The Gift of Gab

The girls and I took another trip this weekend! We went to Cork and Blarney! This trip was quite an experience in itself! We took the bus to Cork, and it took almost 5 hours it seemed to get there! However, the drive up was beautiful. After we arrived in Cork, we went to check into our accommodations for the night. And then, we were on our way to the Blarney Stone! We took a bus there and it was very convenient from where we were staying. We picked a weekend where it was of course, pouring down rain. Despite the weather, it was Blarney was absolutely beautiful! I loved everything about it. The leaves were beautiful and I took so many pictures. And we all kissed the stone and are now blessed with the gift of gab! After our long day of travelling, we were exhausted and needed some sleep. This was our first time staying in a hostel and boy were we in for a real treat. The room we booked was a private room for three people. The room was an ensuit, so it had a shower and toilet in the room. Well, the room was for three people. Our bunk beds consisted of a single on top, and a double on the bottom. Cait and Shawna are better friends and have known each other longer, so they took the double bed. Lucky me! The outlets on the room did not work so we had to either charge our things downstairs behind the bar, or charge one think at a time. At one point, we got so fed up that we started looking for another accommodation to stay in. All of our other options were either fully booked or too expensive. So we stayed where we were for the night. We learned from this trip to really do your research when looking for a place to stay. The room was loud and did not have towels for us to use. We improvised and used our bed sheets as towels! The next day, we went on a tour of the old Jameson Distillery. It was really interesting to see and Cait and I are now certified Irish Whiskey Taste Testers! Swag. Our weekend trip was amazing! The Friday before our trip, we went to an Irish National Heritage Park. We got to see how some of the first Irish settlers would live. This was very interesting to see. The Viking ships we saw were really cool too! After, we went to a beach called the Saving Private Ryan Beach-the name is because the movie was filmed here! How neat! The beach was beautiful despite the coldness and the rain and we got to take some really cool pictures. The walking is really starting to hurt my ankle. Breaking an ankle and spraining an ankle at the same time will ensure that some pain will follow the injury. But the rain combined with the cold and the walking that we have to do is making me very sore. I’ll be fine though. I am trying to find something that will make me feel as comfortable as I am living at home, since this is my home for the time being. I realized that scented candles really help! Another thing that has helped was retail therapy. I have already spent a lot of money on things that I absolutely do not need, just wanted. This came to an abrupt end when I realized how much more expensive things are over here. Living on a budget is easy for me, but not when the cost of food is more than anyone could have allotted for. Another learning experience to take back home with me! Another thing that really helps me is that I have a wonderful family that keeps sending me packages from back home. Ranging from simple things to big things, I could not appreciate them anymore! And my Reece’s peanut butter cups are helping too!

Communication is Difficult When you Live in....

We are literally living in the boondocks of Ireland. An Irish girl even confirmed for us that we are in a very rural part of Ireland in a very small town. When we got here, it almost seemed as though I stepped back in time. This small town is seriously something I was not used to. I wish I would have known how small of a town it was here because it may have influenced my decision on coming here. There are good and bad things alike about the town of Carlow, but my homesickness is making the bad things stand out even more. The internet is not the best ever. And by not the best ever, I mean it’s horrible. I think that the horrible connection and the lack of communication that I have with my family are wearing me down. I have been having some issues with all of my roommates. And well the issues are well, issues. Girls are very hard to live with. To try and get me through these hard times, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Cait and Shawna. They make me laugh and make me really happy! I can laugh with them and actually mean it. And they are actually from Carlow in Pittsburgh but we never really talked before this trip. They are lovely girls and I adore them! We said that we wanted to go horseback riding on the beach, which sounds like a smashing good time! Aside from the issues that have arisen, I have realized something from all of this: I live a very convenient American life. In the U.S., we have a brand for everything. And not only one brand, but about fifteen brands for one item. If I saw a Wal-Mart over here, I might faint! Here, you have to go to 8 different stores to find 3 different things. It’s so different from the convenience that we have at home. These differences really make me appreciate me American life. The days are getting easier though. Things close at 5 or 6pm here so the days fly by. And I’m sure that time will fly as well. I am looking forward to spending as magical of a Christmas as humanly possible with my family in a warm cozy home. But,
I'm not counting down the days until I go home anymore, because I've realized how wonderful of an opportunity this is for me.

Dublin!

1.       This weekend, me and two of the girls that I am now friends with from Carlow University, Caitlyn and Shawna, went to Dublin for the weekend! I loved Dublin so much! I was very much longing to see a city area like where I am from, and Dublin was able to show me that! I loved all the business that it showed me and the hustle and bustle of a bigger city made me miss home a little less. We had quite an experience, going to Dublin for the day. The train didn’t take very long to get there and Dublin was very easy to navigate. We saw many great shops and spent the day exploring! We spent the day shopping and laughing. After we got home, although we were exhausted we decided to plan our travels. Caitlyn, Shawna and I decided to visit as many places as we could afford to and had time to. On our list was Germany, France, England, Italy, and as many parts of Ireland as we could. It was something to look forward to! Ireland has already taught me something about myself, and that is that living with other people is very difficult; especially when those people are basically strangers to you. My Irish roommates Laura and Grace are lovely girls; they just live completely different lifestyles than I do. I think that the age difference also plays a major factor into the differences that we face. I truly like them as people, but their living skills are very different than mine are. More than not, they are loud and often times they don’t clean up their messes. I’m sure this is just something that they have to get used to by not living at home and having their mothers clean up after them. We’ll see where this goes!

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.

Friendships...

Making new friends is something that comes along with living in another country. I seem to have pretty decent roommates so I hope that we can become friends and make even more new friends. I hope this turns out well. Grace and Laura are both very nice and seem not too big into partying, so this is a plus. The second week was a very hard week in terms of homesickness. I called my mom and cried my eyes out for probably about an hour. It is so difficult to be so far away from the people that you love most in life. Back home, I could go for a while without seeing my mom and be fine with it. I think it’s the mental state of knowing that you are so incredibly far away that makes the homesickness worse and makes you miss home even more. Ireland isn’t so much different that Pennsylvania. The landscapes are similar as well is the climate. However, the people are very different. It could be because the town of Carlow is so small, but the people here seem to be hesitant to be friendly. I feel that this town seems a bit old fashioned, and they are very precautions of newcomers coming here. It may take a lot for them to accept us. Which is strange to me because I came here believing that most people in Ireland are so incredibly friendly. I guess we’ll see how this turns out. I’m sure I won’t feel like this once we make so more friends.

I'm in Ireland!

September 12-14th, 2011. I’m in Ireland!!! I have arrived in Ireland and it’s around 9am local time. Its 5 hours ahead of Pittsburgh so today is now September 13^th! It was such a relief to walk off of that plane. However, leaving my family was so much harder than I expected it to be. Leaving people you love is always a lot harder than you expect it’s going to be. But I just have to tell myself that they are only a phone call or a Skype call away. Eric was waiting for me as I walked off of the plane. Even though I had never met him before, it was calming to see him. The plane was the biggest plane I’ve ever seen! And the flight attendants were awesome! They were so helpful and their accents were great! It was there that I met my first new friend of the trip, Sarah. She is from another school in Illinois, right outside of Chicago. I was surprised to learn that there were actually other students from Pittsburgh on my flight to Ireland. The plane was just so big that I had no idea they were on there as well. We all gathered and Eric took us all outside to wait for the bus to Carlow. After a long drive of dozing on and off, we arrived in Carlow! We walked the short distance to our student village. My American roommate, Allison and I went in to our apartment to find that we had 2 Irish student roommates! Their names are Grace and Laura and they are very sweet girls! We pretty much just dropped our things off in our rooms and headed into town to explore and get some very necessary supplies. (Things like blankets, towels, toilet paper, etc.) But before we shopped, we headed straight for the closest café we could find! Eating our first meal out in Ireland was also a different experience. Perhaps that biggest difference is that people in Ireland for the most part, do not tip. This sounds very strange because as American’s, we come from a society where a waitresses job is based on the amount of tips that she can get. In Ireland, one would only tip the waiter or waitress if the service was phenomenal. We went shopping and went home to unpack our things. I was so tired from my trip that I pretty much just crashed. The next day we woke up and had more errands to run. We got to town and I made an a-line for the cell phone store, or as they call it here, the mobile store. We made the executive decision as a group that since this was our first full day in Ireland that we had to get our first Guinness. Guinness over here tastes quite different-it’s much stronger in taste! Overall, it’s been a pretty good first few days in Ireland.