I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know I've slacked recently in the updates, but its been tough to get to a computer. I realized that I do not need one right away, I can get by without for now, but my blogging is going to be brief until I can get home. Anyway, going back since I last updated, Sophie and Carolyn came and visited, we had a lot of fun together, I got to be a tour guide to my adopted home, which was fun. It was also good practice for this past weekend when Emily came to visit. I've done a ton of walking the past few weeks but its been great to see some of my friends from back home.
School has been getting a bit more difficult. Not necessarily harder, but we've definitely had a lot more work to do recently. Papers in two of my classes, a test, and a lot of short reflection and play reviews have kept me pretty busy. Nothing too hard though. One of the papers I got to write about was the issues in Northern Ireland. I chose to write specifically on the schooling problems there. In Northern Ireland there really is no public education system as we think of it. There are protestant and Catholic schools. This leads to built up hatred and fighting between the two school groups. My 74 years of experience of going to Catholic school, and 4 years of experience in hating Fox Valley Lutheran made the topic very interesting to me. I ended up going over the word limit by about a thousand, so I'm going to get down graded, but I really don't care.
As far as traveling goes, I'm off to Scotland this weekend. But last weekend I was in Ireland. Ireland is my new favorite place ever. This history class gave me so much background on Ireland that I was really excited before the plane even landed. Once there, and we checked into our hostel we toured the city a bit and then went to bed pretty early after failing to find a sports bar that would show the basketball games. The next day I got up early, made a few calls, and eventually found the only bar in Dublin that was airing the games. We started touring the city. Walked into a couple of the churches, went to a park, but then the real Dublin tour started. A trip to the Guinness Factory. After the tour taught us how Guinness was made we got to take our ticket stub up to the top of the Gravity Bar for a free pint of Guinness. I am not a big Guinness fan, but this stuff was just delicious. The bar was 7 stories in the air and made of complete glass, so we got to overlook all of Dublin as we enjoyed our free pint. After we came back down we headed over to the Jameson Distillery. After we learned how Irish Whiskey is made, we again redeemed our ticket stub for an opportunity to try some Jameson. Once again, the stuff was pretty darn good. Callie and Emily even got to take part in a whiskey tasting. They were given a shot of Jameson, Scotch, and Jack Daniels and had to decide which was the best. They both voted for the Jameson. After the last tour I headed to the sports bar to watch the basketball games. We spent the rest of the night there. The bar even served Miller. It felt like I was back in the states for a while.
Saturday was more touring but we were told that there was a big rugby match that day. Little did we know how big it actually was. Turns out the Irish National Team was playing Wales in the 6 Nations tournament. If Ireland won the game, not only would that win the tournament, but they would also complete the Grand Slam, something that has been done in 60 years. My knowledge of how rugby was minute, and still is, but I have NEVER, EVER seen anything so intense. By the end of the game I was screaming at the top of my lungs for Ireland...I even started singing their national song. Ireland was winning the whole game, with 4 minutes left Wales kicked a drop-kick to take the lead 16-14. Ireland, then marched down the field and scored to take the lead 17-14. As the clock expired the ref called a penalty on Ireland as time expired. The free kick that Wales was given literally fell about 2 feet short of going through the goal posts as time expired and Ireland won the Grand Slam. Talking to a man who was in near tears, he explained to me that this was the greatest sports moment of his life, and this meant more to Ireland than anything. It was great to be a part of it.
That day we also took a day trip out to the cost of Ireland. The rolling green grass and cliffs that fall into the ocean were beautiful. We wandered and toured some more on Sunday, and later in the afternoon I met up with my friend Lisa who is studying in Dublin. It was great to see her and we got the chance to talk about home back in Madison, and the good ole' days at Xavier.
I'll do a better job of keeping in touch, and promise to have many more stories and pictures to tell when I get home. I can't believe I'm home now in less than a month. Granted I am broke and can't afford to stay any longer but still, it would be great to see more of Europe....I guess its my excuse to come back again someday.
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