Hey guys-
A lot has happened since the last time I posted (I feel like I say that a lot... maybe I should post more)
I got to go to Wales last week. It was really fun! We spent the night in Cardiff. It was cool to get to be in such a big city. We went to a mine called the big pit and I spent an hour underground touring it. It was much more wet and dark then I ever could have imagined. It makes me feel ten times more awful about what happened to those miners in Chile last year.
We also got to go to a living history town. It had people dressed up and teaching you about different occupations such as being a blacksmith or jeweler. It was really interesting and I got to see tons of animals. Pigs, chickens, turkeys, cows, and ducks were all present in the park.
After spending a couple of days home recuperating we took off for Ireland. We left at 3 o'clock in the morning in order to get to the airport on time and that pretty much explains how our trip went. Rush from one thing to the next. I got to see some amazing sites such as; The Guinness Brewery where we learned how they make beer, a prison from the 1900s, Trinity College and the Book of Kells, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Speaking of St. Patrick, we were in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day which was quite the celebration.
To celebrate St. Patrick's Day there was dancing in the streets (literally, we had Irish dancing lessons) and a big carnival and the weirdest parade I have ever experienced in my life. They had super weird people dressed up as like crazy things. It's so hard to describe. Like for example, these one people were dressed up as cats but their necks were like four feet long and just up there. There was one guy dressed up as Dracula. What that has to do with St. Patrick's Day is beyond me. They had super weird floats too. One was like a skeleton in a coffin and one looked like a mutated dog. It was so bizarre but cool to see how the Irish did parades.
We also spent a lot of time with drunks (an old Irish St. Patrick's Day tradition.... drink A LOT!!!) In one bar there was live music and it was super fun. Have you ever seen the movie P.S. I Love You? Some of the girls here are obsessed with it and they sung the song Gallaway Girl from that movie and the girls I was with started freaking out. My favorite part of the night was this midget dressed up as a leprechaun handing out chocolate coins. Really random but I got lots of chocolate because we were there for a while waiting to get a table.
It was also an amusing pastime for some people in our group to watch the drunken brawls from outside the window of our hostel. There were these people that totally got into fights and start beating each other up. There were also crazy love triangles and people trying not to throw up. It was like watching a bad reality TV show. You know you shouldn't get enjoyment out of it but you just can't help but watch.
We got to spend one day in a little town called Kilkenny where we got to see the Irish countryside. It is so beautiful in Ireland. Everything here is so green. It's hard to believe that the countryside is just as beautiful as it seems in movies, but it definitely is. I also found out that Trinity College in Dublin has a really good preservation program, so come graduate school, who knows? Maybe I'll be making my way to Ireland.