Nervousness, meetings and welcoming

After my previous story, basically a lot of words combined into a pile of nonsense, I now feel like I should write a bit more about my own trip. Even though I’ve only been here for two days, I do have a couple of things to say. What has my experience been so far? Where am I? What am I even doing here? Well, keep on reading as to what my adventure here has been like so far and what I could expect.

After my arrival, I got out of a plane filled with girls from Fryslân (Friesland) and I was welcomed by a sunny Dublin Airfield. I walked through the airfield and I was already afraid I had to wait half an hour for my bags to arrive. Yes, you’ve read that correct: bags. I brought two bags, one of 20 kilo and one of thirteen kilo. I also had my backpack of six kilo. This was obviously way more than I thought and also a reason to take a cab to my new family’s home rather than a bus. Luckily for me, my first bag was on the belt just as I arrived there! My second bag followed shortly after. I had this underbelly feeling that my monitor (which I brought) would be broken, but later showed to be intact. I still need to test it because I brought the wrong cable to connect it to my laptop, but I have a good feeling about it.

After leaving the airfield, I was getting a bit nervous. Would the family I’ll be staying at be home? They said they would. Would everything work out okay? Would the cab driver overcharge me?
As I was walking towards the cab, the driver invited me to get in. Rather surprised, I thought to myself: “is he expecting me to drive?” That would be okay, but a bit odd. A bit nervous and slowly I walked up to the car door and opened it. Expecting to see the steering wheel, I just saw an empty chair and the driver got in on the other side, behind the steering wheel. I chuckled and felt like an idiot. They drive on the left here.
We drove towards the region I needed to go to: Artane, Dublin 5. While we were driving, the driver asked me what street I needed to go to. I replied: Pinebrook road. After 10 minutes, we still had not figured out where the address was! I said to myself: “this is odd; I saw it on google maps. Why is it not showing up on his GPS?” We drove around for a bit and finally, after the driver gave me his iPhone with maps, we found it. We still had to ask a local where the exact house was but we finally found it. The driver didn’t want a tip (I didn’t even know if it’s a custom to give a tip or not), we got my bags out and I looked up to the house. Just then, the front door opened and a lovely lady came out, seemingly surprised to see me. “Hey! You must be Jurrian?” she said. “Yes. Yes I am” I replied.

The house I’m staying at is a lovely home. I’m staying with a host family with a mom, dad, daughter, son and rather energetic Labrador. I must say that this must be one of the most welcoming families I know. On day 0, they made me feel at home so well. While walking to the boy’s school with the mother, Kathryn, she showed me some of the facilities around the neighborhood. In the distance, a jolly fellow was walking towards us. He introduced himself, being a bit shy, as Adam.
After a little walk back home, he became more talkative, although it not being much towards me. Just as we were almost home, he spoke up and said some very familiar words to me: “you look like Pewdiepie”. Pewdiepie is a YouTube user, if not the most famous one. I replied: “I get that a lot”.

The same day I also met the husband, Nowell (I hope I’m writing this correctly) and daughter, Megan. So far, I’m counting this as day 2, I’ve been feeling at home here. I have my own little room which suits my needs. It has a very comfy bed and I love how nice and warm it is every evening and morning. There’s enough space to move around and not be in each other’s face all the time and the dog reminds me of Luna (my dog back home) when she was just one year old. Above all, the food I’m receiving is excellent. I will obviously have to cook something Dutch for my family.

I have already done some research and went to check out the neighborhood, but today, I’m getting my bike so I can cover much more ground. Let’s hope I won’t have as much bad luck as my sister in Sweden when it comes to bikes.

This being about what I did so far, much more is about to come. Especially today, I will cycle around and visit the DCU (Dublin City University) where I will check out the building I’ll be getting my office in. Monday will be the day when my internship starts and I can’t wait to see what I have to do and what is expected of me. I can’t go out too long today, considering I already managed to get my first date in Ireland! A date with a very lovely lady I will see again today. I can’t wait!