Dublin!

(If this blog has any huge grammar or spelling mistakes, sorry! I'm running on little sleep :p )

It's officially been over a month that I've been in Ireland! Time has flown by..
This week I finally feel like I'm settled here. I know my way around town and school. I'm finally registered for classes. I'll probably (we'll see) be putting more focus into school rather than travel soon, haha.

It snowed this week! Not enough to cover the ground.. but it was still pretty. The Californian in me was pretty excited--my friends from the Midwest  not so much. I'm really glad I was forced to get up early that morning to register for classes because I would have missed it otherwise! But I'm sure it will snow again. February is the coldest month of the year here.

This week I scoped out a little bit more of Galway with my friend Anne. It's really funny because Anne and I went on a trip to France/England when we were sophomores in high school and now we both picked the same school in Ireland.. small world! We ended up at a used book store called Charlie Byrnes. I found the most amazing book called Superworm. Superworm is this really cool earthworm that helps his friends & just a stand up dude but he ends up getting kidnapped by a lizard wizard. The lizard wizard had a hat, just wanted to note that. I wanted to buy it but it was 13 euro.... so maybe I'll buy it if I'm not completely broke in May. It was my favorite part of the day. We also tried to learn how to palm read and I shopped for future coffee table books. We met up with another friend, Eris, and went to get hot chocolate at this chocolate café called Butler's. The hot chocolate there is so good! You also get a piece of chocolate with it.

Going full creep for this one people.

We went to Dublin this weekend! There was eight of us together and we stayed in a hostel in the city. The ride there is about 3 hours from Galway (on the west coast of Ireland) to Dublin (on the east coast of Ireland). Dublin is an awesome city. We stayed for 2 days but you really need 4 days to do everything!
On Friday we ate at a Japanese restaurant. I had NO idea what to get--if you know me well, you know I don't like any seafood :( but the group helped me and I got a really good beef and noodle dish. Everyone else really enjoyed their meals as well.

Saturday we explored the city a bit. We visited Trinity College and the Old Library and Book of Kells on campus. The Book of Kells is a manuscript containing parts of the New Testament that were written by Celtic Monks around 800 AD. They had 4 pages on display. Side note, I wish my handwriting was as good as the monks. But the art in the display was incredible. What was even better was how amazing the Old Library was. It was a gorgeous room filled with books and books and books. So pretty! That afternoon a few of us went to the Natural History Museum and looked at dead things. The security guard was showing us the best stuffed animals to take pictures with. All jokes aside, it was a pretty neat exhibit. After that, we went to a park where we watched people feed the birds. The park was gorgeous, especially since it was sunny outside! We ended up finding a traditional Irish music festival where people were performing old Irish songs mashed up with Rihanna. It was actually really entertaining and fun to watch! After a delicious pizza dinner, we went back to meet up with the rest of the group.

Trinity College Old Library, Dublin

Trinity College Old Library, Dublin

St. Steven's Green, Dublin

The Temple Bar, Dublin

That night we went out on a pub crawl. During a pub crawl, a tour guide takes you around to a few different pubs and you get to hang out in each one for an hour or so. They encouraged the teaching of American drinking games to foreigners, which was pretty funny. We ended the night at a club and celebrated my friend Kelly's birthday! The tour guide ended up hanging out with us, so we went to Supermacs (Irish equivalent to McDonalds) after the club. Cheese fries!

Today we were all pretty worn out. I zoned out in the lobby while watching the Djokovic/Murray match with a few friends and an English guy who was sitting with us. We finally decided to try to be touristy soon after. I ended up going shopping and picked up a dress for the Commerce Ball! Commerce Ball is coming up this Wednesday or Thursday. So that is something to look forward to this week!

Time to finally sleep! I'll post more pictures this week. x

America.. y u no have these anymore?

More creepy for you.

Awesome doors in Dublin.

Channeling our inner moose.

Bringin' a little SB to Dublin