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