Spiddal Snapshots

It is an absolutely beautiful day in Spiddal!  We had our last Literature class this morning, but lucky for us, we got out 2 hours early!  Emily and I decided to use the daylight and extra time to head into Spiddal to get coffee and edit our Theology final term papers.  Luckily, I had my camera along and I was able to get a few pictures of Spiddal in the sunshine, a rarity. 

It is hard to believe that on Saturday I will be picked up one last time by Rory for a trip into Galway.  Yet, this time I will be boarding a bus on its way to the Dublin airport. Kate and I will be leaving Sunday for new adventures in Cinque Terre, Rome, Madrid, Toledo and Barcelona!  I am excited to travel to new places, but saying good bye to the Foyles, the cottage, the sheep and Galway Bay will be certainly be hard!  Slán Ireland! 

An Irish Thanksgiving

I have had a wonderful last few weeks in Ireland.  While we're in the midst of final papers, exams and presentations we have certainly found time to still enjoy Ireland.  Last weekend a few of us took a bus to Dublin to see a great Minnesota band, Trampled by Turtles. It ended up to be a great night!  We met many people from Minnesota at the concert, talked to all the band members and had a lot of fun being directly in front!

After the show with a few band members

The best part of this Ireland program is getting to know so many wonderful, hospitable Irish people. It has been a blast working with Geraldine in the kitchen.  She is always running around the kitchen and hollering to anybody who is in her way!  The other night she had Annie and me over for our very own pumpkin pie and tea with her and her two daughters.  Her youngest daughter Ava can do an absolutely hilarious American accent!  While both Annie and I had planned to get homework done that night, the three hours we spent at Geraldine's was by no means a waste of time!

Thanksgiving Day was great over here in Ireland!  Most of us ran to the rugby pitch to play a good old game of Thanksgiving football.  Fortunately, the field was a mud pit.  We spent more time on the ground getting plastered in mud then playing football!  There were many great whip-outs and we all left the field covered in mud head to toe.  Which actually poses some issues when a hot water shower is hard to accommodate for all 5 cottagemates anyways! We had to take off all our muddy clothes outside in the freezing rain, then pour hot water from the tea pot on our legs and feet before we could shower.  We are all pretty sure that we probably still have mud in our ears!

Thanksgiving Football!

Slip and Slide anyone?

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The Park Lodge puts on a wonderful Thanksgiving meal for all the students, our professors and other people who we have met throughout our time here.  We had a traditional Thanksgiving meal complete with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables and pumpkin pie!  Geraldine's two daughters entertained us on fiddle and the Irish whistle. All the cottages then had to perform a skit or song for everyone. It was a great night, but its starting to sink in that next week we will all be leaving the Park Lodge after an unforgettable semester.  The hospitality of Jane-Marie, JP, Geraldine and the rest of the the Park Lodge   is unmatched anywhere else.  I know that once I leave her next Saturday,  I will be making plans to come back as soon as I can!

Our great bus driver, Gerry!

Ava, such a fun girl! 

Saving the Best for Last!

I can’t believe that this weekend marks the first of many lasts for our group in Ireland.  We now only have two weeks of class left-followed by a week of finals before we say good bye to our homes here in Spiddal.   This past weekend was our last group excursion  and we have now been to all 32 counties in Ireland.  The excursion was one of the best ones yet! Our Archeology professor, Jacki, came along for the weekend to give us information on many of the sites we saw over the last four days.  It was a busy four days!

View from the Rock of Cashel

Thursday: We headed South to the Rock of Cashel.  This chapel dates back to the 5th century!  It was here that St. Patrick baptized the King of Munster.  Though we have seen a lot of chapels, cathedrals and round towers it was exciting to see a Cathedral that was so pivotal in the spread of Christianity throughout Ireland.  After lunch in the village of Cashel, we continued to Kilkenny.  Here we had time to walk around, shop and explore Kilkenny before our group dinner. Most of us then went out to a couple of pubs with live music with our professors.  One of the guys on our trip, Michael, stepped up to sing with the Irish musicians!  He was certainly a hit and the couple from Wisconsin at the pub was proud to meet some Americans!

Friday:  Off to Waterford! We got to tour the Waterford Crystal factory!  While most of the crystal is not made at this facility anymore, they still make over 50,000 pieces of crystal each year.  We were able to walk through the factor and watch crystal be molded, blown, cooled,  and carved.  The 7 glass blowers there are considered the best in the world.  They all have at least 30 years of experience at Waterford.  They also had on display the backup pieces to many famous sculptures-the Superbowl trophy, NCAA basketball trophy, a London Olympic awards vase and dozens of others!  For every contracted specialty piece that is made they make a second one in case something is broken in transit or once it is delivered.  After the tour we headed back to Kilkenny for a tour of Kilkenny castle followed by another delicious dinner with the group!

Irish Harp made by Waterford Crystal

 Saturday:  Heading even further south we stopped in the port city of Cobh, pronounced Cove.  This was the last port of call for the Titanic!  We had beautiful, warm and sunny weather and after looking through the Cobh heritage center we were able to explore the village for a while.  We then headed to the big city of Cork!  The third largest city in Ireland, Cork was quite the exciting place!  We got to look around University College Cork-where a group of CSB/SJU students will be studying in the Spring! We then had the afternoon off before another group dinner! We had a wide selection of meals to choose from-I had spinach, gorgonzola tortellini.  It was delicious!  Cork was a beautiful, but very busy!  We all were excited to get back to Galway.

Port of Cobh

Pub life in Cork

 Sunday: Perhaps, one of the most exciting days of the semester! To start the day we had absolutely beautiful weather!  We left Cork and drove to Blarney to see the famous Blarney castle and kiss the Blarney stone! We had a couple of hours to explore the castle, caves, gardens and  grounds of the Castle.   We then went zip-lining!  The Blackwater Outdoor Activity center was located on the grounds of another private castle built in the 15th century.  We each got to “zip” three times across a the river!  It was a great end to our final excursion!

Exploring the Caves!

Kissing the Blarney Stone

View of Blarney Castle

Getting ready to zip line!

I can’t believe in month I will be headed home!  It will be wonderful to be home, but until then there is still a lot of exploring and learning that is to be done! 

Irish Living

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, but Irish life has been great! Since returning from break, we have all been settling back in to cottage life.  The weather is most definitely beginning to become wintry.  While sunny days are still scattered throughout the week, its beginning to rain even more!  And by rain I mean a blustery, icy, sleeting type of rain.  Luckily, our gas fireplaces are working just fine and keeping us warm inside our cozy cottages!

Irish Brown Bread made with Geraldine

It has been a nice change of pace to not travel for the last few weeks.  We have had time to start doing homework (as that is a rarity here) and get to hang out in Spiddal and Galway more often. Here are a few highlights from the weeks!

1.  We are all required to do an Experiential Learning Project while we are abroad.  Annie, another dietetics major, and I are working with the Park Lodge's chef, Geraldine.  We are getting to help cook, bake and prepare meals with her. It has been a lot of fun to learn traditional Irish recipes (she has none of the  recipes written down!) and to spend time in the kitchen with her.  Shes always hollering and running around the kitchen frantically!  Her two daughters also hang out in the kitchen sometimes after school.  They know most of the recipes as well and can do a pretty darn good American accent!

Dominos for Halloween! 

2.We all dressed up for Halloween and went into Galway!  Fun fact: The Irish will tell you Halloween originated in Ireland as a Celtic festival, Samhain.  Many historians argue on this fact, but all our professors will tell you that Ireland is indeed the birthplace! We all had a lot of fun dressing up for Halloween with the entire group-even our directors!

3.  I think I've maxed out the number times I can draw an invisible map of the United States to explain where Minnesota is-only to end up by agreeing that it is "Oh, in Canada!"  Sure.  Close enough.


4. We found the Irish equivalent to Punch Pizza! There is a little pizzeria in Spiddal that is run by a single Italian man.  The restaurant has two tables in it and barely room for a group of us to stand.  On Friday night we took Rory into Spiddal, ordered Pizza and then took it over to the Au Tobar pub to eat and hang out.  Now that I know the pizza place is there, you can bet I will be back!

 5.  Our group took a day trip to Kylemore Abbey on Saturday.  Kylemore Abbey is in the beautiful Connemara region.  The Abbey itself is tucked in between beautiful mountains, lakes and streams. The weather was cold and rainy (as usual) but we actually saw snow on the road driving there!  The Abbey was a large estate built in the Victorian era, but in the 1900s a group of Benedictine Nuns bought it and now it is a monastery.  They use to run a school for girls, but a few years ago it sadly closed because there weren’t enough nuns to run it anymore.  We were able to walk around the woods, lakes, gardens and the estate its self.  And met with a Sister who had taught at St. John’s for a few years!

6.  “We Connacht be stopped!” This was the common cheer at the Connacht rugby match we went to Saturday night.   Connacht, pronounced kah-knot, is a region in Ireland played an Italian team on Saturday night.  While my jeans were wet from the sideways rain and my toes were probably white, I had a great time cheering along side the die-hard Irish rugby fans!  Connacht won the match quite easily!  After the first half, there was a little kids rugby match for entertainment.  While, rugby is not considered an Irish sport, it was still fun to go to a sporting event in Galway!  

Thursday we hit the road again and head down to County Cork for the weekend!  Stay tuned for pictures of the Waterford Crystal factory, kissing the Blarney stone and much more! 

More Pictures of Salzburg

More Passport Stamps

After 10 days of planes, trains and automobiles I am back at the Park Lodge.  We had a wonderful trip and I wish I could have blogged each day! Paris was fantastic as I already said and after navigating subways, airports and streets in French we decided to give German a try.  We headed to Vienna via plane on Saturday morning and found our way to our hostel really easily!  We were so excited that the trees were changing colors and the sun was shining once again.  We had a great 3 days in Vienna-we walked around, mastered the subway and saw a lot of cool sites.  In Austria, everything closes down on Sundays which can make for a tricky planning! All the restaurants, shops, grocery stores etc.  But, we decided to tour the Schönbrunn Palace which was still open. It was the home of the Imperial families during Austria's imperial rule.  We were able to tour 40 rooms, walk through some amazing gardens, a hedge maze and played at a pretty cool park!  One of the rooms we saw was were little 6 year old Mozart played his first piano concert for the Imperial family. 

Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna

Nascht Market in Vienna!

Schokocroissant on the train! 

On Tuesday morning we left for Salzburg to visit our friends studying there.  Our train came at the perfect time and just as we were taking the escalator down into the station when we saw Emily starting to take it upwards!  It was really exciting to see someone we knew! Her aunt and uncle, a pilot, were also there visiting for a few days with some of their "pilot friends."  That night, they took us out for dinner at the Stiftskeller St Peter, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in Europe (803 AD). We had a delicious dinner and were very thankful that her family decided to take us with them! The rest of the week we spent time running around Salzburg.  The mountains were just covered with snow, but it was sunny and nearly 70 the entire week! We saw many, many Sound of Music sites, climbed the Gaisberg mountain and spent a lot of time just hanging out with the everybody. While the gazebo, fountains and paths featured in the Sound of Music were a lot of fun, the Gaisberg was most definitely the highlight of my trip. A popular mountain to climb or mountain bike up, Emily and Alex decided it was a must if we were Salzburg for so long.  On Thursday, as soon as Emily was done with class we left in pursuit of the top. We had to ascend quickly in order to beat the setting sun.  It was so warm and each time I stopped to look around, the view go better and better. After two hours of climbing straight upwards, we were at the summit.  In the distance, the Salzach river through the city was only recognizable as a thin, metallic thread weaving its way below. While we were hot and tired the oranges, chocolate and water in our packs made us forget about all our achy legs and sweat drenched shirts.  The rest of the night we met up with other friends in Salzburg who were either studying or visiting there. We introduced Emily to her first Guinness as we thought it was an acceptable time to try one with all her Irish friends along!   Our time in Salzburg was absolutely wonderful and it was a great end to busy travels! Here are only a few pictures from a great mid term break! 

Doe, a deer! 

Salzburg

Me, Mac and Emily at the summit of Gaisberg

View from the top

Does this gazebo look familiar

Oh, and a few more Paris pics! 

Notre Dame

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 We had a wonderful time traveling and I can't wait to travel with Kate Trescony come December!