Hurling and Soccer and Birthday!

Since last post, we've been really busy. That weekend, we took a trip to Tipperary for the U-21 National Hurling Championship between Galway and Tipperary! Hurling is potentially the coolest sport I've ever watched in my life. Pretty much, it's a cross between rugby, lacrosse, gaelic football, and golf. With constant movement (and tackling), it's a game to enjoy.

Since our host town, Galway, was playing in the championship, we definitely took the opportunity to receive some very Irish culture. Sadly, Galway got creamed, but we had a blast regardless!

Hurling = Awesome

After the hurling match, we just hung around the cottages for a little while. On Monday, we decided to do some birthday celebrating! After some phenomenally exciting classes, a bunch of us booked a bus into Galway to go catch a soccer match. Unfortunately, the Irish weather was not really cooperating:

Our rain-faces

Because it was so cold and rainy and windy, it turned out that only a few of us went to the match, but I can definitely say that it was a TON of fun, an experience I am SO glad I did. The teams playing, Galway United and Sligo, are each middle-of-the-pack in the premier league of Ireland. Fans were passionate, players were good, and the company was great!

The match ended in a 2-2 draw, but Sligo was

definitely the better team that night.

After a cold soccer game, what better way to celebrate than get some birthday drinks?!? Yep, definitely hit up a few pubs in Galway, enjoyed some live jazz, and ended up having a great evening!

More to come about our weekend excursion to Southern Ireland!

Home sweet home

Five guys living here for the next three months. It's bigger than it seems...

Well, maybe it's not, but it's not too terrible.

The extent of our kitchen. And our chef.

We got the bedroom with the sink. Score.

Aaaand best of all, we've got a playground right next to us!

One thing I forgot to mention...

I love Irish pubs.

They rock in so many ways.

That's it.

"With gifts like these I'd live at ease, were I near Galway Bay."

Well, I've been in Galway for about a week now, but I haven't really gotten around to typing a whole ton. Well, now's my chance. Lets start with the first few days:

We flew into Spiddal last Saturday from London, and just spent the evening driving to Galway and getting settled into the hotel. After a meal of fish and chips, we called it a night. Sunday morning found us in the Galway cathedral for an 11:15 mass. First of all, the cathedral is BEAUTIFUL. I don't even know what the architectural style is or anything, but it was great. Almost every color was represented in the three main windows, and they looked phenomenal.

After mass, we walked the streets of Galway. After about an hour, my mom and I stopped at a sweets shop for a panini lunch. I met one of the waiters there and got talking with him. His name is Dave, and he plays in a big band in one of the pubs every Thursday night. We talked about that for a bit, and we found out that we each play trumpet! So he invited me to come listen to them and he said I'd be able to PLAY with the band if I want! AWESOME!

We also got to adventure and explore Spiddal. It's a nice little town, with a gas station, a grocery store, two schools, a few restaurants, and three pubs (I've thoroughly explored all of those, I promise). The Spiddal experience ended with a walk along the seashore.

One place that I really enjoyed was the Connemara region in county Galway to see the Kylemore Abbey. That's a cool looking place. Built in the middle of the woods and on a lake, it's a picturesque site, one that draws plenty of tourists. Invariably, I was one of them.

Thursday was the day where I saw my mom off from the Shannon airport and met up with my classmates for the next semester. We got checked into our cottages around 2:00 on Thursday and took the next few hours to figure out how we're going to fit everything into the place. Fortunately, it all worked out, and by the time dinner was served to us by the hotel staff (chicken, potatoes, veggies, fruit dessert, and tea), we were just about settled in.

We spent Friday in Galway getting acquainted to the city and picking up groceries for the next week. We've got some GREAT meals planned. So far, we've had sausage pizza (more or less homemade) and grilled chicken, both phenomenal meals, courtesy of our designated cottage cook, Bobby.

Finally, we spent the day on the Aran Islands today. After taking the 10:30 ferry (45' ride), we spent the next 4 hours biking around the island, seeing different places. It's been about three years since I last went biking, so I'm expecting to be a bit sore tomorrow. But best of all, I got a chance to buy a much-coveted Aran Island sweater. Pictures to come...

(I apologize for the length of this entry... I'll try to cut it down in the future)

A bit of cultured London

Since Monday, we've had a few busy days. Being tourists, of course we would go to the London Eye. If you aren't familiar with that, it's pretty much a gigantic ferris wheel (135 meters tall!!) rising up above the Thames, giving a full panorama of London. We actually got fairly lucky; it was a clear day, no rain, and the visibility was very good. It definitely showed London in a bit of a different light than what we were used to seeing!

Another place we had the opportunity to see was Westminster Abbey (oh, the joys of a student discount). Think of the most ornate church you've seen. Well, this is at least as ornate, possibly even more so. A massive Gothic structure, Westminster Abbey really is a building deserving of all of the traditions incorporated with it. The only place I've seen that can come close to matching the high altar of Westminster is the chapel at Golgotha in the Holy Sepulcher.

While we were planning for this trip, my mom found a tour service that would take us to various sites in the UK, so on Wednesday we embarked on a bus tour, taking us to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Bath. Of the three places, Stonehenge was by far the coolest (to me), but the ruined Roman baths at Aquae Sulis (Roman name... the modern name of the place is Bath) were pretty neat too. At the end of our time there, we had the opportunity to taste some of the water that had come from the baths. Oddly enough, it tasted like the water from the drinking fountain at Silver Lake pool...

One great thing about London (maybe the whole UK?) is that admission to museums is FREE! We figured we'd take advantage of that and check out the British Museum. Not surprisingly, with free admission comes huge crowds. There were times when it was difficult to keep yourself from moving BACKWARDS, so dense the crowd was. It was a constant fight to see the exhibits, a fight not really worth undertaking. After seeing the exhibits on Greece, Rome, and Egypt, we ended up leaving. Later that night, however, we took the underground to the Victoria Apollo Theater to see Wicked. Although not my first time seeing it, it was by far the highlight of the day. The performance was superb, and it was pretty interesting to see how the British actresses changed the style ever so slightly from how the Chicago actresses performed it. All in all, a good night.

Yesterday was probably my favorite day in London. We started the day off by travelling via the underground to the Tower of London. Awesome. For a fan of medieval history, this was the perfect place to go. The stories of what happened there were slightly chilling (good), the buildings were very intact (better), and the exhibits they had throughout the site were extraordinarily relevant to their placement and well organized (best).

After the Tower, we headed over to the Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament. Because Parliament was not in session, tours of the Houses were being offered(again, yay for a student discount!). We got a fantastic tour guide, and she did a great job at explaining the building, the British government, and the history of Britain. That tour alone may cause me to switch my emphasis to more of a comparative political approach when I return to SJU.

So now we've reached the end of our time in London. If you're one of those lucky people coming over here to study either this semester or next, I'm jealous. But not THAT jealous, because now it's time to go to Ireland! Next time you hear from me will be from the Emerald Isle!

"Westminster Palace" aka Houses of Parliament

Stonehenge, as strange as can be...

Guess.

Summer's End, Fall's Beginning

Summer wrapped up really quickly for me. After spending some time at the cabin (I got my first sunburn of the summer... bummer), I came back for about one more week of lifeguarding. Unless something goes horribly wrong, I'm done working at the Y (forever??). It was good for the first few years but the last few... not so much. It's good to be done.

On Monday the 16th, I took the practical exam for my EMT course and PASSED! That's great and all that, but I still had to take the written test. Well, I got that scheduled for Friday the 20th (yes, two days before I leave for four months. Good planning, eh?). I found out today that I PASSED that one too! So now I'm certified as an EMT. Exciting, eh?

Well, that's not nearly the most exciting thing that's going on. Yesterday, my mom and I left the USA for some travelling in London and Ireland! We landed in the London-Heathrow this morning at 7:45 GMT (so 1:45 CT), then took the rest of the day to explore a bit of London. As chance would have it, we were able to grab some tickets for a tour of the state rooms of Buckingham Palace. Definitely an awesome thing to see.

Apart from the palace, we spent the day doing some walking around. We went to this massive "department" store, Harrods, where you could find literally anything you could imagine. It was HUGE -- I'd say it is the closest thing you'd find to the Mall of America. Afterwards, we took our time getting home, enjoying a nice evening in Hyde Park.

A nice walk in Hyde Park.

And for tomorrow? We'll just wait and see what happens!

Off to a good start..

Well, it's a good thing I didn't promise daily updates or anything like that, because I would have definitely failed at that. For the sake of relevance, I'll use this post to just update you on what I've been up to since the last post.

• Nearly every day has me at either the Y or at Silver Lake Pool for some lifeguarding. It comes out to about 45 hours/week between the two pools. That, with my EMT class for four-hours twice a week, means I'm always pretty busy. Speaking of the EMT class...
• I spent a full day at Fire Station 1 in Rochester for my clinical. The purpose of the clinical was to observe treatment of medical patients by first responders. Well, the day I chose just happened to be the RFD's training day, so I got to spend the entire morning out in a field watching them cut open a car with power tools. Interesting? Yes. Relevant? Not so much...
• I spent the weekend of the 24th up in the Twin Cities for all kinds of fun things. Got to see a friend spectacularly perform in a musical (Jesus Christ Superstar, one I haven't seen. It was a good musical and very well performed!), then had some spontaneous tubing on Medicine Lake! Awesome.
• Plans for the next week? I'm still working and going to class, but I'm hoping to head up to a cabin of some friends for the weekend. If all goes well, then this will be one last cabin adventure for the summer. Then it's off to SJU for a few days (more on that later) and then the time will come to lift off for IRELAND!