Day 21: Second full day in Bantry, and our last full day as well

Hey, So just a quick comment to all of you. I know you are reading because people tell me you are and everyone enjoys it, but no comments. It makes me sad. After all my hard work of writing to you guys so you can enjoy knowing what is going on here with me and what adventures I am doing, while at the same time I am writing as a memory for myself... I get no comments. It is like I am speaking to myself, very sad. So just saying... fell FREE to write comments all over the place and tell me what you think or maybe more of what you want to know. Send me on missions to find out cool information while I am over here. You guys are all as much a part of my journey to Ireland, and eventually to london, as I am. I understand if you have no comments, but if you do I am just saying feel free. Love you all !!!

Today is Wednesday and bot does the time fly, only two and a half weeks left until my time is up in Ireland. How sad that makes me because time seems to be flashing by and I feel there is so much more to be done and seen here. Today we got another lovely breakfast in the hotel and has a class in the hotel about the conflict between Norther Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I of course, had no idea there was any conflict before I got to Ireland. I thought Ireland was all one happy place where the grass was green, sheeps and cows grazed, the accents made me giggle, and they had their own language that intrigues me because my ancestors were once from here. But sadly, Ireland is not always a happy place with conflict between Catholics and Protestants, Unionists and Loyalists against Nationalists and Republicans (not in the sense it is used today exactly). But yeah, the whole conflict is a bit confusing so I am not going to go into that.

After class, I took some time to wander about the small town of Bantry by myself and found myself wandering to a couple beautiful shoe stores. There I found a very cute pair of heels, but sadly they were about 200 Euro! Wowie, so I skipped out on those and instead got myself a little journal and two second hand books for pretty cheap to keep myself busy. I am looking around to find souvenirs for everyone, but I have no idea what to get you all. So if you have any requests or things that you think would be cool. Let me know. There all things from Guinness that I can get, shotglasses of course, key chains with actual four leaf clovers in them, all sorts of things. So please let me know and give me ideas. I NEED HELP! (also there are the Claddagh rings and other such fun gifts) but yeah.

So today was not really too exciting. We did go out to a delicious dinner at Brick Oven and I got some really good seafood chowder as well as a chicken quesadilla, you have no idea how much I miss some good mexican and bar-b-que! After that, came back and let the food settle a bit and I just got back from going to the hot tub and the steam room to relax a little. So it will be adding some finishing touches to my next paper and starting the fourth one. One closer to being done! Love you all and miss you very much. Tomorrow we will be off to Blarney Castle and the Blarney stone as well as off to stay the night in Killarney!

xoxo!

Day 20: First day in Bantry and a boat ride in drizzle

Soooo, tuesday was an interesting day. We got up and got to have breakfast in the Hotel, had some yummy eggs and sausage, croissant and COFFEE! Not iced, but hey. Unfortunately it was a rather drizzly day. We had a small lecture in the hotel and then went off to listen to a speaker in the Bantry Bookstore. Very interesting the reader was the author of The Soldier's Son, Alan Monaghan. It was all about war and different wartimes within Ireland. Needless to say it was nice to get in outside from the rain and listen to someone, although it was quite a bit crowded in there.

After that we had some free time, a couple of us went to go swimming in the pool at the hotel or go sit in the steam room and hot tub. Very nice on a cold rainy day. But not for long and we were back out into the lovely weather. Lucky for us though it cleared up and stopped raining right as we were supposed to go on our little boat tour/ride around Bantry and the bay area. This photo here is from way out in the bay. The big thing around here is mussels and getting mussels from the bay. They put these really long rope type things in the water for the mussels to come cling to and live off of and then later on they come back and strip all the mussels off of the rope and they go to local restaurants in the area and other places. It was really cool to see this happening on one of the boats there. If you look closely you can see what I am talking about, how they strip them off and such.

Lucky me, (sorry its sideways) got to drive the boat for a little while. Dad would be so proud! It was quite entertaining and fun. I was told I look like a true fisherman or someone on a boat because of my gear :) I found out rather fast how much turning it takes to really get that boat to move when you are going slow. A small turn to the right in boaters terms really means at least a whole turn of the wheel or more! It was a lot of fun and no one got cast overboard so I would say I did a good job.

After the boat, I decided to walk around before too many shops closed, which they did rather fast, most shops around 5 or maybe 6pm if you were lucky. Bantry is a rather small little town and you can walk most of the shopping area in about a half hour if you dont really stop. Unfortunately, most places were closing so I had to save my shopping for tomorrow, but we did find this! and thought of course it was just a picture taking spot :)

So, after all that talk of good seafood and staying in a prime area to get some good stuff, we decided to head for a pretty fancy dinner at O' Conners. I got some really delicious calamari as an appetizer and lemon sole with a basil and tomato fondue. Fondue does not tend to mean the same thing we think of back in the states as it does here, but there was no dipping, and I did have a delicious dinner. Thanks mom and dad ;)

Well I am surely missing everyone and hope this gives you enough to read for now! love you

Day 19:on the way to West Cork and the rock of Cashel

Hello helllo everyone! So sorry it took a little bit for these posts, it is so hard to keep up sometimes with so much going on, but I got a little break in the day and am writing these posts for you guys! So enjoy! Monday was the day we were heading west to go to West Cork and stay in a little town called Bantry. Lucky for us, we got out own little mini bus (a mercedes bus, which most busses are relatively new busses so I heard the driver saying people won't allow for bad busses) but anywho, it was lovely and I decided to take up space in the very back because no one else had :) five seats straight across all to myself for most of the journey! It was quite a long drive to finally get there even though there were a few stops on the way but it was very interesting getting to see the scenery change and the weather go from beautiful and sunny to stormy and dreary all in one bus ride :)

So after about two hours of driving or so, we were only about half way there. We stopped in a town called Cashel, where there is the "rock of cashel" and in this place there are two churches, a castle (very mini) and other stuff that I cannot seem to remember off of the top of my head. It looked very pretty though and had a graveyard throughout it. I learned lots of things there, but before I tell you that, we went to go get lunch beforehand. Three of us decided to go to this little restaurant called Grannys Kitchen. It was very quaint like a little old cottage with about six tables total and had pretty good food for cheap. I just loved the front of the place though because it stood out in a lovely little town with its bright pink front.

This is a photo of part of one of the church on the rock of cashel and the part above that has fallen off (the fallen piece still remains on the ground and was due to one of the "great winds" which the lady says happens more often than not when you are up in those hills!) was originally part of the home for the people that lived there. As well, we also learned about where spiral staircases come from and why they are the way they are. It was quite fascinating for anyone that does not know, I will explain it either way. spiral staircases for starters are always heading in clockwise manner. The reason for this is because the "defender" of the house was going to be defending by facing down the staircase and the invader would be coming up the staircase. So when the defender is swinging their sword around they have full range (pending they are right handed) to swing the sword around and attack the invader. The invader on the other hand who (pending they are right handed as well) will be swinging their sword right into the pole that goes up the middle of the staircase and doing no damage except to themselves. Also they used to make the steps uneven so that the invader, who would not be used to the uneven steps, will trip up them as the defender is used to them with no worries. Just a couple interesting facts there for you :)

This next one is from a different building on the rock of cashel. The tour guide referred to this as the first ever credit card that was used (approximately around the 12th century... i think) and it led to the first example of credit card fraud. This is because there used to be a choir that was housed in the building there and the king at the time was in charge of them. The all mens choir was to live in that building and their wives and families were to live in town. The king had given them this much smaller plaque type thing that looked just like this and when they went to town it would mean what they were buying was to be put on the kings tab. Well, they of course got the ingenious idea to replicate these plaques and give them to all of their friends and family members to use, putting EVERYTHING on the kings tab. And of course money was not kept quite as well and looked after in quite the same manner as our credit cards are nowadays and it was not until much later that the king realized he was running up a HUGE tab. Needless to say that was the end of those things!

So after some more driving we finally made it to Bantry and are staying in a lovely four star hotel called the Maritime Hotel and this is the view from our bedroom out onto Bantry bay!

Day 18: Horse Market and Fourth of July at the U.S. Ambassadors House

Happy Fourth of July! Today is Sunday the fourth of July and we started it off by visiting the Horse Market that happens the first sunday of every month. It was kind of a quiet market but it was neat to see all the horses and how a lot of people who were riding them simply ride them bareback.

After that we went to the U.S. Ambassador for Irelands home in Phoenix Park to volunteer and get to actually do something for the fourth of July. This was Rachel and I on the Lawn During lunch. Before that we were helping with the bouncy houses for younger kids, helping with temporary tattoos and other set-up needs. It was fun, but lucky for us we had a lot of time to hang out. THey had hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch, chips and nachos before that, mini hagendas ice cream cups, some american football and other things. It was a good day and now we are all wiped.

Megan and I on the lawn at lunch as well

The U.S. Ambassadors House

Six of us in front of the House

Tonight is packing and getting ready to head off to West Cork next week! Love and miss you!

Day 17: Wicklow and Glendalough

Soo like I said yesterday, Saturday was a tour to Wicklow and Glendalough (pronunced glen-da-lock) The wicklow mountains were absolutely gorgeous! This view specifically to the left, is a site from the movie P.S. I love you. It was where they first meet in the movie. So I had to get a picture of me there. The mountains like a said were very pretty and the roads in the mountains were not really meant for big busses, but hey, we made it work!

This was my lunch at the pub we stopped at right before hitting Glendalough (which means the valley between two lakes) It was so yummy! You got up and served yourself and I had chips, ham with brown gravy, peas, carrots and a roll! de-licious!

This next picture was when we made it to Glendalough! We found the lower and upper lakes, but also decided to try and find the waterfall that was supposed to be there. Needless to say we had to climb up a pretty big side of a mountain that was much steeper than we imagined (and we only had an hour and a half to do EVERYTHING there) and we were trying to make it up the fast and were just so relieved to have made it. It was really pretty though!!

This is from the Monastic Village in Glendalough. Sorry these ones are sideways I forgot to flip them before I uploaded, woops! We didn't get to spend a lot of time here. We got there with ten minutes before we had to get on the bus, but we at least wanted to see it and try to get some pictures. It was really beautiful. THere are lots of these round towers built at monestaries all over the place in Ireland. It was really tall and there were other ruins of the other buildings. Very neat to see

This last one is from a villiage that we stopped off at where they make their scarves and blankets from machines like this every day. It was really cool. I go a video of the guy working on the machine and I don't know if I can upload it but I will try to do that for you guys. There was this one really beautiful blanket I wanted to get but it was 97 euro, so I thought that a scarf would be more reasonable :)

Day 16: Tara and New Grange

Hey Hey,
So today was friday and I went on a day tour to go see Tara and New Grange! A little history for you: Tara was a very historical place, it is where all the kings used to go to stand at this monument and declare themselves high king. But this would only be true if something happened while they were standing there, eitherwise they were not high king :(

As for New Grange it was built 1000 years before Stone Hedge and 500 before the Pyramids of Giza! It was a place that possibly took the Neolithic people 10-60 years to build up. A scottish man was actually the one that found the remains of Newgrange and had the first walk inside it for thousands of years. It was considered a sacred "death" ritual place. The neolithic people would cremate their people outside of the tomb and then bring their cremated parts inside and lay them on one of the three stone slabs that were inside. The whole point of this place was almost a reasureance that the sun was going to come back after a long and cold winter.

The neolithic people were very in tune with nature and the earth and their god was believed to be the sun god. You can see a little spot up above the entrance to the tomb that looks lke another square box. On the 21st of December the sun would come shining in through that window and it leads all the way to the inside of the tomb (actually hitting the tomb floor because the long passage way to get to the tomb actually elevates. The thought of this was that when the sun came shining through it would touch the souls of the dead and carry them out. It is supposed to be the experience of a lifetime to actually get to see this happen! You can enter into a lottery every year and attempt to get picked out of at least 40,000 people or more. So hey mom and dad, if I get picked you will let me fly all the way back here right? hahaha because i entered it, it was free!

As well the three kind of curly ques that are all linked together are supposed to be a symbol of life, death and re-birth.

The day was really awesome and I had a great time getting to travel to place outside of Dublin! Miss and love you all!


Look out for tomorrow because we are going to Wicklow and Glendalough!

Day 15: Ballymun Regeneration, Irish language practice, St. Patricks Cathedral, Guinness and live music

Good Morning to you,
Well it is practically morning here! Today started out with our mobile seminar going up to see Ballymun and what is doing to fix up the area. The area is known for ghetto-ized housing, tall apartment style buildings leading to drug dealing, not safe havens for kids and families, and really just dragging down the area. After an outcry for help, people finally came in to handle the situation, create better housing, more accomodations for the people, social housing, grocery stores, community centers, shopping centers, and safe playgrounds and fields for kids to play. It was good to see something like that being done to revive an area.
After that there was our Irish Language lesson in class with our professor Donal Casey! It was a lot of fun getting to learn how to say hello, Samantha is my name, what is your name, how are you, I am fine and stuff. I will give you guys a little Irish lesson on another day though!
After class, on our walk to Guinness, we stopped at St. Patricks Cathedral. This was me standing in front of it. Very pretty.


Finally made it to the Guinness Storehouse! Phew! now it was time to get inside and start our tour


Of course we chose the option to pour our own pint, and head up to the gravity bar later. I mean, you get your own certificate and everything!


You can see in my face a little anger here. and if you can't there was. After pouring the PERFECT pint and placing it in a location where I knew where it was, I was just heading around the bar to go and pick it up to take my first sip... DUN DUN DUNNNN.. some JERK stole MY perfectly poured pint and left me with their shitty one (excuse my french) they were a very sloppy pourer whoever it was. But, I was not going to let that rouin my perfect first pint of Guinness


When Rachel was trying to take a picture, the flash wasn't going off and I wound up taking too big a gulp cuz it took so long. Woops! Overall the day was really fun and later on I got to relax and listen to some live music at a pub after eating food from the best chippery, right behind our apartment! Yum