Another Quick Note

Ah! I'm so so sorry... This week has been ridiculous! REU applications (that should have already been done) and homework and the strong desire to sleep all the time... Ergo, I have not updated and I am leaving for Belfast. in 30 minutes. Ah! So.... I'm sorry. Yet again, I am postponing my blog post! But Sunday night/Monday, it will happen, and you will finally be caught up on my travels :)

A Quick Note!

First of all, I'm super sorry that it's been soooo long, and I'm even sorrier that it's going to be a few days longer. I'm actually headed out the door to London as I write (well, sort of...), but I solemnly swear (that I am up to no good :) ) that I will update you all and with pictures when I return on Monday! So until then, adieu!

Days 36-44: Another week, an amazing weekend trip, and the start of another week

Oh no, it's been long enough since I' ve written that I'm sure I won't be able to remember everything (or even close to everything) that's happened in the past few days...
So on Monday, February started... which was absolutely crazy. It marked the beginning of the second whole month that I'll be in Ireland. I can't believe one has already gone by. Monday also marked the beginning of the first week that I had to study... I had two exams on Wednesday and Thursday (one on each day). But exams didn't stop me from having an excellent week! Monday was not terribly exciting, as per usual, but Tuesday was fun! I did laundry (not the fun part), and I decided to do only one load to save some money. But I did not realize that the pair of jeans I was washing had not been washed many times... so yes, all of my whites (well a couple of them, especially socks and towels) are now light blue... But at least, it's nothing really noticeable and who cares what color my towel is? :) But after laundry and classes and whatnot, a bunch of us went to An Spailpin Fanach, a pub, where we tried our skills at Ceili dancing. Although none of us knew what we were doing, it was so much fun... I now know how to do some traditional Irish dancing! Wednesday was marked with an exam... Granted, it wasn't too hard and didn't take too long, but I still didn't want to take it. (And I still haven't gotten the marks back, so it might have been harder than I thought.) And sadly, Wednesday night I had to study... although I did have the usuals over for dessert and "Fat Families"... and then my Irish flatmate came back from the SU Council meeting and tried to get me to go out with her... I really wanted to, but Differential Equations (somehow) won out. And Thursday happened, exam and all... Classes were decent, and then I had to pack and get ready for our weekend in Galway! Of course, no Thursday is complete without some sort of outing, so the usuals headed out on a pub crawl (led by some Irish students)... We hit four pubs in Cork, some of which I'm definitely going to again. The highlight of the night was running across Cork City to get free Guinness at the next pub... Needless to say, I was one few people there and was happily rewarded with my free pint of Guinness. After the pub crawl, we headed to "The Classic," but we didn't stay too late, as we had to be on the bus at 8 the next morning...
Oh, and how could I forget? This week, Genevieve, Bridget and I bought plane tickets to go to London, baby! How exciting! As of yet, we still don't have a place to stay (eek!), but we are leaving Cork on Wednesday night (Feb 17) and returning Monday morning, really early (Feb 22). It's going to be such a fun trip!!

And now to the weekend... SO MUCH FUN. So we didn't actually stay in Galway... we stayed in this really cute cabins in the middle of beautiful nowhere. Had it been 10-15 degrees warmer outside, it would have been absolutely amazing, and as it was, I was very happy :) On the way to these cabins, we stopped at Bunratty Castle, which was so cool! We had a tour with a quite entertaining tour guide, and got to explore the reconstructed village surrounding the castle. (Pictures at some point) And after lunch, we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which if you don't know what they are, you must google them right now. They are unbelievably gorgeous and just unbelievable overall! The day was a bit cold and windy, but that couldn't take away from the pure amazingness of the cliffs... And then, we stopped at a store to buy some food for the weekend, and headed to the cabins. That night, there was a party, but I was a bit too exhausted to really partake...
Saturday morning, we got up and headed out to the Aran Islands-- actually Inis Mor, the biggest of the three islands. We took a bus to the ferry and then spent about 30 minutes on board... I love ferries! It was really fun and the weather was gorgeous. Once on the island, the group of international students (about 50 of us) got into three buses and had a spectacular bus tour. The first stop was Dun Aonghosa... another place that if you don't what it is, you must google it now. So beautiful and so dangerous!! There are no ropes, no warning signs... basically, they just assume that you don't want to die any more than they don't want you to die. Let's just say that a few of us sat on the edge... feet over water, and it was intense! I think it's like 75 meters from where you're standing to the ocean down below... Just unbelievable. I could have stayed all day! The rest of the day basically paled in comparison to Dun Aonghosa, but compared to any other day, it was still awesome.We stopped at an old monastery that is now a cemetery, walked along a rocky beach, and went shopping! The Aran Islands are known (I think) for their traditional woolen sweaters... now, I didn't get one (although I might have to soon), but I did get myself some hand-knitted gloves that I absolutely love. Then, we had the ferry ride back to the mainland and the ISSoc guys (the people in charge of us) threw another party! This time, I was much more in the mood and ended up talking to these three really sweet Italian girls and a lovely French girl. Plus, in our cabin, there were two Chinese girls, who were also super friendly and nice... That was actually one of the highlights of the weekend-- getting to meet people from so many different places!
Sunday morning, we got up and were all on the bus by 10:15 or so, but apparently, we weren't leaving until 11... so some people were a little mad. But we headed into Galway city, but since it was a Sunday, not much was open until 1 or 2, and we had to leave about 1:30... But the city seemed really cool, and Bridget and I hung out with two of the Italian girls that we'd met the night before! The bus ride home was one of the longest 4 hours ever... Just wasn't comfortable, although my exhaustion did allow me to sleep somewhat. My neck was not so happy when I woke up though... And that was the weekend, and pictures (or at least a link to pictures to come soon!)
And Sunday night, I had planned to watch the Super Bowl... but yeah, sleep happened. I think that was probably a smart decision, although the game sounded exciting! And yeah, Monday happened, again, nothing too exciting... I feel like all Mondays everywhere are just kind of boring... Although, this week is Raise and Give (RAG) week at UCC, so basically people just party and drink all week long, and very few of the Irish students bother to go to class... But yes, I (like a good little American) have been going to all of my classes and have not been drinking any more than usual!
Tuesday (yesterday), I had classes as usual and then did a little work (haha) before going out to a pub called "The Bierhaus" with Lindsey, Mike, and Therese (some of the usuals). I had O'Hara's Stout, which was a very dark (but delicious) beer. And I feel like more exciting things than just that happened, but I can't remember (I must be getting old)... Anyway, I'll be updating soon, and hopefully, by the end of this week, I'll have a pretty good idea of my April plans, so I'll let you know :)

Days 33-35: The Weekend!

See? I told you it wouldn't be another two weeks before I wrote again... YAY! Anyway, I'm currently sitting in the UCC computer lab accomplishing things (and yes, updating my blog definitely counts as accomplishing something). I thought about going back to Deanshall, but I knew if I went there, I would do nothing. For 4 or so hours... And with all that I have to do, that would be a waste of time (an actual waste, not updating-my-blog waste). So Friday-- January 29th, the one-month anniversary of my arrival in Ireland... That's just so crazy, especially because a few of my friends still hadn't left (and a few still haven't)! So for the one-month anniversary, I did nothing special. Actually, that's not entirely true-- I went to my Graph Theory and Combinatorics Tutorial... and I was one of maybe five people who went... in a class of about thirty. Yeah, the lecturer really should have picked a different time. And because there were so few people, no one wanted to ask questions, so I did. And in doing so, I realized that I need to really study for my GT&C exam on Wednesday (but have I yet? No... oops). So after my tutorial, I made an executive decision and dropped Celtic Religion and Mythology to take Italian... I'll miss the other people in the class and the stories, but... I think Italian is both more practical and more fun! :) Friday afternoon was spent at the grocery store... well, not the entire afternoon, and then Friday night, we had a girls' night, which for awhile included a few guys... We watched "Good Luck Chuck," and then a lot of people left (because there was an Archaeology field trip at 9am on Saturday)... By then, it was just a few of us girls, so we decided to play Mao (a card game). Let's just say, it was quite entertaining :) And that was Friday...
On Saturday, I didn't really do a whole lot. I cleaned my apartment's kitchen because it was soooooooo gross, and almost every dish that we have was dirty... I was going crazy, so I cleaned! After cleaning, I was rewarded with a fabulous Pizza and Wings dinner at Kat's apartment, followed by apple pie and ice cream... Needless to say, if I keep eating like that, I'll be on "Fat Families." Not everyone could make it to Kat's, so we had a smaller crowd and thus decided to play Mao again... Part of the appeal of the game is that unless you've played before, you don't know the rules :) So it's quite easy to get frustrated... The eventual plan was to watch a movie (originally, "Silence of the Lambs" but with fewer people, "Moulin Rouge"), but Mao took over and then YouTube videos... I finally saw the "JK Wedding Dance," and finally, Jim and Pam's wedding ("The Office") makes much more sense. So Saturday wasn't terribly productive, but fun :)
Sunday-- I actually tried to be productive; I did... and I succeeded somewhat. I finally submitted my first REU application and have a few weeks before the next few are due... But I figure I'll just go ahead and get those done so I don't have to worry about them. On Sunday morning (about 11:30), I headed over to Liam's apartment, where he was making pancakes... There were a lot of pancakes to be made, so we didn't end up eating until about 1 or so... But that was fine because the pancakes were sooooo delicious. He made banana pancakes and apple cinnamon ones... Yum, yum, yum. I could do with some of those now actually... And he shelled out and bought real maple syrup (really hard to find in Ireland). Yum, yum, yum... I also cleaned my bathroom and vacuumed the living room on Sunday... I basically just hit a point this weekend where I couldn't stand the grossness of my apartment, so I cleaned.
That was basically my weekend... Oh, I also received an email that the International Student Society trip to Killarney got moved to the same weekend as the Belfast trip, so sadly I won't be going to Killarney. But at least, I'm going to Galway this weekend. Also, it's possible that a friend (Genevieve--have I mentioned her before??) and I will be spending our formerly Killarney-filled weekend in London, watching "Billy Elliot" and exploring :) Sounds like a pretty good back-up plan to me!
And now, back to actual productivity. Arrivederci :)