Yay! Home!

I finally bought tickets to go home. For once, I think it actually helped to wait until now. I'd been checking prices for months and was quoted $1000+ just for a round-trip ticket to SFO. An open jaw ticket to PDX/SEA and from SFO was costing $1400. Just absolutely ridiculous. But I found some flights, and although it costs more than I think it should, it's still cheaper than before, so I'll just count myself lucky.

I'm totally going for Chinese food as soon as I hit home soil. Although there are many Chinese here (more native Mandarin speakers in Dublin than native Irish speakers in the whole country, as they keep saying), there aren't any really good Chinese places yet. Another couple years, I think. And pho! Or any Vietnamese food!

I'm also going to buy more of those simple stretchy bras that I like from the Bon Marche. I've discovered that I'm slowly going back to my hippier years, vis-a-vis bra-wearing. I'm really disliking the nice, pretty, underwired things that I wore more frequently during the years in Seattle, and have been either going au naturel or wearing the aforementioned simple stretchy things, which are rapidly becoming worn out. (This is total oversharing, but hah! you're a captive audience.)

Let's see...what else to do while at home? Walk around like I belong there. I didn't notice this until I went over to the UK a few weeks ago for the literature festival, but I think in Dublin, I'm constantly aware that I'm non-native. Or, actually, I'm constantly aware that others are aware that I'm non-native. It's a little hitch that's always in the back of my mind. It doesn't make me feel uncomfortable or awkward; I can't describe how it changes my attitude, but it does, slightly. I didn't notice it was there until I walked out of the plane at Birmingham airport and it was gone. It was also conspicuously absent as I navigated around the airport and train and bus stations. (I was asked for directions.) I think I feel more natural; I don't get the feeling that, when I go up to ask about train tickets or whatever, that the person is bracing themselves for dealing with a foreigner. Not that I feel it happens in Dublin; people have been really nice here. I don't think this feeling is generated or re-inforced by the Irish. I think it's just this thing I have. I will have to think more about it now that I am aware of its existence.

Reading: A Suitable Boy, and Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language, although, to be honest, I haven't really been doing much reading lately. Also, I notice that the guy who did Princess Mononoke and whatever the hell that other popular anime movie was (y'all know how I feel about anime) has just released Howl's Moving Castle, which is based on the Diana Wynne Jones novel and one of my favorite children's books. I'm very upset about this ('cause y'all know how I feel about anime, plus you know they never do a good enough job when turning books you love into films), because now it looks like I will actually have to voluntarily pay money to see an anime film. And no, it is impossible for me not to go see this adaptation. Feh.