Dublin Airport and Trip to Cork

After landing in Dublin Airport Arielle and I picked up our carry ons and departed from the plane. We took a long winding walk through the airport and came up to the Ireland Border Patrol area where they had to check our passports to let us in the country. I was kind of nervous leading up to this because I am a dual citizen and have both a US and Irish passport. I had used my US passport to enter Ireland before, but this time I was planning on using my Irish one. Since I had never used it before I was afraid the agent would take it look at it and just laugh at me and ask for my American passport. When I came up to the station and I heard the agent yell "European Union Passports over here!" I hesitated at first but then went and handed him my passport. He looked at it, looked at me, then said
welcome back and handed me my Irish passport. I had to struggle to keep a straight face cause I kind of felt like Jason Bourne with my American passport in my pocket passing through Ireland Border Patrol and being welcomed home. Being a Dual citizen is nice because I did not have to show any paperwork that proved why I was entering the country or how long I intended to stay. I cruised through and had to wait a little longer as Arielle fumbled through papers and showed a different agent her program acceptance letters, and other various documents. Once we finished with the border agents Arielle and I went to pick up our bags from the baggage claim. They came quickly and we then walked out towards the buses to go our separate ways, Arielle to Galway and me to Cork. Once I Arielle and I had finished saying our goodbyes, I regrouped with my IFSA Butler group that was going to depart for the city of Cork very soon. While I thought we were going to leave soon, we actually waited there for anther student who was arriving on a different flight for about another hour and a half. One of the hardest things to deal with when you come to another country is the inability to communicate with other people because your phones and other electronics do not always work. It turned out that the student had landed about 15 minutes after our plane had, walked right passed us and was waiting outside for the group. We only found him when we gave up on him and went outside to find our bus. The bus ride to Cork was about 3 hours long and I did manage to get a brief nap in since at this point my body was so ridiculously tired it I could barely hold my head up. The scenery of Ireland is a lot of green hills and fields, sheep, cows and the occasionally horses or ponies.

It was obvious when we were approaching Cork because we began to see water and big ships. Cork is one of Irelands biggest port cities and is responsible for much of the countries fishing industry.

Once the bus arrived in Cork I took in the scenery, for the second largest city in the country, I do not think I saw a single building taller than 10 stories high. Cities in Europe are so old that some actually have different ordinances to preserve their history by limiting the size of new buildings. The bus dropped us off at the River Lee Hotel just off of Western Road in the City of Cork. The hotel was very nice and they served us a wonderful dinner. I had some pasta and potato soup. The while the hotel only offered WiFi in the lobby, it did have and ethernet cable in the room with free internet service so I could plug in my laptop. Once dinner was done our IFSA Butler group decided that while we were all tired from our long trip from the USA, it was now time to take  a walk through the city that we would all be spending the next 5 months in.