The Best. Apartment. EVER.

The title pretty much says it all! As of September 29th, I have been living with three beautiful ladies who I am fortunate enough to call my friends: Veronica, Tiffany, Rochelle (and Jenna), aka the best roommates ever! The apartment is cozy, but it is wonderful. 

Our first weekend here was an extravaganza - we had a housewarming party that ended at the club "Howl at the Moon" (thanks Doug!) which was so much fun. On that Saturday we had our Canadian Thanksgiving for all of our Canadian friends (and a few honorary members as well).  It was a fantastic night even though it made everyone feel homesick, and the food was a great success. Everyone brought a different Thanksgiving-y dish, so we had a huge buffet to satisfy everyones' needs.  Veronica and Rochelle cooked a 15lb turkey, affectionately named Frankie, which was disgusting when he was uncooked, but I have to admit...I had a little piece of Frankie.  I couldn't not, though! It was Turkey Day, it would be wrong not to eat any turkey! We had probably around 20 people over, which was pretty ridiculous but it was good fun.

Living with these girls has been so much better than any of my other apartments, and it's nice to have someone to come home to at the end of the day.  We have Kyle staying with us for the week while he visits, which has been a treat because everyone wanted him to stay with them (we are the lucky ones :) ). You can see him in one of the pictures below modelling our apartment haha.

Kyle in the living room

The living room and dining room from the "balcony"

I made that shelf! €16 from IKEA, what a steal!

Kitchen, where we cook things.

My and Rochelle's room...very very cozy! But it's actually
perfect for our needs (pretty much just sleeping)

My little space and the closet with the dresser I made :) Those pictures hanging
on the wall have followed me to every apartment in every country I've lived in.

If you want a live tour of the apartment, let's skype :) 

Tonight I'm on my way to another housewarming party - tis the season!

Love, 

Jennalyn

Apparently I love the stress of moving.

Since Zen left, I have been working in room service. I am absolutely loving it - the team is great, and so is the job. It's nice because there's such little contacts with guests...how horrible is that to say? Haha but after working in the Drawing Rooms with guests constantly bothering you, it's a nice vacation! It's a very hard department to predict, because you never know when the phone will ring. Because of that, we have to be constantly preparing for it to get busy.  

Now, I won't bore you with work talk any longer. In other news...

I'm moving again! I know what you're thinking..."Jenna, didn't you move less than 2 months ago? Weren't you loving your new apartment?" Answer: yes, I was loving it...when I was the only one there. Once my roommate got back from her backpacking trip, that's when things turned sour. I'm sure that she's a nice enough girl, but we don't seem to have anything in common and I don't feel very welcome in my own home.  So I'm moving in with three close friends tomorrow, and I could not be more excited! It's still in a great location, and even better I'll be living with people I can actually have a conversation with :) I'll give out my new address when I know it. I expect lots of mail!! (Jess and Bailey, you did a fantastic job at sending things at this apartment, keep it up! Everyone else...step up your game.)  

I'll post pictures of my new and improved apartment once I'm in there. 

I CANNOT WAIT.

Love, 

Jennalyn

Ireland and Scotland

This post is a sort of extension of my last post with pictures. If you didn't get the vibe from my last post, it was so amazing having Zen here for a too short two weeks, and I'm already counting down the days until he visits again! It was a great opportunity for us both to see new parts of the world, which we took advantage of.  

As mentioned, we first went to Belfast. We were so lucky with the weather we had (what happened to typical Irish weather?), especially for visiting the Giant's Causeway. This was probably my favourite part of our holiday, and was something I looked forward to seeing for a long time. We were not disappointed with the Causeway or any of the other parts of the tour; we had beautiful coastal scenery to look at for the entire day.

Zenon at the Giant's Causeway

 The Black Taxi tour was very moving and like nothing I'd ever done before. I was completely ignorant about the "troubles" before visiting Belfast, so it was an absolute eye-opener.  I never realized that part of the city was still divided - the wall dividing the Protestant and Catholic parts of West Belfast has been up longer than the Berlin Wall was.  The murals on the Catholic side were my favourite, and they're constantly being updated to showcase current issues. The picture below was of my favourite mural: there was a curfew on the Catholic part of West Belfast at one point, which essentially meant that the people could never leave their homes. After a few days of this, the women banded together to try to end the curfew by marching in the streets, pushing children in prams and carrying bread and milk to feed the hungry Catholic. The gardai (police) couldn't do anything to stop them since they weren't being threatening, and this effectively ended the curfew. Moral of the story: women are capable of anything!

The Protestant side of the wall, covered in encouraging messages of peace

The next weekend Zen and I went to Glasgow; neither of us had ever been to Scotland, so it was a real treat. We were only there for a few short days, but we made good use of our time. The first day we had a few hours before we could check into the hostel, so we did a hop-on-hop-off tour. I can't remember too much of the history from the tour, but it was a great way to see the city initially because it helped us get our bearings.  That night we went out to a local pub (Zen wanted an "authentic Scottish experience") and ended up meeting four Swedish business men and two Scottish men and had a grand ol' time drinking with them! Quite the bizzare experience! 

A little groggy the next morning, we woke up early to go on our tour of the Highlands and Loch Ness. The weather was quite awful that day, so we didn't get too great of views of the mountains. The landscape was really unique, though; the mountains looked like huge ski moguls to me (but maybe that's just me).  The tour ended up taking a bit longer than anticipated because of an accident en route, but it didn't throw us off too much. We weren't thrilled with the tour - we didn't stop too much even to take pictures. The driver would sometimes point something of interest out, but would hardly slow down for us to take a look at it.  It was a 13 hour day, which is far too long for a tour, so I think next time we won't be quite so ambitious with our sightseeing. 

Zen in front of Loch Lomond

Me at Loch Ness

 Our last day in Scotland we went to Greenock, which is about half an hour away from Glasgow and where Zen's grandparents lived before moving to Canada. His Grannie has a picture on her fridge of a particular intersection in Greenock in the 1970's, so we spent most of our time there searching for the crossing so Zen could take an updated photo of it.  We had lunch there, where Zen tried haggis (what a bad vegetarian, eh? But a good Scotsman, I suppose), which looked nothing like I thought it would (probably for the better). 

The last few days we spent in Dublin were great - we had beautiful weather and were able to visit Howth and Bray. In Howth we went on the same hike I had done a couple of months ago, and in Bray we sat on the beach for an hour or two. Zen was adamant about swimming in the ocean at least once this summer, so he crossed that off of his to do list - even if it was freezing. While he was swimming in the Irish Sea I was bundled up on the beach.

Me (top left) in breathtaking Howth

Zen going for a dip in Bray

 All in all, it was a fantastic holiday, but like always it was too brief.  Hopefully the next few months go by quickly and it won't be long before my family (and possibly Zen) is here for Christmas. 

Hope you're having a good start to your fall :)

Love, 

Jenna

Irish Times with Zenon

Just a quick post to update you about my life here in Dublin. I, unfortunately, don't have any pictures in this post because I haven't had the chance to upload them onto a computer yet. Zen got to Dublin on Thursday morning, and it's been so splendid having him here! We've hardly spent any time in Dublin so far, so we still have a lot of sightseeing to do around this area. We went out with some of my friends on Thursday night - I think Zen was quite jet lagged but he was a trooper and danced with us anyways! On Friday we took the train up to Belfast and were there for a couple of days. I'll explain more of what we did later; in a nutshell, we did a day long tour of the Northern Coast (highlight being the Giant's Causeway) and on Sunday we did a Black Taxi Tour, which taught us all about the history of Belfast's "troubles" over the past 40 years. Our tour guide was a taxi driver who lived through the troubles (he told us he's has a gun held to his head on five separate occasions). The city itself wasn't very pleasant (although Zen liked it) but the history is rich and they still have a lot of work to do until the city can be peaceful again.

Today Zen and I went to the Merrion for some tea and scones, which I think he liked! My favourite part about that was being able to use the guest washrooms, which I had never seen the inside of before! They were so fancy!!! I guess that's to be expected, but when you use the drab staff bathrooms, it's quite the contrast.

On that note, hope you have a wonderful evening. We're off to Fitzgerald's Pub to meet with the usual USIT Monday night crowd.

Love,

Jenna and Zen :)

New apartment

Hola! I have successfully moved into my new apartment, and I love living downtown! My roommate's gone for the next few weeks, so I have the room to myself with is A-okay with me. My space is pretty small, but I don't really mind that much - it just means that I have to be more organized! The best part is the living room/dining room because it's really bright and open and we have really nice couches. Here are some photos (taken on my phone - sorry for the low quality but I was too lazy to charge my camera) to give you some idea of what it's like:

My bed and things - small but good enough for me!

The rest of my room. This is Maria's bed and our shared closet and chest of drawers.

Dining room area

Living room area with big balcony

Kitchen 

Living room/dining room/kitchen

I met with Ana (the girl who I'm replacing) yesterday and she helped me move everything in. I was unpacked within an hour - a record for me (I normally take at least 3 weeks to unpack suitcases after a vacation). I felt a little strange unpacking while she was there, because if I was her I would feel weird about someone moving into the room that was mine for the past 3 years.  She was really helpful and nice though, and showed me around, how to work the washer/dryer, how the bills work, etc. We got along really well, so it's a shame that she was the one moving! I haven't seen too much of my flatmates otherwise. As I said, Maria is backpacking for 3 weeks so I won't meet her for a while; Priscilla works 2 jobs and attends classes so she's apparently never around; and Evelyn goes to school as well so she's gone for most of the day. 

Today I went for a run because I wasn't afraid I would get stabbed if I left my apartment (like I was on Cork Street haha). No one's dangerous here - there's only harmless tourists who are constantly taking pictures with the statue outside of the gates. I love living here so far! Come visit, and you will see how awesome it is!

Much love xoxox

Moving!

I MOVE TOMORROW WOOHOO!!! I am almost all packed (aka I still have a lot to do) but I think I'll work best when there's pressure applied (meaning an hour before I have to leave).  I have two suitcases full so far, and I expect all three of my suitcases to be unbearably heavy...at least my new apartment has an elevator! I'm moving at 1PM tomorrow, and I'll definitely be posting pictures of my new place once I get there. My roommate is backpacking for the next 3 weeks (or so I've heard) so it'll be a few weeks before I actually meet her. At least I'll be able to get settled in without disturbing her.  

Other than that, I still have my exam on Friday to study for. And Zen gets here in just over 2 weeks!! What a great month :') 

Busy Week Ahead

August has been a great month for me so far...and it's only just started! I've been working non-stop, but it has made the days go by quicker.  I have a lot of things on my mind for the upcoming couple of weeks: 

1. I am moving in 4 days! I'm really excited to move to my new apartment, which is in a better location and I hope will have roommates I can relate to more. It'll be strange sharing a room with someone again (like first year university) but I know it's only temporary and I think (hope desperately) that she and I will get along fine.

2. I am writing an exam for my online course next Friday...and I have A LOT of studying to do! The problem is when will I have time to do it?

3. Zen is coming to visit at the end of the month! I'm most excited about this news!!! He gets here August 23rd (in 19 days!!) and I'm already planning how we're going to spend our time. I think we will tour around Ireland a bit, but spend a majority of our time in Dublin. I have a lot of people I want him to meet and a lot of things I want him to see :)

A lot on my plate, it seems (as well as working 7 days in a row...)! Once this week is over I'll be relieved and I hope I get the chance to relax...something tells me that that might not be the way it goes, though!