2 week notice @ Starbucks

Last friday, I gave my two weeks notice to Starbucks. Instead, I got a new job working at the Great Outdoors which is like Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op. The new place pays 1€ more per hour and I don't have to make coffee for anyone!

That's the only new thing that is going on. I will be working 3 jobs for the next couple weeks while I try to quit Starbucks so I won't have much time to spend money which is a good thing! For Christmas, I have decided to go down to Cork to visit Su and Ryan. At least I will have some Canadians to spend Christmas with. They tell me that they have a tree and stockings and everything. We are just missing the snow. Speaking of snow, my mom told me there was a huge snowstorm in Ontario......i'm liking the 10 degrees it is over here.

My bike has been a great addition to my life. It now only takes me 10 minutes to get to work!

Biking in the Mean Streets of Dublin

I bought a used bike today for 75Euros from a little old lady. I decided to ride my new used bike home and got lost. After 1 hour of biking here and there and almost getting killed 10 times, I finally found my way back home.

I have no idea how to ride of bike in Dublin. I am still not used to riding on the other side of the road and the bike lanes here are totally random. There will be a bike path and then it will suddenly disappear then reappear a few blocks later. Also, the drivers here are crazy. They feel they have the right of way and will run down a pedestrian if need be.

Halfway back, I decided I was going to stay off the road and ride on the sideway. I also need to get a lock, a helmet and a light for riding in the dark as it gets dark after 4:30pm.

Ok, short entry this time as I am hungry. Ciao.

Hotel Taco

This past weekend I payed my first visit to London, England. My plane left at 6:25am from Dublin and arrived 1 hour later at Standstead airport. There is a reason for the early flights being cheap...no one in their right mind should take one. I had to wake up at 3:30am to catch my flight! That seems like a time more suitable to going to bed rather than waking up.

When I arrived at Stanstead, I had to take a bus for another hour to get to central London. This cost me 15 Pounds return, which is over 30$ CAD. London is bloody expensive. It's a little bit more than Dublin. For a 1 way ticket on the Tube (Subway) it is 4 pounds, that is 8CAD! For a 1 way subway ride!! The buses are 2Pounds...that's more than 4$!

After arriving downtown I wasted no time exploring. I walked to Buckingham Palace to say hi to the Queen. I also saw the Roayl Guards with the big black fuzzy hats. I've always wanted to see one of them. Next, I strolled through St. james Park and watched swans swimming around. I then made my way to Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. The buildings in London are amazing. Everywhere I turned, there was something that caused me to stop and stare.

After lunch, I went to see the London Eye (friggin 20Pounds to go on so I skipped that. it's a big ferris wheel that they built for 2000 and you can see a nice view of London), walked along the Thames River, saw Cleopatra's Needle, the Roayl Courts of Justice and St. Paul's Cathedral.

It started to get dark around 4pm so I saw the National Gallery and Nelson's Column all light up. I next wandered around randomly and found myself in some cool shopping districts. I wish I had money to shop in London...but alas, I am not rich...yet!!!

Around 8pm, I took the subway to meet Taco. Taco was a classmate of mine for the past 4 years at CMCC and he is now doing his Master's in London. For those that don't know him, he's a little crazy...but you would have to be to go back to school after CMCC...jk.....anyways, Taco was a great host. He cooked dinner for me and showed me places that I could visit the next day in London. He knows London pretty well and also provided me with some history of the places I would see. My neck and shoulders were sore from carrying my stupid backpack around all day and so I got treatment too! Taco's roomate had an extra mattress and sleeping bag so I got some much needed sleep. I'm so glad that I did not have to stay in a hostel! Hotel Taco gets 2 thumbs up and I recommend the place to anyone...though, the neighbourhood is a little bit "dodgey", but if you are lucky like me and got bus service, i.e. got picked up from the bus station, it's all good.

I woke the next morning to start my sightseeing adventures again. This time I went to the Horse Guard where I met horses that are like the Royal Guards that just stand there and do not move. I also got my picture taken with one of the guards. After that, I went to the Admirality Arch, back to Trafalgar Square to the Telecome Tower and finally to the British Museum. I had a day pass for the tube on Sunday so I just randomly hopped on and off to different places.

The British Museum was huge! I only got there towards the end of the day so I only saw the Egyptian and Roman stuff. It's nice to see all those things but funny at the same time because they really belong in Egypt and Rome. When I was in Egypt, I saw the pyramids and temples but they were empty. In the British Museum, I saw all the things that were supposed to be in those same temples and pyramids.

I took the bus back to Standstead airport at some insane hour and slept at the airport until my 6am flight to Dublin. At first, I wasn't sure about spending the night in the airport so I was going to just stay up all night but when I got there, there were already lots and lots of people doing the same thing as I, so, I laided down on my coat and napped for a few hours before my flight. By the time I got into my bed in Dublin, it was 9:30am. Good thing I didn't have any patients booked this morning!

Ok, now to decide where to go for Christmas...any suggestions?

Tall Non-fat No-Whip Extra-Hot Hot Chocolate

What does that title mean?...yep....that's right, I'm back part time at Starbucks again. I never thought that I would have to make another frappachino again in my life but I was wrong. It's starting to pick up at the clinic but it's still rather slow so i've decided to get a part time job on top of the chiropractic one. Since I worked at Starbucks during school, it was easy to go back. I know the job and the scheduling is flexible. I work at the clinic 3-4 times a week and I'll be at Starbucks for 2 times a week.

I worked my frist shift yesterday. The dress code is black or beige pants with a back or while collared shirt with black shoes. I had not had time to get black shoes yet so I showed up with my white ones on. I had planned on going during my break because the Starbucks is right in town....however, I ended up going a little earlier then I expected. When I got to work, the supervisor told me to go and buy new shoes cause he wouldn't let me work until I had them.....lol. Normally, I would have been pissed but I was happy cause I got to go shopping! I came back half an hour with my cheap black shoes and started work. He wasn't too pleased with me until he found out that I used to work for Starbucks and that he could put me on bar right away. When he found that out, he actually said "Ok, I am happy again".

I woke up late this morning and missed my morning workout but I only had one patient this morning and I don't work again until 6pm so I can go to the gym now. I guess I really needed to sleep. Ok, off to the gym.

Belfast and the Giant's Causeway

This past weekend, I was in Belfast. My friend Ryan and I took a 2.5hr bus ride from Dublin to get there. Belfast is much smaller than I thought it would be and much cheaper than Dublin too. I thought that Belfast would be more expensive with the sterling but it only cost 6.50£ for a bed in the hostel.

We arrived on saturday and spent the day wandering around the city. City hall is interesting because just in front of it is a big ferris wheel. I wanted to go on but it was 6£ which I felt was a little steep. After city hall, we wandered to Lagan Weir and Lookout. Here there is a statue of a giant ceramic salmon covered with tiles that tells the history of Belfast.

Belfast is also the city that gave birth to the Titanic so we walked around to where it first set sail. After dinner, we decided we wanted to stay for the night and had to call up hostels since we didn't book in advance. After checking into a cheap hostel, we went back out to wander and explore some more of the town.

The next morning, we woke early and went on a tour to see the Giant's Causeway. This place was AMAZING. Please look at the pictures as my words cannot do it justice. It is one of Northern Ireland's main attractions. The Giant's Causeway is a vast expance of regular, close packed, hexagonal stone columns. In olden times, they thought that Giant's had built this place. From here, you can see the shores of Scotland and it was said that there was a Giant from Ireland who wanted to battle the Giant from Scotland and they created the causeway to get from Ireland to Scotland. There are 2 walks and we decided to take the cliff-top path to the chimney tops.

With our tour, we also saw the 16th century Dunseveruc Castle from the outside and the spectacular White Park Bay which has wide, sweeping sandy beaches. We were supposed to walk across the famous Carrick a Rede Rope Bridge but it was closed down for the winter. It is a 20m long, 1m wide bridge of wire rope that spans the chasm between the sea cliffs and a little island.

We arrived back into Belfast around 6pm and then had to catch another bus back to Dublin. All I can say is, look at the pictures!!

The Things Your Patient Say...

So I went into clinic today and my patient says "I feel worse now then I did when I came in last time and I think it's your fault". Lol, gotta love when you hear that! But, alas, it is part of the profession. I then proceeded to to ask the patient what happened since I last saw them...."well, after you last fixed my back, I felt much better, so I went for a run." So I say, "didn't I advise you to take it easy for the first few days because you just recently injured your back?", patient answers "yes, but it felt better and now it feels worse"....urgh...really now, how is it my fault that you went out and ran 5km after injuring your back??

So after 1 week in Cork, Carla, my classmate from CMCC has come back to Dublin. She decided that she liked Dublin better than Cork and this was the place she needed to be right now. Yay! Also, Ryan got a job in Dublin so he's back here as well. It's nice to have people that know you around. Carla and I met downtown yesterday and ended up chatting for hours over tea....and she had only been gone for 5 days!

It's great to be back in da gym and eating well. I definately see a change in my energy levels. I decided to detox again so i'm staying clear of junk food. However, to make it a little easier, I have built in 1 cheat meal a week. It's much easier to stick to a regime if you know you can eat whatever you want for at least 1 meal. Hope this keeps up!

The Journey of the Heavy Suitcase

On Wednesday, I went to meet my friend Brian at the airport b/c he had a stopover in Dublin before he met up with his wife, Trina, in London. Since Brian was in Ottawa, I asked him to bring me some of my medical equipement i.e. reflex hammer, bp cuff, etc. What I got was, all my medical equipment, my speeder board (used for adjustments) and 5 textbooks in a huge suitcase! I had no idea I was going to get all that stuff. The suitcase was also not one of the regular square suitcases that you could pull it by the top with the handle on wheels. It was one of those hard cover ones where the handle doesn't extend out too far and you pull/drag it by the side so you have to lift half of it to make use of the wheels. Let's just say that the suitcase was really really heavy.

After meeting Brian, I dragged the suitcase out of the airport and on to the public bus. I'm glad that the bus dropped me off close to work. When I reached my stop, I struggled to get the suitcase off the bus and brought it to work. One thing I forgot to mention, I could only drag the suitcase with my right arm b/c if I used my left, the suitcase ends up hitting against my leg. I got the suitcase to the back room of the office, narrowly avoiding hitting the walls. To be honest, I actually hit one of them, but no one was there to see me.

After work, I had to get my suitcase home. It's normally a 20min. walk but this trip took me 40 mins! I started with my right arm but got really tired after about 10mins so I switched to my left. After several bruises to my leg, I switched to pulling it with both hands but walking backwards. After nearly killing myself on the uneven sidewalks (a trademark of Ireland), I turned back around and tried pulling again with my right arm. When that got sore again, I decided to take a break and sit on my suitcase for a while and rest. After my rest, I continued again...I went b/w my right arm, left arm w/ bruises and rest until I got home. Why did I not take a taxi you ask? None had come by! I even contemplated hitchiking it back home....but i sucked it up and kept on pulling. I think I used every swear word in every language I knew on my walk home! But in the end, I did make it home.

On another note, I'm going to London on Nov 24! I found return tickets on Ryanair from Dublin to Stansted for 18 Euro including all the taxes! The only thing is, I have to catch the flight at 6am and somehow get from Standstead Airport to London, but that shouldn't be so hard. Yay, London!

Visitors in Dublin

I have had the pleasure of hosting 3 visitors this week. On Monday and Tuesday, Jai was here from Toronto and Ryan was here from Cork. Ry came to Dublin cause he had 2 interviews and also to meet one of his best friends, Jai. Jai had left Toronto at the beginning of October and has travelled to London, Scottland and now he's in Ireland. I had Tuesday off so I went sightseeing with Jai. We first went on a tour of Dublin Castle. It was not as exciting as it sounds. Dublin Castle used to be a castle but is now an administrative building. We saw the various rooms of the building including throne rooms and halls. The best part of tour was when we went underground to see what was left of the orginal castle. There is a river that runs under the building which used to allow vikings and others to bring their boats up to the castle. The walls of the castle were all smooth so that people could not climb up the side to attack. They also used to pour goose fat down the walls to make it even more slippery to climb....mmmmmm, goose fat! We also walked around St. Stephen Green which is a park here and Trinity College where the ancient book of kells is kept. We didn't feel it was necessary to pay 12 Euro to see a book, no matter how old it is!

On Friday, Carla, a classmate of mine, arrived in Dublin from Toronto. We had panini's for lunch and I took her on a tour of Temple Bar at night. We went to 3 different bars and Carla had a pint in each of them. At the thrid bar, we ran into my Italian friends and partied with them for a bit.

On Saturday, Carla and I did some more wandering around town going down random alleys and stumbling into food markets and such. Carla, being the party animal she is, wanted to go out again so we met up with her cousin's roomate downtown. Petra, said that there was a nice bar that she liked....turns out, it was Temple Bar, in Temple Bar. So, for the second time in as many nights, we went to Temple Bar. I stayed for a couple hours and then went home early......i'm such a party pooper. Carla is here until Tuesday when she heads for Cork so I have no idea what else she wants to do. It's also a bank holiday weekend here in that Republic of Ireland so everyone has Monday off!

Ciao for now.

Hockey Night in Canada at Temple Bar

On Saturday, I found a place to live in Ireland so I went out with my crazy Italian friends to celebrate. We decided to go to Temple Bar and it was rocking. The rugby world cup finals had just been played and the British lost, which makes the Irish very happy. We went to an 2 level Irish bar that was packed. We left around 12am and since there were so many of us, we waited outside for everyone. In the bar next door, there was a tv and guess what was playing on it? Hockey Night in Canada!!!!! On top of that, it was an Ottawa Senators home game at the Scotiabank Centre. Here I am, all the way in Ireland, in Temple Bar and I got to see my hometown on tv! Ah, the memories.

I moved into my new diggs yesterday. It is a 3 bedroom house that I share with an Italian and an Irish guy. So far, both seem nice, helpful and easy to get along with. Only time will tell. I can also walk to work in 15 minutes so the location is ideal and it takes about 25mins to walk downtown. Yay! I am out of the hostel!

Hostel Life

Hostelling is full of ups and downs. If I was on vacation, being in a hostel would be loads of craic (fun), however, if you like sleeping, hostelling can suck. On Monday night, I was in an 8 person room and it was nice an quite until 3am. At 3am, 3 LOUD German people came into the room, turned on all the lights and began talking. Urgh.
On Tuesday morning, I packed up all my stuff, dragged it down 3 flights of stairs and then disappeared to do some observations at the chiropractic clinic. When I came back, I was placed in a new room and I dragged my stuff back up another 4 flights of stairs. Again, I was placed in an 8 person room. I spoke with a German guy for a bit, then went off to bed. This room was much better. People were actually trying to be quite when they came back. The lights stayed off and I actually got some sleep.
On Wednesday morning, I packed my stuff up again and prepared to changed rooms. This time, I was placed in a 6 person room with some CRAZY italians. They were lots of fun. I ended up going out to Temple Bar with them for a drink. It was interesing b/c they could barely speak english and I spoke zero Italian, but they were great.
On Thrusday, I had to change hostels because there were no beds left. So, I packed up my stuff and moved down the street to another hostel. This hostel was terrible. It was like a maze and there were 6 flights of stairs to go up and down. Thankfully, someone who was watching me drag my suitcase up 2 flights of stairs, decided that he would bring it up the rest of the way. This time, I shared a room with 20 people. While I didn't like the actually look of the hostel, the people in it were really nice. I met a few French people and j'ai parle en francais, which as always fun for me. As you can imagine, sleeping in a room with 20 other people is quite difficult. I probably woke up about 100 times. Also, unlike the other hostels that I have stayed in, this one doesn't provide blankets. So, I got an extra sheet with sleep in but it was still cold. Yay for my fav Lulu Lemon sweater that kept me kinda warm. This morning, I went back to my old hostel and I am booked in there until wednesday.

I have been glued to daft, which is Ireland's housing website. I've seen 5 place so far but it is really expensive to find housing and very difficult. Each place that I visit, 15 people are already waiting there. I'll keep my fingers crossed that I find a place soon! I now appreciate all the things I used to have.....like running hot water....or a shower that stays on for more than 15 seconds!

Kinsale

After all the mess with the association, I decided to get out of town for the day. Since Ryan had the day off, he came along with me. Kinsale is about 1 hr away from Cork by bus but this was one of the longest hours I've ever spent on a bus. Firstly, the roads in Ireland are built so poorly that two cars going in the opposite direction cannot travel on the same road! You would have thought that when they built roads, traffic would flow two ways....anyways, so when the bus is going straight and another car comes along in the other direction, either the bus or the other car will have to pull over to the side of the road so the other can pass. On top of that, the roads are constructed poorly, so after about 15 minutes on the bus I was ready to throw up. If I did not have my trusty homeopathy remedy on me, I definately would have. Instead, I settled on nausea and looking green by the time I got off the bus. Even Ryan, who doesn't get motion sickness, was having difficulty with the bus.

The town of Kinsale is very small. It has about 2 main roads. We arrived in the afternoon and rented a bike. The bike shop was really nice because it closed at 5:30pm but told us that we could keep the bikes as long as we wanted and to chain them up when we got back and throw the keys into their mailbox.

Ryan and I were on a mission to see the coast, so we headed as south as we could get. Kinsale is a harbour town and it also had bike paths and walking trails. We biked for about 2km to Charles Fort. This place was really cool. It was bascially a fort in a shape of a star with lots of holes in it from the cannons that had attacked it previously. We skipped the tour and spent time playing amoung the ruins. After the fort, we hopped back on our bikes and continued towards the coast. After another few km, we ran out of trail. By the way, the trail was really hilly, and we rode up and down and up and down pretty much the entire way. When we ran out of trail there was a huge hill which of course, we decided to climb. At the top, we were told that we were on private property. The lady told us that the trail had ended and that there was no road to the coast....however, it turns out that she owned the wheat fields that were near where we were biking and you could see the ocean from there. She was kind enough to let us go trekking into her fields. So, we got off our bikes, and walked through 3 wheat fields to finally reach the coast!!! What a sight. It was so quite there because Ry and I were the only ones. You could hear the waves hitting the rocks below. I'm not quite sure how long we stayed on the edge of the cliff but it started to get dark. We ended up riding back through the trails in the dark, and of course, me being a scardy cat, I did not like that much.

To emphasize the smallness of Kinsale, when we were walking up yet another big hill in the dark, a guy asked us if we were ok and needed help. Turns out, he was the guy who rented us the bikes! Crazy! We dicided that we wanted to bike back so we did not take his help. At the top of the hill we saw an amazing view of the city at night with all its lights. When we got back to the town, we decided to reward ourselves by eating Indian food. It's nothing like Toronto and it's more expensive here, but it was Indian none the less.

The bus ride back home was even worse then on the way there. The driver was driving Formula 1 style and we ended up getting back in 1/2 an hour.......I was again a nice shade of green. So, that was my adventure out.

Today is Monday and I just moved to Dublin. I took a 5 hr bus ride and now i'm in hostel again. Getting hungry so I'm going to eat. No word yet from the Chiro Assocaition but i'm going in to shadow the other chiro tonight.

I hate the chiropractic association of Ireland

Ok, so more drama at the association since I last blogged. Last time I wrote, Trina and Brian were going to write reference letters for me. Turns out, their letters were rejected as references! She said that they could not accept letters from my classmates. Such bullshit! So, I had to get 3 references to express post the letters from Canada. Firstly, I contacted one of my professional references via e-mail but since I didn't hear anything from him, I decided to call him. Turns out, he had read my e-mail incorrectly and didn't know that he had to send another letter. This put me behind another couple days. Then I got a hold of another reference and they had said that they would send the letter right away as well. 2 days after I talked to them, they inform me that they had sent the letter for 7-10 business days because the price was significantly less expensive....however, I can't start until I get that letter gets to Ireland and I can't wait 2 weeks so, I asked them to resend the letter for me but by express post. Then, last night, my mom informs me that she had the letter....ok...this is getting rediculous. Anyways, my mom works for Canada Post so hopefully, she will be able to get my letter here faster than anyone else. To add insult to injury, each express letter is going to cost me 50$!!!!!!!!!!! I hate this stupid assocaition........

Back to Dublin

So after letting a place, finding a job and getting all settled in Cork, I'm moving to Dublin. I went to see a chiropractic office there and I really like the people that worked there and how the head chiro. runs the clinic. I really like Cork but a job in my field is a job in my field. I hope to start next monday, providing my paperwork goes through.

The chiropractic association here is a pain in the ass. They wanted 4 references (2 personal and 2 professional) which I had prepared already before coming here. However, 3 of my references were sent through e-mail and were not signed so the assocation said that they would not accpet them. I asked if they were going to talk to my references and they said yes. I told them that my references were going to say that they typed everything in my letter but that wasn't good enough for them. Then I asked if my references could fax them a signed paper but they said it had to be the orginal and it had to be signed in pen. Then I asked if they could send an electronic signature but that was also turned down. Urgh. Then, I asked if they could process my application for now and if they didn't receive my letters within a couple of weeks, they could cancel my insurance and I wouldn't practice anyways.....they said no again. When I got fed up with them, I asked if there was another liability insurance company with whom I could sign up with without going through the assocaition and they said no again. Haha. Finally, I asked if I could change my personal references to people who were here in Ireland. She told me that they had to have known me for 4 years and that they couldn't be my friends....but she said it in a way that made it seem like that was not possible since I just got to Ireland. Thank god for Trina and Brian. They each wrote a reference letter for me and they wrote that they are my colleuges and classmates for the past 4 years. The assocaition can had fun trying to prove that they are not my friends. I am still waiting for one more reference from Canada. Hopefully, it comes in time.

On the more fun side of things...on thursday, I went to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone! The stone is situated at the top of the castle and to kiss it, you have to lie upsidedown and hang over the edge of the wall. Don't worry, there are bars there and a guard to make sure nothing happens to you. The view from the top of the castle was pretty nice. Also, within the grounds of the castle, were wishing steps. These were interesting because you had to make a wish and then walk down and back up the stairs, with your eyes closed!! The guy who had done it just before Su and I told us to be careful cause he nearly broke his neck! So we took it very slowly when we went down. The only problem is that you are so concentrated on not trying to kill yourself that you forget to keep your wish in mind. I hope it works!!

Today, I went to a wildlife park with Su and Angie, two fellow Canadians. There animals roam free here without cages. We saw penguins, giraffes, flamingos, monkeys, zebras and many more fuzzy animals.

Another funny thing, there Irish have some phrases that they repeat over and over again. Hrere are some: that's brilliant! that's grand! thanks a million! They also call a car trunk and boot, and vaccuuming is called hoovering.

Hope to take a trip tomorrow. I feel like going hiking and I have the day off. Will let you know where I end up. Ciao for now.

On to Tel Aviv!

Last time we left off, we had gone to Phili temple for the sound and light show.

The next morning, we woke at 3am to go to Abu-Simbal. This was interesting b/c we travelled there in a convoy of 40 vans. We saw two temples here that were dedicated to Ramses II and his wife.

That night, we flew back to Cairo and went back to the Berlin Hotel....don't ask me why we went back to that hotel...the Berlin Hotel was horrible that night! While we were gone, they had "fixed" the elevator. After opening the sketchy doors, we put our luggage inside and hit the up buttom. The lights went out and the elevator moved upwards and the lights came back on. At the top, the elevator stopped and the lights suddenly went out again. Irene and I screamed! We thought that the elevator was going to go plunging to the ground but...nothing happened and the lights came back on again. When we got out of the elevator, two ladies who were watching us were laughing at us. We ran out of that elevator as fast as possible.

We stayed in a different rooms this time but the AC didn't work very well and there were ants crawling in my bed. After complaining to the manager, we were switched into a different room at 4am. We woke at 9am to go to the airport.

Irene and I left to Tel Aviv and Dave went back to Canada to start school. Before we arrived in Tel Aviv, we had a 10 hour stopover in Jordan. The plane ride from Cairo to Amann was quite turbulant and I was looking quite pale after the ride. If it wasn't for Irene's quick thinking and accupressure points, I would have tossed my cookies for sure!

We finally arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday night. Tel Aviv is modern, unlike Egypt and it reminded me of Canada or Europe, except for the Hebrew signs everywhere.

Eric came to meet us at the airport with his car and diplomatic plates. It was so nice to see a familar face! They sure do ask a lot of questions at border control, why are you here, who are you staying with, where are you staying, how do you know them, etc, etc.

Eric took us back to his styling pad paid for by Canadian Tax payers and Irene and I had the best sleep since we left Canada. The next morning, we walked around the markets buying fruit and looking at arts and crafts. In the afternoon, we went to Jaffa which is the arabic part of town and I was not feeling well so I had to go back to Eric's. The heat in Tel Aviv was not as intense as Egypt but the humidity is INSANE and you were sweating just standing in one spot. After napping, I felt better and we went to eat at the Brewhouse.

The next day was spent on the beach. The water was warm, salty and a clear, clear blue. We spent the whole afternoon on the beach. We also met one of Eric's friends from Canada who had just come to Tel Aviv to work at the Canadian Embassy, like Eric. For dinner, we walked around the old port and ate seafood. On sat night, we went to a club called Lima Lima where we watched Isralie's dance with no rythm. We left after 15 minutes to go to Clara which is a club right next to the sea.

Tel Aviv was definately more relaxing than Cairo, thanks to Eric and his hospitality.

Setting up in Cork

It's been a while since I last blogged and now, I am very very behind...I haven't even finished my Egypt trip entries! Yikes.

Ok, so here's the scoop right now. After being in Dublin for a few days, I left for Cork. Cork is Ireland's second largest city. The streets are cleaner here and it has a better feel to it than Dublin. I stayed in a hostel at the top of a hill for 1 week and I just moved out on Monday.

The week in the hostel was fun at first because I met new people however, it gets really tiring if you have to change rooms all the time. Bascially, you have to check out by 10:30am and put all your things into storage on the ground floor. Then, at 2pm, you are allowed back into your room and you have to lug your luggage back up the stairs to your new room. It is also hard to stay in a room with other people. When you come home at night and anyone is sleeping, you need to find your pj's, toothbush, etc. in the dark. You have no idea how much I appreciate having a place to live now. I just wanted to go to the washroom without carrying my toiletries in a plastic bag!! Oh yeah, the kitchen.....it is not the funnest thing in the world to cook with 20 other people. I really felt like I was back in residence again.

My new place is located about 5-10 minutes from the City Centre. It is a little house that I share with two others. One, is a girl from Toronto and the other is a Irish guy. Both seem to be really nice and easy going.

I also started some part time work as a waitress at a cafe called Cafe de la paix. Obviously, it's not my ideal job but it will allow me to pay the rent and meet new people while I search for a chiropractic job. It pays minimum wage plus tips. The bad thing is that Irish people don't really tip anywhere. Oh well, a job's a job.

A funny thing happen yesterday while I was at the internet cafe. I was reading an e-mail from two of my classmates (Trina and Brian) who were coming to Cork. The e-mail had stated that they arrived the night before and that they would call me that day. All of a sudden, I hear "Amanda?". I never turn around now when I hear my name because I don't know very many people here and don't expect to run into anyone I know. Turns out, I ran into Trina and Brian! They are now in Cork, interviewing with some chiros.

Some possible news on the chiro. job hunt. I spoke with a chiro. in Dublin this morning who is looking for an associate. Over the phone, she seems to be very nice. I will take a bus over to visit the clinic to see how I like it....fingers crossed......it would not be fun to move and find a place again but for a chiro. job, it's worth it. I have just startd to settle down in Cork....but I guess, if I moved once, I could do it again. I wish Max and Heather were still in Dublin. I got an e-mail from them a few days ago and they have decided to leave Ireland and move back to Canada.

Ok, that's all for now. I miss you all!

Bye bye Luxor, Hello Aswan

The next day, we flew to Aswan which is even further south of Cairo than Luxor. When we reached Aswan, Irene felt sick and faint so we slept for a few hous at Killany Hotel. For dinner, we had Kushari again. This is a supprisingly good Egyptian dish which consists of rice, macaroni noodles, fried onion. lentils and tomato paste. It is an unusual combination that works well.

Aswan is a pretty small town and there weren't a lot of tourists here which suited us just fine. Here, we met a really cool cab driver named Mohammed who became our personal cab driver whom we called whenever we needed a ride.

At night, we went to the sound and light show at Phili Temple. We took a boat across to the temple which we shared with an Australian and a British guy who was orginally from Malaysia!
Phili Temple's sound and light show was a bit corney but the lights were fantastic!

Day 2 in Luxor

Our hotel recommended a tour guide to us and so, we woke up on our second day in Luxor to meet Aladdin (I kid you not). Aladdin was pretty awesome. He spoke Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese fluently and several other languages partially. He also teaches scuba diving in Australia and all around the world.


We started off the day with the Valley of Queens. There, we visited the tomb of Queen Tutti and a tomb with a fetus in it. The fetus was not mummified because it was never born.


Next, we went to the huge, valley of the kings. There are 62 tombs here and they rotate the tombs that they open every 6 months to allow the tombs to rest. Here, we visited the tomb of King Ramses IV,2. He ruled for 4 years, so it took 4 years to build the tomb. This was considered to be a short period to rule so his tomb was not very elaborate. The hieroglyphics on the wall mostly come from the book of the dead. The second tomb we saw was that of Ramses IX who ruled for 6 years. Our last stop was the tomb of Ramses I who ruled for 16 years. This tomb was a lot deeper that the other two and was very hot inside.


After the Valley of the Kings, we went to the temple of Hapsheptuh (you all know that I can't spell)....and saw the tomb of Monthemhat (sp?).


After our tour, we took a boat ride with our guide across the Nile from the west to the east bank.
We arrived back at our hotel around 2pm. This is when it is the hottest so we took a 2 hour siesta.
In the evening, we went to the temple of Karnack that was built by 50,000 people over 1500 years. We had a very busy day!

Off to Luxor, Egypt

On our third day in Egypt, we left Cairo for Luxor. Luxor is in Upper Egypt. Note: Upper Egypt is actually the South of Egypt on the map and Lower Egypt is the North. They name Upper and Lower based on the flow of the Nile.

Our hotel in Luxor was a palace compared to that of Cairo. Here, we met the cutest kitten, named King Tut. He lives at the hotel and is the manager's pet.

Funny thing happened at the hotel. I went to flush the toilet and it wouldn't work so we called the front desk to tell them to fix the toilet, when the guy came, he tried the flush and of course, there was nothing wrong with it....I just didn't know how to use an Egyptian toilet....stupid me.

In Luxor, we rented bikes for the day but we didn't get very far. It was really hot in Luxor because it's closer to the Equator than Cairo. I'm not sure what happened but I was not feeling very well at all. Instead of going to a temple outdoors, we went to the Mummification Museum so that I didn't pass out from the heat.

At the Museum, we learnt the process of mummification, learned about the weighing of the heart, saw alabaster canopic jars where they used to store the liver, instestine, stomach and lungs of the people that they mummified.

At night, we went to Luxor Temple. This was one of my favorite sites. After the sun goes down, they light up the whole temple. We wandered through courtyards and sancuaries that were dedicated to the Theban gods. There was also an avenue of Spinxes and colosal statures of Ramses II and a pink granite obelisk.

The Great Pyramids

I'm sorry that i'm really behind on my blog. I arrived in Dublin last night and now I am staying with my classmate Max and his wife Heather. I have my orientation session for the work in Ireland program tomorrow.

Back to three weeks ago......our second day in Cairo faired much better than the first. We woke up early and met our tour guide and driver. The guide was a young female around our age who spoke english pretty well. She was cheerful and happy and was a native of Cairo. We had a private mini van for the 3 of us plus the guide and driver.

Our first stop was in Dahshur. Here was saw our first pyramid! It was the Red Pyramid and it was 7000 years old. We crawled inside the pyramid and explored 2 chambers. It's really really hot inside the pyramid. The other pyramid here was the Bent pyramid. We couldn't go inside so we walked around. The special thing about this pyramid was that it still had some of it's orginal coating on it. Most of the coating has fallen off the rest of the pyramids. Apparently, there are 99 pyrmaids in Egypt (finished and non).

Next stop, Memphis Museum. Here we saw a lying down statue of King Ramses II and the second largest spinx in Egypt, which, compared to the largest is quite small.

Next was Saqqara and the museum where Irene fell asleep during the documentary. Here is also where the step pyramid is found. It is the oldest pyramid and a precursor to all the others.

Final destination- Giaza and the great pyramids. It interesting here because the pyramids are actually situated pretty close to town. When taking pictures, you can see the town in the backdrop. We decided to climb into the biggest of the pyramids. This was quite the feat.....lots and lots of stairs. It's pretty cramped inside and you have to climb hunched over. I hit my head on the ceiling so many times. We climbed into Kufu/Chehop's tomb. We also saw the great spinx. At sunset, Irene and I rode a camel, which Dave rode a donkey in the dessert, around the pyramids. It was amazing!

Ripped Off, Left, Right and Centre

We woke up late to our first day in Cairo with breakfast of tea, eggs, jam and bread. We wanted to go to Alexandria so we headed to the train station. The hotel manager had told us that train leaves every hour but when we got to the station, the ticket office told us the next train was in a few hours. The funny thing about Egypt is that you can ask 10 people for directions or information and you will receive 10 completly different answers. Also, when someone says no, the no is flexible. This also holds true for the police there. No can easily be turned into a Yes with some Egyptian Pounds.

We then decided to go to the bus station. The tourist office told us it was a 2 minute walk...we ended up taking a 10 minute cab ride. Did I also mention that there was a heat wave in Cairo....the temperatures went over 40 degrees, and this was not including humidity.

We paid for tickets at the bus station and then realised that the sights we wanted to see would have been closed by the time we got there b/c Alexandria was 3 hours away. In Egypt, there is no such thing as a refund but we did manage to haggle our way into getting half of our money back. We then decided to go to the Egyptian Museum instead.

The Egyptian Museam is huge. If you were to visit each artifact for 4 seconds, it would take you 3 weeks to see everything. The displays are also very poorly labelled. If labels were luckly enough to be present, they were in either english, arabic or french. So, we decided to hire a tour guide. Big mistake. This guy charged us 80E.P. for a 1-hour super tour in which we ran around the whole museum like chickens with our heads cut off. He was also not very knowledgable at all. After the 1 hour, we ditched the guide and wandered around ourselves. Some highlights included animal mummies, jewelery, tombs and mummificaiton.

After the museum, we were hungry so we headed to the local market Khanal-Khalili (please forgive my spelling). There we tasted a bean dish, Foul, which was excellent. One thing I really enjoyed about Egypt was their food. It was tasty and cheap.

After dinner, we saw some beautiful mosques and walked around the market where there were swindlers everywhere. People kept thinking that Irene and I were Japanese. We were glad to have Dave with us. Women don't get much say in Egypt and Irene and I were often ignored.

When we got thirsty, we decided to sit in a coffe shop to have Sheshia and tea. What a rip off. They had a tourist menu and a local menu. The tea was 10E.P., about 2CAD which is more expensive than Canada....and guess what, they brought us LIPTON tea!!!! Urgh.

On our way back to the hotel, we saw a street vendor get his goods taken away by the Tourist Police. In Egypt, there are Tourist Police on nearly every street corner. Tourist are supposed to go to them to report anything that has happened. Anyways, the street vendor had a fit in the middle of the road and then tried to run away from the police. This was a funny site as he had a a lot of adipose tissue (i.e. he was fat).

Lessons Learn from Today

- only ask directions from women

- no one actually knows where anything is

- there are no such thing as a map of Cairo with street signs

- we are walking dollar signs

- plan, plan, plan.

The Sketchiest Hotel

Thursday, August 23, 2007

We arrived in Cairo, Egypt at 2am. It was 30 degrees and very humid. From the moment we got off the plane, I realised that this place was going to be very different from Canada or Europe. When we walked into the airport, we had to get a visa. You would think that this would be easy but, there were no signs anywhere. We lined up in two wrong lines before someone finally told us that we had to purchase our visa from the bank....how were we supposed to figure that out??

After getting through customs, we found our friend Dave, from Toronto, who had come to meet us at the airport. Dave's flight arrived 12 hours earlier than ours.

We got into a cab and drove to the hotel. The driving in Cairo, can at best be described as terrible. There is no regard for any lanes, nor traffice lights or signs of any kind, whatsoever. Many people actually enjoy driving in between lanes more than in them. The horn is used every minute by each and every driver. It is used instead of signalling. Since this was my first experience in a 3rd world country, I was scared for my life. Irene and Dave were laughing at me.

We then arrived at the SKETCHIEST hotel ever, the Berlin Hotel. There was supposed to be an elevator, however, it was not working and we had to climb 4 flights of stairs. The building seemed over 100 years old and that was probably also the last time it was cleaned. This is what happens why you travel on a student budget and pay 7 USD each per night. At that point, all I could do was laugh and go to bed.

From Toronto to Amsterdam

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Irene and I were on the 10pm flight from Toronto to Amsterdam. I was pretty excited about being on an airplane but the novelty wore off after a few hours. After not sleeping on the flight due to excess energy, we landed at Schiphol Airport at 5am, Toronto time, which was 11am, Dutch time. We had 10 hours to kill so we decided to walk around Amsterdam.

We took a train to Central Station and tried to find our way around. It's a bit difficult when you have no map and have never been there...luckily, the Dutch people are very helpful. We decided to have dim sum because we walked by Chinatown before heading to the Anne Frank Huis. When we ordered water at the restaurant, we did not know that we were ordering mineral water instead of tap water. 2.50 Euro for water! That's crazy. Lesson learned.

After lunch, we walked to the Anne Frank House. This is where Anne Frank and her family hid during the Holocaust. The house itself was bigger than I imagined it to be, but since she wasn't ever allowed outside for 2 years, it must have turned small quickly. Anne Frank died 1 month before she was released in Bergen-Belson and her diaries were kept and given to her father.

After the museum, we walked around Amsterdam and then headed back to the airport.



Here is one of the many canals in Amsterdam.