Week 7 & 8: Ireland, Chepstow, and Tinturn

Well let's see what happened next... Nov 1 - Nov 5 I spent the whole time reading books and books and more books for research... I had a 3000 word essay i wanted to finish as soon as I was back from Ireland so I started it the week before. I was able to get an intro done and most of the reading done before we left on Sat for Ireland. Sadly Nov 5th was supposed to be the Guy Fawkes fireworks but due to rain was postponed until the 9th... So Saturday arrives and I am excited and packed up and ready to go! We leave the house around 1 and go to the train station and then head out to Bristol where our  flight departs from. We get there and get on the bus and head to the airport. It was a long day of travel. I grab a bite to eat and some coffee with Tori and Sophia and exchange some money over. We board the plane when the time arrives and we get our seats! I had window which was nice I like to be able to look out. The flight was so short! We literally felt like we had just taken off when they announce that we had to put our things away for landing. We land in Ireland around 730 pm... Jeff was waiting at the airport with a sign and all! Good times! It was great to see him! Honestly, I wasn't sure i would get to see any of the people I met in Korea again and now I have seen a bunch of them! By the time we land and get on the bus and get back to his place everyone is starving! So we order some, I think, thai food. mine was just rice and chicken and prawns! Delicious though! We stuff our faces and by the time we are done no one feels like going out so we play Wii! Sophia and I get really into and I love it! We start the morning around 10 and begin our walk in the sunshine which we didn't expect!

It was beautiful but still very very cold! We head to the city centre to get Tori some money and look about. We then proceed to Trinity College campus. It was massive and beautiful and I wish I went to school there! It was fantastic. Then we walked over to Christ Church Cathedral but didn't go in. We just walked around and took pictures and met a nice couple who took pictures of us all together ! We also walked through St. Stephen's Green park. Everything was so green and still amazing looking. We also walked in the city centre where all the street performers were and I bought some lovely souvenirs! For lunch we had mexican! It wasn't exactly perfect but it was close enough to satisfy me! I was so happy at that point and it was sooo good! although we found out food in Ireland is rather expensive. Next we try to get on a bus that would take us to a country village. It was a little wait to we went to a pub and grabbed a beer, well I had cider. But it was exactly how I pictured them to look and it was very nice to just get off our feet since we had so many km to walk still. Once we got on the bus I snapped shots all the way out to Enniskerry. It was so quaint. I liked it and we walked around and found a cemetary where I swear I saw and black and white horse but we never found it. Rather creepy lol... While out there our walk didn't take as long as we planned so while waiting for the bus we had a lot of fun taking pictures and being silly. We even found an old green and white phone booth! Sweet! Once we got back into Dublin we decided to see a mall which was great and packed full of christmas stuff already! and then we wanted to see a movie so we went back to city centre and got a ride from the eco travel things. They were basically modern horse and carts lol. We saw Due Date that night and the movie theater was huge! I took a picture with two random girls from the Netherlands because Tori and Sophia refused to come with me up there!

Rude! lol Sophia got in trouble for taking pictures with the curtain up later which made me laugh. The screen turned out to be huge and seemed a bit bigger than ours back home... Not sure if it really was, may have just been the layout of the theater. I really liked it. The movie was freaking hilarious. I laughed out loud just about the whole movie! Tori and spent the next day randomly quoting our favorite parts! When the movie was over we headed back to Jeff's to play some more Wii! It was raining which sucked a little but as a whole the day was amazing! 

Day two would also start in sunshine and end in rain as well. we started out back in city centre looking for cigarettes as souvenirs for people. We saw protesters in the square! They were dressed as father time it looked like but i am not sure. We stopped for coffee and found a little candy machine but instead of candy it dispensed Pringles!! How awesome is that?! After coffee and failing to find fags we went to the zoo! I love the zoo no matter where I am so I was super excited! We spent a couple hours wandering the zoo and looking at all the animals. it was super clean and didn't really smell like most zoos do. It was nice but it was also kinda small... I was just happy to see all the animals even though some made me sad. After the zoo we went to lunch at a pub which was delicious I had something healthy but it was still delicious and everything came with chips so less healthy lol... Next we made our way to the Guinness factory!

 It was legit there! I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I hated Guinness itself though. I spent forever in the shop deciding what to get! I settled on lighters for my friends that smoke and I couldn't get awesome cigarettes for. Then Jeff showed me some mustard which I had been looking for for a teacher! I was happy to have finally found some! Then we went to dinner at TGI Friday's which was amazing to get a burger and hot wings! But they didn't have Ranch which was lame! I also got a lovely cocktail. I love that I can order drinks here with dinner. I will be taking advantage of this same benefit when I am back in the states. After that it was another exciting night of Mario on the Wii! I am not going to lie I was an addict. But we also had to go to bed semi early since we had to be up at 5 to catch the bus to catch our plane to catch our train to catch our bus home... lol sorry i had to put that it amused me. 

Back in Swansea I did laundry Tuesday and tried to write some more and did nothing else until the fireworks. They weren't american sized but there were still impressive for a small town. We unfortunately walked back to the car right as the finally was going off and got crap falling on us... My eyes burned pretty bad after that. but that ended the longest day of my life lol Travel wiped me out completely!  Wednesday I started again on the evil paper that would consume the next three days of my life. But I finally finished it on Friday thank god! It was such a relief... I don't think I did anything else until it was done except maybe eat. So many hours at the library and soooooo much reading... but It is done and now on the editing phase... Saturday Tori and I went on the trip to Chepstow Castle and Tinturn Abbey.

 It was beautiful at both places. The castle was a lot larger than I expected and it was in a lot better shape than I thought looking at pictures of it. You could still walk into certain parts and along parts of the wall. We had a cool guide and he was dressed as monk for the Tinturn abbey tour. I loved it! After the tour Tori and I walked up a small hill and then back down through town. It was a lot bigger than we thought as well and it was such a cute little town. I would totally live in a place like that. Who wouldn't like to wake up every morning and open the blinds and see a castle?! Next up Tinturn Abbey which was again guided and sooo awesome! I took so many pictures there of the same thing because the sun wouldn't stop ruining them all. I did get a couple that were alright though. After the tour we looked at souvenirs and got a proper coffee and cake from a tea house. Tori had the strongest machiatto I have ever tasted! Ever! Then we got back on the coach and came back to the house. I skyped with my parents that night and couldnt go to sleep so I edited some pictures which are in an album on FB. I finally went to bed around 3 am to get back up around 9 to head to the library with Chelsey to get books for the next paper. So much for my freedom. So today I looked through a ton of books and finally settled on a few that seemed to be alright. I read through the chapter that I am critically reviewing... and now I am writing this blog. 

It has been an eventful two weeks and things don't seem to be slowing down. I am working on writing this paper and now I am totally going to get it done as soon as I am back from Rome. I am totally going to do it! But until then I am focusing on ROME!!! It is so close and it is going to be the most amazing thing ever! I can't wait and I can't believe how extremely lucky I have been this semester to be here! Well tata for now! I will write again when Rome if done!