The journey back home

The next morning I had to wake up and start packing up all my stuff because I had to check out of the hostel at 10am. Luckily, the hostel let me hang out in the common areas for a bit longer after I told them that my flight didn't leave till 7:30pm. So I chilled in the common room and talked with John for quite awhile. Around 12:30, I realized that I was incredibly hungry, so I bid farewell to John and ventured out with my backpack in tow. I plopped down at the nearby Starbucks and proceeded to eat my panini, drink my chai, write in my journal and facebook my father. I am very skilled at staying at Starbucks for extended periods of time, so I stayed there and reflected on my trip for over 2 hours. However, the sun started to peek out from behind the clouds, so I couldn't stay inside any longer.

I took a walk through the lovely park known as Saint Stephen's Green. I was sad that I hadn't discovered it before, it was quite beautiful. I sat on a bench, closed my eyes, leaned my head back, and soaked in the sun for a bit. Unfortunately, my camera died before I could capture the sunshine, but the park was beautiful in the cloudiness as well.

After meditating in the park, I made my way back to the centre of town in order to catch the bus back to the airport. I was able to muster up a little more battery power out of my camera to capture one last farewell picture of my beloved, purple hostel.

I got to the airport, boarded the plane and had a flawless voyage....until I got back to France (typical). I arrived to the airport at around 10pm. Since it takes about an hour by bus to get back to the centre of Paris, I figured I would be back into the city around 11 and would be able to catch a metro home. WRONG. Since it had snowed, all of the French people naturally freaked out because they are a bunch of pansies. Therefore, I had to wait outside in the snow at the airport for 2 hours (with about a million other people) for a bus to come. We didn't get back to Paris until after 1am, so I had missed the last metro home. My phone was dead, I had no cash, and I was in a part of Paris that I was NOT familiar with. I kept stopping cabs and asking if they took debit cards, to which they all responded NO. Luckily, I found a night bus that took me to Chatelet, where I could get a connecting night bus to my neighborhood. However, once I finally got to Chatelet, it was a 25 minute wait for my bus. So I was waiting at the sketchy bus stop with a bunch of drunken men and homeless people....with a dead phone. So I spent the next 25 minutes thinking of the various ways that the situation could go wrong. Thank goodness, none of the scenarios that I came up with happened, and I boarded the bus. However, the bus didn't go directly to my neighborhood, but at least it dropped me off in the 7th arrondissement, so I had to walk quite a ways to my house. At last, around 3am, I made it back to my safe little nest, crawled into bed and thanked god that I made it home safely (after 5 hours of being in France, RIDICULOUS).

Despite all of this turmoil, I have absolutely no regrets from going to Ireland. It was a journey that I really needed to take by myself and I came back feeling even more confident and sure of myself. At this point I feel like I can handle anything and have no trouble taking care of myself.