Crazy Days

I had the most ridiculously exhausting weekend. For 20 euro, the International Education Division and the International Society managed to keep me competely entertained over the two day period, from the time that I woke up until the time that I stumbled back into my bedroom here in Kilmurry Village. However, I'm only going to tell you about Saturday in this post. Mostly because I don't have most of the pictures from Sunday yet, as they were taken on my cell phone.

So the bus left from the University of Limerick at the ungodly time of 7:30, which meant that I had to be up at 6 in order to get everything ready to go. I was not a happy camper, but I was a hyper one. As the tornadoes ripped through Tennessee this weekend, I was here worrying about my family. Particularily my father, who is a truck driver, as he made his way home. The early hour combined with the lack of sleep to turn me into Miss Talkative, which I'm sure annoyed my roommate Sydney to no end. Once we made it onto the bus and we were on our way, I began to think. I gazed out the window and marveled in the spectacular beauty that is Ireland. Every day, I fall more and more in love with this country. I know deep in my heart that I'm supposed to be here. I could spend every day here for the rest of my life and always find something new to fascinate me. The thought of leaving makes me sad, but I know that if it is right, I will find myself back here in the future. I feel so at peace here, both the land and with myself. I've never felt this way before. After feeling empty for so long, I finally feel like I belong somewhere. It's a great feeling.

The waterfall that the hotel takes its name from.

After that revelation, I finally started to drift off into sleep, only to be woken up when we arrived at our first destination, the Ennistymon Falls Hotel. Here they provided us with some tea (which was fantastic) and raisin scones (which were good once I picked out the raisins) before they made us dance. Yes, we are officially dancing bears. It was difficult to force our feet into the right patterns, but once you got the hang of the steps, you were good. It was a great workout too, which made me really happy that I brought a change of clothes. Once we finished dancing, they stuck us back on the bus and headed off to Lahinch.

As you may remember, Laura, Sydney, Steph and I had already been with to Lahinch with the OPC. Since we had some more time this go around, we ventured away from the sand and the sea to the cliffs in the distance. No matter how many times you see something, the site of such a beautiful place will never fail to take your breath away. Of course, since it rains so freaking much here, the cliffs were kinda muddy. Being the clutz that I am, I of course had to slip in the mud and end up with one leg entirely covered with the brown gook. This made me doubly glad that I packed an extra set of clothes.

After we were done at Lahinch, we all stuffed ourselves back into our coach buses to head back to the hotel, where they plied us with quarter sandwiches, soup, and our dubiously dubbed "yellow drink." None of the people at our table could figure out what it was, but it was delicious. The sandwiches weren't half bad either. Of course, we were one of the few tables who thought so, as almost everyone else still had sandwiches on their plates. Of course, since we couldn't let food go to waste....we brought their plates back to our table where the rest of the sandwiches were quickly devoured. Yes, we are pigs, and we are proud.

The shiny rock in the picture is exposed limestone.

It was then time to get back into the buses and head for the Burren. Which I have also been to before, but we headed to another side. The OPC trip focused mainly on the cliffs, while the International Education department trip headed more inland for a more nature based experience. Each of the four buses got our own guides, who told us more about the history of the area as we drove through. Originally, Ireland was mainly underwater, which left huge deposits of limestone at the bottom of the sea. As time passed and the water receeded, these large fields of limestone were revealed at the Burren, which is the largest collection of limestone rock in the world.  Forgive the quality of the picture, it was taken from a moving bus.

At this point, I was thoroughly exhausted, and kept drifting off. However, I did wake up long enough to take pictures of Mary O'Brien's Castle. We had to take pictures from the bus, which explains the random handicapped sticker floating in the frame. Legend has it that, when her first husband died, she married another man the next day because women weren't allowed to hold land. When she birthed her first male heir, she supposedly pushed her husband off of the roof of the castle in order to be able to control the castle as the proxy for her son. Female empowerment at its most violent.

A bear pit and some remains believed to be 2,000 years old.

The trip took us further into the Burren until we arrived at Aillwee Caves. They were discovered in the 1940's by a local farmer when his dog disappeared. He found the dog at the entrance to the caves, which had been covered for millenia. Remains of brown bears and indentations of their nesting sites were discovered close to the entrance, which is understandably exciting, as brown bears have not been seen in Ireland for nearly 2,000 years. They are a third of a mile long and have some really impressive natural cave formations present, including one that looks like a pair of hands in prayer. There are also several waterfalls in the caves.

Once we were all through the tour of the caves and had done a little frivolous shopping, we headed back into the bus for the remainder of our tour of the Burren. We came across the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb created 4000 years ago as a grave chamber in a cairn of stacked stones. This dolmen is believed to be the oldest set of stacked stones in the world, even older than the more famous Stonehenge. This picture was taken from Wikipedia, as I was too slow to catch a picture of it from the bus. I wish we could have actually seen it this close, but maybe some other time I'll get the opportunity.

Once we were out of the Burren, we headed back to the Falls Hotel and Spa to eat some dinner. I ordered the chicken in a mushroom sauce, and it was absolutely delicious. Honestly, I think I could have eaten two or three more plates, even though I was completely stuffed by the end of the meal. It was that good. Plus, they served ice cream in a waffle bowl for dessert, which was amazing. By the time we were all back in the bus and headed home, I think we were all in a sort of food coma, as it was very quiet. The majority of people slept, but I just couldn't get comfortable. Overall, it was one of the best 5 euro I've ever spent!

Well, that was my Saturday. Sunday was slightly more exciting and a little more tragic. I'll explain that comment in the next post, however. As always, more pictures of this trip are available on my Facebook page, though quite a few of them are mysteriously blurry for some reason.

Best,
Brooke

Hatters and Hares

As the title implies, the last two weeks have been MAD!!! Crazy, that is. The International Society and classes have had us poor exhange students running ourselves what feels like all over Ireland. And there may be some truth to that. We've had signups for trips around the country, signups for clubs, signups for classes and tutorials, and signups for other signups. Well, that last part may be exaggerated, but not by much. The preparation has paid off, however, as we have begun to take trips with our respective clubs and societies.

Yeah, the cliff behind the guy in red. 

For example, yesterday was the Outdoor Pursuits Club's journey to The Burren for rock climbing.  Being on this trip, I was expecting to make a fool of myself by not being able to make it the whole way up the cliffside. Just to give you an idea, here's a look at the cliff they wanted us to scale.

However, because the rocks were too wet to climb (because this is Ireland and it's always freaking raining), they decided that it was not safe for us poor beginners to attempt to climb this cliff. My thighs and my dignity thanked them.

Instead, we took a hike of the area, a set of cliffs that overlook the Atlantic Ocean called the Burren. While some climbing was involved, it was more like this >>
than the whole fall-to-your-death thing they had planned. Which was also a relief. Overall, we all had a great time slipping on rocks and risking our lives just to get a peep at where the ocean hits the bottom of the cliff. Really, it was a beautiful experience and one I will likely never forget. Because of strong headwinds, the guides had to keep telling us to back up. Actually, the way they phrased it was "We're not fishing Americans out of the ocean today, guys! The water is too cold." -_-

Having more balls than brains, I risked my life to get the perfect picture to summarize how beautiful this experience really was. The Atlantic really is prettier on this side of the pond. The sound of the water hitting the rocks was especially soothing. Particularily since it was like 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning after a Saturday spent out with friends at the bar. One of my new German friends, Thomas, took a picture of me on the edge, but hasn't sent it to me yet. I'll include it on the next post so that you can all applaud me for my bravery. XD

Since we were so unfortunate as to not be able to rock climb at the Burren, the guides decided that we could spend the rest of our day relaxing at the beach. Lahinch Beach in County Clare was the next stop on our fantastic Sunday voyage. However, it didn't really feel like a beach (probably because it was so freaking cold). But we took a walk on the sand and enjoyed each other's company. We picked up shells and skipped rocks as we walked along the shore until we reached a bridge at the end of the beach. As we waited for stragglers, one of the senior members found a balloon in her pack and balloon rugby was founded.
I didn't get any good pictures of some of the fantastic tackles that went on. Suffice to say, more than one person went home with sand in their shorts. Sadly, the balloon did not make it home, as it was tragically killed in the first play of the game. Its remains, however, were passed from one member of the OPC to another for several minutes after its demise. Once all of the stragglers were accounted for and we did a buddy check like good little fifth graders, we all stood by patiently for a group shot before heading back to the other end of the beach, where the town starts and the pub beckoned.

However, because some of the members are completely crazy (like the Thomas I mentioned before) they thought it would be a fantastic idea to strip to their underwear and go for a nice swim in the ice cold ocean. Did I mention that it was 9 degrees Celsius outside? That's about 48 degrees Farenheit. Not nearly warm enough for sane people to go swimming, but as I said before, the first few weeks drove us crazy. Or at least that's my excuse. Once they were done being crazy and were dressed again, we headed back to the bus for our dry clothing and went out to the pub to watch the Ireland v. Wales rugby game, which was lost in the last minute due to a penalty on Ireland's part. It was not a fun bus ride home. XD

Even though it was cold and exhausting, I still had a fantastic time on my first look of Ireland outside of Limerick and UL. And I still had enough energy to finish out the night at the bar with a couple of friends, so all was great. Hope you all had as nice of a weekend as I did, and hope your week promises to be a fantastic as mine. I'm leaving for Scotland on Thursday, so there will most definitely be a new post by Saturday at the latest.

As always,
Brooke