We left for Venice on Friday! Heather, Jenna, Zephyr, Mary, Jessica, Kevin and I caught the bus out of Galway City Centre to Shannon Airport and flew to Treviso Venice. The sun was going down and the colors of the place were beautiful, and we hadn't even made it to Venice yet. We got on another land bus to get to the water, and took a water bus, the main public transportation in Venice, just for a few minutes to get to where our hotel would be. We walked for a while, only to find our hotel was doen this tiny [View Full Entry]

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Monday was cold and rainy, even more so than usual. Usually we fight it during the day and go about our business but no one was really into the weather today. It cleared up in the evening so I decided to finally go out with my roommate Serena. The girl likes to go out, unlike the way I like to go out, so we hadn't really spent any wild nights together. Don't get me wrong, she is such an amazing person and we have a great time together. Just not usually for night life. So last minute we decided to go [View Full Entry]

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The weekend was slow but really enjoyable. I planned on getting some homework done (but isn't that always the case?), but it was such a beautiful day that I couldn't stay in doing homework. Anna and I took our time getting ready for the day and then went out on the dock behind the apartment to watch the day go by. We took some books out with us and hung out by the water for a few hours, reading and talking. We watched the boaters go by, waved to the many tourist boats and watched the local rowing teams practice. That [View Full Entry]

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Today was pretty amazing, to say the least. We left for Connemara around 9:30am and it was just the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. Again, if you are on the west coast of Ireland, take a trip through Connemara. The ride itself will be an adventure filled with amazing scenery. We went through the peaklands of the area, what I guess to be the equivalent to the highlands in Scotland. The place was so green and the tops of the mountains were covered with that thick Irish mist. The river valleys we drove through seemed endless and to be [View Full Entry]

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I finally feel like I'm falling into a kind of routine here in Galway. We go into Eyre Square almost everyday, sometimes to actually get things done, other times just to walk around. It's so peaceful here, even when the city center is crowded with people. Today me and Anna took the Corrib Village coach into the city center. A woman from Utah was on the coach and we started talking on the way. We ended up just walking around with her for while, making a stop at Java's, our favorite coffeehouse. If there was anything I learned about Anna right [View Full Entry]

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So here starts my first day as a Galwegian! At least for the next five weeks. A slow morning, being ever aware of the water-contamination. (Reminder: these are accounts of last July. The contamination has been taken care of, as far as I know.) Had some tea, talked with the roommates, and met everyone in the group to go to the university classroom we would be using to do some very long orientation business. Afterwards I walked with Jennifer of Ohio, Lauren of NY, Anna of Ark., and Erin of Tennessee to Dunnes Stores in the city center. Almost everyone on [View Full Entry]

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Our last night in Dublin was really exciting and so much fun, and a lot of the group was very overtired the next morning if you can imagine. But Dublin was over and it was time to make it over to our home for the next five weeks, Galway. It takes about three hours to drive from Dublin to Galway but we had a stop in County Roscommon on the way there. We took a tour of the Strokestown House and Famine Museum. The grounds of the estate were very nice but you could tell there was some history to this [View Full Entry]

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We left Dublin around 9am to go to Wicklow, a place I had read about in novels (Ireland is one of those places you can say that about). It was raining on and off, of course. It may sound silly but taking a bus to anywhere in the country side gives some of the greatest views! We drove up into the Wicklow Mountains and the distant views were just amazing. We stopped at Powerscourt, a really grand estate with extensive but beautiful gardens. We were left to ourselves to roam the grounds which took a while. We probably didn't come close [View Full Entry]

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I hope this doesn't sound really tedious. I'm really just putting down my journal entries from the trip, edited of course. There are some things you people don't need to know. :) So on to Day 2: Where do I start in describing the activities for the day? The beginning is probably good. We set off for Trinity College at 9am to see the Book of Kells. The campus is beautiful, the old buildings wonderfully kept and the new ones expressing a pretty contemporary Irish architecture. It's in a really bustling area but inside the gates it is really peaceful. The [View Full Entry]

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My first day in a European city. The flight from JFK to Dublin wasn't exactly comfortable or relatively enjoyable. Besides feeling sick to my stomach the entire time and not being able to sleep properly it was fine. :) I was afraid the flight delay screwed things up but fortunately it didn't. I was one of the lucky ones with flight delays. Only about 2 hours as opposed to some people having overnight delays. The cab ride here was surprisingly a lot of fun. I shared with Liz, Heather, Caitlin, Ashley, and Mary Beth, all from the mid-west. So far, so [View Full Entry]

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