Being Scared on Top of Being Scared...

These past few days have just been scary. first we went off to the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge and salmon fishery which was blow your mind beautiful, and now we are moved into our homestays and will be living here for the rest of the semester. The Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge is a really old rope bridge that hangs over are crevice about 80 feet deep. in high tide times if you fall off you get a lucky splash landing, but in low tide times you would not be so lucky. and of course we went during low tide... fortunately for those of us that are a little afraid of heights though, over the years they have reinforced the bridge to make it almost impossible for anyone to fall of. once on the other side though the grass on the little cliffs is really slippery and getting close to the edge is sort of a hair raising experience. After seeing all of the sights at the rope bridge we went to the old ruins of the Dunluce Castle. funny story about the castle, the kitchen fell out of it, in the middle of preparing for dinner, and was lost off the cliffs and into the sea.

After a good ole time these past days, it was really sad to have to leave Corrymeela today. but none the less we set off to our new homes in Derry. once there Josh, the only other guy on the program, and I met our homestay parents and brother. we are living with them for the next 3 months and we seem to get along really well. Josh and I went down to the local grocery market with our host brother and bought some food to start us off. Pasta and tomato sauce for dinner the next few days, and then good old PB&J for lunch. For a week of food it was pretty cheap, only around 7 pounds which in dollars is about 11 bucks!! After that we went to a art gallery opening with our host family and then back home for dinner, chicken curry(it was really good!!). afterwards we all sat down and watched a movie and drank this incredibly confusing drink made of apricots and ginger. the apricot was so sweet and tasty and the ginger left a burning sensation in the back of our throats. then it was off to bed, which really meant skyping with the parents and girlfriend and trying to unpack everything I will be living off of the next 3 months.

It is scary to think that this is my new home. it is like moving into the dorms freshman year all over again. you don't know where everything is cause your mom packed all your bags and you don't know where to put everything because you are afraid that you might offend someone who really doesn't care about it at all. What I am even more scared of is classes starting because classes over in Northern Ireland are completely different than those at Bluffton. The professors do not give you a reading list or what needs to be done by when, they just give some names of books that might be helpful and expect you to have them read by certain times. Also there is no homework for our classes apparently, so all that we have to focus on is reading and studying up for our papers that are due at the end of our 8 weeks of classes. this might be the strangest 17 credit hours i will ever take. but i know they will be the most exciting!!