Galway Girl

Insert tacky youtube video full of slow motion segments & montage photos of PS. I Love You here:

 

Saturday morning Emily, Kelly, John, & I took off on a bus for Galway, Ireland. It was only an hour and a half ride and I listened to music the whole time, constantly amazed at what was. Set the scene: I'm a 21 year old college student staring at green pastures full of sheep and various castle look-a-likes traveling to an Irish city by a bay for the weekend. How great is this?

There were a lot of street performers who did totally normal things like pretend they didn't have heads. If only I was this popular. 

Free soup!

A band we watched for quite awhile. They played Mumford & Sons, 

Kings of Leon, & Snow Patrol.

 Yes, please.

Kelly & I and our crepes

 Emily, John, Me, & Kelly

 Almost possible

 I love how "pura vida" has to be translated into pure life on the sign. Oh, but it is so much more than that...

Gloomville

After only a minute or two of walking off the bus I ran into one of my roommate's previous roommate from Point Loma on the street corner! I knew that she was somewhere in that city but didn't expect to see someone I recognized off the streets randomly like that, super crazy.
The 4 of us stayed in a hostel in a room with 2 strangers. Lucky for us, one of them was a 30-something-year-old russian spy named Miroslav Vladimir who snored louder than Gulliver the giant during the entire night. This must be what winning the lottery feels like.

How I know i'm not at home:
-Ketchup is called "red sauce."
-Most sinks i've seen have two faucets, one for vanilla and the other for chocolate. Or, for hot and cold... which still only leaves me with two extremes.
-I still catch myself in a moment of shock as my eyes suddenly focus on an 8 year old sitting in the driver's seat of a car... WHAT?!?! Oh, things are different here.
-Its not 70 degrees in January.
-There's a lot of people smoking on the streets
-McDonalds has curly fries and also costs 100x more

Classes: Who, What, Why?

Shocking News: The water was warm during the ENTIRE 8 minutes I showered. Taking time to shave my legs is still too risky.

I'm supposed to be figuring out my classes, but instead I slept in, made chocolate chip pancakes with Ryan, Kelly, & Emily (confusing, we know) with a cut up bar of chocolate that cost almost 2 euro, and ended up taking a nap for over two hours because I have can't-get-out-of-bed-once-I-get-in-it syndrome considering my house is 35 degrees.

The neat thing about classes at UL (University of Limerick) is that students get 2 weeks to try them out. We're advised to take 8-10 classes and see if we like the subject matter/professors/comfortability of the classroom seats and don't officially enroll or start until February 7th. Sorry Point Loma... except I don't want to hear it since its SEVENTY-SIX degrees at home. Go to the beach, now.

Our kitchen & living room

Something delicious 

The walk to the main part of campus & classes 

 Its a beautiful campus and actually has that "college" feel

 On campus: pub that's popular for lunch, a bike store, & a little grocery store +

 Visiting a castle right down the street from school, NBD, right?

King John's Castle 

The castle is right by the Shannon River, the longest river in Ireland

I'm really loving Ireland and am excited to see the rest of it. First stop for next weekend: Galway. Countdown until I can go outside with only one sweater on.

well wats the story!

I couldn't sleep for the life of me last night and instead rocked out to Flogging Molly underneath my covers hiding from the cold air and practicing my irish accent. That was a joke. Kind of.
I guess that's what happens when one takes an EIGHT hour nap. I finally fell asleep around 3am and woke up around 7am wide eyed and almost... warm? Don't tell me the heater actually worked for a few hours, that would just make too much sense. Heaters in 30 degree Irish weather? What, are you crazy? The best part is that I can't even feel the hard labor of the thing unless I touch it.

I live in Plassey village and unfortunately didn't get any Irish students as roommates, but 2 of the 8 are still to come and they just might be from somewhere other than the states.

 House 3, Room 3

 We bought these duvet covers when we went into the city today. The original ones were supposedly "clean," but we all know how relative that word can be.

 The room is small, but has a lot of storage space and a nice huge desk but most importantly....

 we have our own sinks!!

Nesting, right?

We took public busses when we went shopping today downtown and it was super easy and 100% not like the busses in Costa Rica.

What I learned while shopping today:
 You have to insert money to get a grocery cart at the supermarket by my school.
They don't provide bags so you have to either have more than 2 arms or bring your own. Bags, not arms.
Most of the items were actually Irish... jelly, bread, butter. What a concept.

The scenery while walking down the street to the grocery store. I'll take it! 

Off to making spaghetti & garlic bread for a family dinner!

trains, planes, & automobiles

A 5ish hour flight from LAX to Newark, a layover, another 6ish hours to Limerick, an hour bus ride, and an hour waiting outside to check-in in weather where my breathe was as visible as the clouds in the sky... and 24 hours had almost passed by.

I didn't feel as tired as I should have, but I decided to take a nap around 11:30am Irish time since there was nothing planned except for a 6pm orientation meeting. Plenty of time, right? I crawled into bed with 3 pairs of socks ("tree" pairs), long johns + pjs, 2 shirts, a sweatshirt, and gloves and shivered until I fell asleep. Fast forward EIGHT HOURS and I wake up to my roommates coming back to realize I've missed the meeting. Oops. You know when you wake up late for class and have that immediate flooding of stress, anxiety, and worry all rush in at once? Exactly. Luckily, the resident director said it happens to someone every semester and I was still allowed to stay in the country and made it just in time to go out to dinner.

I have SO much to buy! I'm so excited to be here and can't wait for a great semester!

 The Shannon river and part of a castle, one of my first pictures. The sun didn't even rise until about 8:30am!

Euros & Emilys! 

PS: I'm still alive Mom & Dad. 

Tomorrow!

 Lauren (my roommate) & I at our going away party. She's going to Sicily and leaves in a few days! I'll be waking up in 5 hours, regardless of when I finally make it to bed, and heading to LAX for my flight around 10:30am. Fast forward many hours, airplane food, and jet lag and I should be in Limerick around 6:45am Tuesday. Ready... set... GO!

10 days

I've had the weather for Limerick in my widget for the past couple of months and I shiver every time I look at it. Today's forecast: 32 degrees with snow. sHowzA. 

I can’t really remember what it was that first sparked my interest in Ireland. Most people probably have that one place they’ve always really, really, REALLY, wanted to go to. For me, that’s Ireland. And more than just go, i've wanted to linger there, not just pass through and hit all the landmarks. But that wasn’t so obvious to an outsider last Spring when almost one year ago I took off on a plane on my 20^th birthday for Costa Rica for 4 months. I've always planned on studying abroad second semester Junior year, but those 4 special months in Central America were a surprise in the plan, an add-on, and what I consider my second chance to go abroad even though it came first. 

Anyways, the first sign of my interest that I can remember is being in love with the scene in Titanic where Jack takes Rose down to "third class" for a "real party." Scandalous. It doesn't help that I was also infatuated with Mr. Jack Dawson about 10 minutes into the movie and even wrote down "Rose" as my name on the information page of my journal. Oh, to be 7 years old again. Watch & Enjoy. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U50hqJS2ock

I also remember watching Boondock Saints and concluding that I liked it. But then I realized I didn’t really understand what happened. At all. But there was a catchy Irish song before all the fight scenes that I went home and immediately downloaded and could then pretend like I actually owned something that wasn't considered a chick flick by the entire male population. I'm not embarrassed. 


About 3 minutes and 9 seconds in...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uomNkpNdt4k


On another note, I turned 21!

Some of us girls before we went out to Lips: Lauren, Andrea, Me, Fel, Makenzie, Rooms, & Jennifer.