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