I went wind surfing for the first time today and made some new friends. Three girls; Johanna from Germany, Chloe from Canada, and Lucy from Scottland. I had actually been just watching the beginners fail miserably and was on my way home after chickening out when I ran into Johanna who told me she had never done it before and convinced me to go with her. She was my little guardian angel. If I hadn't run into her I wouldn't have gone out on the water today but I'm so happy I did. It was so much fun. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of me on the board, but most of the time I was in the water anyway haha. It was pretty tough but I enjoyed every minute of trying to master it. I'm already excited to get out on the water again next Sunday. I snapped a few photos while out today. It was a beautiful Sunday!
A behind the scenes look at the residents of malahide. Lots of hurling and soccer games were going on with families and children everywhere. Reminded me of kids sport in johnstown. I'm glad we went to malahide because there weren't as many tourists as we have been used to seeing and we got to see how the locals live. These things really don't have anything to do with each other except that they all took place today. This morning my one and only class was cancelled so I spent today exploring some more parts of Dublin I haven't been to yet. I found 3 or 4 vintage shops next to each other, I was in heaven. I never really buy anything at them but I love to look around and they always have the best music. Besides the vintage stores I stopped in a book store and a few art stores. Those were also fun. Along the way I found out that from today til Oct 11th is Dublin Theare Festival. The one shop worker told me about the ones she recommends. I actually started talking to a couple in the one store and then a few minutes later ran into them again on the street. They were so helpful and nice, filling me in on which shows to see. The shop worker and the girl were actually drama majors in school so it was pretty relevant to them. The shop worker was from Oregon and the girl was from Texas which was how the conversation started. Later on at 4pm my friend and I went to play softball with the softball club from school. It felt so good to be back on the field. I actually slid into third at one point and have a nice scrap. I was going all out haha. Also, saw some pick up soccer going on while on campus. Overall a great day! Yesterday me and a few friends went on a trip with the UCD international students club(which was mostly Americans). I unfortunately have too many pictures on my phone so I wasn't able to capture too much of it on my phone. I can't get over how fun it is to FaceTime my family so I have a bunch of those pictures up here. Today I couldn't focus in class so I decided to put some of my thoughts down on paper. I started to think about how it doesn't feel like I'm here. Most of my life Ireland was always a fantasy or a dream land that I only had proof of through movies and uncles and aunts pictures. It's really weird to be here. It's pretty surreal. I feel like I'm here when I see all the stones houses in a row and the narrow streets. Even when I heard the accents of my professors but it feels like I'm in a dream still. Emily actually said when she came home it still felt like she wasn't here. She still couldn't believe she had been in Ireland. It's crazy! I have learned a lot about Irish sports through my Irish history class. As I understand it Gaelic football and hurling were created during the revolution. Rugby and futbol were seen as English sports so in order to create a more Irish culture, separate from English, Gaelic football and hurling were created. Gaelic football and hurling play on the same field I believe and they both use uprights and soccer goals. Hurling uses the hurley and a smaller ball and Gaelic football uses a ball that is about the same size as a soccer ball but has the stitching of a volleyball. They are both insanely fast paced and have pretty much no stoppage. In neither one do they come back to center field for a kick off after someone has scored. Also they count up with stoppage time being added on at the end like futbol. Gaelic football has 15 players on each side which I thought was crazy. Also Gaelic football has a yellow, red, and black card like futbol. Gaelic footoball is pretty awesome to watch cause it's a combo of basketball, (since they can bounce the ball), soccer (because they juggle the ball off their foot), and football (because if they punt the ball through the uprights it's one point). Punting the ball into the goal is 3 points. Neither team scored one of those yesterday. The final ended up being 12-9. Today my package from home arrived! Thanks so much mike! Also saw some of st.stephens green today This past Sunday a group of us went to visit Newgrange. Newgrange is just north west of Dublin in Meath county. My friends and I took the Irish rail and a taxi over to see it. This was our first excursion out into Ireland alone together without our resident director or assistant director. It inevitably brought the group of us a lot closer. So much so that we actually just got done booking a weekend trip to Edinburgh Scotland. By the way if anyone has been to Scotland or has any suggestions please send them my way. We don't have plans as of now but we do want to see the landscape, maybe climb some mountains and just see nature. As for Newgrange as actually got to visit the two tombs of the 3 for €6. So basically $6 which is awesome, we can thank our student id's for that. The student id's come with a lot of perks here. The first tomb was Knowth and the second was Newgrange. We had two tours for an hour each with wonderful tour guides. We got to enter both tombs as well. The big selling points are that these tombs date within like 10 years of each other but they are 1000years older than Stonhenge which is super cool. They were used as burial sites for the dead people living in the Neolithic era but then it evolved and had a few different uses. The biggest one is Newgrange, which is pretty big especially for its time and it took a while to assemble. They said the rock came from the Wicklow mountains but the rocks surrounding these tombs and used to build these tombs weigh tons upon tons. So by no means was there construction an easy feat. Just kinda mind blowing stuff. We had a beautiful day for the trip too. A little drizzly at first but then by the end of the day at Newgrange it had cleared up. We actually got to go into both, Newgrange we were able to go a lot further in and knowth not so much. There were many more fascinating things the guides told us about how the people had calculated the sunlight and every 8years the sun shines through this roof part of the tomb, near the entrance and makes its way to the back of the chamber. If you have a serious interest I would suggest using google cause I'm not good at reiterating everything but I did learn a lot from it and it was awesome to experience. What a beautiful day! Couldn't have asked for anything better. So I woke up around 9:30am ate breakfast with my Resident Director and Assistant Resident Director which was nice and funny because I ate breakfast at the same time as them yesterday morning as well. So I had a good breakfast and grabbed a book and set out to discover Howth. Haha I think you say it hoeth but I keep pronouncing the wrong way by accident. I waited for the dart for a few minutes and then boarded it to find out we live a good 45 from Howth. I think our house is a lot closer to Bray but it was cool going to Howth because we passed over the City. While on the dart I sat across from two older women probably in their late 70s or 80. They were friends and they were discussing grandchildren and such. It was awesome just to listen to them talk for most of the ride. At one point they started to talk about how the one ladies grandchild doesn't like his school uniform and the other lady had grandchildren as well so she told her how she understood. The second lady went on to say about how the kids wear runners (tennis shoes) and "those flippy floppy things" all summer so they are used to wearing the school shoes. I about cracked up while sitting directly in front of them. Facing them. Typing it now and thinking about it just makes me laugh. It was classic. Once I got to Howth I visited a cute little shop called "ditzy days" which was a toy store for little kids. The young woman inside was awesome. She asked me where I was from and she told where to eat and how to get to the summit of the mountain. A proceeded to follow her directions but when the road split in two I decided to ask a flower shop owner for some directions. She was very straightforward with me telling me that there are many paths and she described them all and gave me her suggestions. I'm glad I decided to stop a second time because she drew out everything and without that map I would have probably been going the wrong way. It's funny how different people gave me different directions. No matter who I would have talked to they all would have had their own twist to things. I later asked another couple which way something was and they were so sweet. They definitely didn't speak English but they did a perfect job of telling me where to go. Overall today was probably my favorite adventure I have taken so far while in Ireland. While at the summit of this hill I just couldn't stop saying "this is insane" I couldn't believe my eyes. The shear power behind the waves is crazy. I got to feel some spray coming off some of them and I was giddy! As soon as it hit my hand I actually licked it to make sure it was salty haha Visiting Kilkenny tomorrow! P.s. I put some postcards in the mail and there will definitely be more to come. |
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