Da Foundryyy!!!

Of course, the night life in Carlow is something to experience. The Foundry is a local club that is great for dancing. We have gone there a few times and it is fun, however, I feel like I am the oldest person in there! The club is full of newly turned 18 year olds, (18 is the drinking age over here,) and I almost feel out of place. I mean, I’m not that old! I’m only 21! But there is another place that is pretty fun to go to called Scragg’s Alley. Scragg’s is a huge bar with many levels; it has live music as well as a DJ. I like it a lot more than I like The Foundry! Any who, starting classes was something that even this summer, I was apprehensive about. However, when we went into class, we were pretty much treated the same as the Irish student. A few of our teachers called us out and said, “Oh, the American students, right?” It was kind of embarrassing, but still totally fine. The classes are so different over here; little to no assignments and incredible amounts of out of class readings. Very different and definitely something that I will have to adjust to. There are many things that I will have to get used to, such as the food, the classes, the fact that we must walk everywhere we go, the clothing/fashion, and most importantly-the dialect. On Friday we had our first excursion. We went to a grave and ruins of an old church. Most of the trip consisted of visiting graves and ruins of old abbey’s. However, the last stop we made was to a Castle that was actually inside of County Carlow. The castle was amazing and particularly interesting. I loved seeing the ruins of it and hearing the stories of the families that lived in the castle. I also loved the history of the whole castle. A part of the castle was the walled gardens. They were magnificent and beautiful! It was even more wonderful because when we were there, there was a wedding party in the process of taking their wedding photographs! How wonderful! Overall, it was a good start to the excursions.