except apparently when it's snowing...)
- Ireland liscense plates are white. UK liscense plates are yellow. Police enforce speeding by taking pictures of liscense plates going by. UK cars can speed because the cameras are unable to read the yellow liscense plates.
- In Ireland, the first two numbers of your liscense plate number are the year of your car. The following letter represents which county you are from (For example, D= Dublin), and then the rest is random.
- Little boys like to throw snowballs at tour buses. Ours got hit 5 times.
- Many other completely boring and useless tidbits of information that I will never use in my life. Such as the amount it costs for a car to use a tunnel to get through London instead of the outside streets. Hm.

I've lost track of time by now because I am so hungry...
We arrive at our hotel in Dublin safely (surprisingly, since our bus driver almost tipped the bus by parking half of it on the curb). We meet our professor, Wolfgang, who is the craziest German you have ever met. Thick accent, crazy anecdotes, and super funny.
Luckily for our stomachs, he ordered us pizza. So we had a pizza party and then we did our first day of class lecture where we went over the general concept of the course. Tomorrow we get to go on a walking tour of Dublin at 10:45 am. I'm pumped (except that it's going to be freezing cold and snowy. The snow here is even rivaling Syracuse.)

So anyways, now that I'm hydrated and full, it's time for me to get some sleep. I managed to only achieve about an hour and a half of sleep during that time frame^, so I need to catch some ZZZ's. I miss all of you guys!!