Commence the Countdown

I know that I have A LOT to get caught up on here but with exams and a paper to do I’m not entirely sure when I will get to it. To be honest I may be finishing up everything on here well after I get home. Today, though, I promised my little sister that I would post a special 20 day countdown of my semester that I came up with on my 4 ½ hour ride back to Cork last week.

20 – Days until I fly back home

19 – Tourist hot spots: Colosseum, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triumph, St. Mark’s Square, Trevi Fountain, Anne Frank House, Notre Dame Cathedral, Oslo Fjord, Nobel Museum, Helsinki Cathedral, Frankfurt Romer, Costa Del Sol, Gibraltar monkeys, Marienplatz Square, St. Andrews Golf Course, Parliament and Big Ben (There are more but I needed something for 19)

18 – Books and Plays read: Robinson Crusoe, Evelina, School for Scandal, 18^th Century Poems, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, Juno and the Paycock, Murphys, Playboy of the Western World, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Last September, Yeats Complete Works, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Part I Henry IV, Tempest, Two Noble Kinsmen, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet

17 – Irish Buses

16 – Airports

15 – Countries: America, Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Italy, Vatican City, France, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, Spain, and Gibraltar

14 – Blog posts to finish writing (They’ve all been started I just haven’t managed to finish writing them)

13 – Stamps in my passport (7 of which are from Ireland)

12 – Trad sessions

11 – Languages: English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Norwegian, Finnish, and Spanish

10 – Irish Pubs

9 – hostels and hotels

8 – New, good friends: Katie, Colleen, Rafa, Rebecca, Susan, Danni, Vanessa, and Claire

7 – Taxis

6 – Exams (thankfully 3 are already done)

5 – Months

4 – Currencies: Euros, Pounds, Swedish Kroners, Norwegian Kroners (You would think Norway and Sweden would just use the same currency but they don’t)

3 – Papers (2 done and 1 due tomorrow)

2 – Umbrellas (Irish wind broke the first one so I now have a bubble umbrella)

1 – Last plane to take

With Love Always

Pictures...

Haha, so silly me didn't realize/pay attention to the fact that there is a storage limit for pictures on the blog and that I have currently reached the limit on that. Luckily I have 4 different e-mails so I can make 4 different picture accounts to add to the blog if I need to. I'm in the process of making the second one and I will eventually get around to uploading the Italy and Paris photos. The only issue is that with me traveling around I don't have hours to sit around online waiting for them to all get uploaded. It may take a while before there are any new pictures up. I will get around to it all eventually though. Last time I tried to upload things I got a wonderful blue death screen from my computer that told me it was deleting files so I had to shut down my computer and reset it. So for now, just to be safe, I'm going to give my computer a break and not upload pics. When I have the chance to try it again I will and hopefully my computer won't give me the death screen again. These foreign countries haven't been kind to it so I think it just needs a bit of a break. I will be around but today I'm in Dublin and I have more to see and do here. So I will go for now and come back in time.

With Love Always

I hope you don't mind but...

So I'm going to be completely honest with this. I do have at least one if not two more blog posts that I could write about Italy since we did Venice yesterday and are now in Rome, but I have no desire to. Actually I probably won't really want to until I'm back in Cork and I have to be studying for exams. I'll most likely use the blog as my study breaks/ procrastination tool. If I do get around to finishing one and I get online for a bit I'll post it, but I can't really say that will happen a whole lot. I will most likely update pictures as often as I can but it's been a bit of a drag to go through and write the posts. Sorry if this upsets any of you but I figured you at least should know that for the rest of April I really have no desire to write things out. That may change in time, but for now this may be it for a while. Enjoy the pictures and I'll wander my way back to this eventually.

With Love Always

A little bit of home

The past three months have been the longest (and farthest) I have ever been away from my family, even when I’m at school, I go home on occasion and I only live 20 minutes away. It has been really different to be apart like this. To be honest I have enjoyed it in a lot of ways and I’m glad that I’ve had the distance for so long, but after a while it did start to finally hit me that I do miss the states and being so close. Today my mom got here and for the next 9 days we’ll be traveling together. It’s nice to have my mom here for a bit, it brings home a little closer. Lately I’ve been in and out of feeling home sick. This has been a great semester and I still have another 2 months before I officially fly back to the states, but I’m ready to be back among familiar places with friends and family. Nothing will ever be better than being home with everyone and the closer I get to the end of this semester the more prepared I am to be home already.

My mom being here marks the beginning of my month long euro trip. She came down to Cork from Dublin for a few hours and I showed her around the campus and where I lived and we took some time to just relax and figure some more things out for our trip. Now that classes are over I have the entire month of April to do anything, and by anything I mean travel. For the 9 days that I’m with my mom we’ll be going to Venice, Rome, and Paris, which were the top 3 places that I wanted to go to at some time during April. Since I knew I had this entire month to travel I spent some time figuring out places I wanted to go to and I knew that it would be impossible to go everywhere, but knowing what I wanted to do helped with planning things out. When my mom found out she was coming (my dad and I planned it out together before telling her) we talked about traveling outside of Ireland together and we agreed upon Italy and France. After my mom flies back home I’m spending a day in Dublin to see what I missed around St. Patrick’s Day and then I’m flying back out of Dublin to start my 10 days in 5 countries. I am spending 2 days in The Netherlands, 2 in Sweden, 3 in Germany, 1 in Norway, and 2 in Finland. After those 10 days I’ll spend another 10 in Spain where I have family. When I get back to Cork I start final exams and then before I know it I’ll be headed home. It will be a very busy last couple of months here but all in all this has been a great experience and I’ll be ready to be home when it’s all over.

With Love Always

It wouldn't be right if something didn't go wrong

The last day in Scotland started around 5:30am on a train to St. Andrews. The train was very empty since it wasn’t really a time where a lot of people were traveling, but St. Andrews is also a little town where there isn’t a whole lot to do if you don’t golf. St. Andrews is the birthplace of golf and has the most famous course in the world. I’m not a golfer, to be honest I can barely even mini golf, but I enjoy playing it. When it comes to actual golf I’m not much of a fan and I have never really had a desire to play. So going to St. Andrews was a little bit of a questionable decision since there didn’t seem to be much to do but play golf. While that is true, there are some other things to do and see around the town. The train there was only about an hour long so it was really early to be there and the latest I had to leave was by 8:30 to catch the trains back to the airport for my flight in the morning.

Right from the train station there’s a bus that goes into St. Andrews and I decided that starting off at the golf course would be a good idea since it was early and there wouldn’t really be anyone around. Little did I know that there were actually going to be quite a few guys out on the course already golfing and getting an early start. St. Andrews doesn’t just have one course on its grounds; actually there are about 4 or 5 different courses in this one area. I walked around for a couple of hours and just tried to follow the paths through the different courses. A couple of times I walked across the greens just to see more of the course and I did get yelled at because I accidently walked through a golf match. Is golf even played in matches? I don’t really know what they’re called, but I didn’t know at the time that there were multiple courses going in different directions and I walked through one of the greens that were being played on.

I have to admit I’ve never been on an actual golf course before, so it just looked like a large green field with some sand pits in it. I know that they’re called bunkers but to be completely honest I’m still not sure what the appeal is in golf. Along one edge of the course there’s a beach that goes out to St. Andrews Bay and walking along a beach seemed more enjoyable than a golf course. It was so nice to kick off my shoes and walk barefoot in the sand. I’m really not a fan of sneakers, if it were up to me I would always either be barefoot or in flip flops, but it’s safer to wear sneakers so I always have them on. I was beyond ecstatic that I could take them off and walk around for a while without them. As I got closer to the water I ended up going searching for sea shells and I collected a bunch more to add to my collection back in Cork. I walked along the beach until I hit the end of it and had the choice of heading back to the golf course or walk into town. I decided to go into town and see if I could find the castle that was falling into the sea. St. Andrews is one of those little towns where everyone knows each other and they are all very friendly people and welcoming to visitors. Most of the other cities or towns are so big that people aren’t really bothered with tourists. It was a nice, quiet little town and most of the people I saw were dressed and ready to go golfing.

After taking a small break for a couple of hours I walked around more of the town and found the castle ruins. I also found the old cathedral that was also standing in ruins. I walked around and just saw the town and what was there. Once I had seen pretty much all there was to see I headed back to the golf course and walked around it a little bit more, without getting in anyone’s way this time. I also returned to the beach and climbed out on the rocks just for the sake of doing so. It was getting late and I still had to get the trains back to the airport so I got the bus back to the train station. For some reason there were issues going on in Edinburgh that was causing trains to either be delayed or terminated all over the place. I got to the train station a couple hours earlier than I really needed to be because the 8:30 train was the last one I could take in order to make it to the airport on the last train from Glasgow. While I was waiting I did end up dozing off for a while, but there was still a lot of time left for me to catch a train back towards Edinburgh where I would switch trains for Glasgow and then switch one last time for Prestwick. With the issues that were going on with the trains a lot of the trains to Edinburgh weren’t even making it to St. Andrews so I was stuck waiting for hours to catch a train. None of them were coming and when it came time for the 8:30 train to get there it was originally running late, but after a few minutes the guy at the station announced that it was terminated as well. I’m generally not someone who freaks out about things, but at that moment I did just a little bit. I talked to the guy and asked him if there was any way to still make the last train to Prestwick and he looked it up and said I would make it with plenty of time. So I was fine with that and I got on the next train that came. When I got into Edinburgh I actually got onto an earlier train than I was supposed to since it would take less time, but it went to the Queen Street station which was a few minutes away from Central Station where the last train I needed would be. Things were working out and I was feeling better about things because I was still very nervous since the trains at St. Andrews had pushed me back about 20 minutes. When I got to Glasgow I walked to the Central Station where all the gates were closed… The last train that the man said left for the airport was at midnight and it was only 11:35. I was panicking a bit and was really worried that I wasn’t going to end up getting back in time for my flight since the next train wasn’t until 5:30 in the morning and my flight was at 6:00. I started asking around and a couple people kept saying I wasn’t going to make it and that the gates were all closed, which didn’t really help, but one guy told me where to find the only open gates into the station. When I got there it was about 20 of and there weren’t any departures up on the board. I was really hoping that I was just looking at it wrong so I asked a couple of the people who worked in the station and one of them told me that the last train towards the airport left 10 minutes ago. I feel really bad because I lost it a little bit and freaked out on the guy and he was a little taken a-back by my reaction. I explained that I needed to be at the airport and when my flight was (all in a very panicked way) and he said that if I hurried I could make it to the bus station where the last bus left at midnight for the airport. I thanked him and then pulled out my map from the first day I was there and very frantically found my way to the bus station. Of course the main concourse of the station is closed and I didn’t really know where to find the buses so I’m only panicking even more about it. I ended up following a few other people and I found the bus as the last few people were getting on. The bus driver realized that I had no clue where to get off so he offered to give me a holler and let me know.

I will admit, I don’t think I finally settled down from that set back until I was finally back in my flat in Cork. While I was on the bus it all started to make sense though that the man in St. Andrews thought there was a midnight train. All of the train and bus schedules for the cities are run by the same company so the schedules are all just put together. So he was thinking train as he was looking at the times for the buses. Either way I was thankful that I was on my way back to the airport and was going to be there in plenty of time to take a small nap before my flight. All in all Scotland was great and I’m glad that I had gone. I’m back in Ireland for a couple days before my mom arrives and I’m headed back out of the country.

With Love Always

So much to see and plenty of time to do so.

Around 8 this morning I packed everything up and left the hostel that I had spent the night in. I got to the end of the street before realizing that I had no idea where my camera was and I thought I had left it in the room at the hostel. So I went back and looked just to find out I had accidently thrown it in my backpack when I was packing. Next to my laptop, my cameras are the most important things that I have with me, so I always have to check and make sure that I have them. My laptop isn’t hard to miss, it’s pretty much half the weight in my bag. Keeping track of its cords can be hard sometimes but I’m usually pretty good about it. I have 2 cameras that I keep on me at all times. My blue one is always within arm’s reach if it’s not already in my hand since it’s the one that I use most. I had it though so it was okay and I walked into the city center.

At the hostel there were flyers all over the place for a free walking tour through the city of Edinburgh. It was 3 hours long and it walked through both the Old Town and the New Town. I gave myself about an hour to get to the starting point since I had no clue where I was going and I was trying to figure out where things were on the map. I ended up finding a very beautiful cathedral on my way to the starting point, so I took a small detour to go look at it and I walked around the area and took pictures of it. Unlike Glasgow, Edinburgh is very picturesque and there is a lot to see and do there. On the way to the tour there was a lot to see and normally I would have stopped to take pictures of it, but I figured that I would get to see a lot of it during the walking tour and would wait to take them. The starting point for the tour was a Starbucks that was located in a little corner of the Old Town and to get there I had to walk through the New Town, which is pretty much a high end walking mall. It had all the big, name brand stores lining the streets, and whatever wasn’t along the road was in the mall. It felt like a regular city with traffic filled streets and stores everywhere with people rushing to and from different locations. It was only about 10 in the morning and the streets were packed with locals and tourists. Once you crossed the North Bridge into the Old Town it was like a completely different place.

The real stunning part of Edinburgh was in the Old Town. I could see why the walking tour was 3 hours. There was so much to see and learn about. I will admit, my favorite parts of the tour were the ones about Harry Potter. I have not read any of the books, only because when I was younger I had no desire to read them, but I have seen all of the movies up to this point and it does make me more interested in reading the books since books are always so much better than their movie counterparts. So at some point when I have the time to read a book that isn’t for school I may start the series or I may read something else, to be honest it depends on what I’m in the mood to do. Either way, the walking tour was a lot of fun and our tour guide James was a theatre/ history major, so doing the tours was pretty much his dream job. After the tour was over it was only a little after 2 and all of the museums and cathedrals closed at 5. I worked my way back through the city and saw the galleries and museums. I went into a couple of the Cathedrals and looked around. Since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures it didn’t take me long to really work my way through things. I spent more time walking around Edinburgh Castle (what I could without having to pay), and I worked my way back through the town and took more time to see the things that we just walked through or just passed on the tour. I walked around until about 11 that night, I did stop in a few places and ate or just hung out, but I headed to the train station since I was taking the 5:30 train to St. Andrews the next morning. I’m actually really surprised at how short this post is, but I won’t make it any longer so St. Andrews will be on its own.

With Love Always

Disney Stickers and Scottish Pen Pals

Today was my first day in Scotland. I got in around 9:30 and was in Glasgow by 11:00. I really didn’t make any plans for any of these places. Honestly the plan was get a map, see what there is, and walk around for 12 hours and just see the sights. To most people 12 hours seems like a lot of time for something like that, but for me it seemed like a good amount, mainly because it gave me time to get lost and also to take pictures. I’m not going to lie; it is a little weird being on my own since every other trip I’ve been on has been with the girls. In a lot of ways it has been good for me though. As much as Glasgow may be well known as one of the top places in Scotland it really didn’t have a whole lot to do. I had a map of Central Glasgow and it had all of these galleries and places on the maps that would make you think that it was a museum or a tourist spot. All of the galleries that I went to today were shopping malls. They weren’t art galleries or museums; they were high end shopping malls. I’m not exactly the shopping kind of person so that really didn’t help a lot. I did see the City Hall, where a protest for disabled peoples’ rights was being held, so I didn’t really get that close. I figured that it would be a good idea to keep out of trouble while I’m here.

After a few hours I had pretty much walked all over Central Glasgow and was struggling to find things to do. I figured that I would go find wi-fi somewhere and spend a little time getting things done and talking to people. As Sarah Brokaw puts it, “Europe is a jerk about internet.” It’s so true, they have wi-fi hot spots all over the place but only about 10% of them are free. Honestly internet is not really worth paying for but I eventually just gave in and got 24 hour access for £4, which really isn’t that bad. I spent some time online and then fell asleep where I was. The funny thing about that was that I was in a hotel lobby when I feel asleep. I only slept for about an hour, but when I finally came around there was this guy who would glare at me every time he walked by me sitting there. So I figured it would just work out best to go walk along the river and see where it led me.

I don’t exactly have the best attention span and instead of staying by the river I got drawn in towards the city by a building that I could see towering all of the others that looked really cool. It ended up being a church. I feel like that always happens in Europe. There’s a building that towers over all the rest with very elaborate architecture and it turns out to be a church. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing; I’m just making an observation. I realize the way that I said that could have come off the wrong way. I ended up somewhere in the West End of Glasgow which was not on my map, but I’m good at retracing my steps so I could find my way back. I found a cute little icafé with free wi-fi. It figures that after I already give in and pay for it that I find it for free. It happens, but it’s fine. It was late when I got there so I ended spending a couple hours there talking to people. This is when the day just got interesting.

So a man walked in to the café and apparently he’s a regular because the girl had his cup of coffee already on the table for him when he came in. I wasn’t entirely paying attention but I could hear him mumbling to himself and he seemed a little close so I turned around to see if I could help him with anything. The poor guy was so apologetic. He swore that he wasn’t reading my messages between me and the people I was talking to. Actually he was intrigued by the Disney stickers all over my laptop. He started talking to me and wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing in Scotland. We just had a 10 minute conversation about so many different things. He was such a friendly guy. He was giving me hints and pointers about what’s in Edinburgh and St. Andrews and what to expect from the people there. He was so upset that I was only spending one day in Glasgow and was talking about how he wished he had met me earlier in the day because he would have set me up with a group of people my age that could have showed me around. He was just being so accommodating and it was just because the Disney stickers on my laptop made him feel cheerful. We talked about my major and how I wanted to become a teacher, and he tells me that he guessed I was going to say I wanted to be a teacher. I was confused as to how he could have guessed that and then I realized that there really isn’t a whole lot that you can do with an English degree. So we talked for a little while and he ended up having to leave but he asked me if I was going to come back to Glasgow anytime later in the year. I said I wasn’t really sure. So he gave me his card and said to e-mail him if I did manage to end up coming back to Glasgow and he would plan to meet me and whoever else I’m with and show us around. I thanked him and he left. It was just so unusual that he did that. People in Ireland and the UK have been very friendly so far but not that friendly. He made it a point to say that he wasn’t trying to be pretentious about it but that he was just proud of his city and he would take any opportunity he could to show someone around it and let them see the good parts of Glasgow. As he left he told me that his name was Joe. It never really crossed my mind the entire time that we were talking that we never really introduced ourselves to each other.

After Joe left I spent some more time in the café since I really didn’t have much to do but catch my train to Edinburgh, which to Scots is pronounced as Edinborough, I’ve been corrected a few times on that but they usually do it in good fun and say that they understand, I’m American. After about another hour I left the café and walked back the way I came and found my way back into Central Glasgow. I had a couple of hours before my train left so I figured I would just walk around the area for a bit and see the city at night. I was outside of the Museum of Modern Art taking a picture of the statue when a man walked by me and said, “Hi.” I didn’t think much of it so I smiled and said “hi” back to him and the next thing I knew he was starting a conversation with me. I wasn’t expecting a response to come from me saying hi to him. He told me that he knew I was a nice person the moment he saw me and that he just felt like he needed to talk to me. With strangers I’m not a very talkative person, actually I get really shy and become an awkward person to talk to, but he insisted on us talking. He asked if we could go get drinks and talk for a bit that he would like to just sit and talk to me. I apologized and told him that I actually had a train to catch at 10. Of course it’s only about quarter after 9 when I say that so he insists that we go get drinks and just sit in a pub and talk. I kept saying that I really had to go and I was sorry but I couldn’t. He decides that he wants to be pen pals. He asks me for my address and I really didn’t want to be rude about it so I apologized and said that I wasn’t going to be in Europe very long and that my address back home was going to be changing, which is the truth cause once I get back to UConn it changes to that one. So instead he gives me his address and insists that I write him. At this point I figured that if I said okay he would let me go, but nope that didn’t happen. Actually he was so intent on talking to me that he offered to walk me to the train station and wait with me for my train. He was telling me that he wasn’t a mean person and he was just trying to be a true Scottish gentleman. At this point it was kind of like I didn’t have a choice. So we walked to the train station together and he really wanted to buy me a drink so we walk into this store and he tells me to pick something out. I really didn’t want something but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So I apologized for being an indecisive person and he was like, “that’s okay” and we walk out of the store without getting anything. At the train station there’s a pub and it was only 20 after 9 so he’s like let’s go get a drink and just wait for the train inside. I kind of gave up on getting out of it because he was being so persistent and I really had no good excuse to tell him no.

So we sat down and he asks me what I wasn’t for a drink. I really didn’t want anything but he seriously was not taking no for an answer. So I just got a soda and a shocked response about the fact that I didn’t want any alcohol. In Ireland no one is ever shocked if you don’t get alcohol so it was weird to get that response from him. Actually I was slowly starting to realize that he was a little tipsy already. As we were talking he was telling me that he had been drinking as the day went on, so he was definitely at least a little buzzed at the time. We talked for about a good half hour about a lot of things. I got pretty much his ENTIRE life story, from being a sniper in the Scottish Armed Forces to his girlfriend leaving him and him losing his job. That’s when I realized why he was looking for someone to talk to. He had a lot to get off his chest and apparently I looked like a nice enough person for him to talk to. He asked my opinion on the mother’s day gift he had gotten his mom, of which I found out that they celebrate mother’s day on the first Sunday in April. He got her a trinket box made out of mirrors with a little rhinestone heart on the front where you can put a picture. It was really nice and I’m sure that his mom will like it. We talked about the differences between the Scottish and American Armies and how he was envious of the Americans because the people who go into the forces are people who are willing to fight for their country and people who truly love their country. He said that the Scots aren’t really like that and that he was a little ashamed of his own country’s sense of nationalism.

He kept checking the time for me even though I could see a clock on the wall. I actually decided against bringing any kind of jewelry with me on this trip so my watch is in my apartment back in Cork. I have my phone on me if I really need to check the time, but there are clocks everywhere so I never really need to pull it out. He starts taking his watch off as we’re talking about the time. I’m thinking that he’s just going to put it on the table so that I can see it as well, but of course nothing with this guy is that simple. His name is terry, by the way. He took his watch off and holds it out to me and tells me that it’s a gift from him to me. I apologized and told him that I couldn’t take it, that it was his watch and he should keep it and that I had one of my own back home. He refused to take it back. He gave me his watch and I just wanted him to keep it. He was being really nice and all but I felt like he was going way over the top and he disagreed with me on that. He kept saying that he was being a true Scottish gentleman. After giving me his watch he asks about my faith. So we start talking about religion, which was the only conversation we had that I really had anything to say about. We talked about whether or not God and the devil really existed or if we just gave names to the good and evil that every person has within them. Honestly I think he was just playing devil’s advocate because his view point changed every few seconds, but he never agreed with me in that they do actually exist. After a couple of minutes of that conversation I realized that it was time for me to go. So he walked me out and I went to the bathroom before going to figure out which train was mine. He waited for me, he would not return home until he knew that I was on my train safely. So I went to go check the train boards and I realized that I was in the wrong train station. I was supposed to be at the Queen’s Street Station not the Central Station. So he walked me there since they’re only a few minutes away from each other. On the way there we were walking past a bakery and he stops inside and tells me to follow him. He buys us both a sausage roll. I don’t know what to do because this guy is going out of his way to be so accommodating and he was being so sweet but it was all really unnecessary. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that though because he was so happy that he had company and someone to talk to that I felt like it would have been cruel if I asked him to leave me alone. He also wouldn’t take no for an answer to anything. So we got to the corner right before the station and he stops and takes off his backpack and asks me to wait real quick. He pulls out two milkshakes from his bag and hands me one while saying “McDonald’s is good for two things, milkshakes and their Arabic coffee.” I felt bad because I’m lactose intolerant so there was no way that I could drink it, but the gesture was much appreciated. So we got to the station and I found my train and said bye to him. He put his bags down and gave me a hug and told me how glad he was that we ran into each other and he had the chance to sit down and talk to me. As awkward as I felt about the entire that I was with him, I felt better about it because it helped him have a better day. He reminded me about being pen pals and that he wants me to write him and let him know how I’m doing. Part of me says that I should write to him and part of me says that it would be a bad idea. So I really don’t know if I’m going to. I got on my train to Edinburgh and I felt good about how my day in Glasgow ended up going. When I got into Edinburgh it was about midnight and I literally just went to the hostel closest to the station and spent the night. This post is long enough so I’ll do Edinburgh in a separate one.

With Love Always

School's Out!

So St. Patrick’s Day came with its pros and cons. We had a wonderful time and everything, but I also missed a day of classes. Considering the fact that the following week was my Irish Language exam it was kind of a huge deal that I missed the first of 2 review classes; especially since Sean was still teaching us new material for the exam. So the following week was spent studying my brains out for this exam. There were two parts, the oral and the written. The tough part about the oral was that we were expected to talk about our family which we were still learning 2 days before the exam. Our teacher was also all over the place during the semester so a lot of times in my notes there would be answers to a question that we learned later. So I didn’t really know what a lot of things were going to sound like when he asked us and pretty much I was stressing out so much. Thankfully Rebecca and I had that class together so we were able to work on things together and she had also convinced weeks ago to go see STOMP with her.

It was the best study break ever. The night before the oral exam I went over to Rebecca’s place, which happens to be on the other side of town from me, and I met all of her flat mates. They were making buffalo chicken pizza for dinner and then brownie sundaes for dessert. So they invited me over for dinner and we went to the show after it.

I remember always hearing about STOMP and I do recall the Sesame Street episode that they were on, so I kind of knew what to expect when we went to see them live. They blew our minds. It was one of the most incredible shows I have ever been to for anything. That night was seriously the most enjoyable study break I’ve ever taken. We just had so much fun and the STOMP crew even got the audience involved in helping make some of the beats. It was a blast.

The next day for the oral exam I was supposed to go around 2:30 and I had a class at 3:00 so I was kind of pushing it on time. So I showed up early figuring that if the 2:00 people finished I could just slip in quickly and be on my way. When I got there around 2:00, there were still people from the 1:00 and 1:30 slots who hadn’t gone yet. So they were running a little behind. Around 2:30, since I had to be somewhere, they were all willing to let me go first and get to my class. By the time I had gone in they were trying to get us all in and out as fast as possible. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I will admit though that I made sure that I knew how to say “I don’t understand” or “I don’t know” since I figured I might need them at some point, and I did. Although of course I said the wrong one first and then corrected myself. So when I didn’t know or understand what Sean wanted me to say, I said both and he figured out which one I meant.

On Thursday we had the written exam. Right before the exam Sean was holding one last review session for us. I figured I would go and that it would be helpful. We spent 10 minutes going over body parts and the difference between his and hers and then he pulled up youtube videos of Irish singers. I ended up leaving and meeting up with Rebecca outside and we got our Dr. Peppers and then headed over to the exam room. We sat in the same row and we were going over things until we got the exams. I looked at that exam and my first thought was “oh no the questions are in Irish too.” It never crossed my mind that they would give us the questions and instructions in Irish and I was so lost. There was a paragraph that was fill in the blank about Barack Obama, I’m sorry but I didn’t even know half of those words. I totally guessed, the only thing I could say was that he is a black man, he lives in Washington D.C., and he has two girls. I’m sure I just took all the other words and threw them wherever they sounded right, which in Irish is nowhere. There was just a lot of vagueness all over the exam. I did what I could though and to be completely honest, there’s no way we could have failed. Between attendance and the 2 parts of the exam we only needed 40 out of 100 points to get a C in the class. We automatically got 10 for attendance so we knew we were at least good enough to get more than 30 points between the oral and written exams. So it was fine. The rest of my exams aren’t until May so I’m not exactly stressing out just yet, but I did turn my computer into my study guide. It has every book, poem, and play I had to read this semester and it also has all of my notes on it. So now it’s a matter of pulling it all up and reading through it all as April is passing by. This last week I literally had no classes so I was making sure that I had all my notes and I was putting everything up on my computer. When I wasn’t doing that I was cleaning things up and getting ready for my trip this weekend and for when my mom gets here.

In about 5 hours I’ll be getting on a plane for Scotland and I’m spending the weekend there. When I get back I’m in Cork for a couple days and then my mom is going to join me. We’re going to spend a week traveling around together until she has to return home. The rest of April will be spent around other parts of Europe and then I’m going to see family in Spain, which will be great because I haven’t seen my cousin in forever. So I actually won’t be around a whole lot and I’ll be getting back in the very beginning of May, in time for my first exam actually. Ryanair is an easy and cheap airline to use but they messed up my last flight back to Ireland and it’s now for the day right before my first exam instead of 3 days before. So I’m working on getting it all fixed hopefully, but worst case scenario, I end up back in Cork about 3 hours before my first exam. So having all of my study materials always on me is extremely useful.

I think I am officially caught up with everything. Although as much as the airport says it has wi-fi it isn’t exactly connecting to the internet. So this may not even get posted till tomorrow when I have to find wi-fi for the sake of checking in with people. Originally Scotland was supposed to be something a few of us were going to do together, but things didn’t exactly work out with the scheduling of things for everyone so I’m actually doing this trip on my own. So it will be an entertaining and enjoyable few days on my own. Everything is pretty much set up though so there isn’t a whole lot to do but wander around Scotland and take pictures. It will be fine.

With Love Always

St. Patrick's Day

So now that I have nothing to do for 5 hours in an airport I guess it would be a good time to get caught up on things.

After Killary we literally had 2 days of classes before IFSA was taking us out on another trip. All of IFSA’s programs flew into Dublin and were supposed to have their orientations there and spend a few days in the city just seeing the sights. Cork, however, started classes on January 4^th and we arrived on the 2^nd. So they automatically drove us down to Cork and the next day they moved us in and we were pretty much told to have a great semester and they would see us around. To make up for the fact that we didn’t get to spend time in Dublin, IFSA planned a trip for us to go up there for St. Patrick’s Day and a spend a couple days just seeing the city and being there for the festivities. As usual they gave us the vague we’ll see you here at this time and we’ll be gone till Friday e-mail. On Wednesday they drove us up there and we dropped our things in the hotel, they handed us a bunch of papers, including maps of the city, and then treated us to lunch. After lunch was over they brought us to a park where there was supposed to be a ceili, which is an Irish dancing session, and they left us. The ceili hadn’t started yet because they were still setting up the stage and the 3 people who actually knew where we were left us all in the middle of the road not really sure what to do. Since things weren’t really going on a few of us decided to walk through the park and just look around for a bit. At one point we started a search for a bathroom and we found the Museum of Natural History, I believe, and we figured why not walk around after. We were literally in the museum for 5 minutes because we walked in right before closing. So we found our bathroom and a large collection of taxidermy animals. It was actually really weird. I still took pictures of some of them because I thought they looked cool and others because they creeped me out and then the museum guy came around asking us to leave since it was closing. As we were walking out of the room we walked by a sign that said “no photography” on it. I somehow manage to always miss those signs and it’s not on purpose, it just happens since my attention is usually on a bunch of other things. I’m not sure if the guy just didn’t notice or didn’t care, but he never said anything about us having out our cameras.

That night we were abandoned for dinner, as always, IFSA figures if they at least guarantee us one meal a day that they can leave us on our own for the other 2. So we went to Centra, one of their corner stores, and got dinner since it was really cheap and we didn’t want to figure out how to get into any of the pubs, which were beyond full. We hung out in the hotel and watched a countdown of the top dance crazes of all time. The great thing is that we knew pretty much all of the songs that they played, maybe not the dances, but the songs were the important part. The number one dance craze is Thriller, which was not at all a surprise to any of us. By the time the countdown finished it was midnight, or after that, and the next day was St. Patrick’s Day, so we wanted to head to bed so we were up in time for things in the morning.

Claire and I actually got an early start on the day and started it off by walking down to the Guinness factory and doing the tour. A part of the tour is that you can learn to pour your own pint, and then drink it, or wait till the end and get a free pint at the gravity bar which has a 360 view of Dublin. I don’t drink so Claire started off her day with 2 Guinness pints and I just got to wander around and take pictures of everything for 3 hours.  Actually the Gravity Bar was my favorite part of the entire tour. It wasn’t just because you could see all of Dublin from it, but it had quotes on the windows from James Joyce, who happens to be one of my favorite authors. One of the things I love about Dublin is that it is a literary capital of the country. Unfortunately I didn’t really get to see all I wanted of Dublin since we didn’t have the time, but I’ll be headed back at some point and I just want to walk around and see the different statues and homes of famous authors from Ireland. We did get to see the statue of Oscar Wilde, and as eccentric of a man as he was, his statue of him sitting provocatively on a rock was a little odd, even for him. I guess if that’s how the people of Dublin knew him, then it would make sense, but it just didn’t seem right.

After the Guinness Storehouse we made our way down to the main street for the parade. The streets were lined with so many people who were decorated from head to toe with paraphernalia. The difference between the parade here and the one back home is the lack of drunk people. Granted I’ve only ever seen the parade back home from being in marching band and performing in it, but still, there were so many more families at the parade in Dublin and far less drunk people. The kids who were there were so adorable. There were these two little boys sitting on top of a step ladder so that they could see and they just looked so cute all dressed up. After a while Claire and I realized we were far down on the parade route and that we would be there for a really long time if we waited there. So we walked further up the parade route and stopped across from the grand stand and stood there for a little while. There was the most adorable little ginger girl with an “Irish Princess” tiara and ribbons in her hair. I just melted when I saw her; she was seriously the most precious little girl ever. We stayed in that area for a while but Claire wanted to see if we could catch the parade a little earlier, so we ended up walking even further up the parade route. We finally ended up seeing the parade in the distance so we stopped for a little while and watched what we could. We were in the back so it was hard to really tell what was going on. I recorded the first 20 minutes of the parade but considering where I was standing I’m not entirely sure how much there is to see. I did watch the video that night but fell asleep while doing so and I haven’t looked at it since. I’ll really have to attempt to figure out how to put videos up. I have a bunch, but it’s easier to put up pictures since I know how to do that already. I do remember the video being really shaky though so I apologize. I was standing on the little bar on the back of a ladder to help get some kind of height to my camera in hopes that it would see more than I could. So that really wasn’t helping much. I also can’t stand still for very long.

After a bit of the parade Claire wanted to go get lunch so we headed out and kind of watched the parade that was passing us at the time. We went and got lunch at this crepe shop called Lemon which had so many different kinds of crepes. It was so hard to figure out what to get for lunch, but I settled with a sandwich of some sort and a salad instead of a crepe, only because it seemed a little odd to me to have a crepe for lunch. As we were leaving we ran into a bunch of the other girls and we talked for a little bit before letting them get to their lunch. We went back to the hotel and I ended up falling asleep as I was watching the video from the parade. I was out for a few hours until Katie, Rafa, and Colleen came over. Claire told me they were coming and I was all for it even though I was still sleeping. It gave me a reason to get up though, which was good because I would have been up all night if they hadn’t gotten me up. We hung out in the room until about 11 just paying games while they were all drinking, and me in all my class was drinking water out of a Guinness pint glass I had gotten that day. The games pretty much just turned into a huge heart to heart conversation between the 5 of us. We’ve spent the past 3 months with each other and we’ve gotten to know each other as time has gone on, but that night we all just started talking and pretty much everything came up. It was one of the most interesting nights ever. After our long heart to heart we turned on music from Glee and I sat back and recorded them all singing and dancing to the songs. I’ve been told that for the sake of their dignities I’m not allowed to put up any of those videos, so I won’t, but dancing made them want to go out and find a pub or someplace where we could just go out and dance.

We ended up finding this lounge place and we hung out there for a little while, we had made a deal that no one went anywhere on their own so when we got to the lounge we all eventually had to go to the bathroom. While we were waiting for each other we stood at the base of the stairs and there were a few guys from the states who we ended up talking to. One of them started eavesdropping on our conversation about somewhere to go to dance. He was just being nice and telling us where we could go, and we just started talking. For the first time since I’ve been here I met someone else from CT. Most people ask where I’m from and as soon as I say CT it has to be followed by “it’s next to New York” and then people know where it is. One of the guys happened to actually be a fire fighter from Hartford, so of course we start talking. After a while all 5 of us were finally all together and we thanked the guys and left. They were really nice and unfortunately the place he recommended was full for the night, which on St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t much of a surprise. So we just kept walking down the road to see what we could find and there was another place we found. We get there and the two guys at the door asked something about drinking, to be honest between the music and people inside I really could not hear anything they said to us. We showed them our IDs and they let us in. Actually one of us didn’t have an ID but as soon as they saw the rest of our ages they just let her in with us. We’re all of age, it was just a long night and she forgot her wallet in the hotel. That was certainly an interesting couple of hours we spent in there. It was our last stop and we agreed that it was just a girls night, we stayed together and no guys were allowed to dance with us. The thing with guys here is that they like dancing face to face because if you’re both drunk enough when he goes to kiss you 10 seconds after meeting you, you don’t think about it. So we were doing our best to avoid letting that happen. It was a game of musical spots. We stayed in a circle and every time a guy came up to one of us that person would switch spots with another person in hopes that the guy would take a hint and leave. If that didn’t work the method of actually pushing them away worked fairly well. After that they all wanted to go to BK for drunk food. I have made a deal with myself, under no circumstances, will I ever buy fast food in a foreign country. I refuse to. So we went into BK and I was good about it. I guess personally I just can’t justify going to a fast food restaurant in the middle of Ireland. We headed back to the hotel and Katie and Rafa actually aren’t IFSA students, they were staying in a hostel on the outskirts of town, so after they got their stuff they headed out to their hostel. The next morning we left Dublin and headed back to Cork. It was a short IFSA trip, but definitely worth it. The St. Patrick’s celebration wasn’t over. They actually celebrate starting the day before to the Sunday after, or for a total of 5 days seeing as it isn’t always on a Thursday. So there were still plenty of festivities and things to do around Cork that weekend. Although I can say I really didn’t do a whole lot but hang out with some of the girls in one of the apartments. We had a great St. Patrick’s Day and that was enough for us.

With Love Always