Thursday, November 24, 2011

THANKSGIVING DAY

Thanksgiving is today back at home. I can't wait for tonight since Sr.Mary is being so nice and inviting us into her home and cooking the whole dinner for about 25 people. There will also be real pumpkin pie and the turkey was just killed and plucked yesterday for our dinner today. Which seems weird to me because I have only had turkey bought at a store and pumpkin pie from a can so it should be interesting since everything was home grown. I can't wait!! I'm actually really exciteed!! even though I won't be able to skype my family because their dinner is happening about the same time my dinner here is happening.

On the depressing note I'm missing the Macy Day parade and Santa clause coming to town part. I missed Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special.. and also baking all the goodies the night before with my grandma.

23 more days until I am home =)  I can't wait to be back with my family!! I'm so thankful for them and all their support since I decided to study aboard.

Friday, November 18, 2011

One month left

The last few weeks have been sort of busy and sort of me just lounging around due to a massive headache that sparked a couple days ago. However, before all this started I went on a weekend get away with a couple of friends of mine aka my roommate! We went to Cork, but we didn't just stay in Cork, must people went to see the Blarney stone which they are known for and we didn't want to do something that most people wouldn't of think of doing. We caught a train and went to Fota and Cobh. Fota is a wildlife park with free roaming animals but some animals where behind electrical fences that way it was still safe for people to walk through. While there we saw monkeys, got to hear the monkeys do their monkey sounds because they were hungry. We also got to see baby animals as well. They even allowed us to feed the ducks which was fun. After spending what seemed like 20  mins there which really it was an hour or 2. We went on our journey to Cobh which is the last place that the titanic docked before leaving for America. We saw the museum for it which was really cool because it felt life like almost. My roommate and I decided we would spend the rest of the day in Cobh thinking it was a big town and all well that wasn't the case we found a tourist office looked at a map and the center of the city was really only 4 blocks long. So, we decided to see all the different things around town. We went up to this cathedral and looked over to the lake and you could see for miles and it was really pretty. After viewing the cathedral we just sat outside looking over the lake for awhile deciding on what we should do next. Well we just decided that we should go shopping around and head back to Cork. When arriving in Cork the whole city was full of energy and life that it made you feel like you were in a complete different country. We ate at this fancy restaurant that was really good, better than expected.
On the next day we returned back to Carlow. The last week has been pretty uneventful because I have been dealing with a migraine all week and all the over the counter stuff for it isn't working and the weather we have been having hasn't been very helpful either. It has rained for about three days straight now and at home it is snowing which is more of a happy sight than rain.

On a plus note there is only 29 days left until I will be back in the states and back to a normal lifestyle for me once the jet lag is minimal.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Final Field Trip

Friday was our last field trip, the weather was amazing and beautiful. I also did a lot of climbing too. 
The first place that we went to was called Browns Portal tomb, which is known to be the largest stone left in Europe. 
Some irish people say if you walk under it right that you will get good luck, other say its bad luck if you walk underneath it all. So, I decided instead of finding out which luck I would get I decided to climb it. 
Me and Shawna on the rock! Photo was taken while I still inch my way up to the top. The view was amazing you could actually see the morning mist, and a lot of farm land! 

Our next stop was off to a chocolate factory called the chocolate garden, where we learned how the chocolate was made and processed. We also got to try samples of each white, milk and dark chocolate. After the learning process was done we got to make our own molds of chocolate!!!



Then after that we went to a mall place and had lunch. They had their christmas stuff up and it made me miss home more then I already do, because Christmas is a big deal for my house trying to find all the things for it and putting them in their stockings. The tree is always the best part because we have to move furniture around to get it in the middle. However, I found nothing that I liked to buy for my grandma yet :( maybe when we go to Dublin again I will. 

After that we went to Ring of Rath which was fun. It is this ring that is huge and people can only go in the second and first ring because it has been excavated yet. They had electrical fences up so people would  go off and steal or tamper with anything. Also, during which we did a panoramic of the whole group where two people where in two different places in the photo. 


Hopefully I will get more pictures up for this post! But that will have to be later in the week. 


As far as my weekend went it was an emotionally roller coaster. But on the bright side I got to play world of warcraft with my boyfriend a couple times. I also stayed up until 3am one night to play Smartass the board game which I won because I used google to look up the answers, and we played uno, that game I lost at because I think my sister-in-law was cheating. 

Not much is happening the rest of the week expect for the weekend where my roommate and I are going to go to Cork. We want to see Cobh, it is the last place that the Titanic ported before going down.  Other than that we probably will look for free things to do. Hopefully it will be fun. Also, something else that I forgot to mention, we decided to put up postie notes across our room on how many days we have left. Yeah, that might sound depressing but in away it is helping us get through this time. If you were wondering it is down to 40 days. 
Hopefully the time will keep going by fast I'm ready to be appreciative of the things I have at home.