Katie's Time with Jackie Poo Poo Bear

Let me just start by saying that I got up SO early to catch the bus to Dublin to pick up Jackie at the airport. So early. After getting coffee at the airport (because let's face it, I need my coffee...) we checked in to our hotel. It was a struggle getting there because Jack insisted on bringing nearly everything he owns with him, making it hard to walk around efficiently. We toured Grafton street and pretty much bummed around for the rest of the day. Jackie had to go to bed early to try to beat the jet-lag, which he thankfully did.

Saturday was a little more eventful; we toured Dublin Castle, which was awaesome! The history of the place is amazing and I had been learning about a lot of it in one of my classes so that was pretty exciting. Plus I had been looking forward to touring the castle since the last time I was in Dublin. We also visited St. Patrick's Cathedral that day, although we did not go inside because it was a tad expensive. But the grounds were beautiful and we got some cute pictures together :)And Saturday was definitely a disturbing night, as our neighbors were "busy" ALL NIGHT LONG. I swear I didn't sleep at all, which is obviously not okay, making me sleepy and slightly on the cranky side for Valentine's Day.... But not too much, our day was still wonderful! It was our first Valentine's Day together, and we celebrated with lots of Butlers Chocolate, a couple hours in a museum, and a delicious Italian dinner. When we got back to our room for the night, our neighbors were "busy" again so we decided it was time to switch rooms.

Monday was spent relaxing and walking around the city a little more (not much to report) and we caught a bus back to Galway on Tuesday afternoon! Tuesday evening we got pizza with Chelsea and Jack got to meet the group when we all went to the Cellar for some drinks! Then we came back and awaited Camille's return! I missed her tons, and she had a huge bear hug for Jackie :)

Camille's time in England...

...was AWESOME!!!!!! Last Saturday (the 13th) I headed to Nottingham, England. My flight left at 8:00 am from the Dublin airport so in order to get to the airport at the correct time I had to leave from Galway at 3:30 in the morning!!!! But there was barely anyone on the bus with me so it was nice and quite and I had a set of seats to myself. I slept. My journey through the airport was very similar to my previous journey to England. I was frisked going through security. But other than that I made it on the plane just fine, and without worrying about the size of my carry-on having learned on my previous flight that it fits just fine. I arrived in Nottingham around 10am and met Hannah and Lauren (my future roommates!) at Costa Coffee where we enjoyed some caffeine and catching up! They took me back to their flat then where I got tackled by Tyler and big hugs from everyone else! It was nice to be able to visit all of these people because they are away for an entire year from Luther, so I hadn't seen any of these people since early September. Also at the flat was Lizzi, who was visiting the Nottingham gang on her winter break from school in Aix, France.

On Valentine's Day Lizzi and I as well as a couple of others accompanied Kathy Reed-Maxfield to Newsted Abbey, a BEAUTIFUL house and garden. We took a nice walk there and ended with some tea and talk in the Abbey cafe. FUN. Later that day, back at the flat, we experimented with chocolate truffles and sugar cookies for Valentine sweets. I also shredded massive amounts of cheese to make the sauce for our Alfredo that was to be dinner. A dinner needed to feed 15 people (so I shredded LOTS of cheese)! But we had a very nice Valentine dinner followed by our heart-shaped sugar cookies and chocolate ganache (because they didn't harden into truffles) for dessert.


Most of the next two days were spent hanging out with my Nottingham loves and reconnecting and relaxing. It was lovely.

Lizzi followed me here to Galway and we are having a lovely time here as well!