Somewhere Else, Not Here

It's been a few weeks since I filled everyone in. I'm aware of that, and I know what I have done. And I'm sorry. Worst of all, I betrayed my travel-blogger roots, by going on holiday and not writing about it every day. But I'm going to write about it now.

Where am I? I'm home. Where have I been? Ireland.

As soon as University finished, my cousin, who has arrived from Canada, met up with me, and we went, with Yunhae, to Ireland. That's where my grandmother lives. And We drive, and took a ferry. It was a road trip. Only, this time, I was driving.

And I had fears that we'd all start grinding on each other, all argue by the end, but we fitted together perfectly. It was a great holiday. Stressful, and all organised at the last minute, but great nonetheless.

We drove on Saturday the 16th all the way to Pembroke in a few hours. I hit 120mph again, with 3 people and a load of luggage in the car. If I'm all alone and have a long enough stretch, I think I can go to 130mph or more. Maybe later though. I wasn't very nice to my car once we got to my grandmother's house. She has a field I was allowed to do doughnuts in, and I practised a lot of drifting. And part of my car broke off during. I'm not sure where it's from, somewhere under, but I kept it for later.

We drove to Dublin, and tried to meet with Ellie, but there was little time for it. We stayed in a very cheap Youth Hostel (14 Euros a night), a shared room and everything. Dublin has this amazing needle sticking out of it, it's huge. And I was introduced to it by driving up next to it, and realising it went quite high, and then being almost unable to see the top from within the car. I used it as my base point from there on in.

Roan (my cousin) and Yunhae eventually managed to get me to taste Guiness from Dublin, which was partially tastier than Guiness from anywhere else, but I still didn't enjoy it. We drove back to my grandmother's house and the next day started our drive home. We hit repeated warnings of horrible frozen fog that was rolling over England and Wales. Yunhae described it as "strong foggy". Despite this, I decided to stick behind someone I could trust, and that was a BMW 530d, the drive of which was confident enough to drive most of it at 90mph, despite close to zero visibility. I stuck behind him from getting off the ferry almost all the way to London, and by then it was clearing anyway. I did feel tired during it, and while I didn't fall asleep, I did begin to hallucinate a little. But I was fine after I woke myself up. When I arrived back in London, the front of my car and the wing mirrors were coated in ice crystals. That's how cold it was outside.

Since being back, I had a day off where I saw my family and slept, and then a day with Imogen, Becky where Yunhae cooked for us. It was delicious, and we had a fantastic time doing drive by chavving (Becky's invention) and McDonalds (after Imogen had been taken back home).

On top of al of this, yesterday was Christmas. I did guess my main present beforehand, and it's of the caliber I'm not used to: extreme practicality. But when I receive it in a few days time, I am sure I will appreciate it. I spent the day with my family, and Emma came along as well, which was great. We had an amazing meal (Christmas dinner is becomming more and more appreciated as a get older), I made a gingerbread house, and we watched Evolution and Ricky Gervais. It was a very family oriented Christmas, plus Emma or course, and I will remember it as a very fun one.

Still no snow.

Lost is back on, but only the first season, because I'm watching it again in the wait for Season 3. Emma seems to be racing me for watching the most. But it's ok, I study it more. I'd watch more Lost Podcast if it weren't so full of spoilers. Good though.

I'm so cold, I'm going back to bed. And watching Lost.

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas, and hope that your day was shiny and filled with cold wind but no snow. It's so cold here that my rev counter freezes on zero for the first 10 minutes of any trip.

43 days to go. See you all soon.