To the Land of the Faries...

Last week was fairly uneventful. I had a midterm essay due today and, since I had a weekend trip with my study abroad program, I spent all of last week attempting to write it. Probably the biggest even of the week was finally getting Morocco booked! First I had to deal with some high-school era drama when one person decided to convince everyone else in our group it was too expensive and a week in Greece would be cheaper (which is not actually true) but I used my “Lauren is super excited voice” and told them about all the different things we could do in Morocco, and how the exchange rate is in our favor, and how exotic the country is… and then insisted we go book the tickets as soon as they were all back on board. Everyone is now as super excited as I am, crisis averted. ☺
Anyway, this weekend we went to County Kerry at the Southern tip of Ireland to see the Ring of Kerry. We woke up painfully early Friday morning (7:00 is too early to be awake), got ready to go, met outside our apartments at 8:15, annnnd waited for Dennis who was still asleep. He finally gets outside at 8:25. We’re meeting Brian, our CEA director, at 8:30. Supermac’s, where we’re supposed to be meeting Brian, is easily a 20 minute walk. Oops! Way to go Dennis! So we head off at a brisk pace, and halfway there we see Dennis disappear around the corner, already a few minutes ahead. Fifteen minutes later we get to Supermac’s and see Dennis already sitting there with Brian. Naturally, we gave him a hard time about keeping us waiting and then completely deserting us. Apparently, he felt guilty about making us wait and didn’t want us to be late on his behalf, so he decided not to walk with us. Logic FAIL, Dennis! Luckily Brian is very laid back, and we still had plenty of time before our bus was scheduled to leave, so no harm done.
After everyone arrived we headed over to the bus station, ready for the first leg of our journey: a 3 hour bus ride to Limerick. We had a bit of a layover in Limerick and, since it was still fairly early, we had time to wander around a bit and grab a cup of coffee. Then back on the bus, ready for the next 3 hour bus ride to Killarney in Co. Kerry. In Killarney we ended up having a loooong layover because the tour bus to take us around Kerry was stuck in traffic on the way from Cork, where it was coming from having picked up the rest of the tour group. Since we never knew how much longer until the bus would arrive, we had to spend the entire time at the Killarney bus station, which lost its appeal very quickly. Finally, around 6pm, we got on the tour bus and began the hour and a half trip to Carciveen, where we were spending the weekend.
Carciveen was a very cute, quaint liitle Irish village, and we all loved it. Perhaps part of the charm was the movie-plot story that came out of it. Our good friend Dennis had originally been planning to split away from our group to find the town his grandparents had come from. He knew there was a church there that was named after one of his ancestors, and he knew he still had some relatives living there, though he had never met them. Well wouldn’t you know, that town was Carciveen. The church was called the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church, and is thought to be the only church in the world that is not named after a saint. Daniel O’Connell was known as “The Liberator” and is one of the most famous Irishmen of all time so… pretty important guy. On top of seeing the church dedicated to his great great (great?) grandfather, Dennis walked up to the house his grandparents told him his relatives lived in, knocked on the door, and asked if they knew “Willy Muskrat.” (Great name, right?!) Well, Willy was right inside getting ready for Saturday mass and, after the classic “I’m your cousin, from America,” they invited Dennis right in for a cup of tea. Turns out he also has a cousin who is a first year here at NUIG so he’s going to try to get in contact with him. He also now has somewhere to go for Christmas, since he is staying to travel after the semester ends and was planning on spending Christmas alone in a hotel somewhere. Heartwarming, eh?
Ok, back to my own life now. Friday night, after settling into the Ring of Kerry hotel, we had dinner (salmon with roasted vegetables and a lemon tart for dessert. Yum!) and then a Ceili workshop. A ceili is a traditional irish folk dance, think the line dances and such in movies like Pride and Prejudice. We learned the basic steps, and then four different variations. Our tour guide for the weekend explained to us that each village would have their own variation of the dance, though they are all centered around the same basic steps. It was SOO much fun but absolutely exhausting. We weren’t even going through full dances and we still could barely make it through a few cycles! After the ceili we were all very tired, and knew we had to be up early the next morning, so it was off to bed.
Saturday we drove to Valentia Island, famous for its slate. It is a very small island, but one with absolutely incredible views. We walked up a hill to a cliff and could just see the ocean out in front of us. It was breathtaking. We also stopped at a spot that had a great view of the Skellig Islands. The Skellig Islands are two small islands/giant rocks about twelve miles from the coast of Ireland. Around 500 AD, a group of monks moved out to the larger of the two islands, Skellig Michael, and built a monastery at the peak. It was occupied for a number of generations, until a final Viking attack likely wiped out all the inhabitants. Since the island has no fertile ground to raise crops, and little space to keep cattle or other farm animals, the monks would have had to make the long (and dangerous) journey through the sea back to Valentia to stock up on necessary food items. The ruins of the monastery are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of only two in Ireland, the other being the Hill of Tara. Much to my dismay, we weren’t able to go see Skellig Michael up close. ☹
After our morning tour around Valentia, we headed back to the hotel around 2pm for lunch and a free afternoon. We spent the afternoon napping and then wandering around the town, taking a closer look at the church and peeking into a few of the shops. Later in the night, after dinner, we had a presentation about Gaelic Football, presented by members of two of the All-Ireland champion teams, as well as by one of the most famous footballers in all of Ireland (says Brian… he could barely sit still he was so excited). If you don’t know what Gaelic football is, I would highly suggest youtube-ing it. It’s a strange combination of soccer, rugby, football, and basketball. It’s a very fast-paced game where pretty much anything goes. Brian says there may still be some championship games going on, so we’re going to try to get tickets for a game ☺
After the presentation, we had table quiz night! My team didn’t do so well, but in our defence a lot of the questions were sports related and, more specifically, European sports related, asking who played for which team in what year, and which county football team won this tournament in this year. The “local” team (the presenters stayed around and formed a team) ended up winning. It was still fun though, I quite enjoy trivia.
Sunday was spent on a morning walk to some nearby rock forts from the first century, then a bus ride around the Ring of Kerry for the afternoon, ending back in Killarney. Sunday was very foggy, so visibility wasn’t that great, but the scenery was still beautiful and very unique. It was definitely reminiscent of every “fairy glenn” or “leprechaun’s forest” you’ve heard of. While driving around we even passed the “Leprechan Crossing” sign me, Nick and Alanna have a picture with from when we came a few years ago. I was very disappointed we didn’t get to stop, but it did remind me of when we came last time and Nick mysteriously toppled over backwards down the hill. Certainly pushed by a leprechaun. Probably because he was making fun of Alanna or something. Either way, it was a fond memory ☺
We finally made it back to Killarney, and began the (exhausting) five hour bus marathon back to Galway. We ended up arriving in the city 40 minutes early, which was wonderful in and of itself. But then we found out that Bus Eireann, the bus service we’d been using, runs a complimentary bus service to Corrib Village and Gort na Corrib, two of the student apartment complexes, on Sunday nights because so many Irish students go home for the weekends. The bus took us directly from the bus station to right in front of our apartment cluster, as close as you could possibly get. Not having to walk the forty minutes from the bus station back to the main entrance of Corrib was absolutely wonderful, and allowed for the “it’s good to be home” collapse on the bed come that much earlier. Sunday was thus ended in deep sleep within twenty minutes of arriving back home.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend. Now I’m looking forward to this weekend! We have a long weekend because of a bank holiday on Monday so me and the girls from my program are jetting off to the Netherlands for a few days! We have a lot planned so i’ll be sure to update again once I get back!
Hope all is well, love and miss you all!

<3 <3 <3

A long overdue post...

 

First off: Sorry this next post has taken sooooooo long for me to put up!  Every time I’ve gotten time to sit down and write this, something else has come up that I’ve had to take care of… minor things like grocery shopping or a society meeting or, you know, class.  But now I’m done with classes for the day and I only have a tiny bit of homework so I can put that off for later J

 

Life has been busy as usual here.  In addition to classes, my friends and I have spent a considerable amount of time lately trying to plan some trips outside of Ireland!  Over the past month we have visited Blarney and Cork, the Aran Islands, and Dublin (to be in a Dublin pub for the toast to Arthur Guinness, celebrating the 250^th anniversary of Guinness)!  This is all in addition to exploring Galway itself, partaking in the Oyster festival (at which I discovered that I actually quite like oysters… hooray for new discoveries!) and finally scoping out which are the best pubs and which are better left to tourists and freshers (the overly-rowdy first years).  I am super excited about the trips we have planned, though.  After about 4 hours on Monday night (thank you, slow internet) we booked the cheapest combination of flights to the Netherlands.  At 1:30 am, we decided to put off booking a hostel until the next day.  This time meeting on campus with a much stronger internet connection, we researched different housing options.  Everything from hostels to hotels to canal boats to apartments.  Dennis finally found the cheapest option, an apartment, complete with kitchen, that would fit all of us and would only cost 14 euro a night per person.  BOOK IT! We all shouted.  Then Niki wanted to just see the pictures so we would know what it looks like… Niki take his computer to look at, I look over her shoulder, and notice one tiny little detail… the apartment is located in Wroclaw…POLAND.  Luckily we caught it before we booked, and we now know not to ever leave planning details up to Dennis.  Anyway, we finally managed to get everything booked, for the right city, and we’re heading off at the end of October, taking advantage of a bank holiday giving us a day off of class.  It should be a good weekend, everyone is actually really excited about going to the museums so our next project is to work out an itinerary with everything we want to do so we stay organized, don’t miss out on anything, and work in a trip to the Efteling amusement park as well because everyone wants to ride in the cannibal pots and eat poffertjees.  Yum!

 

The following weekend I’m leaving everyone here behind and heading off to Barcelona, where I’m meeting up with one of my sorority sisters who is studying abroad in Rome, and then we are making our way to Valencia to meet up with another abroad ADPi!  That weekend will be the Valencia Tennis Open so we may try to catch a couple tennis matches (rumor has it Andy Roddick will be playing… no word on Rafa yet, though).  Valencia also apparently has the biggest aquarium in Europe so we’ll most likely go see that, too!

 

The last trip we have planned (so far) is a weeklong trip to… MOROCCO at the beginning of December!  As most of you probably know, Morocco has been at the very top of my list of places I want to visit for a long time, so finally being able to go, and at a really good price, is super exciting!  We will be staying in Agadir as our “home base.”  We talked to a travel agent about going to Morocco and she said it’s actually among the top tourist destinations for people from Europe, and specifically for people from Ireland.  Agadir is on the coast, so we’ll certainly fit in a beach day, and then we can arrange tours to Casablanca, Marrakech, Fes, etc through the hotel.  We can also arrange camel tours into the desert so… that’s a must!  I’ll certainly have more details about that trip as we get closer!

 

Aside from planning trips, we have also been exploring Ireland, as I mentioned before.  We recently had a very busy weekend, spending a few days in Dublin for the Guinness festival, going to the Aran Islands, and exploring the Galway Oyster festival.  Dublin and the Oyster festival were both really neat, and we’ll be returning to Dublin in a few weeks through our study abroad program.  The Aran Islands were also through out abroad program, and were absolutely amazing.  We rented bikes, which was an adventure in and of itself since most of us haven’t ridden bikes in years.  After a couple crashes (into walls, each other, thorny bushes, and even a car or two (luckily both parked)) we made it out onto the loooong road around the largest of the islands, Inish Mor.  We were very lucky and got a fairly clear, relatively warm day!  While riding around the island we stopped at the old lighthouse, which gave spectacular views of the entire island.  We also biked up to Dun Aolaugh, a bronze age hill fort that uses a cliff face as one wall of defense.  Naturally, when you have ten 19-22 year old students ready to explore EVERYTHING, they’re going to want to lean over the edge of the cliff and see the ocean crashing against the rock face below…  After about 20 minutes of this… and countless pictures trying to get the cliffs, and the ocean, and the STEEP drop off into the picture, our study abroad director had to excuse himself and go where he couldn’t see us anymore.  Later we asked why he left… he couldn’t stand watching us without worrying we would fall.  Oops!  Mental note: don’t do anything adventurous… or potentially dangerous… in front of Brian. 

 

All the societies have now started to pick up.  I joined a couple different ones, and have a “meet and greet” for the archaeology society tonight!  Fun fact: the head of the archaeology department here is named… Dr. Jones!  I am amply amused by this and now have a great desire to rent Indiana Jones.  Okay, back to societies… I also joined the Film Society, a society that watches films, runs workshops on making them, etc.  Last week they showed three films in three nights.  I went to the Tuesday night film with a friend and saw… Twilight!  Always an amusing choice.  The best part however is that I stopped by the vending machines to get a snack for during the movie.  As I’m looking through the options-potato chips, sodas, candy bars-I come across a… MORO BAR!  Now, I first had a Moro bar in NEW ZEALAND and haven’t been able to find one since.  They’re not sold in the US, or in Europe (so I thought), or even in Australia, so you can imagine my surprise!  Naturally I bought it, and googled it when I got home (I was too nervous to try it in case it wasn’t a real Moro bar).  Lucky day for me, turns out they’re sold in two countries: New Zealand and Ireland!  Random? Yes. But oh so exciting and delicious.  They’re a bit different from the original, but still yummy so I’ll be sure to bring a bag of them home… and actually share them this time since I always rave about them.  (Side note: I did bring a bag home with me from New Zealand all those years ago… and I fully intended on sharing them!  But they were just so delicious…).

 

Now lets see… last bit of information… I finally got registered with the Garda  (immigration), which means… no more threat of being deported!  I can stay!  Hooray!  J

 

Well I guess that’s about all… nothing much planned for this weekend…possibly a day trip out into the country or something.  Going out for dinner tomorrow night at a multi-ethnic food place for my 21^st birthday!  My roommate’s birthday is actually on Friday too so we’re doing a big joint party extravaganza… well, dinner and then out to a pub.  Very excited!

 

Love you all and hope all is well!

 

<3