How Gross Can You Get?

Many of you know about my gross living situation with two girls from Spain. I just wanted to share some additional, recent photos of their filth. I finally got them to agree to pay the 80 euro per hour cleaning charge for everything wrong with the apartment when they move out. This was a small feat but still great. Below is a picture from before and after I cleaned the microwave (the only thing my american flatmate and myself have ever used in the kitchen or living room). The microwave looked like the top picture since we moved in on day one.

The before and after of our microwave. 

When I was done cleaning the microwave, I moved it over and found this. So I thought I'd write them a few notes to remind them of their responsibilities, seeing as they cook five meals a day. I mean, really, what is this?!

Look cleaning the microwave led to? Finding more filth.

My American flatmate has been asking for over a week for the two Spanish girls to clean the oven so she can make brownies. It is full of burnt baked on food, crumbs and pieces of human hair. Obviously, the oven needed a sign too.

You can see how dirty the outside of the oven is. Just
imagine the inside. 

The two Spanish girls have moldy foods in the fridge but they also have left things in the fridge that have leaked out onto the floor in front of the fridge and around the side of it. This was the third thing that needed a friendly reminder sign. 

Here is a picture of one of the kitchen cabinets filled with spilled cooking oil and crumbs of food. I hope you girls have a bunch of cleaning products or deep pockets. The cleaning bill for the kitchen and living room is going to be pricey judging by what you think is 'clean'. 

The spilled layer of cooking oil can be seen in this picture. Good
luck cleaning that!

The Countdown Between Countries

As my days in Ireland grow to a close, I find myself looking back on my last four months. I've traveled many places and learned a lot about myself. Here are a few of my personal thoughts about my growth while studying in Ireland.

Before moving to Ireland, I'd only been to two countries. Ecuador and my homeland, the United States of America. However, since arriving, on various weekends and the extended breaks DCU granted me, I traveled to seven countries. This is not including the traveling I've done in Ireland and Northern Ireland. These trips included: Paris, France; Barcelona, Spain; Krakow, Poland; Berlin, Germany; Rome, Italy;  London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. That's a pretty impressive list to have created in less than 121 days. I am extremely fortunate to have gotten to see so many famous places and landmarks during my time abroad. The cheap traveling also helped. For example, my flight to France only cost me 10 euro which is less than $15 USD. Who could turn that down?

After working as resident assistant for the past three years at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, I have become accustomed to being in an authoritative role and receiving the respect that comes with it. It has been hard for me to tell my roommates from Spain, 'No, you can not smoke in the apartment, 'READ THE RULES ON THE DOOR,' only to have them continue to do so. Their lack of cleanliness has also bothered me. They spill cooking oil all over the counters and in cabinets. They also leave rotting food in the fridge. Needless to say, when I move back to the states and in with my fiance, at least I know we share the same values, especially on cleanliness. Even so, the task of living with people so different from myself has taught me what I can handle and can not tolerate.

The act of repacking has put parts of my life into perspective. Even though I have eight days left in Ireland, I have everything packed into my two suitcases and backpack that I won't be using between now and May 22. This has left my room completely naked except for eight shirts, a pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, eight pairs of underwear, my laptop, camera, hair straightener, bathroom towel, flip flops, make-up and shampoo/conditioner.

The things I have missed most about being away from home haven't been material things. They have been my fiance, my mom, my cats and my goldfish. All of these things will be moving to the apartment with me, expect for my mom of course, but those are the only things I have actually sat here missing, therefore the only things I really need to be happy when I get home.

My kitty, Hunter. 

My five-year-old goldfish. 

My fiance and I. 

I find it hard to believe that I successfully lived in this tiny apartment on only these two suitcases and a backpack for four months. But the fact that I have, has help me split the things I think I need to live successfully and the things I actually need to live successfully into two different categories. I know myself in a different way because of my limited lifestyle (no TV, radio, cellphone, very limited clothing, etc.) It has taught me to appreciate the little things. I already know there are a lot of things I will be giving to the Salvation Army or Goodwill instead of packing when my fiancé and I move, because I don't actually 'need' them like I thought I did.

The entire reason I moved to Dublin was to finish my undergrad and get my international journalism degree. However, my only true 'purpose' here took up the least amount of my time and has taught me the least about living in a different country and my future profession. My classes didn't talk about journalism. They spent hours talking about democracy, government and super conglomerates like Disney.

The occurrences that reinstilled my desire to be an international journalist were the things I did on my own time. Some of these things were my travels, meeting new faces, interacting with people from other parts of the world and taking pictures that lead others to promise to see those places for themselves. These are just a few of the things that have inspired me to keep moving forward, doing what I love.

To me, journalism is an experience and a privilege. Confucius once said, "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." For me, journalism is that perfect job. I can not wait to return to the US to look for a job that will keep me guessing and busy doing something new every day. 

I am leaving Ireland in eight days with a deeper knowledge of myself. I am a true journalist at heart and I am proud of that. 

The 'Natural' Order of Life

Who ever said a person should go to college, graduate, land their dream job, go to grad school, then start a family didn't live in today's times. Sometimes life happens out of order. I believe being happy outweighs any lifestyle order. I have always believed nothing else mattered as long as a person was happy. A year ago I found out John Lennon and I shared the same philosophy. Life is simple, people just like to make it complicated.

One of my favorite quotes. 

Helpful Hostel & Travel Tips

For anyone who is planning to travel and stay at hostels here are some helpful tips:

1. Always carry 2 locks. One for your luggage and one for a locker. You can never be too safe.
2. Make copies of all of your credit cards, passport and any other important documents you're traveling with. Always keep one with you and one in a safe place.
3. If you're traveling with someone else, help keep an eye on their things. Two eyes are always better than one.
4. If something feels wrong, it probably is. Don't be afraid to talk to someone in charge of your hostel/hotel. 
5. Be aware of your surroundings. If something does happen, you will want to be able to recall it to the proper people. 
6. Stay away from political demonstrations. If you don't know anything about their country or politics it can be easy for them to get upset at you for not sharing their views or being educated. 
7. Stay out of alleyways. Even if there is some really beautiful graffiti that would make a great shot, it's better to stay safe. 
8. Even if you're lost, walk around like you know where you are going. 
9. Take public transportation as many places as possible. Taxi drivers have a tendency to over charge the obvious 'tourist'. There almost always is a form of transportation from an airport to the city center. 
10. Don't eat or drink food from strangers. It could be drugged. 
11. Put your name, address, phone number and email inside each piece of luggage you travel with. 
12. Know the numbers to call to cancel your credit cards/report your passport stolen if it happens. 

For more helpful travel safety tips check out some of these websites:

U.S. Department of State: Travel.State.Gov

USA.gov: Americans Living and Traveling Abroad

Rick Steves: Travel Tips

Protect your passport & cash when you travel.

The Hunted American

I recently traveled to Berlin, Germany for five days. The hostel we stayed at was the biggest and cleanest one we'd ever been to. It operated with swipe cards (like a hotel card) and had lockers in the rooms. The staff was amazing and instantly my roommate and I were in love. Berlin was the last place we planned to visit before heading back to the United States. Everyone says 'go big or go home' so it only made sense that when we arrived at this particular hostel it grander than any we'd stayed at in any country in Europe. We felt we deserved it, especially after some of the not-so-nice ones we'd stayed at previously.

Everything was great about Berlin. Our first night, we went out and had a great dinner at a little Italian place down the road from our hostel. A delicious salad was much in order and tasted more scrumptious than I could have imagined. I can't described to you how much I have been missing cucumbers and grilled chicken.

Maybe the best chicken salad I've ever had. Thank you Germany. My taste
buds love you.

After this lovely dinner we went back to the hostel and went to bed. We were the only ones in our six bed room and slept wonderfully. We got up the next morning and went sightseeing and shopping. After seeing some of the beautiful sights of Berlin and shopping for a few hours we were exhausted and hungry so we chose to go back to the hostel. This is where some strange things happened.

Like I said previously, we needed swipe cards to get to different places in the hostel. One of those places is the main stairwell and elevator that takes you to all of the bedrooms from the ground floor. When we got to the door, I had to get out my card to open it. As I was going through my purse to get it out, a Hispanic man came up behind us, waiting to get into the stairwell also. He was alone and very giggly, which was strange. I just figured he was drunk (our hostel had a bar on the ground floor) or high. He followed us through the door and to the elevator.

I pushed #2 which was where our room was. He didn't push anything. This wasn't strange to me, I've gotten on lots of elevators before and had the other people on it going to the same floor. Once the three of us were in the elevator he started to giggle uncontrollably in a really high pitch, unnatural way. He asked us where we were from. We told him we're from the USA. He looked at my roommate and told her she was a 'sex pot' while continuing to laugh uncontrollably. This was starting to get not only odd but also uncomfortable.

For those of you who don't know what a 'sex pot' is, here is the
definition from straight from Urban Dictionary.

We quickly got off the elevator and went to our room, which we also needed the key card to get into. When we opened the door, the hyena-laughing-Hispanic man followed us into our room. There were two other people in our room already, so we figured he was staying in the room also. We unpacked our purchases from the day. While we did this, the hyena man walked around the room looking at different things before pulling up a chair. From this chair he sat, giggling, watching me repack my suitcase. This made me very uncomfortable. While shopping earlier, I bought letters that spelled my fiance's last name and was arranging them on the floor to take a picture to send him. As I was doing this, he said the last name to himself and asked me if it was my name while giggling. By this time, I was very ready to leave the room and go down stairs.

The letters I got my fiance for our apartment. 

I locked my suitcase and put it in my locker along with my purse and camera. I then locked the locker with a large padlock. This guy gave me the creeps. After leaving the room, my roommate and I both made comments about how uncomfortable he made us. We hoped his bed wasn't one of the bunks above either of our beds and that he would be out late partying and passed out when we had to get ready in the morning. After a half hour downstairs, I was cold and asked my roommate to come back upstairs with me to get my sweatshirt. 

When we got to our room, it was empty but when I went over to my locker, something wasn't right. The top of it was bent outwards. I quickly unlocked my padlock to find my purple wallet unzipped and laying open on top of my purse. My heart dropped. I quickly grabbed my wallet and looked through it. All my money was gone! My next thought was oh shit, my camera. I grabbed my purse and my camera was amazingly still there. Thank God. My camera, a Canon, which cost me over $1,200 would have ruined my year if it had been missing. I then thought about my credit cards, all three of them, and my bank card, which I'd just used an hour earlier to take out the money from an ATM which was now stolen. All of my plastic was still there. I didn't understand, why would someone only take money, especially not the camera?

After composing myself, my roommate and I went downstairs to ask how many people were staying in our room. The desk worker checked and said only two. A man and a woman. Instantly we knew it was the couple who'd been in there earlier. We told him what had happened and he said he would call the police. About an hour later, two German police officers came to the hostel, went through all of the details with us and came up to the room to photograph the bent locker door. 

The police report that I can't read.

This was all very unsettling for me but it only got worse. The next morning the hostel owner came in to review the security cameras with us. He wanted to make sure we could identify the man who had broken into my locker. After viewing the tapes, I have never felt so stalked or violated in my life. What the security cameras showed us was the Hispanic man sitting off screen. At one point, after the desk worker walked away from the desk, the Hispanic man got up, looked around, looked over the desk to see if there was anything he could steal and then went back and sat down. He was sitting off screen until my roommate and I got back to the hostel. As soon as we came through the main doors, he got up and followed us to the stairwell door and into the elevator. 

How creepy is that?! I wondered how long he'd been sitting there? How many people came and went that he didn't think were good enough targets? He wasn't even a guest at the hostel! I've never felt so invaded in my life. Even after all of the predator shows I have watched in my lifetime I never accurately imagined what it would feel like to be watched and targeted until it actually happened to me. And for all of you who are reading this, I hope it never happens to you. It feels awful and gives you a whole new dislike for the human race.

Lucky for me, the hostel has theft insurance. The owner said the insurance company usually doesn't bat an eye at anything stolen under 100 euros and will compensate the victim. I hope this is the case for me as well. 

If you're traveling abroad anytime soon and want to protect yourself, read my other blog post: Helpful Hostel & Travel Tips to protect yourself while packing, unpacking, traveling and getting around in your destination. 

Cinco de Mayo Delivers Dublin a Legend

Today, Jeff Dunham, the greatest comedian of all time, will be in Dublin, Ireland. I was lucky enough to score tickets to see him. Actually I would have paid any price, probably even sold my soul to get a ticket  to his show but the point I am making is that in less than five hours I will be sitting in front of him watching him work his magic! Today is a dream come true for me. Duhman is the comedian I watch every time I'm in a shitty mood, every time I have downtime, every time I don't want to do my homework and every time other opportunity I get.

I really have nothing else to say other than I AM THE HAPPIEST PERSON ON EARTH TODAY! Yes, that is all. If you haven't been introduced to this man of wonder, let me do the honors. Here are a few of his stand ups thanks to wonderful world of YouTube. 

'

You should now all know why I am so excited to be seeing him on this wonderful day of Cinco de Mayo. This man is a God and I will finally get to be in his presence. What more could a girl want?  

Me before the show started. The happiest day in my life? Probably.

Some People Should Never Leave Home

I am writing this entry today after having a wonderful five day vacation to Krakow, Poland. After spending only five short but amazing days there, I've decided the city is in my top three favorite places in the world only second to the Galapagos Islands and Rome. It is a simple and beautiful city overflowing with history.


We had the opportunity to visit both concentration camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. After visiting both, I feel everyone should have the opportunity to visit these camps or places of similar catastrophes. They offered a very humbling experience that I don't expect to feel again anytime soon.


Visiting Poland also brought to my attention why some people should never leave their houses or be allowed to travel. I'd like to take a few minutes to share in my rant with you. These are my top five annoying experiences which I've dealt with numerous places around the world, including my home country, but were personified in Poland. 

1. Parents taking children on airplanes-On the way to Poland (a 2.75 hour plane ride between Dublin and Krakow) there was a couple sitting across the aisle with a smaller boy. I don't know how to judge ages but he was no more than 3 feet tall and was sucking on a nook. Hopefully for you child lovers, that will give you a better age range than it does for me. This kid cried and screamed the entire flight. Yes, the whole 2.75 hours. If sitting next to that isn't birth control, I'm not sure what is. There should be an age limit for flying your children or maybe a child friendly sleeping pill. I bet that market would be HUGE. 
2. 'Photographers' aka just people with expensive cameras-I've found if you're in a foreign country and you want someone to take your picture it's usually good to look for someone in the general area who has a camera similar in quality/price as your own so they don't run off with yours. However, I've also found just because someone has a fancy camera, that does NOT mean they know how to use it. Some great examples of this in Poland were having a 'photographer' cut off half of the statue I asked him to take a picture of me in front of and having another man take a picture of my friend and I with a wall instead of us with the view behind us on the balcony. 
3. Overweight people standing in lines-This is one of the worst things for me. At Auschwitz, Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine we were surrounded by people who were overweight and though the world was ending if they didn't get into the attraction first. This meant pushing by everyone else or literally pushing us out of the way. This category also includes a VERY over weight woman and her 90 pound husband who boarded the airplane behind us on the way back to Dublin. As we were going up the stairs to the airplane she was right on our asses pushing her very large stomach and breast into our backs trying to make us walk in to the people in front of us faster. 
4. People who don't own deodorant-Do you know how miserable you make other people's lives? One example was a man in his late 40s to early 50s who stayed in our eight bed room at the hostel in Krakow. He showered daily and squirted himself with lots of cologne but never put on deodorant. The whole time we were in Krakow, the weather never got below 85 degrees and there was no air conditioning. B.O. combined with lots of cologne is one of the worst smells to wake up to. I would have to hold my breath every time he walked past the fan, which he wanted to keep turning off! 
5. Pesky people you don't know who end up in your pictures-I can't express how many times people walk in-between a camera and the subject or how many times you're clearly having your photograph taken and they come and stand next to you pointing at something or have someone else take their picture. Some day I just want to be like, 'Umm, excuse me, do I know you? No, okay, then get out of my shot!' 

Who Knew a Fork Could Make Me Wonder Woman

After living in my not-so-high-class flat in Dublin for over three months my shower decided to stop draining completely. Let's start off with the fact that my shower has never, not since day one, drained properly. However, in the last 3 weeks it has become much worse. Lately, I've had to turn off the water in the middle of a 10 minute shower to let the water drain down. Otherwise, I'd have a flooded bathroom.

Recently, I complained to my mother, who lives in the US, about this issue. She insisted I talk to my landlord about the slow shower or fix it myself. Knowing how things get 'fixed' around here, I decided I would try to fix the issue myself before inviting the handyman into my apartment.

Being the clean freak, a neat freak, and a germaphobe that I am, I walked around my apartment for 15 minutes trying to figure out what I could safely (safe meaning that I wouldn't have to touch anything) shove down the drain to pull hair out. Unfortunately, I don't have any wire coat hangers here, or the situation would have been easy. There was no way I was going to stick my fingers down the drain, not even with the rubber gloves I didn't have.

My first attempted included a straw from McDonald's which I found in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets. It was wrapped which made me trust touching it and shoving it down the shower drain. However, being a straw, and a bendy one at that, it didn't work very well. I needed something that could grab, and pull hair up the drain tunnel.

I went back into the kitchen and opened up the silver wear drawer. I found a whisk but after five minutes of trying to bend the metal to break off a piece of it, I gave up, throwing it back in the drawer. The knives were too wide to fit down the six little sections of the drain but then I had a new idea. Maybe I could use a fork to pull the drain cover off. I didn't care if I bent the fork. I never use them anyways, since I have my own set of silver wear. With my new shower cleaning weapon I headed to the bathroom.

My drain and the attack method.

It only took two pulls with the fork underneath one of the holes and the middle section of the drain came right out. This was a good start! I'd never seen a drain made like this before but obviously I chose the right tool to combat it with.

At this point, I was already feeling very accomplished.

Here I go! Who knows what I'll find down there...

Now that I had the drain cover off, there was another strange form of plastic in front of me. I was now looking at a cylinder shaped tube-thing which had a propeller-looking hat on top of it. After using the fork to take off the top of the drain cover, I knew what I had to do. I shoved the fork around the propeller-like-thing and pulled it up...and BAM! 

Quite possibly the grossest thing I've ever seen.

I pulled out what looked like a dead animal from my shower drain. It must have been close to a pound of hair because it kept coming up out of the drain canal. I shed, yes, but there is NO WAY all of this was from me after only three months of living here. I quickly scraped the hair off of the fork into my trash bag, gagging the whole time. 

My wonderful multipurpose weapon.

After successfully removing what might as well have been a New York sewer rat from my shower drain, I felt pretty accomplished. Who knew a handy-dandy kitchen utensil could transform a college girl into wonder woman? And for any of you who were wondering, my shower later that morning was wonderful. 

My floodless shower. Perfection.