I will be in America in 5 short days.

It's so strange. Everyone is excited.

We had our first 'debriefing' last night. I had mentioned that it worried me how everyone would react, but it went much better than anticipated. They accepted everything we said and I think everyone said what they wanted. We are having another one on Friday to work on solutions.... it'll be good.

So, I went to London a few days ago. I love being in a city, which is certainly new. I got to figure out the 'tube' (subway) system and we were set free for the entire time. We sat in on a service at Westminster Abbey and saw Big Ben, the London Eye, Tower Bridge, Buckinham Palace, SoHo, British Museum, etc.

I definitely liked London, and it was much less sketch than I imagined it to be.
Oxford I can't say that I was too crazy about. I did get to see where part of H.P. was filmed, but the rest of the city was pretty boring.

I want to tell stories or share something intersting... but it's 1 a.m. here so you'll have to forgive me.

I'm nearly done packing (of course) and I am ready to be done. I don't regret my time here by any means... but i'm ready to go back to the States.


We have a famous poet coming to speak to our class tomorrow named Michael Longley. It's supposed to be a big deal... he looks like Santa so i'm excited. :)

Billy, the leader from JBU, is here. He grew up in Belfast and to make a long story short- his dad was a leader in the Protestant terrorism group in the most dangerous area of Belfast. So he has an interesting take on everything. He took us to Shankill and Falls Road (where nearly all of the fighting took place) and it was completely fascinating. It's maybe a mile from where we are every week and there are murals all over the place depicting Protestant and Catholic hatred. The visit definitely helped to bring everything together. We wouldn't have understood anything going prior to this semester.

I can't think of much else...
I'll try to post once more before we head out.

Today is incredibly beautiful.
The sky is clear and the mountains are nearly tangible.
The grass is bright green and the bay is full.

For all that I dislike about Northern Ireland ..... beauty is not one of them.

I will surely miss my backyard.


tomorrow we leave for London! bye!


and here is a special picture of me, emily, and imaginary Katie.


clearly I am spotting here while she is on Emily's back....
we miss her. a lot.

We are at Hadden and Betty's for our usual Sunday evening gathering...and as usual I am anti-social so I decided to write on my long forgotten blog.


Today was good. It was our "friendship family" day. We went to our dear friends Karen and Karu (really long Indian last name)'s. They have two beautiful little girls Megan 7 and Erin 5. They have perfect little british accents and incredible dark skin. It's ridiculous. They fed us traditional Indian curry, ya I tried it. Last time I tried brussel sprouts, so I figured this had to be better. Of course it was fantastic. Elma and Desi from our first family day came over as well and she brought those amazing desserts. I'm getting the recipe and I am going to frantically learn how to make them. Bonoffee pie is heavenly.
Here's an interesting dessert fact... The Irish do not eat many cookies (biscuits as they are called here). I told them we would make them chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, and peanut butter and they would see what they were missing.

We had great conversations and unfortunately the girls remembered all the clapping games that I showed them from the last visit. So we sang "miss mary mac,mac,mac" a lot.


This week is our last week of assignments and thursday we leave for LONDON!!! We are in a bit of a crunch to get things done, but it's almost refreshing to have to manage my time. i'm such a nerd.

We had a good time in Dublin when we went. We weren't aware that we would have 5 hours of free time so unfortunately I didn't have anything planned. We were able to go into the National Gallery which had the painting that I've been studying. It was really neat to see. Also we visited Trinity College for awhile.

Thanksgiving day Luke and I ate Foo-Kin noodle. It was delicious... but it was strange. On Friday we celebrated thanksgiving and thankfully had the works Mashed potatotes and all. We all got completely stuffed only to eat 3 pieces of pie afterwards. woopsy.

Billy, the leader of this trip, is coming on Wednesday and I'm a little apprehensive of how to act. I want to tell him everything that needs to be corrected about this trip and want to explain to him all the ways that we were misinformed. Many agree with me on this, but it is my fear that no one else will speak up. I do not want to overly complain, but as we all know, I have to speak my mind.

It's almost over and i'm ready... but i'm sure as soon as i'm home I will want to be back. The grass is always greener you know.

that's all for now. bye!

I haven't written in awhile..... I apologize.

I'll try to write a lot tomorrow.

All I have to say is that I can't believe I'm missing the most incredible NFL season.




The Packers better be in the superbowl. And for Luke's family I'll say that the cowboys are doing incredible too...... *I apologize to everyone in Wyoming for that*



Happy Thanksgiving everyone.. Christmas music starts tomorrow.

the update-

What seems like forever ago we went to the town of Bangor. We have been excited about this day for a long time.... for some reason we all have been making fun of the name Bangor (what they call sausages) for the whole trip. Turns out Bangor is beautiful. Take note...



ya, I know right?

Then sometime we made two random adventures to these places...
first a trip to Seamus Heaney's old home (or something). I know nothing about Seamus Heaney. Most of us don't. And we aren't studying him... but we did go to some random museum/exhibit of his. This is a picture of him with his jacket....
maybe you all know more of him than I do so i'm including it-


Heaney once wrote a poem about the Forge... the Forge is seen in this next picture. The man is Barney. He used to be a blacksmith in that little building. The boys enjoyed this experience much more than the girls. I was in my own world much of this excusion. But this is him and his little shop.


When we went to St. Mark's church where C.S. Lewis was baptized we also got to see these things....
This is a sculpture done by Ross Wilson (who we met at the beginning of our semester). It is of Diggory and the Wardrobe. It was neat.

This is the doorknob of Lewis' grandfather's door. This is supposedly the inspiration for Aslan......


Previously (I think) I mentioned Eamonn Malley. He is the journalist that came to speak to us about poetry. Well we got to go to his house and turns out he is an art connoisseur. He had over a million dollars worth of art in his home. He is one of the strangest men I've ever met... but it was one of our best nights. This is him with one of the art pieces.


Finally-
we went to Hillsborough Castle. This is the safest place in Ireland. This is where the nobility stay when they come to N. Ireland.
Guests have been the Royal Family, President Bush, Tony Blair, the Dalai Lama, etc.
This is also the place where for the first time ever The Queen met with the Irish President. Apparently it's a really big deal.

I've been to the White House and I must say...this place is cooler. Mainly because of this..

This is the room in which this happened.....

I'm not sure if you can tell what is happening... but this is the room in which Bush and Blair met and decided to go to war with Afghanistan. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Eamonn are present in this picture as well.

our next president? maybe..... but she's been to Hillsborough. She actually stayed there during the Monica scandal when Bill went somewhere else (oooOOOooOOOooooO)

The guy that led our tour basically said our presidential hopefuls suck :) He doesn't think any of them have a global understanding. He also very much dislikes Bush. He basically said that each time he's met him it's been a bad experience. I liked him, he did not hold anything back.

This is our group. Emily and I might be holding hands........ it happens. We are always in the front middle, so we have to make it exciting.


Well that's all for now.

Today was very eventful. We went to Carrickfergus Castle and out to the cinema. I saw Lions for Lambs. I recommend it... but be prepared to think.

3 more weeks.

Well, here are some pictures (finally) that I have stolen from other people...
This is in Dublin about to leave Ireland. We are obviously very upset about it.

This is at the Pisa Central Station.... I am 21!

here is the only picture we have of the tower. No one had their camera except Meg and her camera hated life.


These are from our amazing tour of Ancient Rome. (I'm sorry for those of you who want pictures of the actual sites....... those are on 'my' camera)We look really rough.. no sleep, a three hour train ride, and as you can see, rain.

We liked to say "when in Rome" and make the "muah" sound a lot
This is our tour guide Valentina. She is an archeologist and, as she repeatedly reminded us, truly Roman *(thanks Emily).

This is Emily throwing her coin into the Trevi fountain. (I did this as well)

This is Julius Caesar's grave. People still put flowers on it.

Luke and I somewhere on the tour


we got to St. Peter's early... who honestly gets to stand in the middle of the square by themselves?

This is at the top of the Basillica. The picture does the city no justice.

This church was the most incredible sight (besides the Pantheon). This is a list of the Pope's going back to Peter.

The train ride to Firenze (Florence)

I love Florence........ I just needed to put that out there.

This is the Duomo in the center of the city. It's the strangest looking church i've ever seen.

Florence is so beautiful.

There are statues everywhere. This is an exaggerated one (you can imagine where). There is a story behind it... but I don't want to write it.

We love Pizza in Italy and we are very depressed that we ate it all.

A very posed picture of Emily and I heading back to Ireland


back at home-

Luke mastered the 99p kite..... eventually


sunset in Dundrum



A lot of fun things have happened this week. I'll post those tomorrow.

sorry not much new....

I did get shoved by a 60 year old woman though


we were at St. Mark's church on Sunday and a woman came up to the group and was asking us questions. She asked where we had been in N. Ireland and I was telling her the cities we had visited. I said we had been to Derry stroke Londonderry (those that are for a united Ireland say Derry and those that want to stay with the U.K. say Londonderry). Well she said "no, no..... Londonderry is correct." I said ok and she went for a side hug and as she was retreating she literally shoved me. I fell back (luckily Luke was right behind me) and then she just laughed and said she was a rough sort of person.

no big deal.