Updates!

     Well it's been a little while since my last post and I figure I had ought to catch everyone up.

Our bus

     For starters, Galway is AMAZING. I absolutely love it. It is big enough that you know you are in a city, but at the same time it seems really friendly, cozy, and accommodating. There are loads of neat places to find, good food to eat, and things to do. I am just realizing that I haven't really posted anything about the time I've spent in Galway so I guess I will start with the first day we arrived here.

     Well we left Dublin early(ish) that morning on a charter bus. There were several groggy eyed Americans who piled on filling whatever seats weren't occupied with people with loads of stuff. We took a wonderful 3.5 hour drive across the center of the the country and got a great overview of the countryside. Pictures were difficult to snap from a moving bus, so I just gave up after a few attempts. It was absolutely beautiful. We got to see the lush green hills that are on every postcard from Ireland EVER, which was nice, along with herds of sheep, large and small kept in by stone and hedge fences.


     My favorite part was getting to see the medieval buildings in various states of decay. They dotted our trip on the way through just nestled in with the landscape, or near a farm, or just wherever like it was no big deal. Most of them were probably older than our country, with centuries of history, war, strife, and whatever else and they were just there. It seems to be a pretty common theme here in Ireland. The modern and the old, side by side illustrating, quite literally, how big of a role history and tradition play still in day to day life.

     Getting back on topic, once we finally got to Galway and made it to our apartment complex thing, we got an hour or so to unpack and rest before Paul and Dermott took us to Dunnes Store right across the road to pick up some essentials. Dunnes is sot of like a JC Penneys mixed with a Wal-Mart and scaled back a bit. We all had to get pillows, blankets, towels, food, and the like. Food was my first stop (of course) and as soon as I got to the food section, I got extremely overwhelmed. I guess buying food to live off of sort of drove home what I had gotten myself into and I panicked a little bit. A lot of the stuff seemed just familiar enough to tempt me, but I ended up running around for 15 or 20 minutes and only came out with a handful of things.

     After we all got settled there, we headed back for another couple of hours. Paul and Dermott took us all into town so those of us who didn't have a phone yet a chance to get one. This was the first time most of us had seen City Center, the main shopping portion of Galway, and that too was pretty overwhelming. There were people everywhere, shops everywhere, street performers everywhere, and just a lot of stuff. After everyone was finished there, we headed back for the evening and went to sleep.

     Over the next few days we had quite a bit going on, both as a group and independently trying to figure out the city, what classes we were going to take, and going to various orientations at the university. at some point in there, I went to take a nap at around 5:00 one evening and ended up sleeping for 16 hours.... I felt soooo much better afterwards, but it was so long. We had pretty much been doing something since we landed in Dublin, along with the jet lag which ended with a very tired Austin. 

     Well I have class in a little bit and need some food, so I will be back shortly with pictures from our walking tour of Galway and stories from the first week of class.
Cheers!

Guinness Factory Tour

We also got to go on a tour of the quintessential Guinness factory in Dublin. It was MASSIVE and pretty darn nifty.

This was a big waterfall thingy right as we started the tour. People had thrown  hundreds of Euros in here, and Mark and I were trying to make a plan to teal them while no one was looking 

The signed 9000 year lease from the cocky founder of Guinness. He was
Confident enough in his product that he knew it would last forever

My personal favorite part, this was carved from
a giant barrel

And the harp the that the Guinness Harp was
based on. It's from the 1700's 

And of course, a wall of Guinness recipes

OLD bottles

And the view on the way out

Dublin Walking Tour

Hey Again! Finally got some Pics up! We Went on a walking tour of Dublin and I tried to get pictures of all the neat things we say. Thee were so many it was very difficult though. Haha


This was the main street we stayed on, and our hostel was on an off street of this

 This was called the spire. It was super tall and we used it to navigate our way back, since you could see it from pretty much anywhere

                                                                                      This was the sign on a bank written on Irish.

     Here is the river that separates the two halves of the city. There are several bridges that go across and you can see one in the background.
   

 This door was on the post office. It was freaking huge. The people in the foreground are there for reference.

 And here is Trinity College from the outside.

                                              This was one of the tourism offices in Dublin.

 Here is another shot of the College 

 We went inside the courtyard are and were greeted with these next few pictures











And this little guy wasn't the leas bit afraid of us

In the center of the courtyard was this nifty little monument

This is the view up one of the busier streets we were on

I'm going to apologize for the formatting right now.... I'm still trying to get used to the Blogger system here.

Hey there! We finally made it to Galway today after two days in Dublin. I haven't had reliable internet access until today, so here it goes!!

My flight left from Springfield on the 30th of December. There were a few tears but mostly excitement I think.

 That was my first flight, So I was definitely a little jittery, and it didn't help that my neighbor was kind of a jerk. The flight itself was short and sweet and we landed safely in Atlanta.

I didn't get to do much there, or take any pictures, but it was huge. Not as terrifying as I thought. That flight SOOO long. I at next to an older gentleman from Ireland who was super nice, but extremely hard of hearing so we didn't really get to talk much. I read an entire book, and about a quarter of another before my kindle passed away, and the last three hours or so were just no fun at all.

We finally landed in Dublin around 6:30 or 7:00, I don't really remember really. When I walked through the gate I was greeted by two friendly Irish faces, Paul and Mark from ISA. Two other students from Boston had already made it so we sat and waited for the rest of us to show up, including the other ISA rep, Dermot, and we finally left the airport around 10:00. We took a double decker to Jim's Inn, where we stayed for two nights.

Our first night in Dublin was, of course, New Years Eve. We went out for dinner and then we were taken to our first pub, The Stags Head in Temple Bar. As I mentioned, it was New Year's Eve, so it was literally shoulder to shoulder inside so a small group of us broke off and went to another less crazy place. The others wanted to go to another, but my stomach was bothering me so I turned in.

The next morning we went for a walking tour of Dublin lead by Paul, Mark, and Dermot.

I think pictures will do better than words on this part but I'm having a rough time getting them uploaded so I will post them as soon as I can.
Cheers

Here you go!!

Hey everyone!
This is my blog for my upcoming trip. Hopefully I will remember to update it more than this one time. I will be leaving on December 30th, so be looking for posts shortly after that day.