Things I CANNOT wait for when I get home!

1. adventures with #1
2. moneyyy
3. christmas
4. new years
5. BARS!!
6. family
7. christmas eve...food and the yankee swap!
8. full fridge
9. american cereak brands
10. REAL cheeseburgers
11. wendy's frostys and fries
12. denny's date nights with tjmaxx crew <3
13. ice skating in boston
14. parents
15. geoff too...i guess
16. ROLLIE!! and HENRY!!
17. MY CAR!!
18. beach...maybe a tan if i'm lucky
19. snowboarding
20. snowmobilling
21. sleddddddinggggg
22. o'connors
23. normal chips
24. cheetos (i've had the biggest craving for them lately!)
25. REESE'S!!!!
26. proper haircut
27. pedicures
28. hiking
29. nature hikes
30. coolige park with bailey
31. late night beers with daddy
32. bonfires!
33. s'mores with alyssa =] and banana boats!
34. sarah landry's sarcasm
35. hibachi with mallory brideau
36. walks to the farm
37. The Hill in general
38. MY BED!
39. heat and hot water
40. country concerts with #1
41. amy boucher's hugs
42. cousin-time
43. finally being LEGAL to do something FUN!
44. visits to plym

Northern Ireland and Belfast

During my last weekend in Ireland, Caitlyn and I took a final weekend trip up to Northern Ireland. We stayed in Belfast and signed up for a day tour trip through Derry and the North shore. The bus ride to get to Belfast was over 7 hours and we had to change buses 3 times! I was so happy to finally get off the bus.

We decided to tour the city our first night there. They had a christmas fair and there were lots of food vendors! Everything looked delicious. I got a slice of 3-layer chocolate cake! Soooo good!! Caitlyn got a chocolate muffin with truffles on top. You can't get that back in the States. Nope, you can't!

On Saturday, we took a bus tour through Derry and the surrounding areas. We went up the Giant's Causeway and toured through the country side. I didn't think the tour was that great, but it probably would have been much better during the Spring when everything was green and in bloom. Our first stop was at the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge.  The bridge was used by fisherman to catch salmon. It's no longer in use, but you can pay to cross it. I didn't do it, but it looked pretty cool.

When we were done at the bridge, we got back on the bus and moved on to the Giant's Causeway. When we got there it looked like being at the mini Cliffs of Moher. The views were great and it was a cleary day. The Causeway was supposedly made by a Giant who was in pursuit of a woman he loved who had left Scotland for Ireland to marry someone. The Giant built the Causeway to connect Ireland to his home island.

In truth, the Causeway was created by underwater volcanos. You can't really see the causeway in my photos because the tide was high but the cliffs were cool. We walked the entire length of the causeway and it took over an hour to make it to the end. Such a hike! And Caitlyn actually fell in the mud OOPS!

We left the Causeway and headed to Derry. Derry wasn't exciting at all. A dark city with a stone wall, that was about it. At that point, we were tired and didn't want to walk around. I  just wanted to get back to Belfast to the hostel and to my bed.

When we got back to Belfast we went down to the Christmas fair again and saw the lights on everyone's houses and buildings. The lights made me miss home a bit and driving around looking at all the houses where a christmas truck seemed to explode all over them with lights and plastic snowmen and blow-up santas. 

 On our last day in Belfast, we planned out our day on a map and wanted to see the Botanical Gardens and soem Titanic sights. We got up in the morning and headed over to the Gardens. It had frosted that morning so all the plants were frozen in a winter wonderland. But there was a greenhouse where there were tropical plants inside and it was really warm!

Belfast was great, but it wasn't as spectacular as I have heard from others. When our bus came to get us, we had another 7 hour ride to look forward to back to Galway. Half way back, we had to switch buses and found out that the next bus would not be there for another hour. We ended up hanging out in a parking lot with no lights, a cold bench and the bus station closed for the night. Perfect. Well the bus finally came and he guy was probably one of the nicest irish guys I have met. He was so nice and made the rest of the ride back to Galway smooth and fast. When we finally got back to our apartment it was about 12:30 in the morning. I was ready for bed!

Well it's Tuesday now, 4 more days till I'm back in the States. So EXCITED!!

I kissed the Blarney Stone!

This past weekend, Caitlyn and I took a bus down to southern Ireland to see County Cork. The bus ride was long enough, 4 hours! When we got to Cork it was beautiful! The city was right on the water and all the houses were painted different bright colors. We had a little trouble finding our hostel, no one knew where it was and we trekked up and down cobble-stone hills trying to find the place.

We finally got to the hostel, on the last hill we climbed! We checked in and decided to look around the city. There was a christmas fair with dancing turkies and food vendors everywhere! The weather was also pretty nice, whenever we look at the weather channel it says awful weather but we always manage to luck out and miss the rain/snow/wind.

On saturday, we booked a tour that would take us through County Cork and up to the Blarney Castle. The tour was small, only 8 of us which made it nice and friendly. The roads were really icy so we did our tour backwards, we headed to the castle first. When we got there, the icy covered everything there was a fog. The place looked like a scene from the Secret Garden.

Unfortunately the pictures can only be inserted landscape style

We went into the castle and it was pretty cool, there were small rooms everywhere and the icy had formed on the stairs so it was pretty slippery. To get to the top we had to climb up these narrow spiral stone steps that just seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as we climbed higher. When we got to the top the view was amazing. We could see for miles, even with the fog. The view looked over the castle gardens and the stables. I would have loved to live on that property.



Caitlyn kissing the stone

It was pretty scary on the top of the castle, it was icy and the guard rails were low. But the views were great and kissing the stone was something I can now cross off my list of things to do before I kick the bucket =]

When we left the castle, we walked around the grounds and everything was pretty magical with the ice covering everything. There were giant trees that we could climb and paths that lead through gardens and the woods. There were "wishing steps" that if you walked up them and back down with your eyes closed, your wish would come true within a year. There was also a witch stone that was in the shape of a witch's face.

When we left Blarney, we got back on the bus and headed to a town called "Cobh" which is really pronounced "Cove". The irish language doesn't use the letter V so when you see "bh" together, it's pronounced like a V. Cobh was the last stop that the Titanic made before it's journey to America.

The town itself was also really pretty. It was a fisherman's town and there were little houses and shops that lined the road that followed the shoreline. We walked up a hill to St. Coleman's Cathedral. It was so big inside and the stained glass windows were beautiful! The view from the top of the hill was amazing as well.

After spending an hour or so in the town, we got back on the bus and made our way to the last stop on the tour, Kinsale. On our way there we took a boat across the bay to get to the other side of the penninsula. It was pretty interesting being on a bus on a boat, Caitlyn had never done it before and I hadn't done it for about 10 or more years probably. When we got to the other side, the bus drove through the country and made our way to Kinsale which was another water-town. It wasn't made up of fisherman, it was more upscale, almost like visitng the Cape.

There was a hill we could hike called Breakheart Hill, we climbed to the top and got a whole view of the penninsula and the town. The wet and icy hike was deffinitely worth it, even though it was getting colder and dark.

All in all the weekend was great, we got to see southern ireland and the weather held out for us. I got to kiss the Blarney Stone and see the ocean. In a few days we head to Belfast and are doing another tour on saturday through Derry and some other cities.

Tim came for a visit!!

Tim finally came up for a visit this past weekend, FINALLY!! That boy has stood Caitlyn and I up for several weeks now. He was supposed to come up Friday night, but silly goose missed his bus, but he showed up Saturday morning!!

The day started out great, the sun was out and it wasn't windy or sub-zero temperatures. We started off by taking him through a tour of downtown and shop street, which then lead us to the Christmas fair in Eyre Sq. I was glad he came, it was nice seeing friends from back home (states) and introducing him to my new friends in Ireland.

We found out that on Galway Bay, there was an ice skating rink set up!! We all headed over there and ended up running into our friends Jess, Alison, Amie, Sam and Mickey! The rink was set up inside this make shift building that looked like it was for weddings. The side of the building facing the bay was all glass windows so we could see the water and shops that lined the shore. It was a nice reminder of skating in Boston and at my Grandparents' pond in past years.

I can't remember the last time I had gone skating, probably with girl scouts 8-9 years ago?

Everyone was having a great time, even with our clip-on skates and tiny rink!

After skating we headed back to the apartment and made plans for the night. We decided to hit up the larger pubs and one in particular; Coyotes. We usually avoid coyotes because it's an "American" bar but they also have a mechanical bull!! Needless to say that was a stop on our list.

All the girls rode the bull, me too! But it was so slippery and no one could stay on for more than 20 seconds. I think I made it about 4! Unfortunately Tim and the other boys wouldn't ride it =[ HHAHA the Irish men could not believe how Tim managed to show up everywhere with 6+ girls...seriously the boy was a P-I-M-P this weekend, even though the bouncers and security all thought he was 12.

King's Head

I also ran into my friend Meghan from FHS!! Imagine running into an old friend from high school that I haven't talked to since probably high school!! I couldn't believe it =]

Not only was it a great weekend filled with great friends and nights out, it also SNOWED EVERY NIGHT!! It's been pretty cold every night, but it was cold enough to turn this constant rain into snow.



Here's what I've been slacking on...

I have quickly been losing interest and motivation in writing to you all this blog. Over the past month I have been travelling lightly both with API and friends.

A few weeks ago API brought us through East Co. Clare and through Bunratty Castle. It was a pretty cold day and overall it was a nice experience. Wish we could have had longer than an hour at the castle, but we had a full day planned. We had lunch across the street and I got the most amazing brownie sundae! So good...Afterwards we were brought to an old cemetery with a church/ruins. By then it was EXTREMELY cold out and everyone was kind of miserable. We drove back to Menlo at the end of the day and I went straight to bed.

2 weeks ago, myself and some friends went to Edinburgh Scotland for a short weekend. We took the bus to Dublin and then a flight across the pond. It took almost the whole day to get to our hostel. The hostel was nice, kind of small but met some great people. We did 2 ghost tours both nights. First one we went underground through endinburgh's underground city where the poor lived. The lights went out and a man dressed in costume jumped out at us, I screamed and ran away. The 2nd night, we went through a graveyard tour and went through a hill where over a 1000 bodies are buried in unmarked pile-graves. GROSS! We then went into a tomb where supposedly a poltergeist lives (our friend had unexplainable scratches on her!) Of course, another person dressed in costume jumped out at us and yes, I screamed again!

During the day in Scotland we walked around and saw the sites, where JKRowling wrote her first harry potter book. We went to the museum and walked through edinburgh castle; such a cool place! The last day was filled with travelling back to galway, where I of course went to bed! Such a fun/tiring/adventure weekend! Wish we could have stayed longer and done the loch ness/highlands tours.

All in all the time here has been flying! We haven't been able to book anymore out of the country trips because hostel and airline prices shot up. It was going to be too stressful to fly around and plan things to do anyways.

Next weekend Cait and I are going to Cork for the weekend. We're taking a bus there and spending the day sight-seeing. The next day we booked a tourbus to take us through the surrounding area and to the Blarney Castle where we can kiss the stone for luck! The weekend after Cork we're looking at going to northern ireland to Belfast and staying in the same hostel company and doing another tourbus through them as well!

See everyone a 4 weeks!! Just in time for Christmas =]

Oh the possibilites..

As I am looking at the calender looking at the weeks pass me by- counting down the days, hours, minutes until I am back home in Fitchburg I have realized it is a bitter-sweet ending. Sweet that I will see friends, family and Rollie-bear but bitter in the sense that a semester is not enough time to accomplish all that Europe has to offer a 21 year old single free-bird.

As I look at cheap flights to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague..the list goes on...I wonder if I will be able to see everything I had planned to see since day one of being accepted to this program. Nope, I didn't get to see nearly a tenth of what I had hoped to conquer!! The thought of being a college dropout and just filling my backpack and running seems more and more enticing with each day that passes. You can't get that in the States, the different languages and cultures that are so interesting and bright and colorful (no, Main st does NOT count by any means).

Is the business world really the right step for me? Should I reconsider my future and just throw away the last 3 years of my life on a world of adventure and vine swinging in the Amazon? Wouldn't climbing mountains in Chile or biking through China be more life rewarding than sitting behind a desk convincing some corporate tight pants where to spend their money? I thought I loved the idea of money and nice cars and a barn full of horses some day, but is that all really necessary?

I hate trying to prove to Professors that I am smarter than I seem by acing tests and writing bullshit papers that won't ever help me in the corporate world, heck I'm a hands-on person! What was I thinking choosing business over something cool like Adventure Education or Archaeology or a friggin CIA agent? These were all dreams I had and then somehow I ended up with Marketing?! What on Earth was I thinking...Although I do love winning and business is the only way to get ahead these days.

The short adventures I've had throughout my short time in Ireland has only given my the Travel Bug, and boy did it bite me hard! I am going to go crazy when I finally get home and realize there's no where for me to go except the 'Burg or occasional weekend in Plymouth. These short weekends away in different worlds have only been teasers, I haven't gotten the full taste of the world yet and I don't want to stop until I've seen it all.

I was blessed to have been able to partake in this adventure Ireland had to offer, while contributing to my education. But I have to put some light on my family, friends and professors who helped me and encouraged me to push through the paperwork and endless phone calls to get to this wonderful country. So THANKS everyone, you all know who you are.

I suppose this life will always be bitter-sweet; Sweet that I'll always have a place to call home and return to and Bitter that I'll have to leave my 2nd home with a return date: unknown.

I HEART LONDON

This past weekend our program, API took everyone to London for the weekend. We took a bus to Shannon Airport where we boarded our flight and then landed in London around 11 at night. We had to wait around outside, it was so COLD, and wait for our bus to bring us into the city where our hotel was. We waited till midnight (now October 23!) and a few people decided to sing me happy birthday. I didn't yet feel 21 so I didn't really go along with it, but it was nice people remembered.

We finally got to our hotel and everyone was exhausted! Between the bus rides and the plane and long waits outside, everyone just wanted to go to bed. Luckily there were only 2 of us per room and we got awesome accommodations this time!! Queen beds and fluffy comforters and a huge bathroom and flat screen TV!

Saturday morning, we all went down and had breakfast. There we got our tour bus hop on/hop off tickets like we had in Dublin and we got maps of the city. A bunch of us wanted to see the London Tower and decided to split off from out directors and went out on our own. I could not believe how big the city was!! It was like being in NYC with all the hustle and bustle. We headed off to the Tower where we learned we could play games and goof off, why learn history when you can play giant tic-tac-toe?!

London Bridge

We got to go inside the Tower and check out the cool things. There was a nice elevator ride to the top of the tower where we then got to see the city views. This lead to the bridge that connects the 2 towers where it looped around and you could see more of the city and the Thames River. There were jumbo sized-games where we of course played with! Hopscotch, bowling, tic tac toe, and ring toss! We also set up giant dominoes! But I can't upload videos on here unfortunately =[

We continued to walk through London and checked out all the architecture old and new. London reminded me of being back in Liverpool a few weeks ago. Clearly the UK has all the best architects in the world to themselves, all the buildings were beautiful whether modern or old, not like what you would see in Worcester or Fitchburg where some of the buildings are just a giant eye-sore.

Buckingham Palace

We saw the Big Ben and Buckingham Palace as well!! It was starting to get dark, the setting sun gave me some pretty cool pictures of the two sites. Security has been increased at the Palace so we weren't able to get too close, there was a huge wrought iron gate around it with guards at the doors.

On our walk back to the hotel, we decided to see how many people we could fit inside a telephone box! The first time we were able to fit 5 of us but we were venturing for more! We were able to squeeze the 6 girls in the telephone box this time! It wasn't easy but we some how managed to squeeze our butts inside the small space. People walking by even decided to take a few pictures with us or capture us on their video cameras, we were instant celebrities.



Unfortunately Blogger doesn't upload upright pictures correctly

London was also a great place to celebrate my 21st birthday!! I was surrounded by new friends and I was spending it in a city with the best night life. The girls surprised me first by singing happy birthday which then lead to noise complaints from the hotel on our behalf ha ha. I got a tiara and my pimp cup, followed by peanut m&ms =] I was now officially 21 so we went out to a club called The Zoo, and it really WAS a zoo!! So busy and there was several floors of dancing with different types of music and drinks being served, but really fun none the less.

The next morning, a few of us decided to go check out the British Museum. It was interesting getting there, we were having trouble with our directions but we made it there eventually. I could not believe how big the museum was! And it was free, music to my ears. There were so many different rooms in the museum, all were dedicated to a different country and culture. I definitely liked Asia and Southeast Asia the best. Very colorful, that will be my next trip!

While walking to the museum our friend Alison wanted a picture with the giant bronze lions that are in the center of the city. When we got there, we didn't realize how big they were and how hard it was going to be to climb up onto them! The stone it was sitting on was really slippery and we had to boost each other up. We were only to get up there for a minute because the city was having a ceremony of some sort for their Navy and there was security everywhere!



London was an overall great weekend and a place I would definitely visit again! I started to get used to the fast-pace and hustle/bustle of the city towards the end of the weekend. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me as I got more comfortable with the city and realized how much there was to see. I didn't get to see nearly 1/10th of the sights I wanted to experience, but I am happy with what I got see. I am glad the program chose London, but wished it had been a 3-4 day trip and not a day and a half.

Scotland in a few weeks and a day trip through County Clare coming up soon! 51 days till I am back in the States =]