Saint Patricks Cathedral and Dublin

Claudio and I finally had some money to explore some of the richness and heritage of Dublin. About a week ago we got to go to the National Archaeology Museum of Ireland, and I tell you it was wonderful! It was huge and everything there was dedicated to the Emerald Isle. There were archaeological finds dating back to 4000 and 5000 BCE. The most impressive thing to me was this history that I knew very little about, presented in a way that was beautiful and impressive. I also learned what bog and peat are...... which is a common thing around here but I had never heard the words! 

We chose to go to the Viking city of Dublin today, where the old wall held the local city south of the River Liffey. (Hey, I sound like I know what I'm talking about now!) We headed over to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and grudgingly paid the entrance fee (How can they make you pay to go into a church? Why is that a thing?) and enjoyed! The history of the area is very interesting. The cathedral is actually built outside of the city walls, because the archbishop at the time didn't like the Christchurch cathedral because it was a monastery. So around 1000 AD, they build this new little church, then made it into a collegiate church, then into a cathedral. The whole history is actually quite interesting. 

Johnathon Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, is actually buried in the cathedral along with many many others!

Saint Stephens Green, right next to our flat

This place is so old!

The stained glass here was magnificent

The Great hall of the cathedral

Acting like Tourists

Creepy death mask of Jonathan Swift

Marsh's Library, founded in 1707. OLDER than the USA, you guys. 

Christ Church Cathedral ad Dublinia, the Viking World Museum

Fun fact: Did you know the color turquoise is french for "The color of Turkey" because the people of Turkey adorned much of their mosques with the beautiful hue of blue?  

Words of the mouth

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your father was." - Irish Proverb

I'm still trying to come up with a suitable title for our blog. Nothing seems to fit exactly what I'd like to say! Claudio will begin his MSc orientation in just a few short days, and although he is very excited, the Irish accent is still giving him trouble. Heck, it's giving me a hard time! Claudio's program will have many postgraduate students, around 60 if I'm not mistaken. After  just two or three days of orientation, he'll start his first day of his master's degree on September 3rd. I'm so proud of him for going into such a prestigious program, although I'm sure he's worried about those difficult Finance courses! 

My first day of orientation is the 8th. My course is much smaller than Claudio's, and I think much more international - I've only met a few other students so far, but from what I can tell me have me, and Indian, a Welshman, a Libyan/Irish, a Polish Irish, and two other Irish students. They all seem very smart and engaging in conversation just leaves you feeling more intelligent! 

Claudio, however, has caught a cold and I must force him to take some medicine now! 

Expat Living

Getting set up to live in a foreign country is quite difficult. I used my 1GB of Data from Vodaphone in 4 days... and obviously that plan wasn't going to work for me. Ireland is a funny place. People's personal bubbles are a lot smaller, and although people are very friendly and nice, it seems like they're not ones to get to know you really. We've been in our flat for a week and haven't met anyone from the 14 other apartments in the building.  That "internet" we were wired for is of course not actually internet, its cable. We talked with the company (UPC) and they said they can't wire us for internet, but other companies say that UPC has us wired and that they cannot come into the territory. That basically leaves us with a mobile hotspot as an option, but that's so expensive. We'll figure it out I suppose. 

Claudio told me today "moving to the US was so much simpler" and I couldn't agree more. Apps like Localmint sure have helped though! There's a German grocer here called "Lidl" (pronounced little!) that is our favorite to shop at. Although it's almost a mile walking each way, the prices are ridiculously cheap. Like €1 for a thing of Italian ravioli, etc. 


Church was wonderful. We're in the Terenure Ward, Dublin Ireland Stake. Our ward is basically the entire south half of Dublin County, but we were surprised how many expats are in the ward. First and foremost, Caroline Altom, fellow BYUH ICS grad is in the ward! How crazy is that? The ward is about 60% Americans, 10% Nigerians, 5% other expat (Czech, French, Japanese, etc) and 25% Irish. Most of the Americans are employees of Qualtrics, a surveying software company based out of Provo, Utah. From what I heard, the ward has so many expats because Dublin southside is very expensive to live in, and Irish families tend to move to other regions once they have families because housing is less expensive. I felt very welcomed into the ward, and everyone was so friendly. There's elder missionaries AND sister missionaries in the ward, which tells you how large of a region the ward covers. There's only about 2,000 members in all of Ireland, which is something completely different after living in Laie, HI and Provo, UT. As our letting agent told us "most Irish are recovering Catholics..."


Here's a few more pictures from the last week!

I can't get enough of the ivy covered building! 

the oldest bar in the region, I think!

All these old doors are killing me, they're so beautifully painted!

The view from the third floor staircase landing in our building

Claudio was pretty stoked when he saw these...

A random view of the UCD Fountain, the main campus of Claudio's university

We found a flat!

Well, we of course made this huge fuss about housing in Dublin, and found a place our second day here. But hey, it was a lot of work! I slept horribly last night and woke up at 1 AM (Jet lag, ack!) so I decided to search for an apartment some more. Dublin 2, which is the most central region of Dublin (see photos for comparison!), had a new listing for a studio. I immediately texted (sorry John, my new landlord!). The next day I texted again and received word about the showing at 2pm. About 12pm I crashed and fell asleep.... but I woke up at 1:40 freaking out that we would be late! Blame that on Claudio, who says he didn't want to disturb me. We hopped on a bus, rode down to south Dublin two, and arrived at 2:01pm. In line behind 5 other people. 


I'm sure this motivated us a bit, as we waited patiently for the flat viewing and then walked up to the fourth and top floor, up four flights of stairs, to see this 50ft2 apartment! Because of the demand and the fact that it was in our original budget, and we could learn to live in a shoebox... we immediately said that we would take it! 

Here's some of the ad photos for our new flat! 

Adelaide Rd, with it's beautiful trees

Our building. Top right window is ours now!!

view out onto the street

Our apartmment has a set of 3 drawers instead of an armoir

Instead of a bookshelf, we have a small couch and a coffee table

You have no idea how small this bathroom is!

Like I said, drawer instead of armoir and a couch instead of a bookshelf

We're so excited to move in tomorrow!

Traveller's woes

In all honesty, our trip went very well. Almost everything went as planned! We left from Seattle about 11 AM and flew to Boston. This was our first time flying JetBlue, and I tell you, their snacks are absolutely wonderful!! The Boston airport, however, was terrible. Because our connecting flight was international, we had to walk from Terminal A to Terminal E, which at the time we were unaware that there was a special bridge to walk across, but no one we asked told us that!






We were almost late to our connecting Aer Lingus flight. From running to get onto the flight with our VERY heavy carry-ons (hey, they weigh your checked baggage), we realized we were in the LAST row on the plane. That meant squeezing by 50 rows of passengers, and then trying to fit our luggage somewhere! Honestly though, the flight was great. There were personal in-flight entertainment screens to watch tv and listen to music on, and they even served dinner. It was heaven sent!



We ended up checking 5 suitcases, with two rolling carry-ons and two "personal items". We went through customs like a breeze, but once we had to bring those SEVEN suitcases to the bus, ha ha ha. It was entertaining enough. We arrived soon enough to the city center on our Airlink bus, and then had two walk a few blocks with our seven suitcases. I'm quite proud of our wonderful execution! I ended up going ahead with two suitcases to check into the hostel, and then went back to help Claudio with the remaining five. It was triumphant to say the least. 

We checking into Oliver St. John Gogarty's which is a pub, restaurant AND a hostel right in the middle of Temple Bar, the area of downtown Dublin that is known for it's old bars and club, with street musicians always playing. The musicians were so enjoyable and we had such a fun time last night in our room with 6 others! There were two Swiss, an Irish, a Korean, a Brazilian, and a Dutch. We walked a bit around the city, Explored Trinity College's beautiful campus, and started our search for a place to call home. 

The Journey Ahead

Claudio and I had originally planned on leaving to Dublin on September 2nd. It really cut the time to move in a get comfortable short, but the tickets were hundreds cheaper. All was planned, up to the hostel we had reservations for, until the search for housing seemed too problematic. You see, Dublin is a city of about 1.5 million inhabitants, but when school is in session this number increases a lot. Around September, the apartments for rent soar in price as new students flood to the city. On top of it all, this year all the Dublin Universities combined admitted an extra 50,000 students, which meant that many less spaces for us.

Now, being a married couple living with others didn't sound very enjoyable, but we worried that this indeed was going to happen! Feeling pressure from this, we decided to move our flight up a few weeks. In order to beat the arrival of most international students, this meant before the 18th of August. Cheapest tickets, of course, happened to be the 12th!

So here we are, rushing around to pack our suitcases full of items we cannot live without, trying to find new last-minute hostel accommodation, and praying to our Heavenly Father that this all works out. Claudio will start orientation the first of September, so this will give us some extra time to find accommodation somewhere between our two universities. On opposite sides of Dublin, mind you!