And so the adventure begins!

Soooo.... a lot has happened in the last couple of days! I've been sending lengthy regular emails to my mum though so it's a good way of keeping track of what's been going on.

On Tuesday morning I got up at 5am after 2 hours sleep, got ready and my mum took me to the airport. My luggage was about 3kgs overweight but the woman let me away with it thank god! My first flight to Dublin was on a teeny tiny plane but was pretty uneventful. Started feeling pretty sleepy near the end so was glad to get off. 

My mum took photos of my plane as it flew over our house lol

When we arrived in Dublin they told all the people that were going to the States to get onto a seperate bus on the runway that would take us to Terminal 2. It picked up a bunch of people as it went along and then dropped us right at the door to the US Pre-clearance. This is unique, only Dublin has it. Basically it means that you clear immigration at Dublin so you don't have to do it in Orlando. I filled in a little blue form (you will need to know your address in the States, regardless if you enter at Dublin, Orlando or elsewhere. Use the address you put on your visa forms)  and then took my boarding card, passport, blue form and my white I94 card to a desk where the woman stamped the card, filled in the bit she needed to and gave me back the smaller half of the white card. DO NOT LOOSE THIS!!!!!! They might staple it into your passport, they didn't for me but the arrivals team did it for me. Then I stood in line to get questioned by the officer, finger prints and photo taken which didn't take long and then headed through another security gate into the departure area. What is a bit poop about this part is that there's very little in this part of the airport. Its just for flights heading to the States and only has a very small coffee shop/bar and very limited duty free for sale.

Tried to sleep on the second flight but had a lot of mild turbulence that kept me awake, felt like sitting in the back of a hackney cab going over speed bumps. Got pretty bad as we hit New York state so the plane circled for about 20 minutes until it was re-directed onto a different flight path, still got in 15 mins early though.

I thought I would have to go through some sort of passport control again at Orlando, but nope - everyone straight off the plane and off to collect their luggage. The other guys took 40 mins-1hr in the queues so I would recommend it to anyone going out there as I spent about 15 mins in Dublin and they did all the leg work for you. However because I missed passport control I came out at a totally different bit to where everyone normally comes out and where we had all arranged to meet and my battery was dying so I checked the arrivals board and plugged my phone on charge at the first socket I spotted (this seemed to be quite normal so I didn't feel guilty!) Finally managed to find the other Jen (who knew there was 2 Disney stores in the airport!?) and then it took quite a while for Harriet and then Scott to get through immigration and by then me and Jen had been in the airport for hours.

Got the Mears shuttle bus to drop us off and then had a panic because we were dropped off at what we thought was the  "Welcome Point" but there wasn't a soul there, luckily Harriet has a US sim already so phoned the free US toll number and a wee guy came along on a golf cart type thing to pick us and our luggage up cos the taxi dropped us at the wrong place. And then we got Disn-ied. Although the guy was pretty insistent that we all thoroughly washed our hands before we had a cookie because we had been in multiple airports. They sat us down, gave us warm cookies and bottled water and info packs on what we need to do for the next couple of days. And a wee welcome pack with washing detergent and softener lol. Then they loaded up all our luggage and dropped us off at our apartments -  the driver comes with you to help with luggage and also to introduce you, aka bang the door like a crazy man while shouting "NEW ROOMMATE!!!!!" None of our roommates were in though when we arrived. And we aren't sharing with anyone we know, the two other girls are in the same apartment block but different apartments. My apartment is block 1 - right next to the pool/bus stop/clubhouse/etc. Lifesaver!

We quickly dropped off our stuff then me, Harriet and Jen went to Walmart and Scott went to sleep lol! We were pretty sensible, every other person seems to spend about $200, we spent like $70-80 and just got the essentials like bedding, towels and just a little bit of food and snacks. Came back to apartment and there was people in and I unpacked for a bit and then chatted to a couple of my roommates. I'm in a 3 bed/3 bath apartment. I've still to meet one girl and two of them moved out today (Thursday) so I'm looking forward to not being the new girl!

Think I will continue with day 2 in a seperate post as this will get a bit long!