First Week of Classes and My 3 Minutes of Fame

Okay so the first week of classes has officially ended, I am feeling pretty confident about the classes. My History for International Students I am very happy with because over half of the class speaks English as their second language. I am starting to think maybe this class is used to help people speak English along with History, and that sounds perfect. I spent two hours taking notes on everything there is to know about the Potato Famine. On Wednesday I went to my Moral Responsibility class at 10am, obviously the 20 Americans that were sitting in the class, myself included, did not get the memo that the class magically changed to 11am. We have noticed that the Americans seem to miss this Irish memo that class times can change just a day before you have the class. Now I hope I have this class down, and I will get to sleep for another hour on Wednesday mornings, so it's all good. Thursday I have Celtic Saints, which is definitely going to be a little rough. The teacher seems nice, and we almost found the classroom flawlessly (which never happens), except for the fact that room 10 was in between room 14 and 26 (still trying to work out how that works in my head).

After class on Thursday we started our Arthur Guinness Day festivities, which is basically a full day honoring the man who start Guinness. It makes you wonder why there is not a Bud Light Day or something that in America. Well basically at 5:59 there was a big toast on the Court House steps where we all had to keep on drinking Guinness, which I am still not the biggest fan of. The best part of the day is that the 5 of us magically ended up in the front row, dead center of the steps while the camera men were filming (obviously happened completely by accident). Luckily this "accident" worked in our favor and now we are on Youtube toasting to Arthur Guinness. Overall it was a great day and so much fun to see the mass amount of people singing on the steps. Here is the video of us from Arthur Guinness Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV593dayQgY

London Baby!

I forgot that I never blogged about my trip to London so I figured I would do it today! We landed in London late on Thursday night, then when we arrived at our hostel we were shocked to walk into Karaoke night at Belushi's Bar. Yes, we lived in a hostel that was on top of a bar for 3 nights. Besides the difficult start to trip, it was very fun and clean. For our first day we did a tour of Buckingham Palace, it was absolutely beautiful. Every inch of the palace was decorated beautifully, and the tour ended with us being able to see Kate's dress, shoes, earrings, cake, and bouquet. The tour was by far my favorite thing I did in London. After that we did a bus tour and a tour of Westminister Abbey. They were both a lot of fun, and we were able to see the whole city in a day. On Saturday we went and walked around the area near the London Eye and there happened to be this big cultural festival, so we were able to hang out there for a bit. Then my favorite part of London was Notting Hill, it was a cute area with a bunch of different stores that we went into. Sunday was the funniest experience I have had here yet. We went to Abbey Road trying to capture the Beatles picture, just like every other tourist in London. None of us realized how busy of a street it was, and that there was no street lights or anything. There were just about 20 people when we got there crossing a busy street. Luckily we captured the picture with no casualties! Overall the trip was a lot of fun, but I am definitely excited to start going to countries that I have not been to yet!

Big Ben

London Eye and Big Ben

Buckingham Palace

Tower Bridge

Out attempt at the Abbey Road Picture!!

Dublin

Here I am back in Cork, and very happy about it! I loved Dublin so much. The city was a lot bigger than Cork, but everything was still walking distance from our hotel. Dublin reminded me more of an American city than what I have become accustom to in Cork. The first day we arrived around 6pm and had the whole night to ourselves. We walked around the city and went to dinner at Elephant and Castle, which had the best buffalo wings in Ireland! At night first we went to the oldest pub in Ireland, called "The Brazen Head Inn," actually our bus driver, Liam, brought us all there. Kathleen actually had an American Dollar on her so we were able to put a dollar with all of our names written on it up on the wall in the pub! After the Brazen head we went to the Temple Bar area, which is an area that is all cobblestone and filled with many different pubs and clubs. Temple Bar was a lot of fun and I definitely want to go back.

The second day we walked the steps of James Joyce's "Ulysses" throughout Dublin. It was very interesting to see that Joyce made a fictional story be so factual at the same time. Even though the character of Bloom is fictional, where he is walking around is a perfect description of the city of Dublin. We also went to the James Joyce Museum which had really great murals describing the chapters of "Ulysses." Later that afternoon we went to Guiness Factory, Dublin's number one attraction. The factory was really cool and the views from the Gravity Bar were unreal. You could see the whole city of Dublin from an all glass bar. I loved everything about the trip to the factory, except the Guiness. I only drank about 3 sips of it, I just do not understand the attraction to it. The next day we went to visit Trinity which is a University in Dublin. The campus was absolutely beautiful and I could not believe people could actually go to school at a place so beautiful. I felt like I needed to be dressed up just to be walking on the quad. Overall the trip was great and I definitely want to try and visit Dublin again if I have time!

Weekend in Galway/Cliffs of Moher

Here I am, back in Cork, and thankfully alive! It was such a great trip this weekend in Galway and the Cliffs of Moher. Galway is a city on the West Coast of Ireland, it was about a 3 hour bus ride away from Cork. We stayed at the Wood Quay Hostel which is over a hundred years old, and upon our arrival the owner of the hostel (self proclaimed hostel owner, astrologer, and country singer) gave us a full history on Galway in about 10 minutes. My favorite area in Galway was by the Spanish arches, where there was a strip of many brightly colored houses along the water. When we got to this spot we met a very nice homeless man named Joe from Boston. Joe went on a long explanation of everything you need to know about Galway, unfortunately with the combination of the rain and loud wind none of us could pick up a word he said. He was an extremely nice man, so we all waited to hear all of his stories then thanked him and moved on. On Friday night we went to this pub called the Kings Head and it was so cool, there was great live music and a huge dance floor.

Fran and I talking to Joe.

Group shot in front of the colored houses.

On Saturday morning we all woke up bright and early to start our adventure to the Cliffs of Moher. We took several stops along the way to the Cliffs of Moher, unfortunately after seeing the Cliffs it all seems to be a blur to me now. The Cliffs were absolutely breathtaking. They were so beautiful that for most of the time I forgot about my massive fear of heights. I was being such a daredevil I even broke some of the rules, unfortunately I was not as brave as the other people on my trip who went past the many caution signs. (You're Welcome Mom and Dad)

Cliché, but I love it. 

Group plank on the Cliffs. We realized at the end of the trip that we did a group plank photo, and no group photo of everyone smiling... Whoops.

Feet literally hanging off the edge. If you can't tell I got a little nervous and could not look down anymore. It felt as if the French men taking our picture took about 6 years just to take the picture.

Overall the weekend was great and I leave for my Dublin/London trip tomorrow! I will update at some point after I get back on Sunday!!

Taking a Little Cork Break Soon!

Hello! Well today is pretty much my last day in Cork until next week. I have the most exciting week planned!! First after class tomorrow we are leaving for Galway and are going to be there until Sunday. Then Monday night we have a Dinner and a Play with Mary, then we leaving Tuesday morning with our class to go to Dublin. While we're in Dublin were going to walk the steps of James Joyce's novel "Ulysses," which is a novel that describes a day in the life of three different people in Dublin. After Dublin, Mary gave us Friday off so we are all traveling to London together!! I am soo excited!!

Since not much has happened since the last time I blogged I will just mention some of the rules and phrases I have learned in Cork. When eating at a restaurant you do not tip, and you MUST ask for the bill or they will literally never bring it to you. When ordering a soda, they still ask you if you want it in a pint or regular. "Get great craic" means have a laugh, absolutely no references to drugs of any kind. "Piss" means being drunk. The whipped cream they give you is not sweetened (this was a big disappointment at first). One more very important thing, when eating fish and chips beware that the skin can still be on the fish that they serve you! These differences seem very small, but they are definitely something one must know before going into Cork.

Also I decided I would post some pictures of room here in Cork so you can get a feeling of where I am living!!

This is my bedroom, the bed with the purple sheets is mine, and the bed with the green sheets is Kathleen's. We are the only two people in our apartment building that are direct roommates, and we love it, of course!!

Here is a picture of our common room, its a really cute area with a nice view of the River Lee and a little TV. We seem to already have created some sort of assigned seats for ourselves, Diana and I in the chairs, and Kathleen lying down on the couch. 

This is the view of the River Lee that we have from our common room, the river is so beautiful when it is at high tide. Unfortunately when the river is at low tide, it is not a pretty. The low river shows off a lot of moss and even an old rusted shopping cart.