Dublin and Foxes and Wicklow oh my!

Hello there!! I hope all is well with you!

These last two weeks have been a blast and I feel like I have quite a bit to write about. Now that I have a camera (thanks a mill Dad!!) I can include photos in this and future posts :-) Yay!

So back to the first week of November....

That Monday Sue, my study abroad coordinator, came to Derry for a quick visit- it was so great to see her! We went to lunch with 2 other girls from Whitworth who are also here for the semester and talked about our experiences here thus far. I am glad we got to spend an hour or 2 together and it was fun to hear that Graeme is considering studying abroad in Japan next fall. Maybe he'll let me come and visit him? :-)

On Tuesday after class I booked it to the train station to meet up with my Dad. He decided to stop by on his way home from Russia and I am so glad he did, it was so great to see him! That afternoon we walked the city walls and visited the Free Derry Museum. It was cool to show my Dad where I am studying and take him to a few of my favorite places in town; showing him around helped me realize how much more at home I am feeling in the city of Derry.

That night we went to Peadar O'Donnells with some friends from uni which was awesome! There was a great band playing that night and we ended up sticking around until almost 1 AM. I heard the song "The Ballad of Joe McDonnell" for the first time that night which ended up being a really moving experience. It is about the IRA Hunger Strike that took place in 1981 and it was amazing to see how emotional people in the pub were when they started playing it. It got super quiet and so many people started singing along. It's been such a challenging but amazing experience to learn about the Troubles and see how it has impacted the people I am living in community with here- but I definitely have so much more to learn.

After classes we took the bus down to Dublin and stayed in a hotel right on O'Connell street- one of the busiest streets in Dublin which was a wonderful place to stay since it seemed like there was always something going on. Dublin was a great city to hang out in; it's a pretty international city so I heard quite the variety of accents and languages while walking around. We did a lot of wandering up and down the streets and got to see a few of the sights.

While in Dublin we saw the Book of Kells, the Guinness Storehouse, the National College of Art and Design, and a Fleet Foxes concert- we stood right in front of the stage!! I am so glad we got to hang out in Dublin together and it was definitely a trip I'll never forget :-)

Dad left Dublin on Sunday morning so I wandered around the city for a while before meeting up with some friends who came to Dublin from Derry. It was fun to walk around and take pictures- it was so quiet in the morning! Quite different from the hustle and bustle of the city we experienced during the day.

 

After meeting up with Luisa, Lacey, and Hannah we took a tour bus down and around Wicklow National Park which was a blast! It's where they filmed P.S. I Love You, one of my favorite movies, so it was neat to see the scenery in person :-) The park was amazing- we drove through lots of fields of heather and past the Wicklow mountains. It was freezing outside so our guide drove us to different view points so we could stop and take some pictures and jump back on the bus.

While it may have been warmer to travel through the park in the summer, the fall colors of the changing leaves were definitely worth it- it was beautiful! On our tour we also got to see the neighborhood where Bono lives which was pretty cool. Our guide drove us past Guinness lake as well- sand was imported and placed at the top of the lake so that it looks like the head of a beer.

Our bus tour ended at a monastery in Glendalough which was a really cool site to have a walk around. It was built in the 6th century- it still amazes me how old things are here! I'm realizing how much I love visiting sites connected with early Christian history and learning about how early Christians connected with the people in Ireland and how monasteries functioned within their communities.

The monastery was beautiful in spite of the pouring rain and we got to walk along some of the trails behind it which led to some gorgeous views of the surrounding lakes. But by the time we made it back to the bus we were totally soaked! I quickly learned that my North Face coat isn't as waterproof as I was once led to believe :-) Our bus driver offered to drop us off at the bus station on the way back into Dublin which was wonderful! That way we didn't have to walk through the pouring rain to the station and were able to catch an early bus to Derry.

It was such a blessing to have some time out in the park in the fresh air- it was a welcome break from the concrete and cigarette smoke of city life :-)