Quicky

So I'm sorry for the lack of updating, hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon. But until that point I thought I'd post something real quick (mostly because I was threatened by Big Colle). The past month has been full of traveling, as soon as Bagel left I started traveling every weekend, first all over Ireland, and last weekend to Edinburgh. It's hard to pick one picture to summarize the weekends, so I'll just go with the classic, kissing the Blarney stone picture (just to be clear, this is not because I liked Blarney the best - I actually really dislike Cork!).

What city I really liked was Dingle, best place in all of Ireland, hands down. (So pretty!)

BAGEL Recap One

Last week was Notre Dame's fall break and lucky, lucky me I got a visit from Bagel!!! Most definitely the highlight of the semester thus far, I only wish she got to stay longer :( Anyway, here's the first part of Bagel's visit. I tried to upload the pictures in backwards order so they would be in the correct order of events, but it didn't work and I'm a little too lazy to edit the html right now... So here it is a recap of the wonderful week of Bagel.

This photo was taken after our Jameson tour, the guy on the right is Bagel's new friend Pablo, who we met at Jameson and who decided to follow us around the rest of the evening.
Bagel was a taste-tester at Jameson! Here she is trying Jack Daniels - clearly an inferior whiskey.
She's my seestor, I love my seestor. Bagel + Jameson = party.
After Jameson we went to a fabulous place called the Queen of Tarts. Delicious, delicious tarts...

And of course we had to do the Guinness tour. The bar at the top of the factory overlooked Dublin, the view was better than the beer. Guinness = gross.
My Guinness with a shamrock top.
We found it! After getting off the bus we tried to go through at least 3 wrong gates before finally finding the right one.

Monday morning Bagel got to make the walk to school with us. I'm not actually sure this picture is from that morning, but I think it's too darn cute not to share with the world. This is my sister, she's pretty.
Monday night after a late class we went to O'Neills. O'Neills = lots and lots of delicious food. And that night it also equaled lots and lots of delicious alcohol, thanks Bagel! But seriously, check out all those glasses.
What Bagel didn't know is that it does not take a lot to get Matt drunk, and you can tell he's drunk because his eyes are open for a picture. But this is us happy thanks to a little drink I call Absolut mandrin and lemonade.Monday we went to Dublin Castle. I liked the castle well enough, Bagel wasn't as big of a fan... As we were leaving it did start to rain, boo, but there was a cool rainbow! Mean Bagel wouldn't let me take a picture of her with it though, so this is my angry picture.
This is us inside Dublin Castle. It's hard to tell but the picture behind us is of John Campbell Hamilton, the Earl of Aberdeen. Yay Hamiltons.
Thursday we headed to Bray to take in some sights. I know this one is also hard to tell, but it was REALLY windy that day.
Pretty Bagel on the rocks. We almost died climbing out on the rocks thanks to all the wind, but it was worth it.

If only I could control that damn hair. This is our attempt at a sister pic that does not involve my hair eating Bagel.

The rest of my week with Bagel to come...

Woah there! Recap One

Well hello November.... So unfortunately I am way behind in my updates so I'm just gonna recap the past few weeks by going through picture highlights...

Chester Beatty Museum - nice little museum of world religions and random collections. This is a view of the Dublin Castle courtyard from the roof of the museum.
James Joyce Museum. Honestly, not that great of a museum, but it was in a Martello tower which was pretty sweet and it was a gorgeous day.

Bus tour of Wicklow Mountains. Since all of my previous knowledge about Ireland came from the movie P.S. I love you I was really excited to see the Wicklow National Park. These pictures are from the Guinness estate, the sand by the lake was brought in to make the lake look like a pint of Guinness.

Another stop on the bus tour was Glendalough. Nothing too exciting, Glendalough means "two lakes," so there's one.

Holy Crap I'm Excited!!!

BAGEL'S COMING TO VISIT!!!!

If this is wrong...

So last week I volunteered with a group called Friends of the Elderly, and I think it was this involvement that led to the accusation that I love the very young and the very old. This statement may be true, but can you blame me? If this is wrong, I don't want to be right.

PS These elderly people are pretty cool. I volunteered with a 5k run/walk in Phoenix Park and this 90 year old woman beat me, she could book it!

Northern Ireland

Last weekend was our second and last program trip. We bused to Northern Ireland, saw Belfast, Giants Causeway and Stormont (a political building), here's the summary:

Friday 26 September:

10:15: Meet with Aidan Gough, Policy Director of Intertrade Ireland, basically an organization set up to create economic unity between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The presentation wasn't too interesting, but they did give me post-its, and therefore gained my love.

1:30: Stormont, learn about history and constitutional arrangements of Northern Ireland, also met with Francie Molloy, a Sinn Fein (nationalist) member. The building was really pretty and the government is pretty interesting. There are actually two prime ministers, one from each of the top two political parties (there are about 8 major parties), and the two ministers have exactly equal power. Right now the government is sort of at a stand-still because the ministers are not playing nice together...

4:30: Head to dinner, make a beach break:
6:30: Eat dinner (mmm banoffee pie) then head to Sheep Island View Hostel for the night.

Saturday 27
8:00: Wake up to this:
Then hop on the bus and head to Giant's Causeway, making another beach stop along the way:

After a long walk around Giant's Causeway we bused to Belfast to meet with Peter Maguire, a resident of Belfast who lived through the Troubles and had many stories to share. He was actually hospitalized a couple of times after being beaten by police and knew many people who died in fighting for Irish unity and Catholic equality. The town of Belfast is still divided by a wall with Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other and there are streets in which you only walk on one side of the road depending on your religion. It's crazy! Peter also mentioned that if you said your name it was immediately apparent as to which religion you belonged, this seemed hard to believe, but yesterday we were talking to some Irish kids in class and we mentioned Francie Molloy they immediately knew that he must be a Catholic Nationalist - it's so weird to be able to judge someone so quickly based on name alone! But anyway, we walked through one Catholic neighborhood in Belfast and up and down the road there were houses covered in murals (seen below) to remember all those who fought and died during the Troubles. It was also interesting because in the Catholic neighborhoods there were lots of Irish flags hanging on houses, but in the Protestant neighborhoods there were only British flags. It seems so minute and passive, but it really signifies a great tension. Belfast is the only walled city left in Europe and there are zero plans to take it down anytime soon.


(Click on the last picture for a link to more pics)

Please Don't Judge Me...

...I went shopping yesterday

Book O' Kells

Friday night marked my first touristy event in Dublin. I went to Trinity and saw the Book of Kells and the long room of the library. Unfortunately pictures aren't allowed or I'd probably have a billion of the library - it was by far the coolest place I'd ever seen. It even smelled like old books.

Trip to The Burren, County Clare

So this past weekend was very busy. It started with our day trip to Howth and kept going with our program trip to the Western Coast. Our itinerary was something like this:
Saturday:
11am: Stop for coffee, tea and scones at Tyrellspass Castle

2pm: Tour of Gleninagh Castle, Blackhead, Cliffs of Moher, Poulnabron, Dolmen and Lemeagh Castle (now this is what it said we were going to do, but the actual itinerary involved the Cliffs, driving along the coast and Blackhead, if I saw the other things I didn't know it.)

7pm: Mass at St. Patrick's Church in Fanore - that's right, I went to mass, not that I had much choice in the matter, but I was there all the same. I've decided the reason I don't go to mass is because it makes me too uncomfortable, I actually felt anxious as we bused to the church. I think it's just because it's unfamiliar, I don't feel like I belong there and I feel like a giant poser for trying. To sum up, when I get near a mass service I radiate awkwardness... Anyway - the service was short and the priest spoke in Gaelic part of the time so no one (not just me) knew what he was saying. It was really cool to hear some of the songs in Gaelic and afterwards some even ventured to say that the priest's voice rivaled that of Morgan Freeman - that good.

8pm: was a three course meal at the our hotel. It was delicious. There was cheesecake. I was happy. That night was low-key, with only a few bars in the area (the area was actually known for it's matchmaking activity and when we went to mass the priest asked if were in the area so we could be matched) we went to a place called Monk's and had an early night. I was excited to see that the town had a fiddlers, although not a pub like at ND, it reminded me of ND all the same.
Sunday:
We started Sunday with a "full Irish breakfast" - read enormous amounts of meat. We then got on the bus to see more sites. The first stop was Corcomroe Abbey, a ruin church. Next up, a ruin castle: Then what-seemed-to-be a random farm house. I guess it was the filming location for a TV show called Father Ted's House, but it's still lived in by a family who fed us delicious scones and tea. We also got to watch their sheepdog heard some sheep through the fence, something I haven't witnessed outside of Babe.
Afterwards we walked around the Burren and visited a large turlough, which is a disappearing lake. It forms and disappears with the seasons and the amount of rain. It was pretty cool. And finally headed home. And that was my weekend in a nutshell. The bus ride home involved an hour plus of group sing-alongs and by far the best performed song was "A whole new world" from Aladdin.
P.S. Click the bottom picture for the full album from the weekend.

Week One

So I was trying to update daily so I didn't forget things, but then my life just seemed too boring... The Irish lifestyle appears to be a lot more laid back then what I'm used to. For starters, today was the end of my first week of classes. On Monday I had three of my classes, during which I did not receive a single syllabus, nor a required reading list. It's actually a little unnerving, I feel like if I'm taking classes I should have something to read or do... But roll with the punches I guess.

Tuesday I went into town to welcome the Trinity students from Notre Dame and help them get their luggage to their dorms since I didn't have any classes. If I feel lost without something to do, they have to be feeling twice as bad - they don't start classes until October!

Wednesday was another day of classes. That night we went out to a pub in city centre. Despite the fact that it was a Wednesday night there were plenty of drunk people around, on campus and in the pubs. My favorite encounter was with the girl I sat next to on the bus. She got on and asked if I was going to the same pub that her group was going to. When I said no, we were going to Doyles, her immediate response was, "You're American!" Ah the accent, it's a dead give-away...

Thursday was another no classes day. Instead of feeling like a bum with nothing to do I walked around Blackrock to try and find a grocery store. In true Courtney fashion, I got lost, hit two brick walls and spent over an hour and a half walking before getting to a store that took me 25 minutes to walk home from. Good job me. I did manage to take one picture of my walk before the rain started, I'm not sure if the pictures capture the view I witnessed, but I'll try anyway (The Irish Sea is minutes from my dorm):

Today, on Friday - another day without classes, we went on a day trip to Howth. It was b-e-a-utiful. We had pretty good weather, with bouts of sunshine and only a small rain shower. There was a lighthouse, a castle, Ireland's eye, sea cows, real cows... overall good stuff. Click on the bottom picture to see more pics from the trip.