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

Killary or Killarney?!

The weekend right before St. Patrick's Day we had another IFSA trip and this time it was their "Adventure" Weekend in Killary. Except none of us had ever heard of Killary before and thought that it was just a typo and they meant Killarney, but no, they definitely meant Killary.

Now, IFSA isn't great at giving us details about what we're doing. They like to tell us where and when they are picking us up and when they will have us back. That leaves a lot of questions about what we're doing and where we're going. We got picked up on Friday and had to stop in Limerick to pick up their 4 students and then we were headed to Killary. We knew it was a long trip and I don't usually stay awake very long in vehicles because I get motion sickness. I was sitting in the back row with Colleen and Claire. Since their coach buses don't have bathrooms, the last row has 5 seats to it. I was trying to sleep but it wasn't really working out and there was this massive space between the last row and the one in front of it. What do I do? I threw my rain coat on the ground and curled up in a ball on the floor and slept. It was a lot easier than sleeping on the floor of a bus on a UCMB trip. After so long they usually stop and let us have about 20 minutes to go get food or use the bathroom or just stretch if we need to. I usually just stay on the bus and sleep, but we had to switch buses so they kicked us all off. It's already a little sketchy that IFSA doesn't really tell us what we're doing but we're literally in the middle of nowhere behind a random little building, switching buses. We were all so confused. If you looked around the building you realize it's a gas station and a little convenient store. I think there was even some kind of restaurant there too, but that was it. It didn't matter where you looked, that was just it. A random little building in the middle of nowhere and we're switching buses. You would think they were smuggling us all, it was just so bazaar. To make things even better, the rest of the road trip there was the worst bus ride I had ever been on. We were on winding, unpaved roads, because it's the middle of nowhere. Thankfully the rest of that weekend made up for the bus rides. Also the bus we switched to no longer had a giant space in front of the last row so I lost my sleeping spot. At that point all I could do was laugh because everything was just so ridiculous.

We got out to Killary and there's snow... Like real snow, in the middle of nowhere in Ireland, and there were mountains. I was so confused, it didn't look like we were still in Ireland. Geography really isn't my thing, so I had no clue that there were mountains in Ireland. Then again I'm also the person who thinks of it as a diamond, but still I wasn't the only surprised person about the mountains, so it was okay. We get to this building out in the mountains and it's the only one. It was the Killary Adventure Center. The view was stunning. They were located right on a lake in the valley between a few snow-capped mountains. They had acres and acres of land all to themselves to do all of their activities. It was a beautiful place to go for a fun weekend. As always we got there later on in the evening so we pretty much got our room keys and then had dinner. We were the first of the IFSA groups to get there so once we put out bags down we got to sign up for our activities for Saturday.

Our options were:

Ringo(tubing)/ Gorge Walking
Kayaking/ Gorge Walking
High Ropes/ Laser Combat
Zip Line/ Tower
High Swing/ Rock Wall
Clay Pigeon Shooting/ Archery
and maybe a couple others.

They also had one choice which they had to take down because IFSA realized that their insurance doesn't cover it. Of course it's the one thing I was super excited for: Bungee Jumping! I was so upset when they came back and told us we weren't allowed to do it. So I switched to the next best thing; guns and arrows. I went Clay Pigeon Shooting first thing in the morning and then we did archery. It's so funny because the instructor was asking us about who has ever held a gun, shot a gun, or who even owns one. I think only one or both of the guys said that they had and the instructor was surprised. He started telling us about how everyone in Ireland thinks that every American owns a gun and that we just go around killing each other with them. Pretty much that we're a bunch of cowboys. So he got out 12 and 20 gauge rifles for us to shoot with and he was teaching us how to hold them and use them safely. I learned that day that the bigger the gauge, the smaller the gun. Why on earth that makes sense, I have no clue.Normally I'm the kind of person who will go all out with trying new things and I'll go with the bigger challenge, but not with those guns. I took the 20 gauge and was plenty happy with it. The guys made bets over the who ever got the most points from shooting the clay pigeons and us girls just had our fun with it. Colleen put those boys to shame. It was a beautiful thing, really. So after this semester we all decided that she's dropping out of school and joining the Marines so that she can become a sniper. For her first time ever handling a gun she was amazing. It was really fun to learn how to shoot a gun and I can proudly say I at least hit a few of the clay pigeons.  Once we finished there we moved on to archery which was really cool. I had done it before so I kind of knew what  I was doing, but I was still bad at it. The great thing about it was that it was all in fun.

After lunch we had another round of activities and Colleen and I were together for high ropes and laser combat. Neither of us are really height loving people, but the laser combat made it worth it. We did the crate challenge. I'm not very good at describing this so I'm sorry if it makes no sense. We both had a tower that we had to build and we had to build them side by side because we were on top of them as we built them. We were using plastic beer crates that weren't very big. Every time one of us had to add on to our tower we had to stand together on the other person's tower. Make sense? I hope so. We got up to 21 crates between our two towers when I lost my balance moving for her to get on my tower and our towers both swung out then back in and crashed. It was a lot of fun though and after it was all done and over with we got to go to laser combat. Usually when you think of laser combat/tag you think of a dark room with black lights and people running everywhere. This was a bog where they built a military type base and we got camo jackets and hats to wear and the entire bog was a war zone. The first game was every man for himself, which I somehow managed to win. It came down to Colleen and I who were both sitting in these little wooden bases shooting at each other through the little windows in the wood. I won simply out of stupid luck. We talked about it afterward and honestly it didn't make sense to either of us how it worked out, but it did. The next two games we were split into teams and we did one game where they wanted to see what team would die first and then we played capture the flag. On our way back to return our guns we played VIP where one person has 3 body guards and one life. The rest of us are assassins trying to kill the VIP before they get back to the shed. It was a lot of fun.

OH! I just realized I left out what we did on Friday night. We had a pub quiz after dinner, which is pretty much like a game of trivial pursuit that they play at pubs. Haha just remembered that we did that. After laser combat was dinner and then a "disco". When we think disco we think Saturday Night Fever and disco dancing. Here it's just what they call a dance. they cleared out an area and had a dj there and it was pretty much like a typical Thursday night at a pub, except it was Saturday.

Before we left on Sunday we got to do one more set of activities and I had signed up to do the Zip Wire and Tower, but I wasn't really feeling it that morning. So I switched and did the high ropes and laser combat again. With the high ropes I did the challenge wall this time and normally I don't like climbing anything like a rock wall. I hit a point and all I want to do is get down, so to be doing the challenge wall wasn't exactly the smartest decision ever. I did it with Susan and we kept each other going and we both got up to the climbing net at the very top so it was an accomplishment for us both.

It really was a great weekend and I got to learn how to do a couple new things. It's trips like those that really let all of us hang out together and just have a great time doing something besides class work. I love hanging out with the girls. Unfortunately a few of them aren't IFSA people, but for those of us who are we really enjoy it.

With Love Always

A day on the Coast

So I just managed to lock my backpack shut and I can't figure out how to undo it, so I guess I'll do this now instead of later. Haha to answer the question about how i locked my backpack shut, well I'm not entirely sure. I was trying to figure out how to discreetly have it locked for when I'm traveling in April and I got it locked, but I can't get the lock out of my bag to unlock it. So yeah, it's currently locked. I'm also weeks behind on this so I guess it gives me a reason to work on this for now.

I honestly don't even know where I am in this anymore. I did London, which is good cause that was a lot to remember. I know I've put up a bunch more pictures from different things as well. OH! Okay, babbling sometimes help me figure things out and I know where I am now. The weekend after London we had our IFSA Adventure Weekend. The day right before that I went on a Paddy Wagon tour to the Cliffs of Moher, which are known for being in The Princess Bride and more recently Harry Potter 6. It was a lot of fun. Not only did we go to the cliffs but we got to see Bunratty Castle and we went to a few beaches along the Galway Coast. We had to go to Limerick first, though, and pick up a few people from there. Right across the water from where we stopped was St. John's Castle. Even though it was just supposed to be a pick up point our driver let us get out and take pictures. It was a beautiful day out too so when we stopped anywhere it was clear and you could see everything. It stayed that way until we got to the cliffs. When we got there it put UConn weather to shame. We had one rehearsal last season for marching band where in the middle of it we got nailed for about 5 minutes of rain/hail. To be honest I don't entirely know which one of those it was but it was just nasty weather. It was like that at the cliffs but a little worse, and the only thing that ever makes the weather worse is the wind that goes with it. When we first arrived and our driver was telling us about where to go and everything, the wind was pretty much rattling the bus every time it blew. It was sunny and gorgeous out by the looks of it, but that wind made me a little hesitant to really leave the building we had to go into first. I went outside anyways and just kind of made do. When the wind really wasn't blowing it was absolutely beautiful outside. It was a great day and I love being able to see different landscapes around Ireland. They take so good care of their country and the way that it looks. I've absolutely loved everything that I've seen of it in the past 3 months.

Wow, that was a short post. Hopefully the next few will be just like that.

With Love Always

I know I'm bad at this.

I apologize for my lack of blogging. I have an exam this week so I'm studying. I'll get caught up at some point. Especially before April since that will be nothing but blog posts of pretty much every day sine I'll be all over the place. So by the end of March I'll be caught up... I hope.

With Love Always

Off to Never Land

LONDON! Haha I know I’m finally getting around to it. I would have yesterday if I wasn’t sick/ recovering from the weekend. When I wasn’t in class I was sleeping and today I’m doing better so I think I was just exhausted. But I’ll get to my weekend later on. So it’s been a little over a week since I was in London so I’ll remember what I can.

Around 5 am Thursday morning we all left University Hall and headed up towards Katie and Rafa’s place to catch the taxi. Some of the girls had slept over there so it was just the rest of us who had to meet up with them. At 5 am in Cork you would think that it was the middle of winter. Everything was covered in frost, it was the coldest I had ever known Cork to be and it was dead silent. The walk to Katie’s is only about 15 minutes so it wasn’t too bad. When we got there we paged their apartment and whoever answered the phone sounded pretty much dead. It was really amusing. At least to me it was, I didn’t sleep the night before since we had to be up so early, so I found most anything to be a bit funnier than it probably was. The taxi rides weren’t bad. Since it was really early there was no one on the road and it was a 10 minute ride. We weren’t able to actually get one big taxi for all of us so we split 2 smaller taxis.  When we got to the airport everything went fairly quickly since there weren’t a whole lot of people travelling at that time. We were flying ryanair and they give very specific details as to how EVERYTHING must be done. We only paid 30 euros for a round trip and we saved money by just using a carry-on bag for all of our things. I’m pretty sure we all were outside of the dimensions they gave for our bags, but that early in the morning, as long as you don’t have anything illegal, they don’t really care.

As we were waiting in line to board the plane the sun was coming up and we could see the fog that was covering the ground. It was really cool to watch as it lifted and you could see the frost covered ground. Ever since I’ve been in Ireland I’ve found a greater fascination with nature and just watching as things happen to it. I guess when you’re surrounded by fields and fields of green grass that happens. At UConn I think they’ve officially gotten rid of most of their green grass since they built (or are building) on the lawn behind the union. Either way I’m fascinated by nature now. The flight was great! Once we were in the air and the pressure from takeoff had gone away I was out cold. The flight was only 1.5 hours and I woke up when I felt the plane touch the ground. It was so nice. Before I had fallen asleep I was playing a pretty large game of dots with Bryan. Try playing dots with an entire sheet of graph paper. It takes FOREVER, but it’s a lot of fun. When we got off the plane we went through customs, which to be completely honest, was a joke, and also very disappointing. It was literally one person standing there checking our boarding passes and letting us go through. There was no passport check, no anything. Just one lady checking our boarding passes to make sure we got off at the right airport. The disappointing part was that there was no stamp. That’s always the cool part about passports, you can look through them and see where you’ve been, but that’s only possible if you get a stamp from that place. We didn’t get stamps from London and we covered the fact that it would be illegal to find a stamp to put in our passports, so we all just got over it and let it go.

Here comes the fun part. Our group ended up getting split up into 2 groups because we were all on different buses to Central London where we were getting metro passes and heading to our hostels. It worked out that we were separated into our hostel groups. We weren’t all able to stay at the same hostel so we picked 2 that were literally a minute away from each other. So one group left on their bus which was 20 minutes ahead of our bus and it was the last time we saw them before later that evening. Since we pretty much had an entire day to do stuff around London, our group headed out to Tottenham Court Road and we met the head of the UConn in London program. She was this sweet little British woman and she was such a character, it was great. We hung around for tea and coffee before heading out to the British Museum. I honestly can’t even remember how long we spent in the museum; all I know is that we set a time to meet back in the main lobby area. Since it was a while ago I can’t really remember a lot of what I saw. I just remember that there wasn’t enough time for me to go through and take pictures of everything like I did at the Ulster museum, so instead I took pictures of the things I thought were really cool. After that we headed back to our hostel and found out where the other girls were staying since Danni and Katie were going to Les Mis that night. Apparently the rest of the group had decided to just sleep once they got to their hostel so they had just gotten up when we got there. Danni and Katie went off to their show and Bryan and I had agreed to go back for a human rights lecture at Tottenham Court Road. Oh just for clarification most of the places that I’m referring to I’ll refer to by their metro stop since London is massive and I don’t really know where we were to be exact a lot of times. I would love to tell you all about the Human Rights lecture but I’m a horrible person and as soon as I sat down my brain shut down and I kept nodding off. The parts of it that I can remember were so interesting and I wish I could recall everything but I can’t. Although I will say I don’t think I could ever look at a Chiquita banana the same ever again. It’s one of those things that just make you think about what happens behind the scenes of different companies. I remember at least listening to a video about the Chiquita massacres of their workers. The thing about it is that you can’t really help what happens in other countries and you can’t stop it, but you think about it every time you see that product or you see a commercial for it. I really do wish I remembered more of the lecture. Afterwards we all went out to dinner and I met a few random UConn students and it’s so funny to talk to them and realize we know some of the same people. As big as UConn is, it’s still a small world. After dinner we headed back to the hostel and I have to say I was out cold. I ended up getting up really late and missed breakfast, but it worked out that I still had part of a baguette from the day before. Okay so random moment, but honestly it’s going to be so weird to go back home and not eat as much bread as I have been here. You can just walk into a store and get a baguette for a euro or less and walk out and that’s it. They aren’t little baguettes (those are actually called pains, it’s French, I think), but they’re at least 400 grams each and it’s just so easy to grab one and eat it as you go. I’m also pretty much considered like the cookie monster of bread to the girls. It’s really amusing, I’ve started realizing that I’m a part of a lot of random jokes to them, it’s so weird. Haha so yeah that’s just my random little moment about bread.

Friday in London was spent doing pretty much everything that the typical tourist to London would do. We headed to Westminster and as soon as we got out of the metro Big Ben and Parliament were right in front of us. I was so excited. After taking a bunch of pictures and walking even further down one of the streets we made it to the Supreme Court. Go figure, free admission to just go wander around inside. I’m actually really curious as to whether or not you can do that in the U.S. I highly doubt it, but it would be really cool to be like, oh hey, I just wandered around the Supreme Court for a while. Haha, but yeah we wandered around the Supreme Court for a little while and got to go into a couple of the court rooms and look around. They had security at every door that would open the doors for you and then follow you into the courtrooms just to be safe. After the courthouse we made our way over to the Westminster Abbey which was astonishing. You can’t take pictures inside of it, which was fine, it was just magnificent to go inside and look around. The architecture here in Europe is so detailed and elaborate and I understand why they take so much pride in their buildings. Especially buildings that are as well known and important to them as the Abbey. We continued our walk around the area and over to the bridge on the other side of Big Ben. On one side of the bridge you can see Parliament and Big Ben and off in the distance is part of the city of London. On the other side of the Bridge is The London Eye and the Millennium Bridge is across from the one we were standing on. For those who may not know, The London Eye is pretty much a massive ferris wheel that you can go up in and you can see all of London from it. We didn’t go up in The Eye because we were already on the ground and seeing what we wanted to of London. I’m going to probably spell this wrong, but after spending time at Westminster we took a walk down to Trafalgar Square. There were these really pretty fountains there and I liked the little dolphin statues in them that were squirting water from their mouths. The National Galleries are also at Trafalgar Square so we went in and had a look around. All I’m going to say about all of these museums here is, they’re massive mazes. Someone seriously had a lot of fun drawing out the blueprints for these building because everything is just a maze and you can get lost or walk through the same room multiple times and not even realize it. Since it was a gallery you can’t take pictures in there either so there really aren’t many pictures of a lot of the museums because you’re not allowed to take them.

Since we were making our way through London it only made sense for our next stop to be Buckingham 

Palace. We walked through St. James Park on our way there and I’m really glad we did because there were all sorts of birds just walking around on the grass. There were geese and different kinds of ducks, pigeons, swans, seagulls, and all sorts of other birds just coexisting in this park. There were SQUIRRELS! I don’t think you understand how excited I was about the squirrels. In Cork there are birds and I only know that because I hear them every morning chirping away, but there are no bugs or squirrels or any kind of visible animal in Cork. So it was really exciting to see animals in general, but being a husky, there’s always going to be a special love for squirrels. We have them all over UConn and they are some of the friendliest squirrels ever, they just come up and walk beside you and they won’t harm you. So it’s always exciting to see squirrels. We made it to the palace and to be completely honest I think I was more taken by the statue in front of the palace than the palace itself.

There really isn’t a lot to tell about some of the things we saw because we pretty much just went to them, took pictures and moved on. I’m actually drawing a blank as to what we did next. It’s between King’s Cross station and the Tower of London. Haha okay so if my pictures are right we did the Tower of London next. That was really cool and I wish that they hadn’t dried up the moat that used to be around the tower. It would have been so cool to see an actual castle with a moat around it. We walked around the tower and saw the outside. It was getting kind of late and there was still a lot that we wanted to do that night so we didn’t end up going inside, but the Tower is where the crown jewels are held. While we were there we also got to see the Tower Bridge and London Bridge. Just for clarification the Tower Bridge is the one with the two towers on it that is actually more famously known as a symbol of London. The London Bridge actually isn’t that exciting. It’s just in the song London Bridge is Falling Down. People are known for mistaking the two and thinking that London Bridge is the one with the towers, but it is not. We crossed the Tower Bridge towards the South Bank and then ended up walking right back to the North end because King’s Cross Station was in that direction. For those who don’t know about King’s Cross Station, it’s where Harry Potter gets on the train for Hogwarts at Platform 9 ¾. We found the platform and took pictures of it. That’s really the only reason why we went, just to take pictures of the platform. By the time we were done with that it was evening and we headed back to have dinner before heading out to see Westminster and Piccadilly Circus at night.

One thing I’ve noticed is that they like to light up their important buildings or sites with really cool colors when it gets dark out. Big Ben and Parliament just had simple lights on them because they are magnificent just the way they are. The London Eye and the building next to it though were very colorfully lit up. It was kind of chilly though so we didn’t stay there for too long. We took the metro to Piccadilly Circus which is pretty much the Times Square of London. So we went to take some pictures of it at night and then headed back to our hostels. It was a very relaxed night.

Saturday I will say was my favorite day in London. It started off at the Victoria & Albert Museum just kind of as a time killer. At 2:30 was The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theater. All I’m going to say is that it was absolutely beyond phenomenal. I had never seen Phantom actually performed on stage I had only seen the movie, which I will say is amazing as well, but to actually see it performed on stage was incredible. Right now that’s the only thing I can think about and I can’t remember what we did afterwards. It was the most wonderful 2.5 or 3 hours ever. By the time we left the theater most things were closing so there wasn’t a whole lot to do. We ended up heading towards the South Bank to see St. Paul’s Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe. Oh! Actually that reminds me, so originally we were all planning on going to see Macbeth at The Globe, but seeing as how it was a free performance tickets were pretty much gone the second they went out for reservation. That’s why I ended up going to see Phantom instead because we weren’t able to go see the play at The Globe. Actually I have to thank Sarah Ribeiro and Christina Quental because there were a lot of plays playing on the West End and they pretty much decided on Phantom for me. After we saw the outside of the Globe we headed over to Harrod’s, which is pretty much the mall for rich people. We didn’t go because we wanted to buy things but just for the sake of looking around. The most exciting thing I found in there were these giant teddy bears that were taller than me. I’m sure they were about 7 feet tall. We didn’t spend too much time in there because we got there about 20 minutes before closing. Apparently when Harrod’s closes the metro that goes straight to it closes as well. So we had to go find another metro entrance to go in. On our way back to the hostel we stopped at The Hard Rock Café and looked around the shop. I was very intrigued by the touch board they had with different pictures floating around it. When you touched a picture it would get bigger and tell you about it and the other pictures in the background would change to things that were relevant to the picture you chose. I read a lot about The Beatles (of course).

I apologize if I’m skimming over things. I have about an hour before I have to go to Shakespeare and I really want to get this post finished.

Sunday was probably the most relaxed day that we all had. We met in the morning and walked through Hyde Park to get to the Museum of Natural History. It was a nice day to walk through the park. We saw the sky mirrors and also the statues that were in the park. There was a really big one that I can honestly say I don’t remember who it was for. I think it was for Albert but I could be very mistaken about that. We spent hours in the Natural History Museum, it was really cool to walk around and see everything. It was all interactive or just designed in a way that I was very intrigued by everything. Once we had seen everything that we wanted to in the museum Colleen and Rafa went to a Dr. Who show. Honestly I can say that I have no clue who that is or what that’s all about. I guess it’s some kind of British Comedy show with David Beckett. So they went to see that. I ended up going to the Science Museum afterwards. It was really confusing in there for a while because part of the building has 5 floors and the other part only has 3. My favorite floor was the one with the plastic on it because they had these long strips of red plastic hanging from the ceilings. It looked liked the things that a car goes through first at a car wash. I wish I had a better way to describe it than that, but me being me, I decided to walk through them because it just seemed like fun. Of course the only issue with that is that they surround exhibits and there are also random support beams that they cover, so I ran the risk of walking into something. I didn’t though, which was good, and I enjoyed walking around and getting lost in all of them.

Once we had seen everything in the Science Museum we walked back through Hyde Park to see everything else that was there. We walked through the Kensington Gardens where I had a lot of fun feeding the squirrels. You weren’t supposed to feed any of the animals in the garden but I really wanted to play with the squirrels so I took out a tiny piece of bread and they would come up and at least sniff what was in my hand. It was the closest I had ever gotten to a squirrel and I was having so much fun with it. It ended though when one of the squirrels reached up to grab the bread out of my fingers and scratched me. I know it wasn’t intentional but that was when I decided it would be good to just leave them be. I tried to be nice and threw the bread to the squirrel but a pigeon scared it away and stole the bread. I had to laugh at the irony of it. After we were done playing with the squirrels we headed towards Kensington Palace which is currently under construction so there wasn’t a whole lot that you could still see. So I took pictures of what I could see and then moved on, mainly because I was more excited to go find the Peter Pan statue that was on the other side of the park. On the way there I got distracted with taking pictures of all of the birds that were surrounding the little lakes in the park. I believe that one of the lakes was a memorial to Princess Diana. We also fed the ducks and Swans that were there which got interesting because I’m willing to throw the bread to them but not let them eat out of my hand, but I tried to let some of them eat out of my hand and it just didn’t work out. They would get really close and I would get nervous and drop the bread for them. On the way to Peter Pan there were the sky mirrors which were really cool because the sky was so blue that day and had clouds scattered everywhere. We continued to walk along the river until we found Peter Pan. I was so excited and I’m pretty sure I spent most of the time in that area. I love Disney, so to find Peter Pan was so exciting.

On the way out of the park there were the Italian fountains which were really pretty. We walked around them for a little bit, but honestly it was cold and we were still quite a ways from the hostel. After we left the park it was about 20 minutes back to the hostel so we walked along and saw the street artists who were selling their paintings. Some of the pictures were so beautifully done and there was one person who had paintings of the beach and he used actual pebbles as a part of the painting. It was just a nice, relaxing walk back. We didn’t really do anything that night because we had to catch a bus to the airport at 2:30 in the morning. So we just got Thai food and hung out for the rest of the night. We got back into Cork around 8 am on Monday morning and still had classes and everything else to attend to that day. I have classes with some of the girls and it was just so funny to get into our classes and we just knew how exhausted we all were from London, but it was totally worth it. We had a great weekend.

Well I was able to finish this with 20 minutes to spare before my Shakespeare Class. So I will be heading out really soon. Hopefully before I leave for Dublin in the morning I will get the rest of my posts done. Now that London is covered the rest of them should be fairly short. I apologize for the length of this one.

With Love Always

I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

So now it’s fun story time. I always like getting the boring things out of the way first. So these past couple of weeks have actually been quite busy with travelling and seeing sites and just getting around parts of Ireland and London. I actually had a friend from home here for two weeks and I showed him around parts of Ireland and he joined the girls and me on our trip to London. Cork isn’t really a touristy place. Outside of Blarney Castle, there are no major sites to see here. There are a few distilleries and museums in the area but it is mainly just a little city on the river. The first week that Bryan was here I actually had my education and welfare paper to work on so we really didn’t do much since I had to finish that. We did go out to the Cork City Gaol (Jail) which is now a museum where you can do a self- guided tour. It was really neat to go out there and look around and hear about a lot of the history behind Cork. There are wax models all over the jail to help make things seem a bit more lifelike and to be honest it just made it seem a bit more scary. The faces on some of the people were very frightening faces, and in my opinion very unnecessary faces for them to be making. We were handed walkmans to listen to on the self-guided tour, it explained the different parts of the jail and what was going on in different places. I honestly was so surprised when I was handed the walkman. I can’t say I’ve seen or held one of those in a really long time and it came with the realization that I use to use those when I was little. It’s crazy to think of where technology has come from and where it’s at right now. I’m only 19 and it felt like it was so long ago that walkmans and CD players were such a big deal. Now everyone has all kinds of different mp3s, ipods, itouches, and istuff pretty much. It was just really interesting to see that they still used walkmans and cassette tapes to do the tours. So we did the tour and walked around the jail, which from the outside pretty much looks like a castle. Like always, there are all sorts of pictures of that.

Speaking of pictures I actually might as well cover this while I remember. So the way that I’ve been doing things is that I create a folder on my computer that gets uploaded to my blog through a program and it really just makes my life easier. The folders only hold up to 1,000 pictures each so each time I fill one I’ve just been making a new folder that says Ireland and then the number folder that it is. Then today I decided that I was going to scrap that whole thing and separate out all of the pictures that I didn’t take in Ireland and put them in separate albums. So right now I’m redoing about 4 photo albums so a lot of my pictures aren’t up yet. So things will be clearly labeled as to where the pictures are from. All of the Ireland pictures are in the Ireland albums and right now the only other place I’ve been to is London. So the London pictures are in the London albums. So those should all be up by the end of the weekend I hope. I’m on another IFSA trip so I’m writing blog posts and uploading pictures when I find the time to. So for now things will just kind of go up whenever I finish them or have internet access to put them up. I also apologize for the massive amounts of pictures that are up there. I know it’s a lot, trust me I got through all of them before I put them up so that I can get rid of any bad ones or even fix them up. I’m also working on getting videos up on here since I have a few of those as well. It’s actually really late and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. This is it for now. I will hopefully cover all of London in the next post (I apologize ahead of time; it’s going to be a long one). After London I’ll do the Cliffs of Moher post and then I’ll cover this weekend and be caught up as far as what’s going on. Next week is St. Patrick’s Day and I’ll be in Dublin for the celebration so that will be the next big thing for me to cover. This list is really more for me than you. I’ll be able to look back at this post and figure out what else I need to write about and it just helps my brain function a little better. So it’s bed time now but I’ll continue to get caught up on things soon.

With Love Always