Where's the Castle?

Today was Dublin Day! We all felt that we've been living in this city for a month but haven't seen all that it has to offer, so Sof, Paddy (Pat), Joe, Jorie and I set out to change that! 
First stop... Dublin Castle. I'm going to use the name Castle loosely. In all honestly it was probably our own fault. So far we've been to the Black Castle ruins, Inverlochy Castle, Edinburgh Castle... and I think maybe even a few more. I guess you could say we started at the top so our expectations were high. Dublin Castle really didn't stand a chance... Not that it wasn't cool, or that we didn't have fun.... just not what we had envisioned... 

Paddy, Me, Jor, Joe and Sof in Gardens

                 Even though the boys were missing Babez (Andrew) they still took time to play a little line tag in the gardens... 

Pretty, but not very Castley... (is that even a word?... you get what I mean)

We still had fun! 

The whole time we were there we kept wondering where the Castle we were expecting was... we never found it. We did however find some of Joe's friends...that go to IU... that are studying abroad in London... but just so happened to be at Dublin Castle when we were... small world much? 

They didn't plan it at all. I still can't get over the chances of that happening. 

After that massive strikeout we decided to make the rest of the day really count to make up for it. The list for the day:

1. Christ Church Cathedral 
2. Dublina 
3. St. Patrick's Cathedral 

I think my faith in the day was restored when one of the stands at the market of Christ Church looked like this... 

Dublin loves candy, and for that, I thank them. 

The inside and outside of Christ Church are incredible... 

I know I'm no photographer but I was pretty proud of myself for this one... 

Next it was Dublina, the Viking & Medieval Dublin Museum. I don't care how old you are... this place is fun. It was like the children's museum... plus the plauge? We just played the whole time. 

Jorie and I even ended the museum with a Purdue vs. IU fight in the gift shop... 

Obviously I won...

and with that it was St. Patrick's Cathedral time. Again, it was just gorgeous! 

After all that we were starved so we went to Crack Bird. One of the IES staff members Caroline recommended it to us because it's owned by the same people who run JoBurger. All of us girls really liked our food.... The boys decided it would be a good idea to drench their chicken in habanero sauce without trying it first... They both were sweating and couldn't finish eating. Joe started to shake and Paddy got a stomach ache... that'll teach em. 

On our hour and a half walk home I saw this guy... I don't know if it was the heat (which doesn't come around here too often) or that fact I'd walked all day... but I laughed for a good 10 minutes. He thought we was a ninja swinging his walking stick around while admirably trying to keep his pants up with his sweatshirt all while yelling... whatever Irish Ninjas yell. 

After resting our feet for a while we headed back to the Grafton area to check out the Harry Lemon... 

Tomorrow will be a day of writing papers... Boo 

and the Hurling Championship Finals!!! Yay! So that's something to look forward to! 

Until Tomorrow, 

Cheers, 

   Becca :) 

Quarantine

Today I quarantined myself to my apartment....

Ever since my last hostile stay I have been feeling increasing worse by the day.... Thanks again Edinburgh Backpackers... Anyway, the quarantine. It was something I really didn't want to do since I'm only in this beautiful city for a few more weeks, but considering I couldn't walk to my kitchen without practically coughing up a lung, it had to be done.... 

Needless to say, I have nothing too interesting from the day to post about.... Except maybe that the TV show Friends is blowing up in Dublin. Anyone who knows me knows how ecstatic that makes me. So I spent the day with Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey and Monica. 

In other random news.... 

Here are some more places that my good ol' 10 euro Dunnes runners have taken me! 

Courtyard at Edinburgh Castle 

1 o'clock gunfire ceremony at Edinburgh Castle 

Loch Ness in the search for Nessie 

Tomorrow I better be feeling better, because I've got a big day of exploring the city to do! If anyone would like to send me some chicken noodle soup, I would greatly appreciate it. They don't sell it here! What do the Irish eat with they are sick?! Hopefully I won't be sick long enough to find out... and now back to Friends... 


Until Tomorrow... 


Cheers, 
   Becca :) 

Awk Momes

Today in my Writing on the Wall class I had to give a presentation on Gary Mitchell, a playwright living in Northern Ireland who was threatened and forced to leave his home due to a bombing....all for simply writing plays. The presentation went really well... I would say the only bad part was this... 

Yup... matching... not planned. Awkward, or as Jorie has got all of us saying, awk momes... I got there early for my presentation, so I'm saying they copied me... or just great minds think alike. I'm ok with either. 

After class we all headed to Moda (yes I know, I'm always there) to work on our midterms.... Let me tell ya, this lady staring at me for 15 minutes.... 

Yeaaa that wasn't distracting at all... So until she left and I could work on my paper in peace, Sof and I got the Moda special. In all honesty, you can't go to Moda without getting the Moda special. Banoffee and Tea at Moda = My happy place. So this is where I'll be posted up today... 

Looks like a good day for me. 

Until Tomorrow... 

Cheers, 

   Becca :) 

Team 'Merica does Dublin

Happy 4th of July!!!!! 
I may be in Dublin but even they know what's up... 

That's here on Rathmines in Dublin. I think it was a good omen for the day! 
We are all a little homesick and so as a group decided we needed to go all Americad-out today...

 And with that we headed to TGIFridays.

Friday's was the same as it is in the states, but a lot more expensive... maybe this is fine dining here? All of the wait staff were also dressed in costume to observe the holiday.... We were going to ask our waiter, dressed as Mario, if he thought Americans dressed like that on 4th of July but taking a look at Sof's attire... 

We answered our own question. 

Next on our list of American things to do was head to Temple Bar (a tourist trap that the Irish hate). We hadn't been yet so we figured this was a good day to do it. 

The girls were ready! 

And so were the boys... 

Looks like the boy band has grown...

The night was filled with John Mellencamp, Toby Keith, Eric Church and every other American song/artist we could think to request. We may be across the pond, but I think we did America proud! 

Until Tomorrow...

Cheers, 

   Becca :) 

Tuesday tradish

It's Tuesday... you know what that means.
A long day full of classes.... And Moda for dessert of course.
In Wrting on the wall we talked about children in the troubles. Some of the images were enough to make you want to cry and through up at the same time. I can't believe all of the horrible things that happened in Northern Ireland during the troubles (some even in my lifetime) and I had no idea. Being that the program is only six weeks of classes, we have to cram in a lot on information in a short amount of time. It has really shown me how much there is to learn about the world. Ireland is very concerned with the politics of the United States and other news from all around the world to a degree that I haven't seen in the states. Im not sure if it's not there or I've just never taken the time to pay attention. But learning about the troubles has been an eye opening experience.

In between classes we of course went to Cafe Moda (which has turned into my second home here in 

Dublin). There was cake to be eaten and a bachelorette episode to be watched. We were going to work on our midterm.... But we definitely may have gotten caught up in chocolate cake and Emily Maynard. Can you blame us? Ok you probably can... Because it's the bachelorette and it's all that is wrong with the world... It's a guilty pleasure. So sue me.

My history class had a guest speaker who specialeized in the Irish language and the garlic revival. ** The Irish dont refer to their language as Gaelic. It is Irish. Even though it's  not spoken as commonly, especially here in dublin... That is their language. Irish has started to be reintegrated into the education system and children must learn Irish and pass an Irish proficiency exam to enter any university (all except trinity). If you go to the west coast like Co. Kerry or the Aran islands, Irish is there first language. ** Anyway... Class was awesome. If we had an Irish last name, Regina (the speaker) could tell us where in Ireland our family originated. I asked her about Duggan (which here is pronounced correctly, Dug-an instead of Doog-an). Regina told me us Duggans were from her home county of Kilkenny. She also said she grew up with some Duggans and used to pick strawberries with them. How cool is that? She then taught us some Irish words which we all butchered... but it was fun anyway.

Tomorrow is he 4th of July! While I am so sad I won't be in the states to celebrate, good ol' team America here in Dublin is going to celebrate!!! But you'll just have to wait to hear about that until then!


Until tomorrow...


Cheers,
   Becca :)

Tea for Two... Minus One

Even though I wake up at least once an hour in my apartment because my bed is practically a sheet laid over 2x4's, last night I slept like a baby... I'm going to venture to guess that it was probably because I didn't have to lie awake wondering what was in my bed before as I did in the hostile over the weekend. 

Its weird to hear about how dry Indiana is because I'm actually getting to the point where a day without rain here is weird... today was a little extreme though. I literally felt like I was going to have to swim to class. 

Luckily the sun came out just before I had to leave so I was able to leave my kayak at home. 

Class was another film (pronounced as "filum" by the Irish- they don't produce /l/ and /m/ together --- speech pathology moment, sorry). This film again was the the aftermath of the 1916 East Rising in Ireland and again... torture scenes. Man those really know how to get you down. 

Luckily this particular film had Liam Neeson so that made it a tad easier to watch :) 

After I headed to Moda where I finally did Tea the Irish way and added milk. Yum.

I'm beginning to understand why they love this so much! I then "did homework" which today meant people watching from the window and then heading home to recuperate from the weekend. 

Tomorrow will be a long day... but Sofia and I have plans... to eat candy... so I'm looking forward to it :) 

Until Tomorrow... 

Cheers, 

   Becca :) 

See Ya Lata Scotland!

Today pretty much just consisted of buying sweatshirts from Scotland.... having all our toothpaste and contact solution confiscated at the Edinburgh airport, and making it back to Dublin. So instead of dragging that out, I will share some random Scotland things that didn't fit anywhere else... 

The first stop on our tour had this store... heaven right? 

The name of our tour company... Rabbies... awkward?

** Not pictured... we just so happened to be in Scotland during their pride week. We saw people dressed up as mimes, pirates, golfers, and more. it was definitely interesting... 
** Also not pictured.... most of the stores in City Center had kilts in the store windows. Not even just the tourist shops... These were nice stores. We saw more than one couple dressed up for a night out with the men sporting the full kilt outfit. But sadly no bagpipes.... On the other hand, almost every single one of my videos has bagpipes playing in the background. 

Joe wanted to be like the pipers in my videos.... he has a ways to go. 

The weather was more bipolar than Dublin. It went back and forth from raining, to an extremely sunny cloudless sky, and back to raining about 10 times while at the castle. 

 

William Wallace. Scotland. Self Explanatory.

Stories o' Scotland Finished.

And now.... the most traumatic experience of my life...
We had just gotten back from Scotland and we were dog tired. Jorie had gone to take a nap and I was laying on the couch.... and I kept hearing some strange noises. So I got up to look.... I turned the corner and immediately saw two pigeons perched on my shower. They could sense my fear and were staring at me like they were about to peck me to death. Immediately I screamed as if they actually were pecking me to death, closed them in the bathroom, and continued to scream. Somehow in this process I knocked a painting off the wall and woke Jorie up, but didn't manage to scare away the piegons. After a minute they flew out the window and I learned never to open the bathroom window....ever again. Which is a real shame because our apartment gets horribly hot so windows are the only way to cool it off.
Part of this whole escapade may have partially been my fault... I knew we had had a pigeon problem due to the fact they have a rooftop cage matches at about 5 every morning (another reason why I don't sleep here)... either way... not that I ever liked the pigeons before, but now I am also a tad afraid of them....

And with that, I'm going to bed, windows closed, hoping I don't have nightmares of pigeons. 

Until Tomorrow, 

Cheers, 

   Becca :)