3 Day Week - Halloween Decorations

Later on Sunday night, the Ireland Board of Education decided to close all schools in Ireland for Monday because of the hurricane that was going to hit us Monday. It was named Ophelia, and was suppose to be the worst storm to hit Ireland since Hurricane Debbie in 1961. Everybody was advised to stay inside during the Hurricane.

I went to sleep on Sunday around 1:00 AM and woke up around 9:00 AM. The hurricane was suppose to hit where I lived around 1:00 PM to about 4:00 PM. At 11:00 AM, Levi and I went on a walk right before the hurricane came. We walked down by the Liffey, and got some snacks from Tesco on the way back home. The water in the Liffey seemed to be higher than normal, and it was very windy, but still very sunny. We walked back home, and on the way back I got some drinks from the Centra right next to the pierce street dart station. 



We got home around 12:10 PM. It started to get very rainy and windy around 1-2 PM, but it never got really bad. Oma thought we might loose electricity, but we never did. It hit much harder on the west coast of Ireland, and we heard that at one point, there were 300,000 people without electricity. Around 4 PM, Levi and I went walking around to see if we could find anything fallen down because of the hurricane. 

We saw on Twitter a picture of a part of a tree that had fallen down right across the canal. We went to where it was, but the tree was picked up already, but you could see on the side of the tree the part that had fallen off. We found another tree fallen down in front of a bike path along the canal as well. All of the bikers had to go around it since it was covering their path. There was also a small tree down right across the street from us in the park, but it was a very small tree. 

Later in the day on Monday, I found out that schools were going to remain closed Tuesday, so I had Tuesday off from school also. Tuesday was a very nice day, it was very sunny, and probably one of the nicest days I have seen in Dublin which is pretty ironic since I had no school.

Friday after school, I was going to go out with Boan, Juho and Yonghwa, but I decided not to because it was raining and I would get soaked. Later that same night around 11:00 PM, I went to Subway to get a sandwich.


Saturday, Isabels Marine Conservation Club was meeting at the Sandymount train station at 10:00 AM. It was our first beach clean-up as a group. We had trash bags, gloves, and trash grabber things. We walked along Sandymount beach and picked up trash and bottles that we found. While we were picking up trash, storm Brian was passing right over us, so it was very windy and rainy. 

Chance with a mini tree that he found

Saturday night, my Mom was back from Michigan, so we all went out to eat at a place called "The Little Kitchen". It is about a 10 minute walk from our house so we left around 5:40 PM to get to our reservation at 6:00 PM. Levi and I shared a steak, and my Mom and Oma got fish with mussels. The steak was delicious!

Me and Levis meal

My Moms meal

After we finished our food, we walked back in the dark to our house. 

Sunday was a pretty relaxing day. In the morning around 11:00 AM, Levi and I walked down to the St. Stevens Green shopping center. We got food from Eddie Rockets and ate it upstairs. We got some french fries that were covered in cheese and bacon, and we shared a cheeseburger also.

The reason we went to the shopping center in the first place, was to go to the silly shop. There is this silly shop Levi loves to go to in the shopping center, and I wanted to get some black color spray to color my hair black. We found that, and we also found a 75 Euro huge clown mask that Levi tried on.

We stopped at another store on the way home, and I bought a witches hat. It fit me well and it looked cool and it was only 10 Euro. 

Later in the day on Sunday, I went to Tesco with Oma. We got a lot of vegetables, and I got some snacks, we got some fruit and some meat. After Oma and I brought all the food back to the house and put it away, we went back out to walk over to Euro Giant to get some halloween decorations for my room. On the way to Euro Giant, we stopped at Cafe Nero to get some coffee. Since I don't drink coffee, I got a hot chocolate and Oma got a coffee. 

We got to Euro Giant, and I bought a ton of halloween decorations including 3 plastic chandeliers, a candle, black, orange and purple balloons and some mini gravestones. I decorated my room with them when I got back home. 

 

-October 15-23, 2017

PSAT - Hurricane Ophelia Hitting Ireland!!!!

Monday after school, I had Badminton from 4-5 PM. Right after badminton, I had my piano lesson from 5-6 PM. Badminton was fun, I was playing with Eszter, Iian, and Adam. After my Piano lesson, I took the bus home. Tuesday, I had a Physics test. The test was originally planned for Wednesday, but we had to take it Tuesday since we had the PSATs on Wednesday. The physics test was very challenging, but I was glad after I took it. 

Wednesday, I took the PSATs. Everybody takes them the same day, which was that Wednesday October 11. I had been studying for the SATs over the summer with a book my Dad gave to me. I guess it paid off because these PSATs were very easy I thought. I think I will get the highest scores on this PSAT out of all the PSATs that I've taken. 

Friday, I had my Spanish test that would be my October grade, so I had been studying a lot Thursday night. I felt fairly prepared, and it took us overall 80 minutes to take the test. It was pretty hard but I think I did well on it. 

Friday after school, I went straight home and took a shower. I got clothes on and started to walk down to Grafton street, where I was going to meet Juho and some other people. I wore my new Nike Air Force 1 shoes.

We were going out to eat at Brothers Dosirak. Isabel and her cousin tried to find me, but after a while, I went to find them and we just took a cab to the restaurant where we met Juho, Kim, Alec, Pierce, and many more people. I got the same thing I got last time, and I also bought some noodles from the store that was right next to the restaurant. After dinner, some people went to Karaoke with us, and some went home. We had about 14 people in total that went to Karaoke Friday night. It was very fun, Juho, Yonghwa and Jinho were singing songs in Korean, and the rest of us sung songs we knew. 

I took a bus home and got home around 10:00 PM.

Saturday Oma, Levi and I walked down to the Dublin Theatre Festival near the Liffey to see a play. It was called "We Come from Far, Far Away". It was a story of 2 refugees from Syria making their way to Norway. I thought it was pretty good, and the whole story was true. They said after the play that they had interviewed a lot of refugees and had heard all of these real stories, and put them together into a play. After the play, Levi and Oma went to the Custom House, while I walked home. 

Walking home, I passed a Foot Locker store and went in to have a look at some shoes. I ended up buying a pair of Adidas shoes. They were really nice, they were white, with black stripes and the Adidas logo along the back. 

I did piano when I got home, then played on my Laptop for a while. For dinner, Oma made Levi and I some hamburgers. Along with the hamburger, I had some rice and noodles that I got Friday night from the shop by the restaurant we went to. They were very delicious. 

After eating the noodles, I still had a lot left, probably for another week or so, because I like to eat noodles each night around 10:00 PM if I am a bit hungry.

Sunday was more of a chill day. Levi, Oma and I went to get breakfast at "The Natural Bakery" which was right next to the Tesco we always went to. They had bakery things, but also sandwiches, donuts, and muffins. Levi and I shared a sandwich.

 I topped up my Leap card 20 Euros so I could use the bus when I went to school again. I cleaned the bathrooms and did piano Sunday after we had breakfast. For dinner, Oma made steaks, and they were delicious. After dinner, a bunch of people on the IB chat started texting and saying there was no school tomorrow since there was a hurricane apparently heading straight for Ireland, and would pass right through it tomorrow during the day. I looked on the news and sure enough, it said that all schools were canceled Monday. The hurricanes name is called Hurricane Ophelia which I think is a pretty cool name. On the news they were saying that it will be the strongest storm in Ireland since a storm in 1965 that killed 15 people, which is insane. It is not going to be hitting where I live very hard, I think it will just be windy and rainy. We will see tomorrow though. 

 - October 9-15, 2017 -

Abandoned House - New Shoes! - Chinese Food!!

Wednesday, I had a half day. I had history first, and then TOK. In Theory of Knowledge, we were given an exercise where 20 selected people were picked to go to Mars, and we had to decide who got the limited amount of food, water and accommodation. We did not know what the work would be like on Mars, if it would require more physical work or more mental work, and so we had to decide punishments for people who would not work. If some people do not work, they should not be rewarded with food and water as equally because the rest of the people are working. 

I had double physics, where we were finishing up our experiments. Juho got a box delivered to the school from his Mother in Korea, so we got to watch him open his box. It had a lot of Korean food and snacks inside along with some clothes and nice shoes. My last 2 classes on Wednesday were both Music. After I was finished with school on Wednesday, I took the bus home. Right when I got home, I switched into regular clothes and then went on an adventure to a cool place I heard about. 

There is this place where it looks like an old building was being built, but never got finished. It has no roof, and there is graffiti everywhere. It is only one story high, but there are metal beams so it looks like they were trying to build something. Right next to it, there is an abandoned house that has a ton of graffiti on it as well. It is an actual house that you can go into, and I am pretty sure there is a second floor also. It has a roof and everything.

Right off the side of the sidewalk, there is a path that leads to the place, you don't need to jump any fences or anything. 

When you walk around, there are some really nice pictures.

You can climb up the side of some of the walls to sit on top of them, and be the same height as the bars sitting on the top of the walls. It is really cool and beautiful here. 

I met a guy here when I was about to leave, he said he likes to come here for a break when he is walking down the sidewalk. I talked to him for a bit, he was very nice. Then I took a Taxi home because I had a free 20 Euro Promo Code for MyTaxi. 

Thursday, in English, we talked about 'Out Stealing Horses' which is the book that we are reading at the moment. English is probably my favorite class because Mr. Reidy is a really great and funny teacher. In Music class today, I found out that we might be going on a trip in April to New York and Boston for 4 days! We would be going with the Leaving Cert Music people as well. It is only Molly and I in the 5IB Music class, which is fun since we are both experienced and can jump right into the course work.

Friday in Theory of Knowledge, we had a huge discussion on Gun Laws, and if people should be able to own guns. It was a very interesting conversation. 

Saturday, I had a 5km run at 2:00 PM. I did all of my chores Saturday morning before I left the house so that I would not have to do them later. I left the house around 12:45 PM to catch the 46A and meet up with Boan. I got off at the stop where Boan was waiting for me, and together we waited for the next 145 that would take us to Kilbogget Park where the run was. Once we got to the park, we signed in and got our numbers and shirts.

Yonghwa met up with us about 10 minutes later.



We started the run around 2:00 PM, and we were all near the front of the line. Yonghwa and I were running side by side for a while, but we split up sooner or later because we were running at our own paces. I was running pretty quickly, and on the 2nd lap around the park, which is the last lap (2 laps is a 5k), I had to walk because my legs were hurting so much. I think I was running way to fast in the beginning, because I walked for at least 3 minutes, and then started to run again and finished in 27 minutes.



We all got our medal after we finished the 5k, and some water also. Then, we walked back to the bus station to go into the City Center to meet Alec, Juho and Juho's friend Jinho. We took a few pictures on the walk back to the bus stop.



It got very windy and cold on the walk back to the bus, but we got on the bus and started to drive to the City Center. We were going to meet the gang in Brown Thomas to look around. It took about 30 minutes on the bus to get to the City Center, because we were so far away. We finally got there and met them in Brown Thomas. We all had a great time looking at very fancy shoes and clothes. 



I saw a pair of shoes I wanted to get off of an App on my phone, and it turned out that they had them at Brown Thomas, so I bought them. They were very nice looking.

Oma wearing my new shoes!

After we finished shopping, we walked to the place where we were going to eat dinner. 

We had dinner at a restaurant called Jing Gang Shan Restaurant. It was a little bit North across the Liffey. It was a Chinese place that Boan knew about. We all ordered our own meals, then we also got some beef to cook up on a mini grill thing that they gave to us. 


After we were finished eating dinner, Alec went home and the rest of us went to Karaoke for a while. Boan and I only stayed for about 30 minutes, then we both went home.  



Sunday morning, I woke up early in the morning to meet up with Patty and Max at this cool place that has Graffiti everywhere. 



There is an abandoned house right next to the place that has graffiti on all the walls, so we decided to explore it. We opened the door from the back, and it was pitch black, and we could hear a sound that sounded like somebody spray painting. We went in further and it turns out there was a small hose sticking out from the wall that was spraying water constantly. The ground was covered in water. 

We went up stairs, and there were the rooms and it looked like it had been abandoned just before a nuclear disaster or something. I was able to go out on the balcony, which was pretty cool. There were cool things painted all around the house on the inside and outside.

After we spent about 2 hours there, I rode on the back of Max's bike and we all rode to a SuperValu to get breakfast. I got a roll with some spicy chicken in it with cheese and BBQ sauce and it was very delicious. After that, I took the bus home, to do all the homework and other stuff I had to do before Monday.

I worked on Spanish, I had to write as if I were presenting a topic in a conference. I also studied for the upcoming tests that I had.  

-October 6-10, 2017