Liverpool Forgotten

Forgot to post pics for Liverpool :-/ woops! Here they are!

Singing in the Rain

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've written. Since Nenagh, we went to Dublin where we hung out with Karen (the other, a fulbrighter to Dublin). It was a really nice time and Dublin had its own sort of charm . . . but I really much preferred Galway. The best part was the Trinity College and the Book of Kells. It was so beautiful and it's really too bad the library isn't used for real things anymore.
The next week I finished up with most of my 2nd rotation classes and switched over to some new classes. They are fantastic! The 5th graders absolutely adore me and clamor to talk to me and the 7th graders are so sweet and anxious to speak English. Plus I get to work with my 6th graders again, who I love. They were so cute, when I surprised them by showing up at their class (at 7h50) they got to ask me questions . . . first one, "why did you leave us??" aww :-)
The next weekend I went to visit Nate in Bonn, another Fulbrighter, John, in Koeln and Paul in heidelberg. Nate and I also took two day trips. The first to Burg Eltz (one of Professor Resler's favorite castles), which is set on top of a mountain in the middle of other mountains. It's about a 1.5 hour hike to get there and so worth it. It was a great day. The second was to Koblenz to see the Deutsches Eck where the Rhein and Mosel meet. It was beautiful. Then Sunday we watched Paul and Amber run the Heidelberg Half Marathon (that I was supposed to run!) I was really sad, but it was a great experience.
The weekend after that I went to Heppenheim in Southern Hesse to visit Eileen. We had a great first night and morning full of coffee and talking. Saturday Eileen showed me around Oberhambach and the Internat school at which she works, it felt a bit like summer camp, but it was beautiful. Best part of the morning was going to visit this produce stand on a dirt road where the grandfather, father and son come every weekend to make fresh bread in a stone oven that their family has owned since the 16th century. They also sell fresh-pressed apple and holunder juice, honey, potatoes and cake. We bought some bread and cake and went to catch a train to Stuttgart. Stuttgart was really beautiful and different than I had expected . . . lots of classy shopping and really beautiful buildings. We thought the art museum was open late and it was but at the cost of 16euro so we didn't go. Instead, we found this cool mexican restaurant and had delicious guacomole.
Sunday, we went to a little town south of Tuebingen to hike up to Burg Hohenzollern, which is an amazing castle set atop a cone shaped mountain. This is storybook stuff. We hiked up to the castle, took a tour, and then it started pouring and it turned out there is only one bus down to the train station per day and we had missed it!! We ended up having to call a taxi. I stayed through Monday morning and got to see Eileen's school in action, which was cool and then headed home.
Now it's this week. I had a pretty easy week! We watched A Time to Kill with Stammtisch on Tuesday and I had a great conversation with Gabby. Then Sean and I watched Da Vinci Code, which is always a good time. Wednesday we went to the new American Bar (oh, we found a new american bar) for some cheap cider / guinness, american magazines and puzzles. Then we met up with Philipp to go see the new Star Trek movie. It was hilarious, but also really cheesy. Thursday I chillaxed the whole day and then went to see Sean sing in Pop and Classics, which was more or less a singing-based German variety show. Without much variety. It was really good at moments, slow at others, but overall really fun. Then we tried to watch the new Indiana Jones, but we fell asleep so I went home.
Start today.

MY BIRTHDAY!

Today, April 16, 2009 was my birthday in Ireland. In Rohan's Pub, Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland, we celebrated Karen's (2nd) 22nd birthday. I got a place of cheese and gummies, 5 Bulmers Ciders, an Irish Jig, many a jig, Irish ballad and kisses on the cheek. Quite possibly, this was the best night of my life. I had an absolute blast with the irish girls (caoimhe, maria, orna, deirdre, sarah, ciara, noreen). Other than that, we went to Kilkenny and had an amazing dinner of ham & cabbage & potatoes with caoimhe's family :-) I'll be sad to leave for Dublin later today.

Dingle, Blarney, Cork and Nenagh

We started off yesterday with a 3.5 hour drive to Dingle, on the gorgeous Dingle Peninsula. It was our first major driving experience, and it went really well! We drove around the Slea Head Drive on the very tip of the Dingle Peninsula over the Atlantic. The roads were one lane (with cars going both directions AND pedestrians) and practically on the cliff's edge. But the views were spectacular. You can really get a sense of the Emerald Isle. At night, we drove up to Tralee where we had booked a hostel. We went in search of food and found almost everything closed for the bank holiday. Finally we ended up in a pizza restaurant, where I paid 8euro for a hamburger that was smaller than the bottom half of the bun it came on. And a baked potatoe. It is seriously seriously expensive here. A pizza was 13.50euro . . . around $20 for 6 slices!! Anyways, then we went out to a locals pub where everyone stared at us (for not being locals) had some cider and went to bed. Oh yeah, we got a silver cute little stick shift rental car and we play awesome american pop on the Spin SW radio station. It's awesome.
Today, we started off about 2 hours away in Blarney. Here we went to the Blarney castle and kissed the Blarney stone . . . i know my writing is consistently less eloquent than it would have been last year, but if you hear me speak . . . boy oh boy. I could charm your ears (or whatever) right off. ANyways, that was really fun. Except for the terrifying "lean backwards into a crevice 1000 feet off the ground to kiss a stone that people used to pee on, upside-down" thing. Then we drove on to Cork, which we didnt really like. No really reason, just didn't like it. Then we drove to Nenagh, in the middle of Ireland, to meet up with Sean's friends from the Cape last summer. THey are awesome!! We had a delicious dinner at (phonetically) Quevah's house and then went out to a pub on this gorgeous lake with all the girls. So much fun.

Ode to a Flip Flop

Stratford Upon Avon / Oxford / London
Stonehenge & Bath
Belfast & Giants' Causeway
Galway & Cliffs of Moher

On Thursday, we flew to Ireland. I was in fine form, being that we left at 4:30am with no sleep. On top of that, I got to Belfast airport and discovered one of my flip flops had fallen out of my bag. My mommy bought these flip flops (blue with a darker blue border, Old Navy) when i went to college as my shower sandals. And now one is lost. Forever. I was not pleased. We got to Belfast, it was freezing, windy and rainy. So we started walking around and walked up to the Titanic docks where the Titanic was built, finished, launched etc. It was a long walk and it was cold, but I thought it was totally worth it. Sean. Not so much -- he was not pleased. We stopped for coffee, met the barista who was cool and bused back. Walked around somemore, took a nap, went to dinner with Melissa -- Sean's cousin who he hadn't spoken to in 15 years. It was awesome! Went for some beef stew -- just like mom's!! And then to a former IRA pub, which was amazing. Melissa also told us our street is one of the most militant streets in Belfast. Awesome. What was really interesting about Belfast is that it seems like it's trying to be cosmopolitan . . . it has a London Eye, a Big Ben, a Reichstag dome, but it fails. Cool though: it did have cadbury cream egg mcFlurrys.
Friday we got up super early and headed to the Giant's Causeway way up on the North Coast. The Causeway was supposedly formed when the famous Irish Giant wanted to fight the Scottish giant, but realized the Scottish one was too big so his wife hid him as a baby and told the Scottish one that the dad must be 100xs bigger. So then they tore up the causeway. I don't know, the story didn't make sense to me either. In any case, it is these beautiful rocks that are in columns with sides of 5-8. Really really beautiful with cliffs and oceans. Then we went back to Belfast and hopped our bus to Galway, which took forever. Finally we arrived, got to the hotel and I got to see EMILY TODD!! WOOHOO!
Saturday, we basically just walked around Galway. Galway is amazing. It is the perfect town. Pretty much no chain stores, all these local family owned pubs where real Irish actually hang out. It is right on the Atlantic, overlooking the mountains and islands of other Irish counties. We just had a great day catching up, walking around in the sun light, sitting by the ocean, listening to Irish music . . . really wonderful.
Sunday, Easter, I got up really early and went to mass in the Cathedral. It was really really nice and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a little sad to be alone and it was my first Easter without an Easter brunch, but I made do by eating a nice breakfast, coffee and reading Portrait of a Lady while I waited for the others to wake up. Then, we got on a tour bus for the Cliffs of Moher. If you look at no other pictures . . . PLEASE look at these ones. It is just absolutely beautiful there. I could have stayed there for a really really long time. Anyways. We ate dinner in Galway at this cute little french place where I had an amazing salad and now we are chilling out watching the Island. Off to the Dingle Peninsula tomorrow!

I blew a circuit breaker in the shower . . . !!!!

In order to visit Stonehenge, one really must have a healthy sense of humor. Yes, on the one hand, it is really really cool. It is so old, architecturally almost impossible and clearly of some kind of import to an earlier peoples . . . however, it did feel a bit like the Mona Lisa or Angkor Wat when seeing it in real life. I highly recommend a visit and the pictures really say it all.
After Stonehenge, we headed to Bath, the home of Jane Austen. We were meeting up with our former London hosts, Elaine and Tyler, but i jetted off rather quickly to get to the Jane Austen Centre. It was great. It chronicled her time in Bath and I really learned a lot about her, the influences on her writing and about the city itself. It was funny though because a lot of couples came into the museum and the men all parted from the women in the gift shop where the women bought tickets to go inside and the men slunk away back into the city. The gift shop was neat too because it sold rare copies of Austen's books . . . including one called "The Watsons", which has one of my new favorite quotes. Thanks to Will, I have all new copies of my favorite Austen novels so I am excited to read them when I get home.
When we got back to London, we headed out to a local pub and watched the end of the Arsenal game and chatted with Morgan and Chris (our new hosts). Then we went to bed.
Today, we were supposed to go to Cardiff. This didn't happen. I got up, got out of bed, went to go shower and I blew a circuit in the shower after shampooing meaning I got no more water so I had to complete my shower under the bath faucet. Oh yes, you read correctly, I blew the shower circuit. WTF!!!! This is a civilized country! Why, how is a circuit in any way shape or form related to the shower!!! In any case, we got a late start to Ariel's (friend from BC) where Sean made delicious pancakes and we quatsched for 2.5 hours. Then we were still going to try to make it to Cardiff, but ended up stuck in the Victoria Tube Station for almost 1 hour because the cut off connections on the Circle and District lines from there to Paddington because of a Signal Fire that had happened hours ago . . . even later in the day the service was disrupted. It is unbelievable. This would never happen in NYC. So instead, we prepared for Ireland, got some fish and chips and went on the Eye at dusk, which was great. Then we went in search of Cadbury Cream McFlurrys, failed, and went down to Wimbledon to hang out with Philip Altong (former German study-abroader at BC who was in my HR Management class but whom I never knew -- think Basti) and had a great time. We had to leave early because of the Tube and because we are leaving in 4 hours for Ireland. Woohoo!! bis dann

Whirlwind

After Liverpool, Sean and I headed down to Stratford-Upon-Avon where we spent a lovely 2 hours (after a botched train experience) exploring the teeny town in which Shakespeare was born. It really was very beautiful, and perfect weather, but not reallllly that much to see. Following this, we headed to Oxford where we ate at this cool restaurant: Nandos. Really good. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the university and the river and the castle. And we ate Krispy Kreme donuts --- soo good. Then we got to London where we met up with German Fulbright-alumna Elaine and her American boyfriend Tyler. We went out for drinks, which was great, and then quatsched in the kitchen over brie and sandwiches for another few hours! Lovely.
Saturday morning, we slept in and then met our friend Ariel Goldberg at the Borough Market for lunch. The market was all food, SO cool and very delicious. We sat there for a few hours and caught up . . . a really nice afternoon. Then, we walked along the Thames to the Tate Modern and hung out for a while. Saw the Eye. Ariel had suggested a movie at the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival so we went to go see Japan Japan and, certainly, it more than met my expectations. Which, as I have come to learn, is only a good thing depending on what the expectations are. After, we headed out for some dinner at a pub on the Cut that served Thai food. It was great and we had a lot of fun.
Sunday we headed for Palm Sunday mass in Westminster Abbey. It was 2.5 hours of standing and Sean was less than pleased. One of the many things he's had to put up with from me during our trip so far. (:-/) It was a cool experience, though. We met Ariel for coffee and then walked through Sloane and Eaton Squares, the Saatchi Gallery, Picadilly Circus, National Gallery (where I saw another Rembrandt, woohoo!), National Portrait Gallery, St. Paul's Cathedral, Monument, Bank and then headed over to Soho to get tickets for a show that Sean wanted to go to, but unfortunately, it didn't exist. So we ate delicious Indian food and headed home where we talked with Elaine, Tyler, Elaine's roomie Sunny and her friend.
Monday, today, we met up with Sean's friend Whitney at Southwark and walked along the Thames to the Globe. Then we headed across the river to check out St. Pauls and then into Soho for lunch at a cute italian place with her friend Kirsti. We walked around a ton more, ended up at a coffee house called the White Flat and met Wish's friend Morgan. Then we headed over to another pub and then another and then a restaurant and then back to Morgan's apartment for a whiskey sampling because it is Wish's last night. It was a fantastic day!