I lucked out with a ride to Duesseldorf from Lenny, Oki’s boyfriend, who was headed there anyways, and attempted to meet up with a couchsurfing host who I had already contacted in the city. After about an hour of waiting around and attempting to get in touch at the central traion station, I decided to phone up Reinhold (My former Cologne host) again, who was only about 50 miles away in Bruehl. Reinhold agreed to host me another night, and I was glad.

I ran to catch a well-timed rain to meet Reinhold. We caught some dinner at his favorite local pub, and watched the film. We got up early in the morning and took the train into town where I met another mitfahr straight to the airport. The mitfahr was supposed to go Brussels, but the driver took a liking to me and agreed to go pretty far out of his way to spare me the train costs. The ride was pretty interesting because he was from Western Africa, and I was from California, and we were united by our knowledge of German. I’m sure it would have sounded very strange for a native speaker sitting in on our conversation!

In Dublin, Anna Murray (yet another International friend who studied in San Diego) picked me up at the airport with her Mom, the first of many acts in a very successful bid to spoil me rotten while in Ireland. My Irish experience was a rich one from the start, as we stopped to pick up Anna’s youngest brother, Connor, from his “Hurling” practice, a traditioinal Irish sport that vaguely resembles field hockey. I suggest searching it on youtube because my description by analogy hardly does it justice.

The day of my arrival was a big day for the Murray family for two reasons. Anna’s oldest brother, Sean, had just gotten his marks back (A perfect score) on their equivalent of the SAT (but harder). It was also Anna’s Mom Liz’s birthday! Back at the house and over dinner, almost every topic of conversation left me needing explanations of what they were talking about, and I quickly learned a lot about Irish sport, and education.

The next day there was a gathering of the extended Murray clan, including many aunts, uncles, and cousins, and even a few from France. Once again we were all treated to some seriously good food, as became tradition during my stay in Ireland. I also managed to get my ass whooped (badly) by all three of Anna’s brothers at Ping Pong, the youngest of whom is 14. With my pride in check, Anna and I headed out for a little tour of downtown Dublin. We walked around the city awhile and later met up with some of Anna’s friends for some drinks. I got to buy Anna her first pint of Guinness beer. I would have never expected to buy an Irish person their first pint of Guinness!

We all shared a cab to the edge of city center, and from there Anna and I decided to walk back to Palmerstown. The walk home was pretty far, and we had some serious philosophizing the whole way back. We got in deep about sustainability and morality and just the human condition in general. Anna and I didn’t always agree, and that really fueled the conversation which got intensely abstract.

The next day Anna’s cousin, Katie, met up with us and we did the Guinness factory tour. The tour itself was alright, but the bar at the top floor was awesome. It had a full 360 view of the city, and the bar staff gave me 2 pints instead of the normal 1 that comes with the tour. Bonus! We hung out at Katie’s flat in the city for awhile and then took a bus back to the house. I played poker with Anna’s brothers when we got back and was the first one out. The Murray boys sure can compete.

We had some home-made scones in the morning with home-made jam and whipped cream. I cannot express how delicious they were. That day we went into the pheonix park (the largest walled park in Europe!) and flew a big power kite. The park itself has one of the most massive green-grass open-space fields I had seen in a long time, and as a result the wind was pretty intense. We had enough power behind the kite to lift me off the ground by about 4 feet, so you can imagine what it was like when Anna’s youngest brother (who is about half my size) was flying it. Later that day we broke out the mountain unicycle they had in the shed and went for a little ride in the valley by their house.

The next morning a crazy thing happened. I was headed to the airport to meet up with Guillaume (yet another I-Houser) who had a huge layover in Dublin. I was walking down the street in downtown Dublin on a Sunday at 8am and I heard an American voice get off the bus in front of me. I turned to look and sure enough it was my neighbor in San Diego, Alisha. I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned and gave me a really confused look until she realized what was going on. What are the odds? I met up with Guillaume, who had just finished his internship at the UN, and we went out to a little cafe for breakfast. After Guillaume hopped on his plane to Paris, I took the bus out to the coast to a peninsula called Howth. The weather was great and I hung out on top of some massive cliffs with my book and a little picnic. It was a good feeling to be just sitting at the coast, having spent so much time in urban centers over previous month.

After that Anna and I were headed to a city in the south of Ireland called Cork, where the legendary Cormac Mangan of UCSD lives.