CHAPTER SEVEN: Emmanuel

ONE DAY LEFT! It had been such a great trip. No sleep and not knowing me elbow from me arse (sorry for the term, but I dare you not to smile when saying it). This trip was great.

Little did we know, we still had one more character left awaiting to fulfill this adventure. When we walked back to the backpacker's dormitory after going out for dinner and sleeping most the day since we landed from London earlier that morn, we had a new bunkmate waiting to welcome us. With his giant African smile, tidy habits and bed making skills, and friendly personality followed by deep thoughts til late hours of the night, he was our new roomie. His name: Emmanuel. He was in his early 40s but looked like early 30s. A clearly hard working man with a skinny tall frame and well-kept black tennis shoes he tucked nicely under his bed. Traveling from northwest Africa to find work in Ireland, Emmanuel wanted nothing more but good deep conversations with fellow world travelers and most importantly...advice on his life. Emmanuel was sweet as sugar and wouldn't hurt a fly, but what seemed to be harmless life questions soon turned out to be a 3 to 1 counseling session. Tina, an Austrian teen (or "Australian" according to Emmanuel), and myself life coached our way through the evening. Tina and I got ready to go out for our last night, packed our bags while Emmanuel asked us questions and watched us apply our makeup. He flattered us with compliments on our dresses and shopping. At one point telling me I looked like a girl from a music video he watched as a child. When he showed us on the internet which one he talked about it ended up being an 80's video named LaQuinta. I tried to take it as a compliment.

Emmanuel was a deep dude and said he admired us girls in our way of life and "...just being free to live" as we got ready to leave for the Pub where they were having live music. If you couldn't sense it so far, Emmanuel is a very "thought consumed" as Tina would say. After what seemed like hours of him dominating conversations, which we didn't mind and actually found entertaining in the beginning, eventually ended in us backpedaling to the door with him writing homework. Yep, we gave him homework. Never a dull moment. I often wonder how I'd function with a dull moment since my life is too strange to have one sometimes. We went to a pub, which Emmanuel declined the invite to because he doesn't like pubs or drinks...or coffee...or soda...or juice...and so we left him with a checklist of things to reflect on. We told him to make goals of what he wants in life and come up with plans of how to achieve those plans. Life 101. Somehow though, Emmanuel managed to make this simple exercise into a complicated mess of goal confusion. Tina tried to simplify, "Emmanuel, what do you like?" Emmanuel said, "I want to play sports." I encouraged him in that. "That's great Emmanuel. (Thinking he liked playing sports) Write that down! Which sports in particular?" Emmanuel chose soccer. Without question I continued with my enthusiasm hoping we could slowly leave him writing in his notebook while we snuck out the door. "Why soccer?" I asked out of curiousity. He looked puzzled and turned to Tina saying, "Tina, why do I want to do sports?" He got his pen ready to write the answer. Tina looked at him, confused at this point and like a teacher trying to hide her true feelings of disappointment with why her student is the way he is, she said, "I don't know, Emmanuel. Why DO YOU want to be a soccer player?!" I tried not to laugh because I could tell this was slowly becoming less fun for Tina. Emmanuel had no clue. We gave him ideas: to be on a team, to make friends, to get in shape....he wrote it all down saying, "Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah....that's a good one." Emmanuel didn't even know how to play soccer or why he chose it. He just wanted adventure in his life. He just picked the first thing that came to mind when thinking "cool". We had actually regressed from our initial starting point. Tina and I looked at each other. We tried. It's time for a Guiness.

CHAPTER SIX: Now I Lay Me Down To . . . Nevermind.

Yep, it's been two months but we're back to finish the story.

TOD: We finally made it back to the Dublin airport and were racing to the bus to get back to our hostel. Once again, no sleep. Exhausted doesn't even cover it. We fought with the bus driver for a bit about the round trip ticket. We needed to get back to our Dublin hostel from the airport. Up until this point we had been pretty laid back up and go with the flow. And of all the things to go wrong this was the one fight we were going to pick and not back down from. Mind you, it was 6:45am going on NO SLEEP from our day tour of London and for both Jaci and me this was not the time for the bus driver to have a petty disagreement with us. You would not win. Two very tired girls. We have a ticket. Let us on the flippin' bus...we don't understand your booga booga accent and unexplainable ticket requirements. Needless to say, we won the disagreement about our prepaid bus ticket not being "valid" and proceeded to find a spot that very early morning on a very empty bus and struggled to keep our eyes open.

All I could do was keep my eye on the prize. The prize was sleep. All we could think about was sleep. How much we wanted it. Trying to remember what it felt like to speak in full sentences. It was day 7 and we could count the number of hours of sleep we had gotten on both hands! We kept saying "we just have to power through this bus ride and once we get to our hostel we would be free." It was a goal, something to hope for. We both couldn't keep conscious on the bus. Once we were finally dropped off we had a short walk to our hostel. We could almost smell the shamrock scented sheets. With smiles on our faces we made it to the front desk. Home Free. Or so we thought. But if you've been following our blog you would know that it's never that easy. As we began to check in we hear the lady tell us "I'm sorry but your beds won't be ready till 2." Mind you it is 7:30am. I was furious and wanted to give up on life. Jaci remained a little bit calmer. We left the hostel and walked around in the cold. I began to panic as it was Sunday morning and nothing was open. That meant no place to stay to warm up. That meant walking around for 5 hours after knowing we should be in our warm, slightly clean, beds. I knew this wasn't an option after being outside for 3 minutes. We went back in and begged them to let us stay. They could see our desperation and offered us a warm meal like a soup kitchen for Yankees. After refueling, they offered us the lounge which consisted of 8 bunk beds, a coffee table, and a television. The only stipulation was that if we wanted to sleep we had to share a bed so that they wouldn't have to wash the sheets. We took this offer. We took it without a fight. There we lay spooning until our room was ready. We slept straight through for 5 hours waking up maybe once or twice when others would come in confused as to why we were in the same bed when there were 7 other beds to choose from. We didn't care. We got we we wanted and were grateful. So worth the stares. When we finally returned to our room it was more sleep. It was awesome. Around 4:30pm we woke up met our new roommate named Emanuel, showered, and made our way to our hostel restaurant where we shared a plate of meat and smiled with well rested eyes. Life had gotten a whole lot better.