Tag: Dublin Diary

There were all types of things Liz and I planned to work on today.

However, when your insurance company calls & says, “we are going to cancel your policy,” getting that resolved has a way of moving itself to the front of your agenda.

Tomorrow morning, we are leaving our temporary home here in Lucan at 8 am, and I am dropping Liz & Brenna (& Méabh) off at Brenna’s school (tomorrow is induction day for her…Erin’s induction day is tomorrow.)

The boot (Irish for your car’s trunk) will be packed full of our stuff, which I’ll drop off in Raheny, then drive back out here to Lucan to pick up Hannah, Erin and the rest of our stuff…then we’ll head back to Raheny.

We didn’t do any house hunting today…

Basically because there is nothing left to be hunted. (Well unless you count the place right on the water for €2,700 per month ($3,330.45)…or the other two that are €1900 & €2000 respectively. Yeah, none of those are happening.

The past 10 days or so are a bit of a blur. Dublin to Boston to Ithaca to Long Island and back to Dublin via JFK. We landed at the Dublin Airport, 9:30 am on Tuesday, went back to the Garza’s home where we have been staying and by that afternoon Liz & I were out looking at houses to rent again.

A couple of days before we left for Ireland, I wrote a post about knowing…and obeying God’s will. If you’ve been following along over the past couple of weeks, you’ll know that we are still looking for a place to live…and the big struggle we are wrestling with currently is not living in Clontarf. If you’ve been a reader of this blog for the past year, we’ve said several times that we believe we are supposed to live, and church plant, in Clontarf (for example here, here, and again over here).

This morning as I was walking back from my morning trip to Starbucks, I was praying & two thoughts came to mind: 1) I don’t think this is the right place (meaning the place we are trying to rent.) 2) I think the landlord is waiting for a better offer. When I got back, I…

I’m not sure which was worse…handing over the money to but the car, or getting the bill for the rental car and seeing that renting the car for 3 weeks was 16% of the cost of our new Mazda (by new of course I mean new for us). Car rentals in Ireland are insane…In fact if you have a credit card that includes insurance for car rentals…if you look at the fine print, you’ll see that Ireland is one of the only countries where they will not insure your rental. And then they require you to pay an insane amount for daily insurance.

Yesterday was a good day…we didn’t do much of anything…even the idea of planning something, or driving somewhere seemed like too much effort. At one point we’d decided to walk around downtown Dublin and then go see a play in Temple Bar. However, Liz realized they might not allow Méabh in the theatre. When she called, she found out Brenna was too young for the theatre as well. I think Brenna is becoming a bit annoyed how some places (Aer Lingus, most restaurants) consider her an adult (since they can charge more)…and other places consider her a child…And it always seems to be geared against her.

In 1985 I bought my first car…more accurately, I bought 1/2 of my first car and my dad bought the other half (I was staying home for my sophomore year of college & needed a ride.) It was a great car…a 1978 Ford LTD…basically a living room on wheels. In 1990, I drove back to my parents home after my first year in Albany, and the car died in their driveway. After that I brought my brother’s Nova. I married Liz & she brought her SAAB in to the relationship (a car she loved & I hated).

There are certain things that have gone amazing well and smooth…actually two of the biggest things, obtaining residency, and getting our PPS Numbers, we were able to accomplish in a morning.

This morning we dove up the coast a bit from Clontarf to see a potential short-term rental. It wouldn’t be a great fit, and it’s a hike from Clontarf…as well as a long bus ride to the schools for the girls…but it would give us a place to live temporarily while we wait for the housing market to open up a bit more in Clontarf. We’re waiting a couple more days & then we’ll probably move on that if nothing else works.

Last July Liz & I attended a Sunday morning service at the Vineyard in Dublin as part of our “is this really what God is doing in our lives trip.” Today Brenna, Liz, Méabh and I showed up at our new church home. Everything was great…the people were wonderful…it is just a weird experience to show up and sit in the back again…to not know most of the people…to not know many of the songs.

Every day I think, “I need to take more pictures so I have something to post here on the daily update. And every time I sit down to blog, I realize I forgot. The big news today is that we found our lost luggage….but I doubt anyone wants to see a picture of our ugly blue duffel bag. So the only picture I remembered to take today was of Raheny, where we went to set up our bank account…excuse me, Liz’s bank account.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch around 7:30 our time…they let me sleep for about 30 minutes & when I woke up, I was wide awake for the next 2.5 hours. That’s how I was able to get the blog post done for yesterday. This morning, I woke up at 6:00 am (1:00 am Ithaca time) and thought, this is great, I’m already on a good schedule…next thing I know I wake up to the sound of Liz on the phone trying to locate her luggage at 8:00…I hate when that happens.

Wow…we’ve been talking about it for about two years…planning it for 12 months & now it is here…we are in Dublin! Although a bit jet-lagged to say the least. Won’t be able to provide a coherent update of our day, but thought I’d give you some of the highlights…