Pictures from the tour

                                                     My new friends.

                                                                    Christ Church (It is 1000 yrs old)

                                                                   Guinness Storehouse

                                                         9,000 year lease made by Arthur Guinness

                                                                      view from the gravity bar

                                                            Guinness is disgusting, end of story.

                                                                Kilmainham Gaol (jail)

                                                       The Liffey River at night

                                                                     St. Patrick's Cathedral

                                                                             again

                                                            and again with me sitting =)

First week of classes

Well I realize it has been awhile since I have posted, but many things have happened.  The biggest would be that I started classes which everyone seems to forget I am here to do.  My weeks are spent trying to get in classes that I should be in and trying to figure out how things work here.  Therefore I won't have updates until after weekends because it is on the weekend when we actually go explore.  That being said we took part in a hop-on hop-off bus tour.  Our first day we only visited three places.  We went to Christ's Church which is a thousand years old and amazing on the outside. Natalie said the inside was alright and had so cool old stuff in it.  (Nicole and I didn't feel like spending money to see the inside of a church, I did enough of that with my family in Italy.) Next we went to the Guinness Storehouse which was absolutely amazing.  It was really cool, I highly recommend everyone who plans a trip to Dublin to go to it.  With that I must also say DO NOT drink the pint a the end, it is disgusting and you will regret having to taste that nasty liquid! Finally our day ended at Kilmainham Gaol (jail) which was alright, but not a must see. The tour guide just talked about executions the whole time so it was very depressing.  Our next day didn't go as planned.  We went to the Dublin Castle which was a huge disappointment and St. Patricks Cathedral which was beautiful.  It is 800 years old and HUGE.  I don't know how they were able to build it.  Unfortunately we were not able to finish the tour, hopefully we will be in the country next weekend.  That also means I will probably not be back on until next Monday so no yelling at me for not posting, I am a busy girl!

pictures

                                                                          Our kitchen

                                                                              Living room

                                                                    St. Stephens Green

 My mom was on the phone when the fireman came up and was trying to get us to buy them...my dad and her demanded that I buy one, so this is for them.

 Georgetown, then three Marquette girls, then my roomie from Italy, then Georgetown

                                            Cheers from me and Natalie! (my Newy York roomie)

Getting Settled

Alrighty, so its day four here and things have gotten better.  We've had our first night out in Dublin which was definitely and experience, I bought my first bottle of alcohol ever so I am pretty much a badass. =) I have gotten two new roommates, one is from new zealand and the other is from italy.  The one from New Zealand is having a lot of trouble which jet lag so we feel really bad (she had to go through 40 hours of travel to get here) and then the girl from Italy just got here yesterday and does not speak english so we are trying to figure out how to communicate.  My roomie told me that if I just turn the shower on a little bit it will not turn my bathroom into a lake, therefore my options are having ok-good pressure but flooding my bathroom or having barely any water but not flooding my bathroom, it's a tough call. Today we are going to kea...well if everyone wakes up sometime soon...and then having a real irish dinner and pub experience.  We have not taken many pictures yet so when we take some  will try to upload them.  That is all I can think of for right now, eventually ill get back on this thing and post again. =)

very confused

I do not understand how to work this thing so cut me some slack. =) Dublin is not too great so far, the first plane took off an hour late so they had us sit on there for over two hours before we left on our 8 hour and fifteen min journey.  Thankfully we made it ontime for our next flight, but we almost missed that one out of the French's stupid system. (They took us by bus on a ten min drive to out our tiny airplane, where we saw our luggage sitting in the rain...cool) Anyways we got to Dublin all safe and sound but we are not to impressed yet.  Nicoles apartment is horrible, she has been thrown in with guys and none of the doors to the apartment lock...very safe.  I on the other hand have a great little dorm/apartment, I have a huge desk, clost cubicle things and a bathroom all in my room.  Even though the sink does not drain and the shower is just the corner of the bathroom with a curtain around it (and water leaks into my room during my shower) I like it.  I have only met two of my rommates one is from New York the other is Irish.  They say there is only one other irish girl and the other two we are unsure about. Basically it is chaos here and Nicole and I are attempting to figure out the city.  Hopefully tmo will be better because we will have slept and we have all of our orientation stuff.  Hope this post works, and there uncle mike you happy now? =) (I still haven't slept so if it sounds like Brian wrote it, I apologize!)

She Made It

Well Kristy called to report that she made it to Dublin some time between 11am-12pm local time (I was still sleeping).  I know she has a lot going on today and has not slept yet.  She was trying to find an international phone (she checked in with her friends phone), was going to go the UCD to try and figure out if she could get into one more class, and on top of that figure out where shes living.  I am sure once she gets settled in and has an internet connection she will take over the blog.

Good Bye Kristy

Well Kristy is officially in transit.  Her flight left at 6:04pm and is expected to land in Paris around 9:20am local time.  She will have a short layover at Charles De Gaulle Airport and then be on her way to Dublin.  I believe she will arrive there around 11:15am if all goes well.  Kristy is traveling with her friend Nicole from Marquette, who is also studying abroad at UCD.  Between the two of them, they should be ok.  I did not have time to give Kristy a crash course on her blog, so until she gets an Internet connection to figure it out, I will be keeping everyone updated. 

-Brian

Kristy Arriving At O'Hare

Getting Both Her Bags Weighed In

Amazingly enough, both Kristy's bags ended up weighing 22.2kg (which was just barley under the 23kg allotment) and her backpack weighs at least a quarter of that.  I would love to see her dragging this all around by herself.

Nicole & Kristy Just Before Heading To Security

This Is Where I Will Be!!!!!

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog.  I will try to update you all as much as possible about my experience overseas.   I will be heading to the airport soon and if everything goes smoothly I will arrive in Dublin at 11:15am local time.  I also created a Skype account (so look me up) and I will be looking forward to talking to all of you faithful followers on Skype.  I will be studying in Dublin for this semester at the University College Dublin (UCD, or OCD as my dad keeps calling it for some odd reason).

This Is Where I Will Be

My New School