Chris Rock Show! / 2 New Sweatshirts!

Last week, my school had Monday off, so I only had a 4 day week at school. Monday, I spent most of the day finishing my 2 essays that I had to turn in on Tuesday. I finished my English and History essay, and all my other homework. 

Wednesday was our half day, and after school Chance, Kim, Carolina and I all went to get pizza. There is this pizza place close to my house called Cirillos. It is a modern Italian restaurant and their pizza is very delicious. Me and Chance split a garlic pizza and Kim and Carolina had another pizza. 

Thursday, Boan brought in Mooncake from a celebration he went to Wednesday night. The first one I tried was at lunch time and it was very good. Boan said it was filled with lotus seed paste. The other one was softer and was filled with purple sweet potato, which was really interesting.

Thursday night, I ran 3km around my park. I ran it in under 13 minutes which is really good for me. I want to get under 22 minutes for the Run in the Dark this year. I also signed up for another 5k on October 7 in Kilbogget Park. There will be over 1,000 people there and a DJ and stuff, so that should be fun. 

Thursday night run time for 3k

This weekend was a very packed weekend for me, but it was probably one of the best weekends I have had in a while. Saturday morning, I woke up and had from that time until about 1:00 PM to do whatever. I had cleaned the bathrooms the day before so I could do whatever I wanted, so I walked down into temple bar to go shopping. I got some Mountain Dew from this special store that sells American drinks, and I also got a really nice shirt for 10 Euro. It had the leaning tower of pisa on it.




Saturday at 2:00 PM, I had a play with Oma, my Mom and Levi at 'The Helix' in DCU which is Dublin City University. 



It was about cats. Everybody was dressed up as cats, and they had different characters, and some of the people could sing very well. Overall it was a pretty good play, it was kind of weird though, because it was all about cats but it was fun. I was going to meet Alec and his Family at a restaurant at 5:00 PM, so right after we got out of the play we got a taxi to the restaurant. 

My family met Alec and his mom there, and they left me there, and I had food with Alec, his Mother, and his sister. The restaurant that we ate at was called 'The Drunken Fish' and it was Korean food. We got a lot of food to share, and it was all very delicious.






After we had the amazing meal at The Drunken Fish, we took a taxi to the 3 Arena, because I was going to see Chris Rock with them as well. The show started at 7:00 PM, so we had time to get to the arena. I was so excited to see Chris Rock, because I know that he is a comedian, and he has been in movies like Madagascar, and Grownups and Grownups 2 with other actors like Adam Sandler, Kevin James and David Spade. 

We got to the 3 Arena, and we all had to put our phones in these little green pouches. We were able to carry them, but they did not want anybody recording the show it seems, because probably that people could steal their content.

Where we had to put our phones in the locked cases

On the way to Chris Rock!!

The show started around 7:20 PM, and he had a few openers, who were really good. One guy took some random people from the audience and roasted them on stage, that was very funny. When Chris Rock came out, everybody went crazy. He was obviously the best part, but he was very funny, and just told stories about every day life and random things like that and politics and things. It was a very good show!

Alec and I were very excited because after the show, we went to Izzies house for a little get together. We all got another taxi to near Izzies house since Alec lives really close to her, and Alecs sister and Mom could drop us off at her house. We stayed at the party until about 11:30 PM, it was a pretty fun party and then I walked to Alecs house. From there, I called a taxi to get home. I went to sleep around 12:40 PM.

Sunday was a very fun day also. I woke up at 6:26 AM to go for a walk in the morning. I walked down by the canal, and took some cool pictures of random places I thought looked cool at night. 

After I got home, I watched some videos, and worked a bit on some songs on FL Studio 12. I studied a lot of Spanish vocabulary also, because I had made a quizlet for my Spanish class Friday, and I had to learn some terms. Around 2:00 PM, Levi, Oma and I went down to St. Georges Arcade to go shopping. Levi said there was this really cool shop that has really nice hoodies, like the ones that I wanted to buy online. They have really interesting designs on them. 

I ended up buying 2 sweatshirts. One had a hood, and the other one did not, which I liked because it was like a shirt, but very comfortable and just no hood. They were both so amazing! 

I think that the first one went well with my shorts. When we were walking around by St. Georges Arcade, we stumbled upon a Chinese market. They were selling things for the Mid-Autumn Festival which is a Chinese celebration on October 4. The shop was way bigger than I would have thought, we spent a long time in there, and bought a lot of things. Then we continued on home. We had 1 more stop at Dunnes in the St. Stevens Green shopping center. Levi and I got Ice-Cream, and I bought 2 pair of gloves for 3 Euro. 

Then we finally were able to make our way home and got home around 4:00 PM.

For dinner we ate with Ms. Beth and her husband Ben. We had some meat and potatoes and I made myself a salad with avocado, cranberry seeds and cheese and onions. We played many games afterwards which was fun. I go back to school tomorrow, and I have a piano lesson tomorrow, as well as Badminton!!

-September 26 - October 1, 2017!

Culture Night / Killiney Hill Climb / 38km Walk from Howth to Bray!!

Friday, September 22 was Culture night. Culture night is an annual event in Dublin that celebrates arts, heritage and culture. There are many different free events and venues that people can go and check out. The first thing that we went to see Friday night was a Mews. The Mews was where the horses were kept. We walked into the room and there were stables where horses used to be kept, and It looked like a barn, but once we went up the stairs, it looked like a regular house. It had 4 bedrooms, many bathrooms and a kitchen, It was really cool! It is now an Air B&B.



Next, we went to the Iveagh House. The Iveagh House is the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Dublin. It was first a house designed for British Clayton, and later it was bought by Benjamin Guinness. It is only open 3 times a year, and Culture night is one of the times. There was a huge line to get in, but we were able to get in and do the 45 minute tour of the House. 




Inside was very beautiful. There were some very nice statues, and the house looked very luxurious. 






After we were finished with the tour of the Iveagh House, I went to get Ice-Cream while everybody else went Home. Then I walked back home and went to sleep.
Saturday, we had our hill walk planned. We had made a plan to climb killiney hill at 2:00 PM on Saturday, September 23. A lot of people were not able to go because they had other things to do. Boan and I met up near St. Andrews College, and took the dart to Killiney Dart station to meet everybody. Once we all got there, we had a total of 5 people. We had Me, Boan, Carolina, Eszter and Alana. It was nice to have a small group of 5 people, because climbing the hill was very fun. 

I remember climbing Killiney hill in the past with my Family, and we took the regular path, but this time, we actually climbed up the hill, as in took a very steep path through a ton of shrubs and prickly bushes to the very top. It was way more fun and challenging. Here is a picture of the start of the climbing of the hill.






It was very steep, but it was very fun because we found this one place under the trees that had a swing. 




After going through narrow steep paths and through thorny bushes, we finally made it to the top. We came up on some white rocks, and then we saw the Obelisk right away. 





After spending some time at the top of Killiney hill, we took the easier way down, that included a better man made path. We went down a different way, and at the bottom, there is a playground. I remember going to the same spot last year in Transition Year for orienteering. We saw a lot of dogs while we were walking down to the playground. They were all climbing Killiney hill that day as well apparently.





We hung out on the playground for a while, then walked down to the Dart Station. Saturday was very fun, we got to climb a hill the fun way, and play on the playground on the way out, and it counts as CAS for school. 

Sunday I had a huge event planned again. This was something I signed up for last week, and it is a walk from Howth to Bray for Cystic Fibrosis. Boan and Kim were both doing it with me. I woke up Sunday at 7:30 AM to get ready. Boan was going to pick me and Kim up from my house in a taxi, and we would take it to Howth. We all got in the Taxi, but it turned out there was a huge bike race going on, so we got out of the taxi and walked across the Liffey where we cought another taxi to take to Howth. We got there right on time, about exactly 9:00 AM. 

Boan, Kim and I are all in Howth, top of the picture.

There were a lot of people there wearing the purple shirts we had gotten. They were handing out free food, bananas and waters for the walk. Kim bought a sandwich for Boan and Me before we started the walk which was really nice of her. Boan spotted a very inspiring drink at the shop.
 

The walk started around 9:30 AM. In the beginning, it was really nice because we were walking at a solid speed of about 10 minutes per km, and we got to see Bull Island as we were walking from Howth toward the City Center. I was using MapMyWalk to map exactly where we walked. We walked pretty much right on the water. We ended up getting to the 3 Arena and crossing over the Liffey. 




At about the half way point which was about 17km, there was a spot where spar had some tents and had free food for the people doing the walk. They had bananas, drinks, and free sandwiches also. We sat down to take our lunch break, and I ate the sandwich Kim bought for me, then another one from the spar stand.



The walk was very nice, because we were walking right next to the water, and it was so beautiful to see everything around us. It was also a very nice day out, and sunny most of the time which was awesome. We continued our walk on. I cant describe how long the walk was, but we just kept on walking. We stopped at this place on the beach that was like a square wall, that had some cool graffiti on it. 




I saw on the Snapchat map that Alec was in Dun Laoghaire, so when we were passing him, he came and said hello to us. He was on his way for lunch.



After talking to Alec for a bit, we continued our walk on. We walked toward Dalkey, and then we would walk past Killiney hill toward Bray. On our way through Dalkey, there was this really cool place by the water that we stopped to rest by, and some kids were doing parkour. We all stretched our legs since they were getting really tired.



We saw Max on the snapchat map as well, and when we got to Dalkey, he came out and said hey to us as well, and he gave us 2 bags of sweets which was nice of him. We talked to him for a while, then we continued on. We were about 23km through the walk at that point. We continued to walk, and eventually we ended up getting to Bray. When I mean eventually, I mean after 2 or 3 hours. This was a very long walk, and the end reception was in the Royal Hotel in Bray. I stopped my map, and here were our final results.



The reception at the Royal Hotel was very nice, because we got food and water. Most of the people were there already, but the food was very good, it was rice and some Indian food with chicken. They had a lot of purple balloons so Boan and I each took some home. We took the 145 bus home. It took about 45 minutes on the bus to get home. 

Once I got home, my legs were very sore, but not as sore as they have been before.