FLIGHTS of Fancy

I hope you're all ready for a relevant pun for every entry title! Har har!

Here is a list of the most interesting things I saw from the airplane:

• A high-school football game (it was awesome, little red and white circles basically acting out those little X-and-O play diagrams you always see)
• A distressingly large and eye-catching Golden Arches sign
• Trees planted in a checkerboard pattern
• Oil tanks arranged like a smiley face
• Emergency vehicles assembling around the scene of an accident

Also, a message to all hypothetical stereotypical stand-up comics: "The Deal" with airline food is that it's surprisingly decent and very welcome on a transatlantic flight after being stranded in the airport for seven hours. Shame on you for complaining otherwise.

Yes, that's right! I got to the airport around noon, knowing I'd have plenty of time to check in for my 3 PM flight. Wait, I mean my 4:15 flight. No, 5:04. No, wait, 6:20.

We finally took off around 7:30 PM.

Luckily, this meant that I didn't have to sit in the Newark airport for five hours, and got directly on the Dublin flight! Sadly, I couldn't sleep at all on the Dublin flight (so forgive me if I stop making sense anytime in this entry, as I've been awake for about 27 hours with only minimal drifting-off-to-nap). I got grilled pretty heavily by the immigration guy on the Ireland side; he didn't like that I was spending 87 days in the country without a visa, but he stamped me in for three months anyway (because the limit is 90! hah!).

Now I'm sitting in Sheila's Hostel in Cork City which is delightful and clean and has free internet, though the hill leading up to it was quite...unpleasant while carrying a backpack, ukulele, and non-wheeled (enormous) duffel bag. The guy at the counter is a very friendly middle-aged fellow named Paddy. He reminds me of a well-built, moustachioed Ricky Gervais, in the best way possible. It so happens that his hometown is Clonakilty, where I'll be heading in two days to be picked up for the first farm. This (along with the name thing) may have encouraged him to take a liking to me. He's offered a plethora of suggestions for things to do while in Cork (but warned me NOT to order Guinness while I'm here, as "that black muck from Dublin" doesn't compare to the local stout, Murphy's) and seems like a very helpful guy. This is what I came to Ireland for!

I am going to go get a very late and very needed lunch (it is approx. 4:45 PM) and then maybe a fifteen-minute power nap to get me going again. Or maybe I should just plow through so that I sleep like a log tonight and reset my internal clock...

Curses, "personal storage" websites are blocked so you'll have to wait a bit to get pictures. Oh well, they're not important yet anyway - I took them all from the bus window on the way from Dublin to Cork.