And, Until We Meet Again, May God Hold You in the Hollow of His Hand :)

Sunday was bittersweet because we knew the fun would come to an end soon.  We left Killarney for the Blarney Castle and Blarney Stone and when we arrived we headed straight up to the top to kiss the famous stone.  I have been waiting to do this almost my entire life!  I remember my brothers and I looking it up in our ancient encyclopedias and and thinking that it must be really really scary.  The stairs you had to climb were beyond steep (like maybe 4 inches in width!) and they were so vertical that the handrail literally was a rope tied down.  Once at the top, we got really jittery and nervous because of the way you have to go about kissing the stone ( they couldn't have made it easy of course!)  In order to kiss the stone, you sit down backwards and grab the two bars while being held onto by some random irish guy and essentially hang your head off the side of this castle so that you can kiss the famous blarney stone.  If you happened to slip, you would essentially fall to your death!  I went first and luckily I'm still here to tell about it :)  The story is that when you kiss the stone you get the gift of gab (which I already had lol).  Afterwards we were able to walk around and explore the castle, grounds, and village of Blarney.  We picked up a couple loaves of bread, cheese, a 2 liter bottle of sprite, and cadbury chocolate bars to form an impromptu picnic before loading up the bus to head back to Dublin.  On the way back we passed by the field where they filmed the fight scenes from Braveheart.  We got a little nervous on the way back because our flight was due to leave at 8pm (gate closed at 730pm) and we didn't get back to Dublin until about 6:15 (you are supposed to arrive for international flights 2 hours early).  Luckily Amanda, Christina, Marie, and I were able to split a cab straight to the airport and arrive just in time to board the plane.  After arriving back in London we were once again stuck spending the night there because the trains don't run after 930pm (that's when we arrived).  So we spent the evening working on homework, writing postcards, taking pictures, watching a hot dog stand be built (randomly during the night the airport set up a new hotdog vendor right by where we were camped out), and being silly.  At 4:30 am we were able to catch the train out to Grantham and then a taxi to Harlaxton.  I showered, went to breakfast, and then arrived at my first class at 8:30 am.  What a busy weekend!

May the Rains Fall Softly Upon Your Fields

It was very difficult to wake up Saturday after having such a busy past few days but the thought of seeing more of Ireland pulled me out of bed.  We left at about 9am and headed down many more curvy, hilly, country Irish roads.  We made our first stop at another film village where they filmed "The Field".  I have yet to see this movie but I am really excited to now.  We started heading up in elevation to a land called the Burren.  This area was full of flat rocks and their was even a ancient burial ground we saw that was around the same age as Stonehenge.  As we drove we started down the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  Here we saw the most beautiful (and biggest!) waves I have ever seen.  They were sooo cool!  The sound of the ocean was just so powerful and the way the waves came up and hit the rocks just below the cliff was just amazing.  It was one of those scary/breathtaking moments.  The waves here in Ireland are actually really famous for surfing and here you can see the Aileen's.  We left and then ate in Doolin and I had an amazing bowl of Tomato soup.  From here we headed up to my favorite part of my trip-The Cliffs of Moher (pronounced More).  I can't even describe them, but they are absolutely beautiful (see the picture!).  A panoramic shot of them was actually used for the Harry Potter 6 movie.  Saturday was super windy, especially up on the cliffs so we were having fun trying to hold our hair down :)  Afterwards, we headed to Killarney for the night.  The hostel was nice and that night we went out to a restaurant where I enjoyed some fresh mussels (they were really good!).  We didn't stay out to late though because at this point we were all absolutely exhausted and we needed our rest for day 3 of the tour! 

May the Sun Shine Warm Upon Your Face :)

We woke up today (Friday) in order to get onto our coach by 8:00 am.  We scheduled a 3-day Paddywagon tour of Southern Ireland (pretty much the only chance we had at seeing all the cool stuff outside of Dublin).  It was a little frustrating to see that like 30 other people from Harlaxton had the same idea so our bus was full of Americans.  We left and headed onto the motorway.  As we drove the beautiful countryside became more and more and we finally made a stop in Cong.  Cong is a quaint little village that has a little stream that flows through it and it is also famous because it was the site that they filmed "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne.  I've seen this movie so it was really cool to get to see some of the famous sites of the film.  While in Cong, we followed the river around had fun exploring and then we went out to the ruins of the Cong Abbey.  This was absolutely gorgeous and everything was sooo green :)  It was just like you would picture Ireland to be!  Christina, Amanda, and I even picked out houses there so we can live by each other ;) We loaded back up and then headed towards Galway and into the Connemara are of Ireland.  Here we saw many lakes, rivers, and mountains.  We even stopped at a waterfall where the Erriff river flows into the Atlantic Ocean.  It was really cool.  The next stop on our tour was at Kylemore Abbey.  This was a beautiful building that looked like a castle and it was nestled perfectly at the base of a mountain.  It was neat because if you looked closely, up the side of the mountain there was a statue of Jesus.  Here we ate lunch (I had a Limmerick Ham and Brie Sandwich which was great).  From this point we loaded back up and followed the fjord all the way to Galway, Ireland (Song Galway Girl from P.S. I Love You).  This town was unique and really fun.  We checked into our hostel and then headed to eat.  I ate a wonderful seafood chowder and then we walked around and experienced some of the unique nightlife in Galway.  Live music was awesome there and we had a good time hanging out in the city.  We even met some people from our home away from home (England)!

May the Wind Be Always At Your Back

Upon arrival at the Dublin Airport we now had to find our way by bus into the city centre and find our hostel-Paddy's Palace.  We talked to the tourism office and they pointed us in the right direction and we found ourselves headed into the city.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a map of the bus stops and the bus driver wasn't being very helpful so we had to ask someone where exactly O'Connell street was and how we would know when we arrived there (none of the bus stops were marked either).  We eventually arrived at the hostel and checked in.  This hostel was okay, but our building you had to go outside to get to and you also had to be let in by a person at their front desk (they called it VIP service but really they are just too cheap to fix the door so we can get in!).  We picked our beds and headed out to find a bite to eat before we had to meet Brian and Rita (relatives of Amanda's cousin and also locals of Dublin) at the front gate of Trinity College.  We ate at O'Briens and my sandwich bread was shaped like a shamrock (which was awesome!).  We then left to meet them and we quickly found that they were super friendly and nice.  Rita got us into The Book of Kells (the Gospel in Latin written by Celtic monks around 800 a.d.) for free because she works at Trinity College.  We were amazed by this and also the library at Trinity College.  We spent the rest of the day walking around the city to see the castle, Christ Church Cathedral, Beatty Library (where we saw ancient pages of the bible and other religious documents as well), and even stopped at The Brazen Head Pub (which is where Brian and Rita had their first date!).  It was a really neat day.  We even got to meet Rita's elderly mother who was a character, she told us, "What you can't cure, you must endure".  Finally, Brian and Rita welcomed us into their home and fed us a delicious three course dinner!  It was soo good and I haven't been that full in forever (we didn't realize they would be giving us so much food!).  I wish I could describe what Brian cooked for us, but honestly I didn't know what most of it was!  We had a great time talking to them about our lives, school, and our ancestry from Ireland.  They took us back to the hostel at about 10pm because Amanda and I were exhausted from traveling and staying up pretty much all of the previous night.  It was a great experience though and I am so happy we got to spend time with real Irish folk.  When we got to the hostel we found it just as sketchy as ever.  They let us in and they had no lights on in the hallways so that it was difficult to find our room.  Then we both experienced a sound of scratching while showering (we were like 10 feet from each other) that was creepy as well.  Nevertheless, we got in bed to get ready for our early morning on Friday.

May the Road Rise to Meet You

I'll begin my Ireland trip on Wednesday.  Unfortunately, we had a short week but the entire school had to stay on Wednesday afternoon from 2-4pm for our British Studies test.  I don't understand why, but you would have thought we were taking the ACT or final exams or something because the whole school made a huge deal about this test.  We even got to look at questions from the past exams to study and I felt like although it wasn't easy, it was just as I expected it should be.  I was so relieved to have it over with because everyone studying was stressing me out!  Afterwards, we ate and packed for Ireland.  We had to take a train into London Gatwick Airport on Wednesday night for our 9:40am flight on Thursday because unfortunately, there aren't trains that go early enough in the morning to get us there on time.  Minor detail that was rather annoying but we figured it out and we just had to deal with sleeping in the airport all night (from arriving at 1am until our plane left at 9).  In the train station we met up with another girl from harlaxton headed to France via the same airport so we formed a group and made our way there to camp out.  Unfortunately, we picked a clean spot to sit on the main floor of the terminal that just happened to be by the door to the underground train.  The door kept opening all night and letting in cold air and then they were also doing construction so we really didn't get any sleep.  After a while, we decided to take a walk to warm up and we realized that if you walked upstairs, it was like a sauna compared to downstairs and we were able to snag some bench space to get a couple hours of sleep before checking in.  We checked in and got through security okay (I was randomly searched but it was no big deal).  We eventually boarded the airplane and took another nap as we flew to Dublin.  It was a beautiful sunshining day an it was really cool to see that outside of the airplane window rather than the dark and rain that we typically have experienced.  We even arrived early which was a plus!

"An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."-Henry David Thoreau

Okay, so maybe Saturday's walk wasn't really that early, but we were up and going before pretty much everyone else on campus.  We woke up really early with the plan to just walk in whatever direction away from our manor that we found ourselves drawn to.  This turned out to be a success!  We left around 10:45am with our packed lunches and off we went.  We walked down the lane, out to Harlaxton village and then climbed up a hill going away from town and the other direction from Grantham (the only city we have visited in the immediate area other than Harlaxton).  The hill was intense, but it finally plateaued and we walked along that road until finally we came to the fork in the road.  It was super windy that day and pretty cloudy but we were fortunate enough not to get rained on.  We decided to take the country road into Grantham (sign posted it as another 3.5 miles).  This road was much busier so we had to walk in the muddy grass to avoid being run over by the cars zooming past us.  A guy even stopped and asked if we needed a lift (you do not ask for a ride here).  I'm guessing that means that not very many pedestrians use that route for leisure walking lol.  It was neat to see the country houses as we progressed towards Grantham.  We even passed by another field of sheep, and also saw a game of football (soccer) being played.  We arrived in Grantham and set out to find a place to sit and eat our lunches.  We ended up eating them at the bus stop for lack of any benches or picnic tables in the city.  Afterwards, we stopped in at Morrison's (a grocery store) to pick up a few items.  I purchased some biscuits (actually cookies), and also a bag of crisps (chips in the US) for traveling snacks.  We then left the store and were able to catch the shuttle back to school (which was awesome because our feet were sore after walking like 3 hours)!

Peterborough & a Long Walk

This has been a pretty average school week.  Unfortunately we have classes today (Friday) to make up for the Ireland trip next weekend.  Anyway, I did get to take a pretty fun trip on Wednesday afternoon to Peterborough.  We rode in a double decker coach which was fun except the wind was intense and so it was swaying pretty bad on the top level as we made are way down the A1 (interstate).  When we arrived, we walked around the city centre for a bit which was nice.  It was very similar to the shopping centers at all of the other cities in the UK we have previously visited.  We made sure to stop in at Poundland to pick up a few essentials.  I got a cool UK flag passport holder which was nice because the paper envelope that I previously have been using is on it's last leg!  We then went to the main attraction of the city that truly was impossible to miss, the cathedral.  It was magnificant and unfortunately I do not have any photos of the inside because you weren't able to take any :(  It is a significant point of interest though because the tomb of Katharine of Aragon is housed within the majestic walls.  Furthermore, the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots formerly was in the same cathedral.  It is so cool to get to see first hand things that we are learning about in our British Studies class!  Yesterday (Thursday) my English Novel class took a walking trip while we discussed the novel Jane Eyre.  We took one break at The Gregory pub and cafe to talk about the reading and then some of us went with our professor on a walk about the town of Harlaxton.  It was beautiful.  We walked through a residential are, along the canal, and also through hilly and green pastures.  One really neat thing about England is that their are footpaths leading through their fields so it is possible to walk about the farmland.  It was neat because we got to use a "stile" like Mr. Rochester and Jane do in the book.  All in all, the walk was 7 1/2 miles-->quite a trek!  It was very nice though.  Okay, well I need to get ready to go to my final class for the week so until next time :)