Parents and the ROI

This week is suppose to be our "paper writing week". i say suppose to be because if you get all of your papers done before hand, and or have a good grasp on getting them done before the due date of next week, then you can take this week to travel because last week was our last week of classes. so what do i do on this "Paper writing week"? i travel the Republic of Ireland with my parents who flew over to spend the week with me!!!

we started off by heading down the northwest coast through the Conemara National Park and over to the city of Galway, and then on over to Dublin for me to run in the Dublin Marathon on Monday. just to mention i placed 1605th our of 14 thousand and finished with a time of 3 hours and 27 minutes. it was such a cool experience and to get to have my parents there with me to watch and go explore dublin with i ran was the best part.

After the marathon, the days of painful walking and climbing of stairs commenced as we explored the central part of the ROI(Republic of Ireland). we went over to a the Bunratty Castle and were served a midevil meal in which the only utensils we were given to eat with was a dagger and our hands. at one point during the show that we were given, i was thrown into the dungeon by the volunteering of my parents because of "fratenising with the ladies". which the only "ladies" at my table was my mom and a group of 70 years old and up women from Maine. to get out of the dungeon i was required to go up on stage and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. needless to say, no one wanted to hear me keep singing so they let me out of the dungeon for the evening.

The last few days have been the most exciting as we have been to the Cliffs of Moher and the Dingle Peninsula which are both on the southwest coast of the ROI. The Cliffs of Moher were really cool because we got to walk through a bunch of cow pastures in order to get to them and then there you were, right on the edge of some pretty nasty drops into the ocean.(see pictures) and the Dingle peninusla was really nice do because you were driving through mountains and could get out and explore the different areas. as i kept saying "It is like one big jungle gym!!!!"

These last few days we are going to be traveling through southern parts of the ROI and looking at mostly castles and cathedrals. today we actually went to theKillarny National Park and saw the Torc Waterfalls and Muskross Abbey.

After such a fun filled and exciting week, it doesn't seem like fair that i have to go back and finish off my papers in order to pass all of my classes for the semester. oh well, if that is the price i have to pay in order to have an amazing paper writing week and time with my parents, then so be it!

Behind Schedule

Sorry, but i am behind schedule on these blogs. it is coming down to crunch time here as our Final papers are due this week for all of our classes since all of our classes are done after this week and we are going to be doing our work placements after this.

I promise to update(with photos) of our trips to Dublin and Belfast that we took the last week but for now i am just going to post this link to a report that was shown on BBC last night that Josh and I watched about the Disident Republican groups that are a threat to the peace process here in Northern Ireland and specifically they talk about what has been happening here in Derry/Londonderry. This is what we are really learning about here. this what what we are trying to understand and get our heads around. this is why we are here, to better understand why this is happening. The Bomb that they talk about at the beggining went off 2 weeks before we got to Derry and the second one they talk about went off 2 weeks ago when we were away in Dublin. even with this threat we all feel extremely safe, but it is interesting to see how this effects people even today, 12 years after the Belfast/good Friday Agreement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vhgqt/Spotlight_19_10_2010/