I'll be home for Christmas...

December 13, 2010

I’ll be home for Christmas…

                So let’s see, last time I wrote a blog it had been a quiet snowy weekend. My how times have changed. It is now Monday. I have been to Paris. And I will be home on Saturday.  I still have so much to do this week. Where has the time gone? It feels so unreal that it is almost time for me to go home. I have come to the conclusion that I do not want to leave Ireland but I really want to be home. I have also come to the realization that this ideal situation is not possible. So I am left to enjoy Ireland as much as humanly possible in the next five days and also very very very excited to go home. Like I have said many times before I absolutely have fallen in love with Ireland but now that going home is so close, I cannot wait. I miss my family so very much. I cannot wait to see you Mom, Dad and Chad. Also soon I will get to see Adam, Lisa and the dogs. The very thought brings such joy to my heart.

                Other than realizing the lack of time I have left here I went to Paris this weekend.  Surprise, Surprise, I loved it. Jackie and I departed very early Saturday morning for our last adventure. After doing the usual wondering around to try and find our hotel (yes we actually stayed in a hotel and not a hostel…living large, I know) we began to see all there is to see in Paris. We first went to see the Arc de Triumph. It is really cool! Prior to going I had this notion of “What is the big deal about a giant arch?” Needless to say that notion is gone and I love that giant arch. We then meandered down to the Eiffel Tower; which is just as majestic as one could imagine. I really could sit there all day and people watch and admire the tour. I loved it. There was a Christmas market right near the tour that we walked around for a while, watched some little kids ice skating and then headed off. We ate dinner near our hotel and then watched TV in French; it is incredible how entertaining TV still is even when you have no idea what they are saying. At this point we were both very tired and called it an early night.

                Sunday brought the usual, roaming about the city seeing most of all there is to see in one day. We began with a walk to the Louvre.  On the way we stumbled across some very beautiful monuments and plazas. We got croissants for breakfast at a stand in the park of the Louvre and as we sat down to eat them we were swarmed by birds. After making a quick escape we decided it is better to eat on the move. We managed to get free admission into the museum. Maybe that happens a lot but we were both pretty impressed with ourselves for getting in with no cost. As you may know the Louvre is huge. One could literally spend all day, probably two days in the museum. We only spent about three hours. I felt like we saw a lot but in retrospect we probably saw a very little portion of the whole museum. We did, however, see all of the most famous pieces of artwork in there, and of course that includes the Mona Lisa. I have heard stories about when other people have seen the painting so I was not all together surprised to see a relatively small paiting on a rather large wall in the middle of a room. The funny thing is the painting opposite the Mona Lisa, a piture of Jesus at the wedding where he turned water to wine, is HUGE. Literally the biggest painting I have ever seen and it is just across from the Mona Lisa; a very small paining. After the Louvre we began to walk again, we saw Notre Dame. The cathedral is just a beautiful as you would imagine. It felt incredible to actually get to see it. The rest of the day was filled with wondering about Paris seeing all that the beautiful city has to offer. What a wonderful day.

                Like I said, I really enjoyed Pairs. I was a little skeptical with all that one hears about how rude the French are and how high end the city is, but I really enjoyed it. I did not feel that the people were rude but it is for sure a very high end city. Perhaps my favorite part of Paris was just getting a baguette and walking around eating it. Sounds weird but it was incredible. Of course the bread was delicious and it was not cold outside so it made for a great day. The crepes were also to die for.

                As wonderful as Paris was I really was glad to get back to Dublin to enjoy the last few days here. All of the “lasts” are beginning to happen and all of the loose ends are beginning to be tied. Stacie and I already went to the YSI Christmas parts; it was SO much fun to get to go and just hang out with the great people we worked with. The CIEE program already had our farewell dinner. And I only have 2500 more words to write and a presentation and I am done with school. I have begun to think about packing and how in the world I am going to get everything home (some of you know that this is always a challenge at the end of the semester).  I look back at my time and I would not change a thing. It has been the most incredible three months. When I think about all that I have done I am overwhelmed with gratitude. It is sad to think that I will have to say good-bye to my new friends and my roommates soon.  Oh how time flies! I must admit that I am getting a little apprehensive to come back to the states. I am afraid it is going to be hard to adjust back to living in America. I have grown so much and life in Ireland has become so normal, I do not even feel like I am in a foreign country anymore, I am just a litte nervous for culture shock. I am sure it will all be okay though!

                I hope that the Christmas season has brought you all joy. I am excited to see you all. Thank you all for being a big part of the last three months. They have been so very good.

Cheers,

Keely

Speaking words of wisdom let it be......

December 5^, 2010

Speaking words of wisdom let it be….

                No crazy adventures in other countries this week but what a strange week it has been in Dublin. As I mentioned in my last post there was snow in Dublin when we got back from London. Well as it turns out it was snowy all week. I have heard, not sure how true this is but, this is the most snow Ireland has ever gotten. I don’t know about EVER but it is definitely the most they have gotten in a while. I have loved it! It has reminded me of home. However, as it snowed more and got colder Ireland began to shut down. Stacie and I did not go to our internship at all this week, mostly due to cold weather and the Dublin buses not running. Also, the entire university shut down from about Wednesday afternoon until tomorrow. So I have almost had another week off of school.  A little mini vacation if you will. So I have had plenty of time to sleep and get some school work done; which I have actually got a lot of work done. I have learned in the past week that I am much better at being busy than I am at not having anything to do. The first few days were all well and good but the past couple days I have been going a little stir crazy. I am ready for life to start again. I am ready to go to class.

                On Wednesday I got to have another Thanksgiving dinner. That is right, I am in a country that does not celebrate the holiday but I celebrated it twice. My roommates were so nice and thought that since I was not able to be with my family on a holiday like Thanksgiving we would have an apartment family Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone did something; Laura chopped onions and cubed potatoes, Ruth peeled potatoes and got a delicious dessert, Sarah set the table, I washed the dishes and Carla pretty much did everything else. Let me tell you it was such a brilliant dinner. I am not saying I did not enjoy the first one, I did, but this one was better. As things would have it, our cooker broke in the middle of cooking dinner. Perfect. I told my roommates that it seems like the same thing could very well happen on Thanksgiving at home too.  No fear the girls moved cooking into another apartment nearby.  We all were definitely in a food coma for a couple hours afterwards as well. It was a great night and a Thanksgiving I will never forget. I still cannot get over how nice of them it was to think of me.

                Today Jackie and I decided to go to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; something we have been talking about since we got here. It was a different mass than either of us had ever seen but it was still a great experience. It is a beautiful cathedral and I am so glad that we went. Afterwards we found the Hard Rock Café Dublin; of course we had to eat there before leaving in a few weeks.  I had Mac and cheese. I know some of you are thinking “Mac and cheese Keely? Really? Are you still seven?” But they do not really have Mac and cheese in Ireland and since the Hard Rock is a chain they had Mac and cheese. Yes I had it and yes, it was delicious.

                It seems so strange that two weeks from now I will be waking up in my own house. I am starting to get really excited to go home and see my family. I am starting to dream of a white Colorado Christmas. I just hope the white part happens. As excited as I am to go home, I still have so much fun to have here and memories to make.  This weekend Jackie and I are taking our last trip together to Paris, we have a big program dinner, I still have papers to write, X factor to watch, and many trips into the city centre. What a fantastic two weeks I have a head of me.

                I hope you all are well and that you have had a great week. I cannot wait to see you all soon and to be able to share stories in person!

Until next week,

Keely

This is the park near school where I sometimes run

Family Thanksgiving

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Mine is not a new story...

November 29, 2010

Mine is not a new story…

                Well, here we are again…another week has gone by and I still find myself falling in love with this country. And yet again this week brought me another incredible adventure. So here it goes…

                I will start with Thanksgiving, or maybe I should say “Thanksgiving”. All of last week I kept forgetting that it was the week of Thanksgiving. So Thursday came and I woke up and….it felt just like any other Thursday. Stacie and I headed into the city centre for our internship and went on with our work. It was so bizarre. When the ladies that we work with found out/remembered it was Thanksgiving they bought Stacie and I Christmas cupcakes and a card that everyone in the office signed. If you know me, then you know that I LOVE LOVE LOVE cupcakes. I was happy to say the least. For dinner that night one of the American girls in my program offered her apartment for us all to have dinner at. We all brought a Thanksgiving dish to share. There was about twenty people total so we definitely had a feast. It was a pretty big success. Thanksgiving dinner and day were not nearly the same as at home but for being in a country that does not celebrate the holiday it was a good day.

                Saturday, Jackie and I rose early to catch our plane to London. Yes, I did go to London for just a small weekend trip. J Our plane was due to leave at eight in the morning. When we woke up there was about a half of an inch of snow on the ground. Which does not sound like anything to me (or anyone else from Colorado) but for Ireland it was a big deal. Our plane ended up being delayed about three and a half hours. Awesome start to the trip right? When we finally made it to London and checked into the hostel it was about 4:30p.m. From there we decided to go try to find platform 9 ¾ at Kings Cross. This is a Harry Potter reference; it is the platform that gets you to the Hogwarts Express. It took a while but we found it! There is actually a luggage cart going through the wall. Naturally, we took several pictures there. By now it was dinner time and we ended up going to the Hard Rock Café London. Jackie did some work in school with one of the founders of the Hard Rock Café, so she has a slight connection to go to as many as she can; especially the original. It was so cool to be the original Hard Rock Café. While we were waiting for our table we looked at the gift shop and took a free tour of the vault that holds several pieces of memorabilia. It was so cool.

                Sunday ended up being our only full day in London, we had a lot to do in one day. I am just going to list what we did so you get the effect of how much we did. Here goes….Buckingham Palace, Princess Diana Memorial Park, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament buildings, London Eye, City Hall,  Abbey Road Studios and Crossing, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a Christmas fair, Piccadilly Circus (London’s equivalent to Time Square) and of course a few cups of tea mixed in there. Whew.  We were literally all over London. I loved every minute of it, I really liked the city. I would love to go back and see some things in more depth.  It was all wonderful but one of my favorite parts was Abbey Road. It was so cool to see it and all of the people who signed the wall outside the studio. Also it was so fun and entertaining to try and get pictures crossing the road like The Beatles. Hilarious. It was so great to see so many famous buildings and places. Jackie and I continued our tradition of finding “Mexican” food in every country we go to. The restaurant we found in Piccadilly Circus and was so good. I was pleasantly surprised.   We are now four for four on finding Mexican food. It was one long fantastic day.

                This morning our plane left at six a.m., this means we had to catch the airport bus at three a.m. thus we woke up this morning at one thirty a.m. That means that I am running on about three and a half hours of restless sleep. Today has been a long day. It was all very well worth it.

                Like I said before I really enjoyed London, it is a fun, busy lively city. I would love to go back there one day. But still the best country I have been to is Ireland. I am not sure anything can beat this. When we returned today it was snowy still. I love it; it reminds me somewhat of home. It is also hilarious to watch people try and deal with it.

                It is starting to become a reality that this dream I am living will soon come to an end. It is such a bitter sweet idea. I absolutely love Ireland and am so grateful for this semester. On the other hand, I miss my family so much and cannot wait to see them again. This experience is changing my life and I will never forget any of it. But also at this point I am not trying to look too far ahead. Something I really believe in is living in the present. Sounds obvious but I think a lot of people (including myself) get lost in what they have done or what they think they will do. I have three weeks left and I fully intend on soaking in and enjoying every minute of them. Today I will leave you with a quote:

                                “Hence, nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks for the past and love to the present; fear avarice, lust and ambition look ahead” C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letters

Have an incredible week!

Cheers,

Keely

Buckingham Palace Gates

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace

Parliament Building

Big Ben

London Eye

Me signing the wall at Abbey Road Studios

I am just like The Beatles...ha

Tower Bridge

St. Paul's Cathedral

Piccadilly Circus

All of this is more than I have ever known or seen....

November 21, 2010

All of this is more than I have ever known or seen….

                Sunday has come again and I have had yet another incredible week in Ireland. I would gladly like to report that I finished my papers and the person I turned them into told me that I did well. This, for me, a person who has not written a paper in five months and someone who is not really a good writer, was great! This week also brought our program field trip to Northern Ireland.

                Going into this field trip I knew that it would be a lot different from our trip to the West of Ireland, but I am not sure I grasped how different. I feel like I should mention that “Northern Ireland” refers to the six counties in the northeast of Ireland that are still a part of the United Kingdom. On Wednesday we departed Dublin and arrived to a very wet and rainy Belfast. We were supposed to do a walking tour of the city with our program leader but due to the rain we did it on the coach. Not really the same and it was a lot easier not to pay attention. We saw many murals and memorial gardens. I am getting ahead of myself.  Northern Ireland is much divided, more than I understood. It is divided between Protestants and Catholics, but these are not necessarily religious stand points but rather they are political standpoints. There is a long history of controversy between the two that I will not get into because I still cannot fully grasp all that has happened. To this day there is a peace wall in Belfast that divides one side from the other; and people do not cross the line. There are sport centers that are the exact same thing and only blocks away from each other except they are on different sides of the wall, serving different communities. You can tell where people stand by the technicality of their words or the newspaper they read, or so they told us, I personally could not tell. It was strange to know that I was still in Ireland but the way Belfast felt, you would think you were in another country.

                Okay, so on the walking (bus) tour that we took we saw a ton of murals. On a lot of the sides of buildings there are huge murals that make political statements and they are all over the city. They make statements not only about Ireland but also about current happenings around the world. We also went to a couple of memorials for those who have died during the troubles of Northern Ireland. In one, one the Catholic (more Irish nationalists) side of the wall, I found two names that were interesting; Peter Blake (y uncles name) and also the surname McKenna. I was really happy to find family names from both sides of my family.

                The second part of the day we toured the ship yard where the Titanic was built and docked. I did not realize that the Titanic was built in Ireland. It was really interesting to see the actual places where she was built. We also had the opportunity, which most people do not, to go into the building where she was designed and where Thomas Andrews (the man who designed Titanic and played by Victor Garber in the movie) worked every day. It was so cool to stand in the exact room where the ship was designed and see exactly where she stood. I felt like I learned a lot and gained a better understanding of how big the ship was and what a tragedy it was when the Titanic sank.

                Thursday we went to Derry for most of the day. There we mainly learned about the Bloody Sunday of Derry. Bloody Sunday or the Bogside Massacre occurred Sunday January 30 1972 when a riot, which were common in that time period, took a turn for the worse and 13 died on that day. We went to a museum where the man who gave us he tour lost his 17 year old brother on that day. Walking through the museum almost made you sick. It was horrific, but I am also really glad that I was able to learn more about the troubles that have faced Ireland. Through the troubles neither side was blameless. I find it far more enjoyable to learn history as you are walking the streets of the place it occurred.

                Friday was low key, we were able to go see a twelfth century castle in Belfast and to see one of the government buildings in Belfast. It was bizarre because on Friday we woke up and say blue sky and the sun, I almost did not know what to do with myself. I have found that I love going to castles and our visit to this castle only made my love grow. It was beautiful and very interesting to learn about it and stand castle that still stands as it did when it was built, which is incredible. The government building was beautiful and I enjoyed walking around the grounds on such a nice day.

                Friday night was the premiere of part one of the seventh Harry Potter movie. There were about ten of us who went to the movie. I love Harry Potter and was so excited. Luckily I was not the only one, Jackie even dressed up, fantastic. I really thought that the movie was great and I love that I can saw I was in the UK for the premiere of Harry Potter.

All in all it was a good, relaxing trip. I love getting to see another side of Ireland. It was interesting to be in a place like I have never been before. I still feel so lucky to have the opportunity to do all of this. It is surreal that I only have four weeks left in Ireland. Four weeks to soak in all that I can.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am thankful that you all are a part of my life and that I get to share this adventure I am on with you.

Cheers,

Keely

The peace wall in Belfast

The actual room where Titanic was designed

Murals in Belfast

The building where Titanic was designed

Oh, the Irish countryside

Titanic's dock

Overlooking the city of Derry

International Wall in Belfast

Jackie and I in the castle, ,note Jackie's Harry Potter outfit

At Harry Potter

Bobby Sans, famous for his large role in the hunger strikes