Snow in Ireland!! (3 Snow Days!) - Birthday!!

From the beginning of the week, we have been hearing about this storm that was suppose to pass through Ireland and possibly bring snow. It was first called the "beast from the east" and now is called Storm Emma. Tuesday night it began to snow:

The night before Wednesday

It did not snow a lot, but it snowed a lot for Ireland, and in the morning I looked out my window and it looked like this:

I woke up before my alarm, because people were texting in the IB facebook chat about if we had school or not. It was about 6:40 AM or something like that. We had a little debate, and we concluded that school was probably canceled, and then somebody said that they just got a text from St. Andrews saying that there was no school. My mom walked in my room and told me also. It was suppose to continue to snow for the rest of the week, with really high winds. 

Me and Levi immediately ran over to the park across the street with my Mom to check out all the snow:

After we were done walking around the park, we went back inside. I suggested to Kim and Carolina that we meet at 8:45 AM to go and make a snowman in my park. I thought that they would suggest a later time and I was tired so I went back to sleep, but while I was sleeping they were let inside the house by my Mom and she told them that I was upstairs. Levi led them up to my room and woke me up. We then went across the street again to build a snowman. 

While we were making the snowman, it was snowing pretty hard, and it was very windy. The snow was not really good packing snow, but we made it work and we were able to make a very good snowman! 

Snowman face!

We had a snowball fight after we completed our snowman, and then we were really cold, so we went back inside. Kim and Carolina wanted to make hot chocolate, but I said that I did not have any Hot Chocolate powder, so we tried to make it a different way. We got some milk and put it in a pot over a flame on the stove. Once it was hot enough we proceeded to put chocolate chips into the pot and stir it around to mix it up. 

It tasted very chocolatey, probably because it was basically all chocolate chips melted into milk. It was still good, but after drinking it i had to get some water because of how sweet it tasted. My Mom and Levi came downstairs and we played some blackjack. Around 1:30 PM, my Mom walked us over to Chopped so I could get a wrap; Kim and Carolina were not hungry. We then split up and us 3 took the bus down to Dominiks house. 

At Dominiks house, we read a lot of his American children books that he had like 'Knuffle Bunny' and 'If you give a mouse a cookie'. After hanging out there for a while, we decided to go to the graffiti place since it was fairly close to Doms house. It was really cool once we got there, it looked much cleaner because there was snow on the ground: 

While we were there, Kim made a gorgeous snow angel:

After spending a bit there, we started to walk back to Doms house. It was getting colder and windier. The sidewalks were covered in ice, so it was very slippery on the walk back. It was about 5 PM once we got to his house, and I decided to leave so I could be home by 6 PM. The Dublin Bus sent out an email recently before that saying that they would stop all busses at 7 PM, and they would not run them on Thursday. 

I got home around 5:40 PM, and my Mom was on the phone with my Oma and Delta. Oma was suppose to be back Wednesday morning at 8 AM, but they flew her back to Amsterdam because of the storm in Ireland. She had to try to sort out Oma, and meanwhile I went down to Tesco to try to buy some groceries. My mom wanted some stuff to juice, but when I got to Tesco, a guy was holding the doors closed and told me the store was closed. 

All the stores were closed because of this storm, I dont really know why, maybe because they needed to take busses home. The roads were not covered in snow though, because there were cars constantly going on them. So I came back with no groceries, but we had tortellini for dinner. 

Thursday, Levi and I took the bottom ball of the snowman we had built the day before, and made a bigger snowman. I rolled the ball until I was unable to roll it any further, then we made the body and the head of the snowman. The snow was better packing snow on Thursday then it was on Wednesday. 

 

I also went down to Tesco on Thursday to try to get some food. For some reason, most of the shelves were completely empty. It looked like everybody was preparing for an apocalypse, because there was literally no food that I could get. I was only able to find some cucumbers and pears. 

 

For dinner Thursday night, my mom found a restaurant at the top of a hotel that was open. Most all other restaurants were closed because of the snow. It was not that far of a walk from our house, only about a 10 minute walk. Once we got there, we took the elevator to the top floor, because that was where the restaurant was. It had a 360 degree view of Dublin. It looked very pretty with the snow on everything.

For a starter I got a salad that had blue cheese, walnuts, different greens and some other tasty things, and chicken. It was very delicious:

(Homemade Smoked Chicken Salad, Bellingham Blue Cheese, Poached Pear, Walnut Dressing)

Next, I got a smoked brisket pizza with onions. It was very delicious, I ate 2/3rds of it by the end of the dinner. 

(Smoked Brisket, Mozzarella, Red Onion, BBQ Mustard)

For Dessert, I got a Crème brûlée that was lemon flavored. It was very delicious, and it came with a nice message because my Mom told our waiter that it was my birthday:

Levi got vanilla ice-cream with chocolate syrup and walnuts, and my Mom and I had a lot of his ice-cream also. After we finished our dessert, we started to walk back home. The walk back to our house was much windier, and snowier than the walk to the restaurant. The wind was crazy, and it continued like that all through the night. 

Friday morning, there was still snow everywhere, and it was still very windy. Tesco was closed the whole day, so we just stayed inside. We had dinner plans Friday night at a restaurant called Forest Avenue. I went with Isabel Bosch and her family. Dominik was suppose to come also, but he was not able to come in the end. My brother stayed at home alone. We met at the restaurant, my Mom and I walked since it was just over the canal, about a 5 minute walk. We were going to take a taxi because it was snowing and it was very windy, but there were no taxis for us to get. 

We got many different small dishes to try, I didn't take pictures of all of them but heres an idea:

This was a rhubarb dessert, it was delicious

This was a salted caramel filled chocolate

It was a very cool experience because there were so many different things to try and so many different tastes. After we finished our wonderful dinner, Isabel's family drove us back to our house and we played Levis favorite game 'Things'. Its basically where you pick a card and it has a question like 'things you would never tell your husband/wife' and then you answer the question on a piece of paper and the person tries to guess who answered what. It was a really funny game, and Levi showed Isabel how to play Just Cause 2. 

After we played that game for a while, Isabel and her family went home. I was pretty tired so I went to sleep.

Saturday morning, Oma was finally suppose to come home. I woke up at 7:30 AM to try to get a pair of shoes that I wanted to get, but I didn't end up getting them. I then went to see if Tesco was open around 9:30 AM, and it wasn't but spar was so I got some Milk. Around Noon, Oma got home and we were waiting for her. She was glad to be home, but her luggage was still yet to arrive to our house. 

February 26 - March 3, 2018

Papa visit - Macbeth - Monkstown Beach Clean-Up!

Wednesday morning, I woke up again to walk Levi to school. I got back home around 9 AM, and my dad arrived around 10:30 AM. I was waiting by the door to let him in, and we went up to my room and hung out. It was really fun to see him, he was pretty tired so after a couple hours, he took a nap while I went to get lunch at Chopped.

Around 3:30 PM he went to get Levi from School. They got home and we hung out, we got burritos for dinner from the burrito place close to our house. The next day, my dad walked Levi to school in the morning, and at around 1 PM, my dad and I went to take a bus to the cool graffiti place. I wanted to get some pictures there:



We took the bus back home after about 1 hour there. My dad went to go get Levi again. Over the weekend, we went to see Black Panther at Cineworld, it was very good! Sunday, we walked down to the Stevens Green shopping center just for fun. I got some new notebooks and a hot glue gun at Easons. 

Friday the 23rd, I had a Spanish test, it was not as hard as I thought that it would be. I took the bus home with Dominik, Kim and Carolina. They all went out to eat, but I had a dinner planned with my brother and my Mom. I got home at around 4:30 PM, and we left around 5:15 PM to walk to our restaurant that was called 'Delahunt'. It is described as a contemporary Irish restaurant, it was very cozy. It used to be a shop, but it got turned into a restaurant.

The waiter told us the specials of the night, and I got the starter that he suggested and also the main course. The starter was a sweet potato soup and it had some onions and mushrooms in it also I think. It was very delicious, it tasted like pumpkin soup, which is delicious also. It came with a small sausage roll thing with some weird sauce.

They poured the soup into the bowl separately:

For my main course, I got gnocchi which is a dish of various small and soft dough dumplings, these specific ones were made out of potatoes, they were really delicious with the sauces and mushrooms they had with it. It was really interesting because there were so many different flavors on my plate. 

After I finished eating my main course, I left to walk to the Bord Gais Energy Theater to go see Macbeth. It was about a 30 minute walk from Delahunt but I was able to get there a bit quicker. On the way there, it was pretty cold, and I ran into Chances dad at a bus stop so that was cool. I continued on, and got there about 10 minutes before Boan and Juho got there. Once they got there, we went in together and found our seats. It was a good play, and I followed the story-line and heard lines I remember learning from the book. The fighting scenes were really good. At the intermission, somebody from behind me called "Are you enjoying the play so far Jackson", and it turned out it was Ms. Devane. It was funny that I saw her there, she teaches half of the 5IB for English. After the play was over, Boans mother drove me home, which was really nice of her. 

Saturday morning, I woke up at 9 AM; we had another beach clean-up to go to. We were going to Monkstown to do our clean up this time, it is a little more south than Booterstown. Many people came, and we started to pick-up trash and recycling in the parking lot of the Dart station. Then, we walked over a bridge that brought us to the beach. We walked on a sidewalk picking up trash for a bit, then we went onto the actual beach. We found a lot of trash including old blankets, clothes, and a lot of other things. 

It was a very successful beach clean up, we got a full bag of trash and a full bag of recycling. Saturday night, we had a party at Jennas house to celebrate her fathers 50th birthday. Isabels mom drove us there which was very nice of her. Jenna lives very far away from anywhere, so it took a while to get there. The party was pretty fun we just chilled and listened to music and stuff and had some really delicious burgers.

We stayed until about midnight, then we all started to head home. 

Sunday was a pretty chill day. I spent most of the day doing homework. At 5 PM, I met a lot of people in Dun Laoghaire to get some pictures for a brand that my friend Max started called 2020 Vision. We got some pretty good pictures, there was a lot of cool graffiti that we got pictures by. 

February 15-25, 2018

U-Live, Chopped, Food!

Tuesday after school, there was a dance class in the Junior hall, but the teacher let us use the piano for 5 minutes, so Isabel, Carla, and I just went through our song once. Wednesday, I brought my U-Live clothes to school with me because I would not be going home until after the show. I had my normal classes, but the 2 last classes I had, we practiced our song to start off U-Live. I was playing the drum and singing, and everyone else was singing. 

After school on Wednesday starting at 1:15 PM, they began the sound checks in random order. Who ever was in the senior hall they would sound check. I had a piano lesson at 4 PM, but I asked to reschedule it because we still hadn't done our sound check yet and we wanted to practice a bit after that. Our sound check was around 4:40 PM and it took only about 1 minute. Mr. Hehir let us in the Junior school so that we could practice our piece in one of the practice rooms that they had. 

The performance started at 7:30 PM, and many of my friends were there along with my Mom. We were act 21, out of about 28 acts, so we didn't perform until about 9:30 PM. The first thing that happened was the introduction song which I was in, I was playing the Drum. All the singers walked into the stage while the song was starting, so it had this cool atmospheric effect, we all found our places, and right as we all did, the drum part came in and it was really cool. I watched some of the acts, but mostly I was back in the 6th year center, we also practiced a couple more times before it was our turn.

When it was our turn to perform, I went down to the grand piano, and Carla and Isabel were standing on stage. I started to play the piano and when Isabel started to sing, the audience seemed to get pretty excited, she has a really good singing voice, as well as Carla. Our song was like 3 and a half minutes long, and I think it went pretty well. We got a lot of clapping at the end and I was glad Ms. Sawyer and my Mom recorded it so I could re-watch it later. 

After U-Live, I took the bus home with Dominik, Kim and Carolina. Friday was the last day of school before our break, and it was a half day also. It was also a no uniform day so we could wear whatever we wanted. After school, Yonghwa, Dominik and I went to Gleesons. We then walked down to the Dart to go back to my house. Dom was spending the night that night. We watched a movie called Django Unchained, it was very good. We played zombies on the xbox 360 also. 

The next morning at around 10 AM, Dominik and I went with my Oma and Levi to go get breakfast at a place called Cafe Boulevard. It is right next to the Tesco that we always go to and is about a 2 minute walk from our house. Levi and I both got the same thing, pancakes, and Dominik got a breakfast with eggs, toast, bacon and sausage. We all got hot chocolate. After we got back, Dominik went home because he had to pack for Belgium. He was leaving the next day and would be returning on Wednesday. 

Sunday, I met up with Stephen and Alec at Eatokyo. Stephen went to St. Andrews last year, and it was nice to hang out with him again. I got cranberry juice and a chicken dish at Eatokyo. 

After we ate dinner, we walked back to my house and hung out there for a while. We watched the latest episode of Riverdale, then Alec showed us some of a movie called, 13 Hours: The secret soldiers of benghazi. Then, both of them went home, and I talked to Stephen later that night on Discord. 

Monday, I packed up my laptop, and microphone to take everything to Alecs house. I walked to the Dart station then took it to Blackrock. I walked to Alecs house. Once I got there, I dropped of my bag, and the two of us walked into the town and got some food to eat. We went to this place where they take things like meats, lettuce, cheese, all the things you would put in a wrap or a salad, and they put them in a bowl and chop them all up with this thing that looks like 2 pizza cutters together, like this:

They use this and run it along the bottom and sides of the bowl to cut up everything inside of it, then after that they put it all in a wrap, and it is so delicious tasting. It was very cheap also, only 6 Euro for that, and a drink and some chips. We brought them home to Alecs house to eat. After that I set up my laptop on Alecs dining room table, and I played with Alec, along with Stephen and Dominik, who is in Belgium at the moment.

At around 5 PM, I started to head home since I had to be home by 6 PM to have dinner. Once I got to the Dart station, I climbed over a bridge to check out some cool stuff by the beach:



Then, I took the next dart to pierce street dart station, and walked home. Also, that night my Oma was leaving to go to Michigan, so I was watching Levi for a couple days by ourselves. Monday and Tuesday night, we would be alone. 

Oma along with her friend Noelle knit some sweaters for premature babies in Rotunda Hospital. It is a hospital located in Dublin, and is the most active maternity hospital in Europe. It also is the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world, as it was founded in 1745. Here are pictures of Oma and Noelle with the sweaters:

Tuesday morning, I got up at 7:30 AM and walked Levi to school. On the way to his school we stopped at a little shop to buy some smoothies and some water, then we continued on to his school. There was this cool painting that I saw on the way to his school, and I got a picture of Levi next to it:



 Once we got to his school, I dropped him off, then I walked back home. I was still tired, so I went back to bed around 9 AM and then woke up around 11 AM. The whole day I spent doing SAT prep, making some music on FL Studio, and playing on my laptop.

For lunch, I went to Chopped, which is really close to my house. They take lettuce, some meat and toppings and put it on a cutting board, and take out a mezzaluna knife and chop up the contents, then put it in a wrap. (Below is a picture of a mezzaluna knife, it means half-moon in Italian)



The wrap was very good, I ate it in my room. At 4:10 PM, I started to walk over to the mespil pool to pick up Levi from swimming after school. There was construction that I had to walk around but it wasn't that hard to find the pool. I found Levi, then we walked back home. Around 5 PM, we walked down to the burrito place on the corner next to Tesco, and we each got a burrito. We took them home and ate them upstairs. 



***February 5 - 13, 2018***