I'M OBSESSED WITH BARCELONA.
This place is honestly awesome. Ok, not sure I could study there because it is so out of control, but it was fantastic for a weekend.
Friday morning I did the dreaded 3:15 am bus to Dublin because my flight was at 7:40. I survived and made it to my flight to London Gatwick which landed at 9:10. I sat in departures for a while "studying" but really walking around the tax free shopping. I was STARVING around 11:30, so I went to this place which was 100% American and was bumpin Motown music. I went to the hostess stand and the guy was like "For lunch?" And I said "Yeah, just one." And he goes "Just one? Or are you waiting, so two?" and I said "No, just one" and he literally goes "Really? Ok." TOTALLY a Forgetting Sarah Marshall moment, I half expected him to offer me a magazine, so I explained that I was waiting for friends. Then around 12:30 Meg, Em and Tara showed up and I'd like to say that I brought them back the same place solely because it was delicious, but sadly it was also so I could prove to a perfect stranger that I did indeed have friends. I'm pathetic. Then we got on our flight and landed in Girona, Spain around 6 pm. Girona is about an hour outside of Barcelona, so we took a bus into the city and then took the Metro to our hotel. The hotel was GORGEOUS. It was like, 66 euro for two nights, and honestly looked like a place I would go with my family. Go Em for finding it. Ok, so you know how they say Barcelona is the pickpocketing city of the world? Yeah. Emily got pick pocketed not even 15 minutes after we arrived in the city. We had our map out and were being tourists and this guy happened to be standing behind her, and then just like that he was gone... with her walet. It would have happened to any of us, the guy just happened to be standing behind Em. So for those of you who are going to Barca, it's all too real, so hold on to your bag like it's your child.
After we straightened out Emily's situation, we headed to dinner... at MIDNIGHT. The food was pretty good, but I was exhausted so we headed back to the hotel around 2:30 and I passed out hard. Saturday morning we woke up around 10, had DUNKIN DONUTS. Yes, that's right. It was freakin' delicious. We headed out to Parc Guell on a GORGEOUS 70 degree day, which is so pretty and offers a great view of the city. I posted a ton of awesome pictures from it on facebook so check it out! Well see, the park was great until... this is so embarrassing it's just not right. Ok, we're walking down the stairs to leave, and mind you these stairs are UNEVEN, so SLIPPERY, and OLD... that mixed with the traction-less sandals I was wearing... yeah ok, I ate shit. Even as I was falling, I go "OH NO, THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING". It wasn't just that I fell, it was that the dirty, sandy ledge of the stair scrapped down the entirety of both of my shins. Ugly doesn't even begin to describe it. It hurt SO bad. Interestingly enough I discovered that English obscenities must be easily recognizable to the Spanish, because I got a few horrified looks. I thought I might have been able to get away with it, but you can chalk it up as just another fail in those few seconds. I was literally mortified, but right after we left we found a "farmacia". The woman was a SAINT. She took me to the back room, put hydrogen peroxide, iodine AND ice on my shins... all free of charge. I was so inept I could not think of anything other than
"muchas gracias!" to say. Tara helped me out and gave me "muchas gracias para su ayuda" which means "thank you very much for your help". I could only think of how to say that phrase in Latin... sweet. After that I walked out, heavily bandaged and mortified, to lunch. We went to the center of the city, which is where the beach and all the touristy shopping is. This is where I found the new love of my life - SANGRIA. We had sangria and paella for lunch. Thinking about the paella too makes my mouth literally water. It was so so yummy and for a while made me forget about the monstrosity that were my legs. After that we walked to the docks and then to the beach. It was beautiful, but starting to get a little chilly.
So we went to our hotel to have a little siesta of our own. Meg and I watched Glee and the news and then got showers and got ready to go out. We were ready around 9:30 and we headed back to the beach metro-stop because thats where all the fun happens. We had an AMAZING dinner. We ordered a 2 liter thing of sangria for the 6 of us, and the waiter comes out with a 2 liter TOWER of it. Theres a picture on facebook of it. I was literally sad when I wasn't drinking it it was so delicious. We ate more paella and had a yummy dessert just talking and laughing the whole time. After that we headed out to meet up with some of the girls friend from SJU who was studying in Barcelona at a bar. Guess what kind of bar it was? Oh none other than an Irish pub, the George Payne. I was SO excited. We watched the UConn game surrounded by UConn and U of A kids, it was awesome. I actually even met a guy from Galway who went to NUIG and followed his girlfriend back to Spain! It's funny how much I identified with Galway once I was out of it. I felt so at home at the pub it made me realize how much I love it here. After that, at 2 am, we went to the club, Catwalk. We got bottle service which was SICK. They brought out 4 700 ml bottles of Absolute and a bunch of mixers. We had our own little section of the club and were just livin the VIP life. We danced until 6:30 am lol which at that point I could have fallen asleep in the club, so Meg and I headed back via cab. I was asleep like 5 seconds after getting home.
Sunday morning we woke up late, of course. There wasn't much time to do anything, so we took the Metro to the center circle where the airport busses were. The London girls stayed another day, so I had to get back to Galway solo. It was honestly a little nerve wracking, but I'm proud of myself for doing it. I figured out what bus to get on, what terminal to get off at, and where to check in and what not, all on my own! It might not seem like much, but I was terrified lol. I got back to Galway about 9:30, completely exhausted. It was SUCH an amazing weekend and I'm so glad I went.
4 days until the greatest day of the year. GO PHILS ;)
Kel
Monday, March 28, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
donegal
Sooo, after the craziness that was RAG week, Allie and I headed up north for a no-stress trip to Donegal. My Mommom's family is from there, so I was excited to see what it was all about. I was not disappointed. It was by far, hands down, the prettiest place I've seen in Ireland. For those of you who don't know, I was here two years ago with my family and so I've seen most of the country except for some of the midlands. So now I can say that I've seen about 75% of the Republic. Preeeetty cool, eh?
So we got on the bus around 9 am and took the four hour ride up the countryside. It was a beautiful bus ride, but I was exhausted so I slept for a good bit of it. Bus Eireann is great because it takes you to so many places, but honestly horrible because it a) takes forever to get where you need to go and b) you'd think you were in the deepest depths of hell the busses are so hot. I was literally sitting ON a heater on the way home. Anyway, we got to Donegal Town just before 1 pm and grabbed lunch before heading to the hostel. Now, this was my first experience with a hostel so I was a little nervous. There was no need. We walked in and the place was very neat and clean. We were greeted by a woman named Linda who might have been the nicest person I've ever met. It felt like we were coming home and talking to Mom. She asked us all about where we were from and how we liked Ireland and then gave us a few suggestions as to where to go in Donegal Town. We took her advice and headed to a water bus tour. Honestly, prettiest sights I may have seen in my whole LIFE. It lasted about an hour and a half and then we walked around town to all the cute little shops and such. I bought a postcard, which I have everywhere I've gone, and a Cadbury egg... typical. We then found where we were going to go to Mass the next morning (again, typical) and then found a place for dinner. The place was called Mama's and was dirt cheap so it was perfect for us. We walked in and were literally the ONLY people in the whole place. The town was kind of quiet anyway so we weren't bothered by it. We ate our dinner and drank our Guinness and enjoyed having the place to ourselves. After dinner we walked to the off-license and found the cheapest beer we could to bring back to the hostel. We couldn't decide if we wanted to go back out, because honestly most of the pubs seemed like a place where everyone knows your name... and they didn't know ours. It ended up fine. We met these German girls in our hostel and talked for a few hours about the differences between the American culture and the European culture as well as the differences of our home universities and Irish universities. One of the things I love the most about studying abroad is getting to know how other people see the world. We went to bed fairly early because we were randomly exhausted, but it was a great day.
Sunday we got up and went to Mass at this really cool old church in town called, you guessed it, St. Patrick's. Then we toured Donegal Castle. It was built by an old Irish family, taken by the British, taken back from the British, taken by the British and then left for ruin... your normal Irish castle story, really. But it was huge and old and something to do so we enjoyed ourselves. Then we had lunch and waited for the bus later in the afternoon. Nothing terribly eventful took place, but we enjoyed ourselves just relaxing and hanging out.
I got my exam schedule today... I'll be home May 12th! I love it here and I'm having a ton of great experiences, but I'll be so ready to go when it's time.
Miss you all!
Love,
Kel
So we got on the bus around 9 am and took the four hour ride up the countryside. It was a beautiful bus ride, but I was exhausted so I slept for a good bit of it. Bus Eireann is great because it takes you to so many places, but honestly horrible because it a) takes forever to get where you need to go and b) you'd think you were in the deepest depths of hell the busses are so hot. I was literally sitting ON a heater on the way home. Anyway, we got to Donegal Town just before 1 pm and grabbed lunch before heading to the hostel. Now, this was my first experience with a hostel so I was a little nervous. There was no need. We walked in and the place was very neat and clean. We were greeted by a woman named Linda who might have been the nicest person I've ever met. It felt like we were coming home and talking to Mom. She asked us all about where we were from and how we liked Ireland and then gave us a few suggestions as to where to go in Donegal Town. We took her advice and headed to a water bus tour. Honestly, prettiest sights I may have seen in my whole LIFE. It lasted about an hour and a half and then we walked around town to all the cute little shops and such. I bought a postcard, which I have everywhere I've gone, and a Cadbury egg... typical. We then found where we were going to go to Mass the next morning (again, typical) and then found a place for dinner. The place was called Mama's and was dirt cheap so it was perfect for us. We walked in and were literally the ONLY people in the whole place. The town was kind of quiet anyway so we weren't bothered by it. We ate our dinner and drank our Guinness and enjoyed having the place to ourselves. After dinner we walked to the off-license and found the cheapest beer we could to bring back to the hostel. We couldn't decide if we wanted to go back out, because honestly most of the pubs seemed like a place where everyone knows your name... and they didn't know ours. It ended up fine. We met these German girls in our hostel and talked for a few hours about the differences between the American culture and the European culture as well as the differences of our home universities and Irish universities. One of the things I love the most about studying abroad is getting to know how other people see the world. We went to bed fairly early because we were randomly exhausted, but it was a great day.
Sunday we got up and went to Mass at this really cool old church in town called, you guessed it, St. Patrick's. Then we toured Donegal Castle. It was built by an old Irish family, taken by the British, taken back from the British, taken by the British and then left for ruin... your normal Irish castle story, really. But it was huge and old and something to do so we enjoyed ourselves. Then we had lunch and waited for the bus later in the afternoon. Nothing terribly eventful took place, but we enjoyed ourselves just relaxing and hanging out.
I got my exam schedule today... I'll be home May 12th! I love it here and I'm having a ton of great experiences, but I'll be so ready to go when it's time.
Miss you all!
Love,
Kel
Thursday, March 3, 2011
RAG week
So remember before how I mentioned that this week was RAG week? How it's supposed to be a charity thing but pretty much ends up being the biggest shit show known to man? Yeah, it didn't disappoint. Not so much that I was shitty the whole time (I mean, some of the time...) but just the way the student body transformed was wild. I'll do my best to recount some of the crazy things I've seen.
My friends from SLU live in this place called Corrib Village. Corrib is the name of the river that runs through Galway to Galway Bay and then out into the Atlantic. It's a village of pastel colored houses that each contain four Lafarge-esque suites, but with kitchens. It's mostly first year (freshman) Irish students and then international students who range in age from sophomores to 23 year olds. Now in the past this place has been the site of MAJOR damages because not only do the people who live there get crazy, but the friends that they bring into the place make it even crazier. So this year they implemented concentration camp-esque security to keep anyone who isn't a Corrib resident with a Corrib ID out of the complex... and out of the party really. However, yours truly did find a way to circumvent this maximum security to some extent. On Sunday, the 24 hour lockdown surveillance didn't start until 4:30, so I got to Corrib just in the nick of time at 4:15. Drinking commenced shortly after and I got to meet lots of new awesome Irish people. The girls that my SLU friends live with are so sweet and it was nice to meet some Irish girls for a change. I had a great time drinkin in the complex that night, but the loud music and crazy party didn't stop until 4 am... I guess I'm just not hard core enough to drink from 4 to 4. But I've heard some wild stories, like one of the guys across the hall left the plastic cutting board on the burner in order to start a fire so that he could extinguish it with the fire extinguisher. Yeah. I saw the aftermath. Their entire common room was white and some people had written little messages in the white powder. Smelled like shit too. That's going to cost them some major euro-age. I've also heard reports of people being thrown into trees and I met a guy who chugged 500 ml's of vodka to earn a free ride into Galway for RAG week. Yeah. His way of getting around security was to literally hop over a 8 foot fence and haul ass. I don't know how he did it or if he was making it up but homeboy was WRECKED. On Tuesday I was able to get back into Corrib by riding in the trunk of a residents car. Yeah, Mexican style. Long story short, I've seen some things that I never thought I would see. This week has turned a campus into a slopfest of drinking. It was fun, but at some points it was just taken to such an extreme that it really wasn't that fun. Don't get me wrong, ya'll who know me know I enjoy drinking and having a good time... but a whole week is a bit much. Moderation is the key here and no one has seemed to observe it.
On a sober note: I BROKE A WORLD RECORD! Well, me and 905 other people. Ok it's a little difficult to explain, but I was walking to class on Monday and Liz bbmed me to tell me they were all going to "Rock the Boat". Now, I had no idea what they meant but I soon found out that NUIG students were breaking the Guinness World Record for doing it. What it was was over 900 students sitting on the floor in lines in between the person behind you's legs rocking back and forth and side to side for 5 minutes to the song that goes "Rock the boat / don't rock the boat baby / rock the boat / don't tip the boat over!". Yeah. We were dying laughing the whole time, but I gotta be honest I never thought I'd be able to say that I was part of breaking a world record! Pretty cool, eh?
Tonight is the last night of RAG week and I have to be honest, I'm glad it's over. It's a lot of pressure to be drunk that much! But it should be a really fun night as everyone goes all out to end this joyous week of giving, but really drinking, with a bang.
Oh! I'm going to Donegal this weekend! My friend Allie from SLU and I are going. Not really sure what to expect but we're gonna see what the craic is up there in the northern part of Ireland (but not Northern Ireland). It will be my first hostel experience, so I'm sure there will be a few things to remark upon when I get back! It'll be nice to get out of Galway for the weekend. It gets so dead here because the students go home for the weekend, every weekend. They look at us funny when we tell them that the weekends are mostly the only nights we go out and party because we have so much homework during the week. Hopefully it's a nice weekend. Also, a lot of the girls have friends coming for spring break so it'll be a lot of fun showing them around and getting to see a few people I know and also meet a few that I don't! I can't wait for Johnny to come in TWO WEEKS TO THE DAY! It's so fun having people here that you know. I love showing Galway off but at the same time it's so comforting to have a piece of home with you when you're here.
That's all for now. I'm trying not to go MIA on this blogging thing for another month. Don't lose faith in me - check every now and again!
Love you all,
Kel
My friends from SLU live in this place called Corrib Village. Corrib is the name of the river that runs through Galway to Galway Bay and then out into the Atlantic. It's a village of pastel colored houses that each contain four Lafarge-esque suites, but with kitchens. It's mostly first year (freshman) Irish students and then international students who range in age from sophomores to 23 year olds. Now in the past this place has been the site of MAJOR damages because not only do the people who live there get crazy, but the friends that they bring into the place make it even crazier. So this year they implemented concentration camp-esque security to keep anyone who isn't a Corrib resident with a Corrib ID out of the complex... and out of the party really. However, yours truly did find a way to circumvent this maximum security to some extent. On Sunday, the 24 hour lockdown surveillance didn't start until 4:30, so I got to Corrib just in the nick of time at 4:15. Drinking commenced shortly after and I got to meet lots of new awesome Irish people. The girls that my SLU friends live with are so sweet and it was nice to meet some Irish girls for a change. I had a great time drinkin in the complex that night, but the loud music and crazy party didn't stop until 4 am... I guess I'm just not hard core enough to drink from 4 to 4. But I've heard some wild stories, like one of the guys across the hall left the plastic cutting board on the burner in order to start a fire so that he could extinguish it with the fire extinguisher. Yeah. I saw the aftermath. Their entire common room was white and some people had written little messages in the white powder. Smelled like shit too. That's going to cost them some major euro-age. I've also heard reports of people being thrown into trees and I met a guy who chugged 500 ml's of vodka to earn a free ride into Galway for RAG week. Yeah. His way of getting around security was to literally hop over a 8 foot fence and haul ass. I don't know how he did it or if he was making it up but homeboy was WRECKED. On Tuesday I was able to get back into Corrib by riding in the trunk of a residents car. Yeah, Mexican style. Long story short, I've seen some things that I never thought I would see. This week has turned a campus into a slopfest of drinking. It was fun, but at some points it was just taken to such an extreme that it really wasn't that fun. Don't get me wrong, ya'll who know me know I enjoy drinking and having a good time... but a whole week is a bit much. Moderation is the key here and no one has seemed to observe it.
On a sober note: I BROKE A WORLD RECORD! Well, me and 905 other people. Ok it's a little difficult to explain, but I was walking to class on Monday and Liz bbmed me to tell me they were all going to "Rock the Boat". Now, I had no idea what they meant but I soon found out that NUIG students were breaking the Guinness World Record for doing it. What it was was over 900 students sitting on the floor in lines in between the person behind you's legs rocking back and forth and side to side for 5 minutes to the song that goes "Rock the boat / don't rock the boat baby / rock the boat / don't tip the boat over!". Yeah. We were dying laughing the whole time, but I gotta be honest I never thought I'd be able to say that I was part of breaking a world record! Pretty cool, eh?
Tonight is the last night of RAG week and I have to be honest, I'm glad it's over. It's a lot of pressure to be drunk that much! But it should be a really fun night as everyone goes all out to end this joyous week of giving, but really drinking, with a bang.
Oh! I'm going to Donegal this weekend! My friend Allie from SLU and I are going. Not really sure what to expect but we're gonna see what the craic is up there in the northern part of Ireland (but not Northern Ireland). It will be my first hostel experience, so I'm sure there will be a few things to remark upon when I get back! It'll be nice to get out of Galway for the weekend. It gets so dead here because the students go home for the weekend, every weekend. They look at us funny when we tell them that the weekends are mostly the only nights we go out and party because we have so much homework during the week. Hopefully it's a nice weekend. Also, a lot of the girls have friends coming for spring break so it'll be a lot of fun showing them around and getting to see a few people I know and also meet a few that I don't! I can't wait for Johnny to come in TWO WEEKS TO THE DAY! It's so fun having people here that you know. I love showing Galway off but at the same time it's so comforting to have a piece of home with you when you're here.
That's all for now. I'm trying not to go MIA on this blogging thing for another month. Don't lose faith in me - check every now and again!
Love you all,
Kel
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