Get over London calling, Dublin is the place to be! After a half-hour delay at Hazelhatch/Cellbridge station and a dose of Luas tram-time, I finally entered what turned out to be a city of immense calibre, even on a dreary,rainy day. After a refuel at Starbucks,I met Trinity student Giovanna, who also happens to be a Betson relation, at her college's main entrance.Here she showed me the 8th century-originating  Book of Kells, and ancient-reeking wood-panelled library. Mind-bogglingly big, filled with 200,000 books, (non of which are doubles) and very,very old. Then she took me to the collosal dining hall which, in her words'' looks sort of like the Great Hall in Harry Potter''.

Neck bent to avoid the rain, Giovanna and I scurried off to Temple Bar, which we concluded to be Bohemian like Montmartre, but uglier.After a humongous lunch at Curve Cafe, a filmhouse centre populated by apple-using urban outfitters and tasty toasties, I felt quite the local. Nothing beats discovering a city then with the people that actually live there, and know the places to be. Especially if these people also happend to be extremely friendly, and fun to hang out with.

As my guide for the day had to get back to class, I burnt off the lunch-time calories by walking to Merrion Square, a district which has te clear remains of Victorian Dublin visible at every door. Obviously the richer part of town, the inhabitants of the luxurious houses shared their neighbourhood with the Government buildings, National Gallery and National History Museum. The day sharing my feets fate of being wet, I felt it was an agreable idea to visit the National gallery, where I viewed Piccasso's,CAravaggio's and even a Rembrandt. Also I met a very friendly senior museum guard who felt it was his mission in life to tell me about paintings, his fondness of the Dutch people, utter unawareness of modern technology, and even quoted Shakespeare when speaking od dreaming and dreams coming true every day. Lovely man, who filled half an hour of my day, it was a very agreable museum visit indeed.

Culturally loaded as I was, I spent the remaining time I had before catching my train back to Cellbridge with visiting Farrow and Brown local Irish knitwear store(bought a gorgeous scarf), and Brown Thomas, an Irish warehouse which has expensive brands only. They actually sell Manohlo Blanik and I saw a dress that had my name written all over it, that is if I had a wallet that size. But hey, dreams might come true right?

More later, in the meantime I'll be dreaming of silky, bare-back dresses....

Bring you Wellington boots, and sniff the fresh air, that's what I've been doing over the week-end. Saturday Cooleen,Hannah and I went to a historical site, which is famous throughout Ireland: New Grange and Knowth. They are cave-like structures  in a mound that were used by early Irish civilization as holy burial places. Very interesing, although hard to describe, I think you might actually be better off googling New Grange. It was however, really really cool!

When we got home, I met the latest addition to the Betson family, 3-month-old Maya. Seeing as  I'm not a baby person at all I think I did a pretty good job at not showing my disdain, as the baby was crying her eyes out of the sockets, and the entire family(Simon,Cooleen.Dave,Dee,Alan and Hannah) were cooing over the little creature. I even smiled to the camera as Dave took pictures of me holding her(naturally she started crying,so I had to return her to sender)

Yesterday, was fab! We drove up to mountains, can you imagine it! (translation: bumpy things that do not occur in the Netherlands) I took loads of pictures. We also visited a lake (Glendalough) which is bsolutely gorgeous! we traveled a total of 4 km by foot, and I now feel very fit. The down-side was that Cooleen,the dog(tufty), and I were all snoring on our way back to Cellbridge, poor Dave(designated driver always suffers.

Today(monday), Alan and I did some more King's hospital pictures(his old school), but this time of the very neat,composed and serious-looking prefects and student counsil members. It only took about an hour, so I decided to take the bus into Dublin, and discover the shopping area. All be proud I bought nothing at all, my savings are still in tact although I did see a lot of great stuff. I just scanned through an very trendy area of Dublin, and ended the afternoon with a blissfull cup of Starbucks.Then disaster struck, and I had to get back to Cellbridge. Step 1 : Catch a tram (where is the ruddy tram?), step 2: Catch a train( why is the stupid train already gone???Did I miss it, oops, wait an hour) Finally arrived home, had dinner, and am now informing you all on my whereabouts.

Planning on doing the rest of Dublin tommorow, likely to be accompanied by Betson-cousin Giovanna, whose a student at Trinnity college. Get a flavour of college life!

I'll keep you posted, and hope to travel safely from now on.

XOXO,

Nikk

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the updates! So glad to go to EYP Romania! And no way, am I doing the body switch movie thing!! I really am having the time of my life!

 Now you guys are going to love this, thursday morning Alan calls to inform as that we're going to take pictures at a murder scene!! Turns out that a person was stabbed at a supermarket after trying to raid the store. So I actually saw real-life CSI Dublin guys, who looked like men on the moon(they were wearing white suits). I didn't  see a body, they took that away right after the incident, but nonetheless I was part of the mediacircus and helped get a picture posted in the paper!

Later the same day, we went to the Dubin Zoo to take a photo of an urang-utan that just came back from a stay in Holland. That was hilarious,though because we were late and we're racing through the park to get there on time, going: ''look a koala,check it out a panther!'', very funny at top speed. After that we went into town to get pictures taken of a student banking action, and a portrait of the courthouse CEO. Then rush back to the office, photoshop the pictures, do the captions and send them to the editor. Although everything is equally fantastic, exhaustion does kick in when stretching on the couch after a day like that.

However, friday in comparisson was veeery quiet. We only had one assignment in Drogheda, which is puny industrial town, north of dublin where we had to photograph a constuction builder, to illustrate an article about decline of work opportunity in building. AFtre that we headed to get soe camera equipment, and went back to Cellbridge(Dave an Cooleen's place) to do some captions on India photos, that Alan had taken for a charity project in Calcutta(which he just got back from before I arrived). There was loads of typing and deciphering involved in my case, the notes that he needed fot the captioning, were scribbled down on a note pad, in incoherent english accompanied by funky looking Indian names.The chocolate that was provided by mother-figure Cooleen was therefore definitly needed to stay concentrated. Nonetheless I triumphed! This was followed by some chilling in front of The Devil weirs Prada, chatting in the verbal sense of the owrd with next-door-neighboor Becky, and reading Breaking Dawn.

End of workweek, and start of four-day discovery of Ireland!

Hope everyone's great, I'm starting to seriously doubt whether I'll want to come back to boring Holland, although I do miss everyone!  Nonetheless, I'm starting to understand what they were talking about last year when describing the feeling of independance, responsibiity and awsomeness!

love,

Nikki

Everbody rejoice, I am still a member of this planet. My plane did not crash(jeeeej!!) I did however, trip over several things including an actual person, but he was very short so it wasn't really my fault,. Also I spilt coffee over myself, I'm expecting Starbucks will  start with the hate mail shortly for wasting their precious liquid.

First thing first, I arrived, and it was pouring(nothing new there, unfortunatly..). My host family which then only consisted of one person(cooleen, who is in fact very cool, hence the name)met me at the airport accompanied by grand-daughter Hannah-Kate. We drove home, I had a shower to get the airplane goo off of me, and I got thrown into the deepest end of Irish society.  Still hyper on half a cup(ahum) of Starbucks, I was dragged off to a neighbourhood card night, which meant meeting 50 people that are basically all named Shebohn or Paddy O'brien, and at least 10 centimeters shorter than me. Turned out, though, that the Irish are the absolute friendliest people in the world, I met loads of teenagers as well, which made it a great night altogether. Yet , after a card game that starts at 8 and ends at 2.30, one might start getting bored of clubs,hearts and diamonds, and start longing for the peace of a warm bed.

Sunday, was a day of relaxation, Got up late, took a long walk with the dog, Hannah and Cooleen, to go SEE a sponsorship run for Lukemia at Castle town house, which is an estate close by. Watched Elizabeth Bennet, wallow over mr. Darcy on tv, and caught up on my rest.(If you don't know these characters (Marlot,Eline,:) read pride and prejudice, it's a classic)

Monday,I met the rest of my temporary family, including my boss-for-the-fortnight Alan, who is in fact Cooleen's son, his wife Dee, their 2 Australian guests frenchy and Sue, and we all took a trip to Belfast. Once in Belfast, Alan had booked an ex-prisoner guide that took us on a historical tour of the city which was in the middle of warzone Ireland back in the 70'ies. Being a total nitwit regarding Irish history, I had to be filled in on the blanks, but turned out that the city(and entire country,really) is divided in North and South, based on religion, Protestant vs. Catholic, and Belfast was the main target zone. The interesting part, however, was that our guide Seamus was a Catholic at the time, and had been in prison for ten years (he won't talk about what he did,though, maybe the late Jack the Ripper,who knows??)  It was all hugely fascinating, except fot the frostbite that almost froze my limbs off after walkng in the rain for 4 hours!! The day ended with more rain a visit to the pub, a discount  mall and then at family dinner, where I met another Betson brother Andrew.

Then tuesday was my first day of actual work, although it was Alan;s day off, he'd volunteered to take school pictures of a first and sixth form class at his old secondary school. Keeping in mind that the usual class sizes are around thirty people, I was slightly scared when 120 people walked in. Uhm, gulp!! Nevertheless, I tried to make the best of it, and had a ball setting up the photography equipment. Take these umbrella light thingies, they are in fact very cool! Also, it was fab to see another school, the campus was huge(private school), with a swimming pool(!!), and the poor fellows are forced to wear a uniform When we got back to Alan's house, Dave, Cooleen's husband got back from his golf trip in Spain, the man has it bad, and we celebrated his birthday with the family. Again a unique, and pleasant day.

Finally, before my fingers get too stressed from typing, today, we drove out to a town I can't remember the name of and visited a dycare where we did some pictures of an ex-junky dad with his baby-girl, and did a portrait of another man who is aparantly very famous here, but I also can't remember the name of.(woops). AND, I went inside the Irish Times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Journalists,and aple computers and I'm still in shock!

Let me get over my wow-caused-trauma, and get back to everyone later,

XOXO

Nikki