West

Things have been really crazy lately but good. On March 15th i think it was we had a Taylor literature prof come in to teach our Irish literature class. and from the morning she got here, we were full go. She had us reading poetry and plays and all sorts of shananagans. but last week on the 19th we left for the west with our Lit prof. Ok side note, her name is Beulah Baker and she was hilarious. Normally i like it when teachers are real relational and want to come in and get to know everybody and stuff like that. Not Beulah. She just came in and got everybody to work. And on our 4 hour trip out west to study the famous writers she was on the bus microphone pretty much the whole time giving us every detail about the life of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Zoinks. Plus her name is Beulah, which is awesome in itself. As much as we wanted to refer to her as Beulah, because we knew she is going to be the only Beulah we ever meet again, we had to respect her and call her Professor Baker. Lame.

Anyways, out west it was great. Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at this incredible hotel in Donegal.    I should be able to tell you a lot about Donegal and the famous Irish figures that lived there, but the only thing i for sure know is that it has a rockin hotel in the heart of the city with an amazing restaurant where we ate like kings. So good. And one of the best parts about this trip is still the fact that the 20 girls on this trip never finish all their food when we eat together so we get to clean up afterwards.

Wednesday we were in Galway which is on the coast. the hotel was not as nice, but still sweet. I got to run along their coast line which was a good change from Greystones. Honestly i really did love the west. it was such a good change in pace. There was so much history out there and it was definitely the more rural Ireland with sheep EVERYWHERE and more mountains and stuff like that. Thursday we went to the Cliffs of Moher which are in one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride (The Cliffs of Insanity. Which we watched the other night and it made me miss my sister really bad) so that was awesome. it was ridiculous and i got super close to the edge!

I will sum up our drive 8 hour ride home by saying that the smell of our bus snacks, popcorn/chips/cookies, combined with the smell of 25 humans was about to make me vomit. yikes.

Holy smokes i just remembered i have not poste since St. Patrick's day. oops. Well, it was the craziest day of my life. I have never seen so many different kinds of people, all drinking, in one city. ever. I am pretty sure it is the one day in Heaven where everybody leaves Patrick alone. Cause he probably doesn't want to talk about it.. It can basically be summed up with my profile picture on facebook right now. which was one of the best things ever to happen. speaking of, a ton of the girls here take way more pictures than me and put them on facebook fyi. (go to my wall and watch the video of me and steve having an epic thumb war match in the Donegal ring fort that is on top of this huge mountain. i think it is hilarious)

ok next, i wanted to post tonight because tomorrow will be nuts and thursday morning starts our spring break! Me and a few of my friends are going to Santa Eulalia, Spain which is on the southwest island of Ibiza. We are so excited. i cannot wait to just sit on the beach and read books. im so pumped. we will be there til late sunday so i will be out of commission until then. we for sure will have pictures up from that. Our school work is piling up some, so it will be good to have a break from that and then come back to hit it hard.

Ok i will wind down now. i feel bad this post was kind of rushed and i did not have any pictures. But for sure the biggest thing, i was reminded this week how easily it can be to lose my focus on a trip like this as to why i came here in the first place. But constantly I remind myself that the one reason i came was to get away to dive into God's Word and basically let him transform my life. And He has. He is teaching me to let go of things in life so i can move forward and be full go for Him. His timing was better in this trip than i ever could have planned. And although i really miss the guys back at Taylor, and my family at home, I am soaking up my last month or so here so i can come back ready. And i am so excited for that!

And now, really randomly switching gears, since i did not have any pictures i want to leave this video which i had not seen in a while but for some reason wanted to watch on youtube. We were in Dublin all day today walking and i am about to fall over im so tired, so maybe thats why it is so funny. But i hope it makes you laugh as much as it did me... Enjoy!

I love all of you guys back home and cant wait to see you soon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmDTSQtK20c

im good

Im sorry i have not updated in a while. things have been nuts. literally, Crunchy Nut is this type of cereal here and it is incredible! i wish we had it back home. it is so big here that they even have tempting signs...

so let me go ahead and sum up these past couple weeks with some super legit pictures that im taking with my camera! First item of business... we were walking on Grafton Street one day (Where a lot of one of my favoirte movies, Once, is filmed. Boss) And looked over to see this nut who literally made it look like he was frozen. he made his tie stick up like that and just stayed in this position for a long times, with his briefcase open for money. haha. CRAZY

Next up: Our trip to Howth. Howth is a ton about 20 minutes north of Dublin. and a few of us went there one Saturday to do a hike along the cliffs there, and it was one of my favorite days since i have been here. It is this incredible seaport town with this huge pier and awesome restaurants with really fresh fish DA BESSSS MAINNNN!!! (Just double checked and saw i posted about Howth in my previous post. Oh well. it was great)

Here is a view of Howth, and some rocks?

Best part of the day. Finding a boat named Willie. HAHA!

All the other lame boats.

Crazy cliffs that i threw a few pieces of fruit off. it was neat.

Ok so now this is our trip up to Northern Ireland (Which is a completely different country. nuts.) We stayed in Belfast which is a town with a ton of history but it was really sad also. In short, Catholics used to really not like Protestants in this area, and many people suffered. Yikes. But we stayed at this awesome Hostel that was literally right on the beach. it was super great. The trip of north was great, but pretty exhausting after your on a bus for a lot of it. It was really interesting. We were there for three days and honestly it was really good when we got back to Greystones. It is home.

This is a castle we saw and we got to go inside and look all around. it was pretty great. but not necessarily da besssss.. 

next was this crazy bridge! it was kind of da besss....and a lot of people were really freaked out about it.  especially when we went across the bridge, people realized the only way back meant crossing the bridge again. haha! 

now this part of the north trip was definitely DA BESSSS. Its called Giants Causeway. and my sister told me before i came on the trip its the strangest thing ever, and it honestly sooo nuts. it s just this huge mass of hexagonal stones stacked on top of each other. it was so weird. But incredible to see how creative God is. it was AWESOME

And then we came home and like i said it was so nice to be back. The trip was great though. ever since then things have been good. we are starting to get into classwork a little more which is a little stressful for people. But ultimately, im trying not to let anything get in the way of the fact that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity so i want to make the most of it. I am so glad that coming into this trip i knew the one thing i wanted to get out of it. It has helped me step back at times to remind myself why i am here. And that is to grow in my relationship with God through Jesus. I am continually learning what it means to be still before the Lord and it is an extremely humbling experience. And getting to do it in Ireland is just an awesome plus. I run every other morning and stop at my bench. It is the one on the left, and being able to sit there and watch the sun rise over the Irish sea is one of the best things ever. so im soaking it all in for sure.

The things i dont have pictures of right now are when all the guys went and got our straight razor shaves after not shaving all february. it got to be pretty brutal. But the warm towel shave was incredible. the place we went to is called Sweeney Todd's. haha it had posters of the movie all around and these 3 guys working it. it was one of the best things i have ever done. Our faces were so smooth. 

Other items of importance: There are like 3 girls who just never stop baking things in our kitchen. and 89% of those things include Nutella. So i have had to be careful. But our food here is sooo good so thats boss. I miss everyone from school a ton. and for sure back home. my email has not been working the past few days which has been a bummer. so if you have sent me anything in the last 48 hours, i probably did not get it. sorry :/ but it is working now! so pumped.

And yeah, ultimately I am growing a ton. I have loved listening to all the sermons from my church in Kansas City. It has been so encouraging. And i am still listening to a ton of Christian rap. which is where i will end.

"Satan uses guilt, to strip away our hope" -Lecrae

Every once in a while if I have a rough day, i feel like Satan does just that. He tries to make me dwell on my mistakes and make me feel not da bess. But something i also have been reminded of lately is to have an Eternal mindset. My small group is reading Mere Christianity...

"Aim for Heaven and get earth thrown in. Aim for earth, and get neither" -Lewis

THE TRUTH! so good. Between Lecrae/Tedashii/Trip Lee(my post title=his new single. boss)/C.S. Lewis/C.T. Studd(I am reading his biography, insane)/And ultimately getting in the Word every morning, I am growing in ways i never knew. Loving my life, but missing everyone back home! But we will be together again. I love you guys and will post soon. St. Patrick's day in Dublin next Saturday. Lord help me.

PEACE!