REUNITED

On Tuesday evening, Camille and I were reunited in our apartment once more. Jack and I waited up watching TV until her and Lizzi arrived around midnight or so. Then we moved next door where we celebrated the first day of Lent with some grilled cheese :)

The following day we took Lizzi and Jack to our history class, where they got to experience our crazy and very stereotypical Irish professor. After that was just a long day of walking around in city centre, trying to figure out the details for our trip to Cork that was taking place early the next morning. As per our usual, our travels started as a struggle; we missed our bus. However stressful that was for Katie, we made it onto the bus that left two hours later with no problems. Our hostel in Cork was great and very close to the city centre. Cork was fine, nothing too special really, unless you had lots of money you wanted to spend at Monsoon! Which, unfortunately, we do not. But we had Kebabs for dinner and they were delectable. Later that night we went down the street to a pub, where Jack got his first Guinness in Ireland and us girls had some Bulmers to go along with the massive amount of crisps (fries) that we ordered at a semi-sketchy place nearby.

Thursday was spent in the lovely town of Blarney, where we toured the castle and grounds. The castle was average, I mean, for a castle, ya know. Although it did have a terrifying series of stairs that you were forced to take in order to get to the top, way too small for any normal sized person to climb, especially when you are carrying a backpack. At the top, we had all decided that we were not going to kiss the stone because really, that thing is so gross. Imagine all of the people that have touched and put their mouth on that. Ick. Confirming our decision was the man in front of us who had an incredibly obnoxious cough. But... as we were about to begin our dangerous descend, Jack had a change of heart, convincing Katie to come along. So we did it. And it was gross, but probably worth it for "making memories" that Jack is so fond of.




The grounds of the castle were gorgeous, lots of trees and soon-to-be flowers. Camille was horribly depressed by the fact that the flowers were in this stage of development, and has committed to traveling back to get them in bloom. In one part of our tour, Camille and Lizzi made their wish on the Wishing Steps by going down and back up a flight of outdoor stairs with their eyes closed and their minds on only that wish. We have a year or so to see how it works out for them. Good luck! :)

We made it back to Galway on Friday night, again, no meat. So we ordered a pizza! And relaxed while watching Zombieland!!!!!! Great movie. Therefore recommended. Lizzi left on Saturday morning, and the rest of the day and Sunday were pretty much spent on the couch, with Camille and Jack playing Sporcle for about seven hours....

Katie and Jack will head out tomorrow for an overnight Cliffs of Moher tour and Camille will enjoy her day of no class. That's all for now, more later... Hopefully ;)

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!

Upcoming Events!

Just in case there is anyone out there who cares.... which it doesnt seem like it.... because even though we are expected to write... there are never any comments... just sayin.

This weekend Katie is going to Dublin to get Jackie Poo and hang out until Tuesday. YAY! We dont have any plans set for sure yet, but we hope to hit the Dublin Castle, Killmainham Gaol, and maybe the zoo! And it will be our very first Valentine's Day together so we're definitely going to do something special, whether or not Jack is aware of that yet or not. ;) He will be staying for a total of two weeks and it is going to be wonderful! Katie will have lots to blog about when he has to leave at the end of the month...

Camille will be traveling to Nottingham, England to visit fellow Luther geeks. ha. She will be returning on Tuesday late late with Lizzi to spend some time in Galway. She is SUPER excited since she has not seen any of these people since late August. Two of those that she is visiting are going to be her roommates at her last year at Luther. Good stuff!

We will both try to blog about our weekends on Wednesday or so; keep checkin in!

LOVE

LONDON

I don't know why she said she'd promise... two posts in one day? That's asking a little too much... But alright, one day late. Here goes...

London- What can I say? It's one of my favorite places in the whole world!! We stayed with Chelsea's friends who are studying there for the semester so not only did we get cheap boarding, we also got a jam-packed weekend of fun! But let's start from the beginning- the Shannon airport. Well, this was quite the event. Shannon airport is quite small and we got there early enough in the morning where we were pretty much the only ones there, and we even checked in online ahead of time. You'd think we'd get right through with no problems, but you are wrong. First we went to the security desk without having our boarding passes stamped. Then I found out I had gotten my return ticket stamped so I had to go back to get the appropriate one done. As I was doing this, Camille fell victim to the "Random Frisking" and Chelsea got her bag searched and a lecture on how "anything that can become liquid must be in a plastic bag if she's carrying it on"-- referring to her deoderant, which for the record, Camille and I carried on with no problem AND no baggie (rebels, I know). Finally we were through and got to our gate, where we waited for over an hour to board. While in line to board, Camille and Chelsea decide that now was a great time to freak out about whether or not our bags are small enough to be carried on RyanAir planes, as if we could do something to change them. No worries, we got through just fine. Once on the plane, however, we were searching for our seats only to find out that you can sit anywhere you want! I chose the middle of the plane, which got us off last since you exit from the front AND the back... UGH talk about a strugglefest.

Alright, back to London events... The first night we arrived we pretty much went straight to the theater to see "Phantom of the Opera" which was, needless to say, amazing. Although we had a large group of Spanish high schoolers surrouding us who found it necessary to talk and sing along throughout the entire musical. Awesome. Loved it. But it was great anyway!

The next day we got up semi-early to try to make it to Buckingham Palace in time for the changing of the guards. As usual, we had difficulties and the Tube caused us to be almost an hour late. Thinking we had missed all the good stuff, we walk up and hear a band playing "Thriller" and joked about how it was probably the guards, as "Thriller" is obviously the Queen's favorite song... Turns out it was! The guards, that is. Although we decided it is likely that MJ was definitely on the iPod that Obama gave her when they met... Ha! The guard band went on to entertain the crowd with other pop-songs including Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time" (which, for those of you who don't recall, happens to be the song that Camille debuted as a solo in our fifth grade Millenium concert. Fun fact.) Chelsea got extremely picture happy at this time, and if you would like to relive these events second-by-second, her photos will surely do the job. The rest of the day was dedicated to touristy stuff: Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London...

Saturday was dedicated to the Harry Potter tour that our hosts put together. We journeyed through the city to see the spots where Harry ran from Death Eaters in front of a small souvenier shop, where Harry ran from Death Eaters over the Millenium Bridge, Platform 9 and 3/4 (which was conveniently relocated as the station is being remodeled) and we even saw Hermione in a Burberry ad! Mixed in this day was several shopping stops where Chelsea and Camille bought a few too many items to fit cleanly in their suitcases, causing more fear in their hearts as we boarded our flight home.

Don't worry, we managed to fit in some culture at the Tate Modern and the British National museums. And at three a.m. on Monday night, my bed in Galway was never better. :)

Love, Katie (and Camille)

Hello Hello Hello

Many apologies for waiting so long to update you all! Katie and I just got back from a long weekend in London, but more about that later...

On Saturday, the 30 of January, Katie and I and several others went on a day trip to Connemara and Kylemore Abbey. The scenery was simply breathtaking! Connemara is the name for the countryside north of Galway. The area is identified by the type of rock found there, granite, because the majority of the island of Ireland is made of limestone. There were sheep everywhere, I would say the most we have seen at one time yet! And on our way to a beautiful 14 century monastery we got to see itty bitty baby sheep! So precious. Also on this adventure we were able to see Ashgrove Castle. It was owned for several years by the Guinness Family but today it is a castle turned hotel. Also extremely gorgeous. Pierce Brosnan grew up 20 minutes from the castle and had his wedding reception at the hotel. It used to cost anywhere from 700 to 1700 euro a night to stay there but now because of the recession you can stay there for about 80 euro a night! Haha. Also, you should know that the Lochness monster resides in this area of Ireland, not in Scotland. So, we finished the tour by spending some time at Kylemore Abbey. It is a breathtaking castle-like building that is curremtly inhabited by 6 Benedictine nuns. The sisters there used to run a boarding school for girls but because of the lack of interest and the age of the nuns that live there it is most likely that the entire building will be opened up for tourism, rather than just the grounds. It ws a long but gratifying day!

The next day (Sunday) we went out for our friend, Trisha's, birthday. We started out around 7;30pm and ate at this really nummy tavern on the Corrib River called Monroe's. From there we pub hopped and finally ended up at this pub in City Centre around 11:30 called the Front Door. There we met a group of local Irish guys who had apparently been drinking since 11am that morning. But they were a lot of fun and made sure that Trisha was having a good birthday celebration!

The next week was filled with classes and then LONDON!

We will post about London later tonight! I promise!!!!!!

I am sorry that we suck at blogging...

Well, I think that the most important thing to be mentioned here is that Katie found a Starbucks...yes I am serious. Miss Katie has several giftcards to Starbucks and was hoping to be able to use them in Galway, however, the city is absent of a Starbucks. But, there were two that we ran into in Dublin! I was excited too, gotta love a taste of home! In our two day, one night stay in Dublin, we were sure to enjoy the luxury two times...

So, Dublin. We took the short 2.5 hour bus ride to Dublin early Saturday morning. Upon our arrival we walked to our hostel and checked in quick so we could be sure to get in some tourist activities for the rest of the day. First, we needed sustenance so we ate at this tasty restaurant, the name of which I cannot remember. Following, we looked around Trinity College and Dublin Castle but opted out of the guided tours since we plan to spend more time in Dublin. We also spent an hour or so on Grafton Street to look around the shopping stores. I found a fabulous Lady Gaga tee for only 3 euro! We then took some time to relax at the hostel before going out to the pubs. The pubs were fun but crowded and since we had a tour the next day we turned in semi-early.

The next day we took a tour of County Wicklow and got to see some beautiful countryside as well as the Guiness Lake and lots of sheep! Also, the tour guide was the very same Stephen that I got to tour with last year, so that was exciting. Plus, he is a cutie.

During our stay in Dublin we noticed a few things. There seems to be the most awful of hair trends occurring. it consists of the under part of the hair being long and stringy and the upper parts being rather short and fluffed out. Don't really get it and I hope it doesn't catch in the States. Also, the doors. For some reason, several locations in Dublin have seem to have something going on with their doors. This "something" consists of taking the standard size door and splitting it in half, each half is on hinges on it's respective side of the frame; saloon style, if you will. However, since the total parts of the door equal a standard sized door, it is basically impossible to get through these doors with any amount of grace. ANY.

When the time came to head back to Galway, 7:15pm Sunday, we were ready. It was nice to travel west and feel like we were heading home, because Galway is our home for now.

Well folks, we will try to keep up a bit better with the blogging...

Until next time...