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