Dublin & More

Well. I took a bus to Glasgow airport at 4:30am on Saturday morning and left on my flight around 6:30. It only took 35 minutes to fly to Dublin, so I had a very early start and long day ahead. Some how going through airport customs was a breeze. One of the boys got their deodorant, hair gel, and shampoo taken away, while I passed through fine with a huge bottle of my eye makeup remover, shampoo and conditioner, a water bottle, and lots of other liquids. I definitely dont trust airport security any more. haha. Our first day was a ton of fun, we visited the Guinness Storehouse for four and a half hours! There were about 7 levels to see, so that's why it took us a while. We got to pour our own pint of guinness and we also received a certificate saying that we passed! Of course I gave my pint away to one of the boys because I think it looks like chocolate but tastes like poop. Saturday was definitely the worse day for weather! It was more than rainy, it was pouring for hours at a time! It took my jeans and shoes two days to dry and I had them on a heater and I even tried blow drying them at one point. Saturday night we just hopped on a tram back home to the hotel and hung out and watched tommy boy until bedtime. Sunday I was the first one up, like usual on vacation, and so I got ready and had three cups of tea and then I explored a little bit around the hotel and ate breakfast, and then finally almost everyone was up. We spent the morning at the Jameson Whiskey distillery, where I was one out of six people chosen to be a taste tester at the end of our tour. I tried 3 irish whiskeys, some scotch, and jack daniels and had to pick my favorites. Of course it was an irish whiskey, just to be fair. And then we had a complementary shot of Jameson. So suffice to say I was pretty darn happy at 12 in the afternoon walking out of Jameson! After that we went to subway to get some good eats and the toured some historical part of Dublin. We went to Dublin Castle, St. Patricks Cathedral, and Trinity College. That night we went pubbing in the Temple Bar Area and had a really good time just hanging out being in downtown Dublin. Monday we got up early and checked out of the hotel and walked downtown to see the St. Patty's Day parade. which to me seemed like any old parade Ive ever seen before, but with bigger floats! So it was interesting to be a part of that. Basically monday we toured the city again to see the sights we might have missed and then spent the rest of the night pubbing before our last bus to the airport. We left for the airport at 10:30pm and spent a long 8 hours waiting for our flight. I got kicked out of sleeping on the starbucks chairs, then I was told to move from a restaurant chair I was sleeping in, so finally I resort to sleeping on a pair of my pj pants on the cold airport floor. Some of my friends decided to pull a prank on one of the guys we were travelling with and I swear I almost peed my pants at the success they had with it. While this guy was sleeping they took off his shoes and hid them and took his backpack and moved to a different sitting spot. Well a couple hours later this guy wakes up. One person that was sitting by him saw everything that happened and found our group to tell us that he had woken up and was looking really confused!!! haha. Well finally he comes around and finds us and we all act like we dont know what's going on (this is at about 4:30 in the morning) and we give him his backpack, well we convince him that someone must have stolen his shoes. So he walks around the airport with us for the next hour without shoes on. There was a point when he wandered off when we were sitting down again and so the boys who had his shoes take them and wear them, so when the guy comes back he just freaked out at them. It was one of the funniest pranks I had ever witnessed. Any way, on the flight back I slept the whole time and it seriously felt like when I woke up we hadnt even left yet. But the plane ride was really fast because we were flying with the wind so it only took 25 minutes. Well after another long train ride and a long walk home, I finally made it to my bed and took a much needed nap! So Im all caught up on sleep. I turned in two essays today and those are finally out of the way. My British Politics class (well lecture at least) is done as of today. That's two classes out of the way. Right now Im trying to figure out what Im going to do for spring break because I have a one way ticket from london to krakow with no plans, so that will need to change. This weekend I have to start two other essays that are due in 12 days!! whoopy! But when those are done spring break will be here. Alright well Im off for a lunch break with laura and her boyfriend! Cheers

School and Pre-Dublin

It's been a very busy and school-occupied week. I can't believe tomorrow is Friday already! Geez. Any way, as all of America suffered through the worse day of the year this last Sunday (time change day) I had to celebrate a little bit because I do not have to change my clock until March 30th. However, on Sunday I had no clue that the UK and for that matter...other parts of the world, didnt have a time change on the same day? Which is so weird to me. Well Sunday morning I woke up pretty early and looked at my computer and the time was automatically changed so I proceeded to change everything in my room that tells the time: two watches, a camera, and my ipod. After that I went around the flat and changed the all of those clocks ahead one hour. At about five o'clock at night I come back into the kitchen and the clock in there says 4:00pm, so without thinking I changed it back again and my flatmate's like what are you doing? I said "time change" and theyre like "no". So I learned something that day and set all of my clocks back. Im a bit relieved though because I dont want to wake up an hour early for another couple weeks. Oh and the time change in the US end in November and here it end in October. Well any way, Monday I had my last Children's literature class, but we still have to turn in an essay and then we have an exam in late May...but class is done. So for our last class we read the book "doing it" by melvin burgess. I...am virtually speechless about this. Because what the heck were we doing reading a book that as you may have guessed was about "doing it" and it was terribly explicit and blah! I think my professor went seriously nutzo because there is NO WAY that book could (or should!) be considered children's literature. So during class discussion our professor just randomly points to me and says in front of the whole class "I want to know what you think" I was almost speechless. Why on earth choose me to ask that question to? I just randomly rambled on about the most innocent thing I could possibly talk about, because otherwise I would have been discussing porno in front of 15 people. Not funny. Well the rest of my week has been pretty peachy. On Tuesday I went to The Mars Volta concert with my friend Matt. It was such a fun time. I normally have never liked this band and dont even listen to this type of music, but a lot of people I know do, so I said what the hey! And decided that I should give them a fair chance. The concert was great and a lot of fun, and such a good study/essay writing break. Yesterday I booked a one-way ticket for Spring Break (booking the return ticket tomorrow, dont worry). A few of my flatmates and I are going to London and flying to Krakow. We're going to hit up Hungary, Poland, Germany I think, which should be a lot of fun. Today I have been working my butt off trying to finishing writing my 2nd essay. Almost done, as of right now at this moment Im 66% done. Good. I leave for Dublin on Saturday morning around 4am and I'll be back on Tuesday around 7:30am. We dont really have any outstanding plans yet, but we're definitely visiting the Guinness brewery and partaking in St. Patty's Day festivities which will be a lot of fun. I think we're staying in a hostel? Or hotel? Either way we have to sneek in 5 people and Im one of those 5, so Im a little nervous about that! Ah, should work out fine though. No big deal. Well that's the update of my whole week practically! Got to get back to school! Boo!

Oh how the week rolls by

Two history essays are dominating my time and social life this week, hence why I havent updated my blog! In between procrastinating, staring blankly at my computer, and typing two really bullcrap-filled essays I have been pretty much in seclusion the past couple of days! I am being a loser for just this week and probably also will be monday tuesday wednesday of next week so I can finish my work and then I will be guilt free from school when I head to Dublin next weekend for a little bit of St. Patty's Celebration! Yippee! Thursday I had been working on my essays all night right up until two of my flatmates said to me "bayle we're leaving in five minutes to go out, come with us just do it." and so I did. I was impressed that I even got dressed that fast, but I was out the door and heading for a night on the town. We went to the student union and listened to one of our friends sing at open mic night, which was really chill. Hung out there for a bit and then we were going to go out clubbing, but my shoe was a thread away from breaking and the buckle was rubbing on my ankle every time I moved so I decided to call it a night and retired early. Yesterday it was only my flatmate from sweden jo and myself here. Linzi (scotland) went to visit her bf in isle of skye, aimee (netherlands) went home, Joyce (canada) was at rowing, and carrie (georgia) is in paris! how random to say that she's in paris. but any way so jo and I spent the night watching notting hill and eating food and doing homework. Carrie has my tweezers and Im in desparate need of them, but her room is locked because she's...in paris...so I'll just have to wait until she's back. She had to borrow mine because she lost hers in her room somewhere I think, but it makes me laugh because of how prepared I am sometimes. Like I was thinking about all the stuff i brought over from home that looking back seems absolutely ridiculous, but that's just how I am. For instance, I brought a kleenex box. I brought 6 pillow cases, 7 wash clothes, decorations for my walls, every toiletry on the face of the earth, and many more! When will I learn. But the good thing about that is, even though I had one hell of a time lugging my stupid suitcases around, once I was unpacked I was glad to have everything. I didnt need to go buying anything except food, which put my mind to ease. And the even better part of this story is that by the time I go home I will have an empty suitcase almost because all the stuff I brought will be used up! So maybe I am a good planner after all.....I dont think so. Any way, Im off to bed soon so I can rise and shine in the morning for my essays. cheerio!

Weekend Trip To A Haunted Castle!

As I said last time, I took the weekend off and went for a trip on sat-monday. We traveled up to the highlands and stayed in Carbisdale Castle, which used to be the Duchess of Sutherland's castle and is now a youth hostel. And it's supposed to be haunted which made it all the more fun/creepy! On Saturday we left around 10am and traveled for a bit before we stopped in a town called Pitlochry and shopped around for an hour. It was a really small, but cute town. I went to buy a Nessie Key Holder so I could tack it up on my wall and I tried paying with my debit but the lady told me I couldnt, So I said that's okay I'll come back later because I could go get cash. And she gave me the bitchest look and told me that she had already rang it up, and I said that's too bad because there's nothing I can do about it, I'll be back later. Well when I came back I half did it because I wanted to see if she would even sell me anything, and she acted like the nicest lady and was like...have a good day! So that was interesting. We arrived in the castle at 5pm and got our rooms and stuff then took a castle tour before lunch. I thought dinner was going to be scampy, but we were fed mountains of the most delicious food in the world. After dinner we went on a night hike outside to see the castle from far away. I just remember not being able to see anything and I had my eyes open really really wide and then someone would flash their camera and I was blinded for a bit. We tried to hunt some sheep that night, but we couldnt see any. Also the friends that I went with formed team names: lamb, mutton, peep, sheep, haggis, wool, fleece, ewe. I was ewe. Sunday we had another fantastic breakfast, lunch, and dinner...makes me hungry just thinking about it. The we went to Dunrobin Castle which was by far the most amazing castle I have ever seen. And the weather was great for the first part of the day, so it was even better. We explored the Dunrobin gardens and then went out by the sea. I collected a few rocks and some shells!! Of course. Monday was basically the same, but we stopped at a lot of historic/touristy places on the way home. We took photos with Nessie, saw some castles, and shopped around. This week Im completely secluding myself from anything that could possibly let me procrastinate because I have two 10 page papers to finish before I leave for Dublin in two weeks!!!!!!! okay I have to start that. Lata