The Dolphins Made me Late!!

Top of the Mornin Everyone!

Hope you’ve all had a great month or so. Wow, time flies! Can you believe it is almost the end of October? I literally feel like the month started.
As for the title of this entry, this was an actual excuse I had to use when I showed up late to my art class. There were dolphins spotted at lunch and I couldn’t pull myself away from them!!!

Ireland was phenomenal. The locals kept commenting on how lucky we got with the weather – sunshine! We were lucky indeed in the land of Erin  The first day, a group of us went to Trinity College to take a look around and see the Book of Kells. I ran into a girl who was born in Winston-Salem, NC! It happened to be freshman move-in weekend so that was fun to be a part of! People thought we were joining the class LOL The Book of Kells was not as awesome as I thought it would be. The handwriting was beautiful and it was crazy how old it was so I’m glad I saw it.

For lunch, I happened upon this wonderful vegetarian place and met some tourists from Wales. I have been lucky in happening upon vegetarian places a lot lately!

Later that day, I went to the Museum of Natural History. Well, that just ended up being a museum of cute taxidermied animals from around the world so a little different than I expected. There were over 2 million animals there!!! No, I did not get around to seeing them all!

We visited the Kilmanham Gaol for my sociology class and that was really interesting! Who knew jails could be that interesting?! Our tour guide was great. He said that people would purposely commit crimes during the famine because in the jail, they were guaranteed at least one meal a day whereas they were not guaranteed that meal at home.

I decided to venture up to Northern Ireland (let me just hop over to another country for the day) to visit the site of where the Titanic was built. Belfast has this incredible new exhibition all about the ship building and its fate which was wonderful. I liked this trip because I booked it through a tourism agency but instead of being with Semester at Sea kids, I met people from all around the world. I had lunch with a girl from the Czech Republic and a boy from Australia. I loved hearing where everyone was from on the bus.

The last day in Ireland, some classmates and I thought we wore out Dublin. It was a great city. But we were ready to see some green! So we took a train to Wicklow, a small coastal (and BEAUTIFUL) town to hike. Our intentions were to hike to the cliffs so that we could see the beach. Well. That never happened. We never reached those cliffs. We ended up in someone’s pasture and after realizing it was private property, turned around. Oh well, we still got a great view of the ocean from the commuter train believe it or not! We met an older gentleman who used to work in the kitchen at East Stroudsburg University. We were blown away (one of the girls I was with is from Philadelphia) and it just reminded me how small the world is. You never know who you will run into!

One of my favorite memories of Ireland was dining at an Asian restaurant for dinner. At this point I had already had my Irish cuisine and I saw vegetarian so I was in. Sorry, no more bangers and mash. All the tables were filled as a middle-aged couple came in looking to eat. I told them they could have my table, I would be done soon. Then I said, well, you might as well sit while I wait. They declined and shortly after were seated at the table behind me. This time, the tables turned (hahah) and they said I should sit with them. After all, I just had my computer and map out planning the next day and wasn’t doing much of anything by myself. Well, joining them was a fantastic conversation. We just had a nice evening talking about life in Dublin and my life in America. Turns out, the lady used to go on holiday to Bayonne. I could not believe how close that was to me (and that that was where she went in America haha). I plan to stay in touch with them because they were just such hospitable people.

Ireland was really phenomenal. I thought that was my favorite country…..until we got to Ghana. Hahah more to come on that!

XO