Leaving Dublin

First of all, to anyone who has actually continued to check for new updates, I offer my apologies: this blogging thing is more work than I expected, and I could offer a wide selection of excuses for my negligence (I've been busy, I've been tired, my internet cafe is horribly uncomfortable--no leg room and hard chairs, my hair is annoying me, to name a few), but I don't suppose it really makes any difference. So I'm very sorry--I hope you haven't wasted too much time!

That said, I have a lot to report; this isn't the time (I'm tired and my butt has already gone to sleep on this horribly hard chair) to give you all the details, but since I last wrote I've been to Prague, Krakow, Budapest and Amsterdam. I was travelling with my parents, and it was all great!

I'm off to Scotland tomorrow, for what will be my last real trip before I head home (that's right, the time is coming). It's a six-day tour with the sister company of the one that ran my Irish trips, so I'm pretty excited.

What has been on my mind a lot lately is leaving Dublin. Admittedly, it isn't my favourite city, and a part of me is glad to be leaving, but I have had good times here. And one of the best things about leaving a place is how much better is seems as a result of that fact; walking home from my last day of work yesterday, I was admiring how the light looked on the buildings of O'Connell St. Usually all I notice on that street is how crowded and busy and noisy and annoying it is, but yesterday it seemed almost beautiful.

My last day of work was affected by that same phenomenon; suddenly all of the customers were really nice to me, telling me how great I was and giving me notes, and all of my co-workers were going on and on about how much they'd miss me, and my managers and supervisors were complaining about losing one of their best baristas. It was really nice, until I started feeling guilty for leaving and just wanted them to stop...but a day later, I really appreciate the sentiment.

Dublin and my time here were not quite what I expected (not that I was even really aware of having expectations), but the past 5 months have been good ones, dogless-ness excepted. I'm sure, looking back, things will seen even better than they were...which is the best way to remember anything, I suppose.