Staying in Dunmore-East and Waterford

Friday started off as a lazy morning in Dunmore-East as we got up for breakfast late and then leisurely ate since we had no big plans. We ended up doing was making a loose plan to go on a cliff walk near the beach and then head towards the opposite side of town, the harbor, to get a light lunch and explore what was over there.  What really happened was that I left the Haven hotel with a big bunch of people and we took some wrong turns on the roads and couldn't find he path for the cliff walk, and when a bunch of the guys in our group decided to just climbing up the side of the steep hill I bailed with Menglin and Becca. The three of us decided to go to the other side of the beach that we hadn't explored yet and just took in the scenery. It was sad that it wasn't warm enough to swim, but I bet Dunmore-East would be a great summer destination. After sitting on the rocks for a good bit, we decided to continue the plan and go towards the harbor of town. Since its off-season for tourists not much was open, but we did get to have a great ocean view from café we stopped at. We also went into the Spar (which basically works as a grocery/convenience store) and grabbed some snacks for travelling. With our snacks in hand, we walked back to the hotel for a nice afternoon of reading and watching videos while it was rainy and foggy outside. For dinner that night we ate as a big group downstairs where I got to have fish and chips and lovely salad with rashers or rocket leaves, which I don’t know the American name of! After dinner we had yet another history lecture in order to catch up with the rest of the class still at Auburn. That lecture took an hour and we were all exhausted after it. Ashley and I went upstairs to our room and propped the door open because there was live music going on downstairs at the bar that we wanted to listen to but not go into the crowd. It was the best decision because we could hear them very well, but we could be comfortable!

The Dunmore-East Beach

Saturday we had the option of going on an excursion with the group to Loftus Hall which is the supposedly most haunting building Ireland and a Lighthouse in County Wexford, which sounded fun but I also wanted to go into the nearby city of Waterford so I opted out. Ashley and Becca also didn't want to go so we all caught a bus into Waterford at 10:30 that morning. My plan for the day was to see the Historical sites of Waterford because it is the oldest city in Ireland that was founded by Vikings and also go shopping a little bit as some girls that went on Friday said there were some really good places to go. So we got dropped off right near the center of the city and saw Reginald’s tower which is famous for how long its been there, as it is the oldest tower to survive in Ireland- and with a cannon ball lodged in the side too! We went into a 3-story Penneys because the other two girls had not been in one where I surprisingly found a good wallet for 2 euros to replace my travel wallet which was past its prime. We also went into some thrift stores where we did more window shopping than actually purchasing anything. There surprisingly wasn't much open for lunch, as we should’ve guessed (again not tour season) but found a pretty large café where I got tea and pie as a wasn't really hungry. We checked out the mall in Waterford, again window shopping, and passed by the Waterford Crystal Factory and the Museum of Medieval Treasures which we had plans to visit the next day so we didn't go in. We saw the sights and were content with ourselves enough to go back by the bus, but we did have to wait a bit for the next one which came at 4:30 pm. We were dropped off by a fancy restaurant in town and walked back to the hotel were we played some cards (watch out I’m getting a lot of Rummy practice in!) and I wrote a bit in my journal. We were a bit tired from the day, and I still wasn't too hungry so I just grabbed a quick sandwich as my dinner with a side of chilli heatwave Doritos. The time change for Ireland was that night so we all had an earlier night than usual to account for losing an hour of sleep.

The Waterford City Walls Map in the City Center

Today we have done a lot. We started out by leaving the Haven hotel at 9:30 am after grabbing a quick breakfast downstairs where they have been making us amazing food ranging from poached eggs on toast to beans on toast. We left in two vans that dropped us off at the Museum of Medieval Treasures where we arranged to have our bags stored until we came back to take the tour later. We then went right across the street to the Waterford Crystal Factory to take the factory tour there. We took a look around the store first while waiting for a tour guide, which houses some pretty amazing work. We were called and so we walked a building over to the factory where we had a rundown of the factory’s back story and saw the more famous crystal pieces they are known for (i.e. the National Championship Trophy!). By the way, they are wary of people from the University of Alabama as they have dropped their trophies 3 times!

Me holding a scale of the BCS football!

We walked into the molding room which was not in use today because it is the weekend and then moved into where they blow the glass and form the basic shapes. We got to see them process about 4 vases which was really cool because you saw them take it to the furnace, take it out, form a cylindrical shape, put it into a casing in order to blow it into that shape, and then cool it down with water and air in order for it to come off of its base. Then we moved into the area of the factory where they clean and sand the edges of the crystal to make it presentable. Besides the fact that every time the man in there started sanding a new piece there was a terrible loud grinding that quieted as the glass gave, it wasn't much to see. From there we went into the patterning and cutting area, where there were many artists work on vases to make very straight cuts into the already formed crystal which looked very impressive to me. Then we went into the etching area where we found three artists working on various projects that were masterpieces of skill. They use copper wheels in order to make such etching on the crystal, while also using very small tools to create details. Then we were done and back into the store where I got something for myself and my mom. When in Waterford, buy some crystal? 

Molding the glass into a cylinder

Cutting the glass in extremely straight lines

When I'm making bank, one day I will come back to Waterford. 

              We went back to the Museum where we had a great tour guide who was very fun to listen to took us through the history of Waterford and through the artifacts they have. Most of what they have dates back to the 1600s or older, but mainly focuses on the stuff Ireland had around the time when it was conquered by England. We did have the treat of seeing the found spiritual garments of clergymen and models of what the city would look like in different centuries. It was a quick tour, but a good one that really showed me more about the city’s different histories that were influenced by the Normans, Vikings, and the English alike. We grabbed our bags from the Museum and then put them onto a coach bus which we took to drive to Cork. 

The clergymen garments made withe actual gold

Cork is honestly like a mini Dublin. I looked up from reading on the bus and someome said what I was thinking, “Are we back in Dublin?”. We also are staying in a Kinlay House hostel so really it is just like Dublin, but this time we have a room of 8 and a room of 4. Take a guess at which room I’m in. It’s not that bad, but it is tight with 3 bunk beds against one wall and the other wall has one bed against it with an armchair weirdly on the same wall. We figured out who was going where and then had a quick group meeting before going to eat. We found some Mexican place akin to Moe’s or Chipotle to get a cheap meal. We stay in Cork for about 3 nights before moving to Kilarney, but we have a good schedule setup with going to Blarney Castle and Blarney Stone tomorrow and Cobh for the Titanic exhibition Tuesday.  

Carlow and Moving to Dunmore-East

Sunday early afternoon we arrived at the Carlow train station. The train we were on was just a commuter stop so we had about 2 minutes to get all 23 of us off with all our bags. Needless to say we had to rush to get out of the way and cause a lot of problems getting bags down. We had a fairly long walk to our guesthouse which maybe would have been shorter but we were hauling everything we owned. The place we were staying at in Carlow was called the Carlow Guesthouse and was a 10 min walk from downtown Carlow and about 20 minutes from Carlow Institute of Technology. We were staying 3 to a room there and its amazing quality! We had breakfast every morning, which is your choice of eggs and sausage or bacon and tea and coffee made for you. So much better than the hostel breakfast! Once we settled in, we went out into town, but since it was Sunday there wasn’t much open. We settled on a local pub to grab an amazing dinner of sweet chili (which has become my favorite flavoring here, the Doritos chili heatwave flavor is to die for) wings and pulled pork! It was a short night after that because of all the travelling.

Our Breakfast at Carlow

              Monday morning we had our Irish breakfast and then had a van pick us up at the Guesthouse and drop us off at Carlow Institute of Technology. So in Industrial Design there is an unequal ratio of men to woman in the workforce with men always outweighing the women, I’ve never really experienced that type of ratio at Auburn because we actually have more girls than guys in our graduating class for my year. At Carlow, I got to really experience the ratio. In Product Design there they have a class of maybe around 30 people with two girls total! We were given some time to chat and meet each other, and by far these students have been the easiest to talk too. They wanted to know what we’ve learned, what we were interested in doing, and what else we had seen while in Ireland. The professors then split us up into teams of two Auburn students and two Irish students, like before. This time was with Bekah from our group, and Matt and Eoghan (yep that’s another one said like Owen) from Carlow IT. Our job this half week was to observe and record how users interact with and use objects near ATMs. Now we had a talk on ethics so we know how controversial this was, but none of us were close enough to an ATM to see anything. We all played the observer role across the street or at a café half a block away to ensure that the customers had safety in their bank records. We as a group drew up or game plan and decided to start observing on Tuesday in a nearby city called Kilkenny. That night we ventured out again to downtown only to find most places to eat closed again and found ourselves eating Greek gyros for a cheap amount of euros that actually turned out to be pretty good!

Carlow IT's logo

              Tuesday we did breakfast early and quickly to get to school around 9 am. Matt drove us about 30 min to Kilkenny and we ranged in lots of topics on the way there. Side note: Since the driver side is on the right side of the car it was interesting to see Matt drive with a stick shift backwards from what I’m used to. Made me wonder if the pedals were the same orientation or different as well. One more observation was that the speedometer was in miles per hour while the road signs were in kilometers per hour. When I asked about it, someone said they mostly just know the conversions and that the signs used to be mph years ago. Anyways Kilkenny is a bit larger than Carlow in size, and has a castle right in the middle of town. We walked away from it to a square off of a good shopping area to find a café called Bollards in order to observe ATM users. We all joked it felt James Bond, but it was fun. For instance, I found a lot of older people are more worried about the safety of their pins i.e. putting their hands over the pad while typing, but are the most impatient out of the age groups to get their card and money. Or the fact that almost no one put their money away at the ATM, and rather walked away while putting things away or stopped further down the road to put money away. We left town after getting all our recordings pretty quickly because we had a lot of paperwork to do before Wednesday. After a lunch break, we did all the work on the sheets we needed to have done and put our key observations on the wall for the next day. We walked back to the Guesthouse to get a small break before heading back out again to get dinner. Again as apparently Carlow restaurants do not open earlier on in the week, we had very few options we ended up getting Chinese take away and went walk to the Guesthouse to eat around reruns of How I Met Your Mother. I know, I know we live the crazy life!

Bekah, Myself, Matt, and Eoghan ( who didn't realize we were taking a picture!)

              Wednesday started again like the days have been, Irish breakfast and van drop-off at the school. We had presentations of our findings in our groups, which went well enough. It wasn’t hard but it was fun to hear how everyone else went about creeping around observing. After that we had a history lecture from our Industrial Design History class played in the room, where the Irish students didn’t have to come but did anyway. I’m not sure they had too much fun, but some insisted it was better than nothing. We had a break after the lecture to go to lunch which was mostly uneventful except for a trip to the pharmacy for anti-histamines for an allergic reaction to nuts for my friend who realized her mistake right after she bit into her sandwich. We had such a big break that even after that we had an hour before we had to be back at school so we walked to the Penneys nearby. Penneys is a magical place where everything is inexpensive and made with quality that is better than what the prices make it seem. I bought a couple little things and we made our way back to school after that. What we sat through was a 2 our lecture series from 5 graduates on “Design Thinking”. It was interesting, and all 5 people had very different approaches which was refreshing. From school, we took a van home because of the rain and got back to the Guesthouse before it started raining too hard. In order to avoid walking into town in the rain, four of us pitched in to order some pizzas and have them delivered. It was a great decision!

              Today was interesting to say the least. We had breakfast as usual, and got ready to leave the Guesthouse when we had a change of plans. One boy in our group got trashed the night before, and another boy from our group decided to wheel him home in a cart from the nearest grocery store. It was fine until they decided to leave the cart right outside the door to the Guesthouse for our professor to find and question everyone about. What he decided was a good punishment for the boys was to have everyone, instead of walking to the train station with all our bags, walk the 10 minutes back the grocery store with all of our bags to return the cart and then walk to the train station. It was brutal. Getting on the train and sitting down was a welcome break and probably the best feeling I’ve had all day. The ride to Waterford was about an hour, and from there we were picked up and driven about 13 miles to Dunmore-East which is on the very edge of Ireland on the east coast near the water. We are staying in a beautiful hotel, and the room that I am sharing with my friend Ashley has a beautiful view of the water. We quickly put our bags down and then went to explore the cliffs in the park across from the hotel. We then went down the coast a bit away from town to the entrance of the beach where we collected shells and sea glass and played fetch with some local dogs. Our final stop was getting lunch/dinner at a nearby café, which was a good way to end our day out before heading back to the hotel. Later on we just grabbed some beer and dessert for a snack and played cards until we had to leave the sitting area. Dunmore-East is going to be our “Spring Break” destination at the beach, and we don’t have school besides the lectures we have to sit through! Good way to start off our crazy schedule of moving every couple of days! 

Note: Today is actually Friday, but the wifi in the hotel we are staying at isn't the greatest and I couldn't get the blog to go up yesterday! Read the last paragraph as if it was Thursday!

The Haven Hotel ( Our room is the one over the blue flag!)

The beach at Dunmore-East

Badger's Cove right near our Hotel

More of the beach

Dublin Part II

Well here’s another long post as this week has been so full! Tuesday was St. Patrick’s day and it was insane! My room started off the day in a very lazy fashion, by sleeping in and sitting around missing the breakfast window downstairs. We have a great view of the street from our hostel windows so my room and a handful of people (some not even in our group, looking at you random German tourist) crowded around the window sill to watch the parade. It didn't actually get to our street near Christchurch until around 1:30 pm, and because we wanted to be prepared my legs were asleep from being perched on the sill for so long. Once the parade started I gave up and appreciated that I had a pretty awesome view outside the crowded streets below. We had mixed drinks to hype up during the parade and maybe it wasn't the best idea to drink on an empty stomach, but it certainly made the parade weirder than it already was. It was a toss-up on what was really going to come next, you had to guess American marching band, Boys and Girls clubs, or even a random dance group with a theme that didn't match all the way through! I enjoyed being able to say I saw the parade, but I have to agree with the NCAD students when they said it wasn't worth it.

The parade from our window

              After the parade, our huge group split and I stayed with a group of a 6 or so people and we ran at the chance to get food. We all went across the street to get Indian take away and went back to the hostel to quickly eat so we could go back out. We dwindled down even more to about 6 people, and walked towards a fair at Christchurch. There we found even more food that included mini donuts which I shared with my friend Hunter, whose birthday is also St. Patrick’s day. After taking that second food break we headed more uptown towards a huge shopping area near Grafton Street that ended up having great live music by a band of two girls called The Heathers. We stayed around there and then planned our attack for dinner. We had to wade through the bar district of Temple bar again which was littered with people and alcohol to make it to a Mongolian Barbeque that we had been before. After that, to get out of Temple Bar we found ourselves across the river and at a bar called Lotts where my friend Ashley had her first beer and Cosmopolitan. Needless to say, she enjoyed the Cosmo a lot more than her Carlsberg. I had a couple of drinks with the rest of the table, and when we decided we should get back we got to see how fun Ashley is when giggly. I know she is going to be very fun when she can drink.

Ashley, Me, Shari, Hunter, Christina, and Becca on St. Patty's

              Wednesday was a boring day after having fun on Tuesday. We went back to NCAD and worked on our rubber band cars. My group was struggling to really cement an idea so went through a couple of ideas and prototypes before we ended up having to accept what we had last for a trial run of all the group’s cars. The most exciting part of my day was probably seeing that Rebecca in my group has a cordless hot glue pen (which is amazing seeing as its not like a cordless glue gun because those are still huge enough that it doesn't matter and I use hot glue guns a lot at studio!), so if you find one of these let me know because I am all over that! That night we were treated dinner by my professor at a really not that great Italian place, but I appreciated the effort in getting a group of 24 into a place so I was grateful.

Bosch GluePen, consider this wishlisted

              Thursday was a day like climbing the mountain in Ballyvaughan all over again, at least with the step count. First we walked down a couple blocks to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which is amazing smashup of museum like sections, harry potter looking walls with pictures and plaques puzzled together, and an actual working church. I really enjoyed being there and looking around even though a lot of people in the group didn't seem to care since this is just another big church. Then we walked back towards our hostel through St. Patrick’s Park to meet up with the professor who will be taking over for the next 3 weeks, Dylan. Dylan decided to tag along on our big day as we made our way to The National Gallery. We were given the option of The National Gallery which is the big art museum in Dublin or the Natural History Gallery, and I chose the art. There was a cool exhibit where they paired writers with works of art that reflected or mirrored what they wrote about. I quickly found Seamus Heaney and was happy to see the art they paired him with. The National Gallery is very touchy about photography of any kind so as much as I wished to document the art, I couldn't. The best I could do what write the names down and go from there. We had very limited time there, so I had to rush through most of the galleries.

View of the cathedral from the park

Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral

              Next, we took a short walk to Trinity College to see The Book of Kells. Walking onto campus was like getting transported back in time and to a different country. I remarked to Ashley that it was walking into Italy from Dublin and she agreed immediately. We were ushered into the exhibit space, and it was so cramped with people it made it hard to read everything up to the books. And even then, when we got to the books the crowds were very pushy and I only got to see the books for a slice of time. The presentation of the books, I have to say, is a bit of a letdown. They are in a case that you have to lean over to see and the lighting is so poor the only thing you can really appreciate is how much time it took to write so elegantly in color and with the decoration. I honestly had a better time going upstairs to the Trinity College Library and seeing the collections of books, awards, and artifacts they had up there. After getting everyone through the exhibition, we had a lunch at the Trinity Dining Hall which in all honesty is actually the Great Hall in Harry Potter complete with huge benches that span the room. Our next stop was for one of the students, Joseph, to cut off his wild mane and exchange that for a Euro haircut. Really, it was on or official schedule. We all stood outside and cheered when it was done, leaving the locals confused on whether or not there was a celebrity among them.

Trinity College Library

              After a quick break, we reconvened for a walk a little bit further out of Dublin 2 to the National Museum of Ireland. We took a quick peak at the Eileen Gray exhibit, as she is one of the most influential designers of the 20^th century. With even less time I went through another exhibit called The Way We Wore, which was clothing and textiles from Ireland of the past 250 years. Last stop we had time for was a quick look at the replica of Asgard, Ireland’s first national sail-training vessel first built in 1905. The last place we visited as a large group was the Guinness Storehouse, which I did not actually know was shaped like a giant pint glass! We made it up the floors where they explain how Guinness is made, what advertising they have used, and have several places you can use your free pint voucher at. I did get to go through the taste-testing rooms, which you have to make sure your timing is right, and was taught the proper way of tasting a Guinness. You have to breathe in deeply and then while drinking you must breathe out through your nose to get all the notes of the beer. They even give you a tiny pint glass to practice. Eventually, my friend Shari and I made it to the 7^th floor, which is the Gravity bar, and where you can see the whole city from there. We were ambushed by another person in our group who told us Usher was also there (Usher the famous rapper, who really is much shorter in person)! So got our free beers and proceeded to be creepy and also try to be cool about the whole situation. We walked around and enjoyed the view while also trying to get pictures of Usher. Some people in my group even made it into Usher’s photo that he posted on Instagram, talk about cool!

Advertising sign at the Storehouse

Usher at Gravity Bar

              Friday, we returned to NCAD for the last time to finish up with the cars. My group quickly had to make design decisions on the car to figure out what mechanism we actually wanted to use. What we ended up with was a wind up where the front axle is locked into the body of the car and you wind the rubber band around the back axle which can spin freely. At 1pm, I grabbed lunch with Iziz and she told me that the students were going to protest at 1:30pm in front of the president of the school’s office. It amazed me because the students wrote out a whole page of demands and all signed it, handing it to him one at a time telling him if they didn't hear from him before Wednesday they would escalate their campaign. They had a symbol of rebellion and everything! Quickly after they had finished we had our final races, our car didn't do so hot but we didn't come in last! We did get a shout out for building the most prototypes, so there’s something. After that, we said our goodbyes and made sure to get everyone’s info so we could keep in touch.

Jon, Eihon, myself, Rebecca, and Iziz with our car

               Today has been a good day to catch up on everything, as we leave for Carlow tomorrow by train. We've been out and about today and people are also catching up on sleep. It’s one of those rare very sunny days so I think everyone is really enjoying themselves. I know I am going to enjoy the rest of my night, and I am excited that Dublin is our in-between place so we get to come back a couple of times before we go home!  

               

Dublin Part I

        Dublin has been great so far, and we are really ramping up for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. First though, I am going to talk about what we have been doing since we first arrived in the city. On Thursday, morning life at the Kinlay house hostel was how it’s been since. My room of six gets up and shuffles around each other and our bunk beds in a dance that guarantees that something or someone gets thrown across the room. We get ready with the help of the light that comes in from the window laughing at the fact that we feel like we are at an orphanage or at least at some boarding school. Then we go downstairs to the lounge/kitchen area to eat a breakfast of cocoa puffs and toast. We got ready go on our tour of Glendalough(meaning “Valley of the Two lakes”) which is an hour out of Dublin in the southeast. Glendalough is a 6^th century Medieval monastic settlement that Saint Kevin founded which has a lot of monuments including several churches and beautiful views of the hills.

Church at Glendalough

        So we drove by coach down to the visitor center at Glendalough and started a walking tour of the whole area. What we expected was to have a nice day hiking around the hills and eat lunch near the lake at the valley. What we got was a rainy and cold 3 hour walk that ended with us eating lunch under a pavilion. I did enjoy the tour but I have to admit it was a little hard to look up at some of the larger buildings because the rain was just coming down so hard! I tried to do my best to make the most of the day despite the weather, which really turned out to a good day where we saw a lot of countryside near Dublin. We got back into Dublin in the afternoon with enough time for a good amount of us to grab dinner at a Mongolian grill (which was a heaven of Mongolian style buffet).

        Friday we did the morning routine, toured around Christchurch pretty quickly, and walked to the National College of Art and Design for our first day there. At school we were paired up with one student from Auburn and two Irish students from NCAD, so I am with Jon and my two new friends Rebecca and Eihon (pronounced Owen). We are creating a rubber band powered car for a race that the whole class is having against each other next Friday. We spent the morning getting to know each other and having them tell us where they like to go in Dublin, and then went to lunch. Their student center here is basically a hipster’s paradise, I felt cooler already by just walking in. They have an underground café that is lighted by what looks like different art projects, and according to one of the students changes its design every month or so. They also have really cheap (3-4 euros) lunches that are incredibly delicious. Anyways, after lunch we tried to get some work done on the car but we really enjoyed talking to the students! After school, we were free to go wherever we wanted so a bunch of girls and I went window shopping. We had a Traditional Irish dance and dinner planned for Friday night, which ended up being for fun than I thought it would be. There was live music before and after the dancing that I think I enjoyed the most, but the whole thing was pretty fun to see close up. We also to a pub called The Porter House where we also got to hear live music and have some fun. The place is three stories with a stage on the second floor and with an opening so you can see them from all floors! The night was a really a hit for live music as the second band was also very fun!

Christchurch

        Saturday was a free day so that’s when we really got our shopping on. We first stopped for a brunch around the corner from our hostel, which was the greatest choice. We then walked around Dublin trying to get the most out the area we are staying in, while also trying to orient ourselves to the city. We found Grafton St. which is a huge shopping area and one of many main streets that offers a variety of shows, pubs, and nice restaurants. We, of course, went into H&M and Topshop to check out the fashions here and really were not disappointed. I think everyone in my group ended up leaving with something they wanted! Later that night, we went out to a Chinese dinner and had a little bit of an earlier night than Friday since we had an early wakeup call on Saturday.

        Sunday was also a tour day but that time it was for the Newgrange area, which is an hour northwest of Dublin. Newgrange is located near the Boyne Valley, and is a Neolithic passage tomb mounds that no one is sure of the purpose for but we do know that the passageways are perfectly aligned with the rising sun and lights flood the chamber in a beautiful way on the winter solstice. We got to go into the tomb and had the light simulated for us by our guide (who had obviously had it with stupid questions that day as he was quite grumpy). It really was magical and it would be cool to see the actual event, but even then it is a lottery as the monument has shifted since its original alignment and now getting to see the light in the tomb perfectly is a lottery that have thousands of people flocking to the site on different days to see if it’s the correct one. After we saw Newgrange we went to the Hill of Tara, which also had significance to the Neolithic people as it is an archaeological complex that runs over a large amount of ground. We traveled back to Dublin after that, and my friend and I decided to get Italian food around the corner for dinner.

The passage tomb at Newgrange

        Today was a regular day back at school in our groups working on the rubber band cars. We added some more Irish students to the class so my group got more and her name is Iziz, and we hit it off instantly! Its really very fun getting to learn about all the students, so even though we all aren’t in the same groups we still all talk together. I had lunch with a huge group of just the Irish students today, and we spent most of the time talking about name differences ( i.e. aubergine= eggplant, corguettes= zucchini) and what’s different for school here and there (they don’t take core classes at NCAD, we take drawing classes, they have tutors rather than professors, and we have more sponsored studios). We made a little bit of progress on the car, as we have to be ready to test it on Wednesday to see if it works. We talked about our St. Patty’s day plans and what they suggested we do, as well as make plenty of jokes on what we shouldn’t do (note: don’t buy anything while the parade is going on because you really are just going to get hassled). We wished them well for the holiday and then went back to the hostel for a quick break before dinner. A small trio of us decided to walk around for a bit before stopping at a Mexican restaurant. I don’t know what’s in the water here, but all the food I have had on this trip has been amazing. Even the Mexican food in Dublin tasted better than some of the Mexican food I’ve had in Auburn! Maybe it’s just the slight vacation mode I’m in, but if you are into good food Ireland is a good place to be.

NCAD's entrance building

So tomorrow is St. Patrick Day and the city is ready, there are lights and garlands everywhere showing off the Irish colors and people have started crowding in around our street. It’s going to be hectic, but I think our group has a plan to get through the day and make it a good one. I’ll let you know how it goes next time!

Temple Bar ready for the holiday

A Whirlwind through The Burren and Ballyvaughan

So I know a lot of you at this point are even wondering if I’m alive still. I am and have had such a crazy busy week and a half for the start of this Study Abroad, so strap in because this is a long post. After a flight cancellation and many hours sitting and trying to get us all to Dublin, we found ourselves on a coach to Ballyvaughan. Ballyvaughan is a 3 hour drive from Dublin and is on the very west coast of Ireland next to the Atlantic. It’s a pretty small town with a handful of pubs that open only at 7 pm and a Spar (the local convenience store) that close at 7 pm. It is part of what is called The Burren which means Rocky Place in English which to be frank is not the most creative name but hits the nail on the head. This is probably the only time I have been extremely happy to say that I took 2 semesters of Geology because the rock formations there were rare and beautiful. The locals also loved to talk about how the flora is known worldwide because you can find flowers from alpine conditions usually sitting snug next to Mediterranean flowers.

Fairy ring formation

Where we were staying was right outside the city center in little cottages complete with thatched roofs, 4 to split between the 22 of us. We had a short walk into town and a man, who basically was a whatever you need guy to us, Robert would take us to school every day. Where we spent this first week and a half was The Burren College of Art, which is center around an actual castle tower. Students walked around this like it was the most normal thing in the world, but as I’ve noticed in the Burren it kind of is normal to see that kind of stuff all the time on the roads. We were separated into 3 groups of students and set on projects right away. What we did was help the college do something with an outdoor space that was extending off a dorm-type of building for students staying there. What my group did was build a bike port for students to put rental bikes into to help keep them out the elements. We thought this was an extremely important task because we experienced hail, rain, and bright sunshine and that was all in just one day! I won’t bore you with the process but we built the structure within a couple of days with a minimum of problems. I did get to learn how to weld which is very much like trying to draw a straight line in the dark. I even have a permanent souvenir from welding as I now have chunk gone from my pointer finger from a bit of wire that I accidentally touched while it was still extremely hot!

The castle at BCA

Welding one of the bike stands

In between working at school we have also done a whole bunch on sightseeing and have had free days to do anything we wanted. On this past Saturday, a bunch of us wanted to go hiking on the nearby mountain, Cappanawalla, so we got up decently early and had to walk to the school (a 30 min hike) to start the hike to the top. The winds on the ground were at 31 mph, so here’s where you get to imagine me trying very hard to keep my balance while trying to climb vertically up a ridge in the rock only to find that I still have half of mountain to go up. We did eventually make it to the top, me with a lot of help from others! Three of us had to link arms just to walk at one point because the wind was making us do the Michael Jackson body lean. On the way down the mountain we had even more trouble where paths were extremely steep and that wind was not going to make it easy, so needless to say I fell. A lot. The reward from such an intense hike? A herd of horses on the mountain that were extremely beautiful and friendly! My Fitbit says that that hike and the hike back to town was 20,000 steps, so I counted that as a good day.

Me trying to catch my breath on Cappanawalla

The next day on Sunday, we had a coach tour of the Burren and County Clare. Now that was a long day after that hike! We went to variety of places, from Medieval stone or faerie forts to a famous pub called Vaughan’s to the Cliffs of Moher. To give a full run down on the day would take a whole other blog post, but I am going to do my best to summarize. The tour we took brought us south down through the country and back up along the coast to Ballyvaughan. Quick facts that I learned include: Any place with a cathedral is a city no matter what the population size is. The Pope to this day is actually the bishop of a tiny place called Kilfenora because no one else would take it. There is no such thing a Celtic cross, what we think of those as are called High Crosses. The circles around the High Crosses are not there for design, its purely structural support. And there are 50,000 miles of stone walls covering the Burren because during the Potato Famine the government had to give some sort of job that had no benefit to anyone special, but that people could do without getting free handouts.

High Cross at Kilfenora

We went through many towns that could probably be described as the perfect Irish countryside towns, but only stopped at 4 or so. In order to break up the time on the bus we stopped in a beach side town called Lahinch right before stopping at the Cliffs of Moher where there is apparently world class surfing conditions for a good part of the year. From there we did get to the Cliffs, where we promptly broke the rules by climbing over the wall to get better views of the scenery. I did wish we could have spent more time there, but we did get to go the Mini Cliffs. So everyone knows about the Cliffs of Moher, but where you can really get out to the extreme edges before the ocean is the Mini Cliffs. There are no railings and I made very sure not to lose my footing but as I said to someone else, “I’m not going to the very edge unless I get picture proof”! So a couple photographs later, and can say I made it so close to the edge of a big cliff that I got to hum “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic with a friend as we made sure the other one was safe. After that we just got to sit back and watch the ocean go by as we traveled back to Ballyvaughan. 

View of the Cliffs of Moher

The beginning of this week has been as fast and full as the past week. We finished construction of the bike port at the college on Tuesday morning, and quickly moved to more sightseeing. There are a lot of cave systems under the Burren to explore so went to the Aillwee caves near the college. It was a short tour, but right after that we took a short hike to a birds of prey demonstration which had birds ranging from owls to vultures. We rushed back to our cottages where the cottage I was staying in became the place where a famous Irish storyteller would come to speak to all 25 of us. His name was Eddie Lenihan and he told us 3 stories that were told to him by people of Ireland about "The Wee Folk" as he called them, or faeries to us. It was all very interesting to hear and e definitely had a good way about him that made you want to listen (and it may have been because I was fascinated by his beard). After he had to go we were left to pack up and clean the cottage.

Standing in our finished bike port 

Eddie telling us a story

Today, we have traveled by bus to Galway which was a county over and has the train station we connected through. We had a quick lunch there and then took a commuter train into Dublin. I kind of forget when I get into far off places that I love cities, but there is no mistake Dublin is going to be good! We are staying a hostel called Kinlay House which is actually pretty amazing! We are fitting a lot of people into each rooms but we have a huge window that outlooks onto the street so it should be good. We took a walk around the city for a little it after setting up at the hostel and then we were released to do whatever we wanted. I grabbed Indian food with a couple of friends and explored a bit more. This hostel has wifi and since we are going to be in more populated areas I should be able to post more frequently and keep everyone up to speed.