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