Hi everyone! I'm now in my third week in Dublin, so let me fill you in on what happened this past week. The foundation course if officially over, and the last day was kind of sad because my favorite lecturer cancelled his class because he was sick. However, he did give me many suggestions about places to visit while in Ireland so that should come in handy.
This past weekend a group of us went to Cork City, Kinsale, and Blarney Castle. This was my first trip really far away from the city (4 hour bus ride to be exact). It was also my first time using a bus and staying in a hostel. The buses were pretty nice, I guess, as far as buses go, though towards the end of the ride I started to feel a little sick because of the many winding roads. But that aside it was a pretty uneventful ride. We got to Cork City and I was in charge of getting us to the hostel since I had brought my travel book (which has a map in it). After making a slight circle, I got us to the hostel. We stayed at Sheilas Hostel, which is pretty nice apparently (according to a few girls who had stayed in other hostels in Ireland). Linens were included and it was really clean. My group had actually booked an entire room to ourselves since there were 8 of us staying in that room. The room was really small though, slightly bigger than my room here in Dublin, but there were 4 bunk beds along the walls, which made for a tight squeeze with all 8 of us in the room. But it was still fun. That first night we went to Mulligans pub (a pub that we just wandered into). There was a big rugby game going on so 95% of the people there were male and they were all drinking a pint and glued to the televisions (kinda reminded me of home lol). Once the game was over, most of the guys left and my group was able to grab a table. The Laughing Shamrocks (a band) played a bunch of songs, but they were all cover songs. Still good though. I got to hear many a song that reminded me of someone in my life, like The Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tom Petty, etc. It was a lot of fun.
Saturday we took the bus to Kinsale, a small town on the coast. The weather kinda sucked when we arrived--very rainy and windy. However, we were able to find a cute cafe and had brunch there. It was warm inside so we were all pretty happy. Once we left the cafe though, the weather cleared up a bit and we broke up into two smaller groups and wandered around the city. My group went up this hill that said cliff walk and we got a great surprise when we got towards the top--the sun came out and we had a great view of the water! Oh there were so many pictures taken. We wandered back down and then went by the docks for awhile. Once we met up with the rest of the group, we all trudged up this MASSIVE hill to find a fort that was supposed to be there, but we turned the wrong way at the top. However, by this time the weather was turning bad again so we made for the bus and were able to catch the 4:30 bus back to Cork City. A few girls, myself included, went out for food and found a chinese restaurant that had an early bird special--3 course meal for 15 Euro. I had some pretty decent chicken curry and a banana fritter. Soooo good. We then met up with some people from our study abroad group that were also in Cork City at Bru Bar and hung out for a few hours. Then myself and like 3 girls turned in for the night because we were beat.
Sunday morning we got up, got breakfast at the hostel, and then caught the bus to Blarney Castle. OMG the castle is sooooo beautiful. When you think of Ireland, the landscapes there are what you think of. Jackie and I climbed to the top, and she kissed the Blarney stone. I chickened out because I had heard from two sources that some of the locals pee on the stone and I also made the mistake of looking down (it was really high up and you bend over the edge backwards to kiss the stone). But the view from the top was breathtaking. Jackie, Anna, Nora, Mike, and myself had lunch at a cute cafe (one of the few places open for lunch on a Sunday) and then caught the next bus back to Cork City so we could make the 4pm bus back to Dublin. It was a great weekend trip I must say.
Yesterday was a very lazy day. I slept in and watched The Tudors online for a bit before meeting up with Amanda to go grocery shopping. Once we got back, I made dinner and relaxed for a bit before Amanda and Sam came over to plan this weekend's trip. However, we did not make much headway because many of the tours we wanted to go on aren't open until March. But I was productive in that I bought my plane ticket to England for the last weekend in February. I'm so excited to see Lauren Mottle and Lauren Taylor. I miss seeing my roommates everyday. But I know they are having fun and I'm able to talk to them via Skype so it's not quite as hard as it could be.
I also got my class schedule. On Tuesdays I'm taking Formations of the Psyche from 1-3pm and on Wednesdays I'm taking Culture and Religion from 11-1pm and Abnormal Psychology from 3-5pm. Those are my only classes!!!!!! I'm so excited for an easy semester. I need it considering what I put myself through last semester. However, I will be doing research while I'm here, but I don't think that will be too stressful. I'm hoping that I can get people from my classes who aren't American to fill out my surveys and that get me closer to my goal of 50 participants. Anywhos, I'll post more later, like pictures, but I should start getting ready for class :)
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Nice class schedule! So you have a 5 day weekend, every week? Even though you have research, that is niiiiiice... You better do a lot of traveling and post a lot of pictures! You can start with the ones of Blarney Castle since I can't go there myself but I really want to see it. ^_^
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