Wrappin Up

Today the boys left Dublin. We're all a little sad knowing they're not just a Luas-ride away anymore. I've been so excited these last couple of weeks to finish school and go home that it didn't really hit me until recently how much I'm going to miss all of this. It's been fun.

One of the highlights of the past few weeks was celebrating Thanksgiving here. Steph got to come over break, which made it that much more fun for me! We had a really great time seeing the sights around Dublin and catching up. We four girls had been planning for quite a while to make an entire Thanksgiving meal, and somehow, we managed to pull it off in our tiny kitchen thanks to late nights baking and prepping in advance. We invited some of our Irish teachers from DIT to join us so we could show them a real American Thanksgiving. They said they'd all seen it in movies, but never really experienced one! We had the best time!! We tried to warn them ahead of time not to eat all day, but I think they still underestimated how much food we have and how much Americans eat on Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, they LOVED all the food and endlessly praised our cooking skills. An added bonus to our Thanksgiving was having Johanna Dwyer from Tufts University join us for a little while. She's only one of the biggest names in the dietetics and anyone who knows what's going in the nutrition world has heard of her. She's been in Dublin for the last month doing some observing and speaking at DIT and we were fortunate to have her stop by. I mean, how many people can say they spent Thanksgiving with Johanna Dwyer? I'll be making a point to bring it up in any dietetic internship interviews next year, that's for sure. The only downside to Thanksgiving was being required to go to class, which we all complained about incessantly the entire week, but it was definitely one of the nicest Thanksgivings I've had and will probably always be the most special.

After Steph went home, the real work began. These past two weeks have been spent constantly studying, paper-writing, and doing hardly anything enjoyable. I can't complain, though. My open-note, open-book Statistics "exam" consisted of two incredibly easy questions. Therefore, my grade for the entire class is based on those two questions, which I aced. My entire Communications grade is based on a 400 word essay explaining my views on the pros and cons of two different health promotion approaches. I think I finished it in about fifteen minutes. So far so good. My other classes haven't been so easy, but it's nice to know I'll be coming home with at least two good grades for sure. Kayleen and I were supposed to have an exam this past Friday, but when it got pushed to this coming Wednesday, we decided to spend our Thursday night watching a movie. So, Jeanine joined us and we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" with the Christmas lights on when we really should have been studying or working on those twenty-page papers we have due this week. Ah well....

Exactly one week from now I'll be back in America and everything will be back to normal. I seriously can't believe how fast the time has gone--these past three and a half months seem like a blur. I had waited such a long time for this trip and now it's almost over. So many good friends made, so many memories, and so much learned. I didn't really know what to expect going into this trip, but I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything. I'm so fortunate to have had this opportunity. It's been a blast and something I'll never forget.

Crazy November

These past few weeks have been absolutely insane-- so much fun, but so exhausting. Traveling in our spare time was something we all wanted to do while we were here, but of course, we planned all of our trips in a three-week time period. Up through October, we had only taken a few day-trips and one weekend trip, all just within Ireland. Then it was time for the real traveling to begin. Here's a recap of the past three weeks and the four trips I took.

Edinburgh, Scotland: October 29-30

The week of October 27th was "review week" at DIT. This means that most of the professors don't hold lectures, but are allowed to have exams. I got lucky in that none of my professors assigned any exams, so I had the week off! Kayleen had just one exam on Tuesday, so on Wednesday, the two of us headed off to Edinburgh, Scotland! We planned to stay only one night, so we found a really early flight on Wednesday morning- 6:30 am. We planned accordingly (or so we thought) to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport. Apparently, we were a little off and almost missed our flight. We got to the check-in right as it was closing. Rushing as fast as we could and apologizing profusely, they got us in and we ran to the security line. It, of course, was incredibly long and as I stood there, I even started thinking about our options if we missed it. As soon as we both got through security, we sprang into a full-out run through the airport to our gate. It felt just like a movie as were yelling "excuse me!" and maneuvering around people, doing our very best not to run into them. We got to our gate with two minutes to spare. We decided we would NOT be letting that happen on the way home-- it was a little too close for comfort.

When we finally got to Edinburgh at about 9:00, we absolutely fell in love with it. The architecture of the Old City is so beautiful! It's very "hilly" and all of the streets are cobblestone. We found our hostel, dropped off our bags, and then decided to spend the afternoon in St. Andrews, about an hour away. We took a train, which we decided was just an added bonus because it allowed us to see some of the countryside as well. St. Andrews was so gorgeous!! It's actually a little town, too, with a college and some neighborhoods. The golf course is located right on the beach as soon as you get into town. We walked along the 18th green of the Old Course, had lunch in the country club, and spent a little bit of time seeing the sights. It was picture perfect.

We got back around 6:00 pm and were pretty tired since we had been up since 3:00 am, but because it was so close to Halloween, Kayleen had her heart set on doing something haunted. Edinburgh is apparently one of the most haunted cities in Europe, so there were plenty of haunting things to do. We found a tour that took us down into the underground city where we heard ghost stories and such from back in the day when people lived down there. It was pretty fun and not too scary. I thought I would freak out because I don't handle scary things well, but I was one of the best ones in the group!



Thursday, we got up early, checked out of the hostel, and went to the Edinburgh Castle which was just right up the street from where we had stayed. It was high up on a hill that overlooked all of Edinburgh-- such an awesome view! We had to hurry through in order to see other things, but it was totally worth it! We got to see the crown jewels that are used in all of the coronation ceremonies! Pretty incredible.





Afterwards, we ate in a restaurant called "The Witchery". It's advertised as a popular place for celebrities to eat. We could see why. The service was excellent, the food was so good, the decorating was beautiful, and the bathrooms were clean. :)



The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping. There were so many shops along The Royal Mile. My favorite one was called "The Christmas Shop", full every kind of Christmas ornament you could think of. I think we went into it three times just to look. Of course, since it was Scotland, there was an endless amount of plaid available along with Loch Ness stuffed animals and bag pipes. We shopped til we dropped and decided to get to the airport even a little bit earlier than we had planned, just to be extra extra safe. We got there well before check-in and then afterwards, still had a two hour wait before our flight. About an hour or so before we were supposed to board, we found out there was an hour delay. We were originally going to be getting back around 10:30 pm and now it was going to be even later. We were already so exhausted. As we were waiting around for our flight, I was looking through my bag and realized my cell phone wasn't there. I had used it a couple of hours earlier and stuck it in my pocket and it must have fallen out sometime on the bus to the airport. Major bummer. It was just a cheap phone I bought when I got to Ireland and I really didn't use it much anyway, but it was convenient to have at times. I've actually gotten quite used to not having one now. I'm happy to know that I am completely able to get along just fine without one, though I can't deny it will be really nice to have my real one back when I get back to the States.

We finally made it back at 11:30 and had to catch a bus back to the city center. I was already so tired at this point and most definitely not looking forward to another bus ride seeing as I don't handle those very well. Of course, we picked a seat right next to a guy who wanted to smoke, though they had given specific instructions NOT to do so. So that, combined with the regular bus fumes did not sit well with me. We still had to get a taxi back to our house from the city center. After taking so many taxi's here, I will never ever have a car with manual transmission. All the cars here are like that and I get so sick every time I have to ride in one. We finally made it home at about 1:30 am and crashed. The traveling was exhausting, but so worth it. We had such a great time!

County Mayo: November 1-2

A day after getting back from Edinburgh, the four of us girls headed off to County Mayo, which is on the north western side of Ireland. Jeanine has some distant relatives, Micael and Maurine, living there, and we were all invited to stay with them for a night. This was our chance to see a rural Irish town and countryside. We had all heard and seen pictures of sheep grazing on the green hillsides and really wanted to see some for ourselves. This was the perfect place to do it! They live in a tiny little town called Swinford, where they have a farm less than ten minutes away. We took a bus (for four hours) to the town where he picked us up. When we got to their home, Maurine had a meal all ready for us. Everything we ate was from their farm! It was a typical Irish meal with lamb (it had been grazing in their yard only a couple of days before), mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables which were all from their garden, and apples from their trees with custard on top for dessert. She told us the custard was the only thing bought in a store. It was so delicious and we all agreed it was the best meal we had eaten the entire trip! Afterwards, Maurine took us to their cottage where we would be staying for the night. It was actually the house that she had grown up in. She and Micael and redone it and now it was a beautiful little cottage in the middle of nowhere. Only green hills and sheep were around. It was so cold, but we started a fire in the fireplace, drank hot chocolate and enjoyed being cozy. :)

Maurine's niece, Claire Anne, picked us up that night and took us out for a little bit with her friends. We had such a great time with her! After church in the morning, Micael took us for a drive in the mountains. It was totally breathtaking! It is so rural and quiet up there, unlike all the cities we've been used to seeing. The people there live such a different life and I loved it. Everything seems to run at a slower pace which is so nice to see when what we're used to is a crazy hectic life, it seems. We went back to their house where Maurine had prepared a huge Sunday lunch for us; something you really don't see anymore, but is still pretty common there. It was another typical Irish meal, but this time, it was ham from their pigs, baked potatoes and cabbage from their garden, ice cream (store bought) with berries from their bushes on top. Again, it was amazing! I think we would have all been happy to stay there and let her cook for us some more, but we had to go home.


Thirsk, England: November 8-10

One place I have always wanted to visit is the English countryside. So I did. By myself. Kayleen was going to be in France and Jeanine and Monica were going to London for a night, but I decided I wanted to out to the country since I had the opportunity. Never would I have imagined that I would travel to another country by myself, but I surprisingly, didn't mind at all. In fact, I was looking forward to having a nice relaxing weekend to myself where I could just chill out and do whatever I wanted. However, it didn't start off that way at all. Traveling there was a total nightmare. Between losing item in security (dumb 3oz rule), not having a bus to get me where I needed to go, getting on the wrong train, and having absolutely no clue where I was at one point, I thought I was completely crazy
for doing this on my own. It was just not my day. At all. I thought this was a sign for how the rest of my weekend was going to be, but I was very wrong. I finally got to my B&B and it was beautiful! The couple who owned it could not be more hospitable and my room was the nicest place I have ever stayed in. I was able to relax, drink numerous cups of tea, read, study, shop, and go to bed at 7:30 both nights. It was perfect and I was praying that my trip home would
be nothing like the first one, but I was wrong again. Getting to the airport was exhausting, but I got there without any problems. However, I got there two hours before check in because I had wanted to be extra sure I would have plenty of time in case anything did go wrong. I was already exhausted at this point (this is a common theme). I waited til 8:30, checked in, and then found out my flight had an hour delay. Now I wasn't going to get back to Dublin until 12:30 am. I couldn't have felt more miserable. To make things worse, when I finally go to the check in line, I ended up next to a little four-year-old boy and his mom. Now this kid was extremely cute and I could tell he was just a really sweet kid, though a little rambunctious. He immediately started talking to me and asked me to sit next to him on the plane. At any other time, I would have thought this was adorable, but at that moment, I was so tired, not feeling very good, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But I couldn't tell him no, so I spent the entire flight entertaining him and trying my very best to be pleasant. By the time we finally got to Dublin, I was his "girlfriend", so I apparently didn't make it too obvious that I really did not enjoy talking to him. I finally got home about 1:15 am. The traveling was absolutely horrible and I didn't enjoy one minute of it, but getting to go somewhere I've always dreamed about made it totally worth it.


Krakow, Poland: November 15-17


Kayleen, Adam, and I just got back from Poland a few hours ago. Once again, it was so incredible! It was really different from the other trips we've taken so far. I think one reason for that is the fact that this time, we were in Eastern Europe. It's so much different than Western Europe. This may sound strange, but it seems so much more foreign. Obviously, everything in Europe is foreign, but so many things are similar to the States. The language barrier was the biggest issue. Adam ensured that we knew a few necessary phrases. He and Kayleen are both Polish, but he, especially, was excited to try his hand at communicating there. I have to say, he did a pretty good job. It's a strange feeling not being able to read any road signs or billboards. Luckily, we weren't left to fend for ourselves. Actually, the whole reason we were able to go was because Kayleen had a contact there. A lady she knows at Purdue is Polish and has family still living in Krakow. We met up with her sister-in-law, an older lady named Anna. We had the best time with her! She had never met us before, but yet she was so incredibly hospitable and took so much time to show us around and make sure we had anything we wanted. One thing that is so different about Poland is the food. Ireland, England, and Scotland have a few traditional foods that are good, but nothing is too far from everything I'm used to. Poland has some of the best food I've ever had and Anna made sure we had plenty of it! She took us straight to her house from the airport and had a meal all ready for us! The first part was kind of like broccoli soup with mushrooms. Then she made golabkia, which is meat and rice wrapped in cabbage and hers was topped with mushrooms. Now, I don't usually like mushrooms, but this was seriously amazing!

We were so fortunate to have Anna! She lives by herself in an apartment that she's lived in her entire life! It's very old, but so beautiful. Her English was broken, but we didn't have any problem communicating. We had a great time asking her questions about Krakow, how to say certain things, and just Polish life in general. We learned so much more than if we had just stayed in a hostel. She told us that the names "Adam" and "Elizabeth" are very traditional Polish names, but are pronounced differently and that's how she would be calling us. In Polish, my name is spelled Elzbieta with a dot above the "z". It sounds so cool and I loved it. Adam's name is Adas (pronounced Adash) and now the three of us call each other by our Polish names. :)



We got there on Saturday and Anna had the whole day planned for us! She took us to the city center where there were numerous amounts of shops along with some incredible buildings! That's another difference about Western Europe; the architecture. So beautiful! We shopped and thoroughly enjoyed that fact that the Polish zloty is so cheap compared to the American dollar! It's the first time the entire trip where we've actually gotten a good exchange for our money! Anna took us to several historical places and had "Adas" read the history about it that she had printed off earlier. So funny! She took us to a Polish restaurant for dinner. We had so much fun deciding what we wanted. Anna absolutely insisted that we get a soup called zurek. It a soup made with rye flour and has potatoes and sausage in it. Kayleen and I both got the traditional pierogis that had potatoes and meat inside. YUM!!! I'm pretty sure I would move to Poland just for the food. After dinner, we met up with a few college students that Anna knows and we went out with them for a few hours. They were so friendly and we had so much fun with them! We've all decided to be Facebook friends now. :)

In the morning, Anna had outdone herself, yet again, and had a HUGE breakfast all ready for us. This was, by far, the most unique breakfast I've ever had, but again, so good. She had poached eggs in those the little egg-stands. I don't know what they're called, but I've always wanted to eat an egg like that. She had ham, tomatoes, sour cucumbers, cottage-cheese spread for the two kinds of bread, and plum jam. The table always looked so pretty. She even had two spoons set out along with a fork and knife, just like a real set table is supposed to look. Seriously, this lady was incredible!

After breakfast, she packed us a lunch and the three of us headed out. The first thing we were scheduled to see was the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp. This is something I've always wanted to see. I've been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. but I really wanted to see the actual place. It was very hard to walk through and very sobering, even more so than the Holocaust Museum. To actually be where it all happened is almost incomprehensible. We started out in Auschwitz where several of the buildings have been turned into museums. They still have one original building, Block 11, that still has cells where prisoners were kept. We also saw a execution site where many people were shot and walked through a gas chamber. I got chills several times just from looking at it all. The tour then took us to Birkenau, which was only about five minutes away. That's the camp that most people think of when they hear "concentration camp". The railroad tracks are still there that brought in the cattle cars full of people. The fields are filled with rows upon rows of barracks where the thousands of prisoners stayed. Most of them have been rebuild as exact replicas because the originals were bombed by the Nazi's after the liberation in attempts to cover up the "evidence." As much as this tour wasn't exactly enjoyable, we were all so glad we went.

The next tour was a little bit happier. We went to the Wieliczka Salt Mines, right outside of Krakow. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, salt was considered very precious and mining was a huge resource for Poland. For the past one hundred years or so, parts of the mines are opened to the public. We went 130 meters under ground by stairs. I never thought going down stairs was hard, but my legs were shaking for the rest of the tour! Everything was made from salt! The walls, floors, and sculpters. Along the way, several sculpters portray the original mining days. There is a chapel, and several large banquet halls with intricate designs and pictures, all made entirely from salt! Even the chandeliors are made from salt crystals. The largest salt chandelior in the world is down there, which makes sense I guess, considering not many places would have chandeliors made from salt crystals. There are even several lakes down there that have the salt content of the Dead Sea. Pretty cool! They say it's really good for you and we're guaranteed to live three days longer just from our one visit. Nice, eh?

We found a gimongous mall in Krakow and had dinner there. Kayleen and I both got kababs with lamb meat, another traditional Polish food. Again, we weren't diappointed. The mall was huge and had mostly designer stores. Most things were incredibly expensive, even by American standards, despite the exchange rate, but we had fun looking around. We were so tired by that time and decided to call it quits for the night, so we headed back to Anna's house. When we got home she had a little snack all ready for us, of course. She had made jello with strawberries and oranges inside with champagne to go with it! Our friends weren't kidding when they told us Polish hospitality is above and beyond amazing. The four of us had a great time chatting about our day and enjoying our snack. Anna showed us pictures of her few visits to the States and we begged her to visit again really soon! We loved her so much and were so sad to leave this morning. She even got teary when we all said goodbye. Poland was a great trip and we all decided it was most definitley not long enough. There were so many things we still wanted to do. Regardless, it was a great trip to end on. No more traveling for me. There's only a five more weeks left and now it's time to focus on school. Final exams and project deadline are fast approaching and I'm cringing just thinking about how much work I need to do. I love traveling, but it's time for a break. Four places in three weeks is a lot! It has been so exhausting, but so rewarding. This next weekend, all we're doing is studying, decorating for Christmas and then Stephanie is coming to visit!! I am so excited, but I've got so much to do between now and then. I should probably start by going to bed now. I've got quite a lot of sleep to catch up on. Goodnight!

Out and About

Edinburgh and County Mayo were awesome, but that will be another post for another day when I get around it. In the meantime, we've been staying pretty busy with school and not just the regular run-of-the-mill homework, either. We've been given some great opportunities recently! Like I said in an earlier post (I think), because DIT and Purdue operate on completely different schedules, the class time we're getting here is not sufficient to get full credit for those classes back home. This has caused a few problems for Kayleen and me, especially with our Maternal Dietetics class. The class only meets for one hour a week and we're only in school for twelve weeks, so this is not enough class time to get full credit at Purdue. Because of this, Mary Moloney has worked extremely hard at finding extra things for us to do in order to fulfill our requirements. First, we're doing a joint project on public awareness of the importance of folic acid in pregnancy. Mary created a survey for us to hand out to college aged girls that asks questions pertaining to amounts of recommended folic acid and so on. We want to see how well informed the general public is about folic acid intake. After getting our results, we will put them into a power point and present our findings to the class. Originally, Kayleen and I were going to do some volunteer work in a hospital and do a project based on that, but because of the legal work issues in Ireland, we weren't allowed to work in a hospital. As disappointing as this was, Mary arranged several opportunities for us to observe in a couple of hospitals. This past Monday, Kayleen and I trekked an hour from our house over to Crumlin Children's Hospital and observed the dietitians there. Crumlin is the largest pediatric hospital in Ireland and we were both very impressed with it. I've never had the opportunity to observe clinical dietitians before, so I really enjoyed this. Purdue doesn't offer any kind of clinical experience in their curriculum like DIT does, so this was so exciting for us! We got a general tour of the different wards throughout the hospital, then one of the dietitians on staff took us through the neonatal ward and we looked a several of the babies' feeding records and prescribed formulas. We also got to talk with one diabetes dietitians for a little while. I really really enjoyed all of this and is has definitely given me some things to think about as far as future careers go. This wasn't something I would have considered doing before, but now that I've been able to observe a little bit, it's really peaked my interest and I want to start looking into it.

Today, Jeanine, Monica, Kayleen, and I got to skip a day of classes and head to Athlone for a Meals-on-Wheels conference, all thanks to Mary! She made all of the arrangements for us to miss school and go with her to listen about all the planning and ideas for the MOW program. One of the speakers was a professor/dietitian from DIT who addressed some of the nutritional aspects of the meals and what changes should possibly be made. This part was definitely the most interesting for me. After lunch, Mary dismissed us to go shopping for a little while. :) Besides having to be up at 4:00 AM to catch the train, we had a really great day! It was such fun to have a "day out" and hang out with Mary! She has been so great at arranging all of these outings for us. We're attending some sort of Kellogg's symposium next week and then Kayleen and I are hopefully observing in a maternal hospital in a few weeks! We're staying pretty busy, but it's so nice to break up the monotony of lectures. These types of "outings" are definitely things we wouldn't have the opportunity to do at Purdue, so we're loving it.

I Love my Grandma!

Today didn't start out to be the best of days. Kayleen and I didn't home until 1:00 a.m. from Edinburgh thanks to delayed planes and nauseating buses. On top of that, we had to be at school bright and early for breakfast with the department head of our school. As nice as that was, I was very tired, freezing cold, and ready to get home so I could relax. I hadn't been home ten minutes when the doorbell rang and the "UPS" guy was standing there with a package for me!! There's nothing better than receiving a letter or package or something in the mail. It was a "Halloween gifts" package from my Grandma; perfect timing!! She included Halloween Peeps (jack o'lanterns and ghosts) a Taste of Home magazine with some GREAT fall recipes, fake fall leaves to decorate, some really pretty fall coasters, and best of all-CANNED PUMPKIN!!! How incredible is she? She always thinks of everything! I was on cloud nine and immediately began decorating my room with my new fall foliage, eating peeps, and flipping through my magazine. I've already found some recipes I want to try. I can't think of a better care package than that. :)





Grandma-- This was the PERFECT care package! It totally made my day. Thank you so so much!!! Love you and miss you and I hope to see you soon!

)

A Most Productive Weekend

It is currently 60 degrees in our house. I wore two pairs of socks, slippers, leggings, sweatpants, and sweatshirt all day and I was still freezing. At one point, I honestly couldn't feel my toes, so I tried warming them up with the blow dryer. Our heat only comes on twice a day, but you wouldn't know it by looking at our electricity bill. Yikes! We got our first one today and it was not pleasant.

Other than that, this weekend was pretty good, though it got off to a rocky start. After microbiology lab on Friday, Kayleen and I headed out to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Most of the museums are free so we're trying to take advantage that. We stopped at Bobo's, home of the "Gourmet Irish Burger". We walk by it every single day and have always talked about wanting to go, so we finally did. Good choice. It was probably one of the best hamburgers I've ever had and also the messiest. I'm sure I put on quite a displaying trying to eat it, but I enjoyed every bite.

Feeling like we were going to burst, we headed to the museum. We were pretty glad for the opportunity to "walk off" our lunch as the museum was almost two miles away. I can't say I'm a huge fan of art in general, much less modern art, but it was fun nonetheless. The building itself was worth seeing. The museum was in a beautiful two story stone building that had a huge courtyard inside. On the left side of the building was a really pretty garden with a fountain and little trails running through it that kind of resembled a maze. It seemed appropriate to call it the "Secret GardenKayleen, especially, enjoyed this as it was always her childhood dream to have a "secret garden". :) Afterwards, we began our walk back home. The weather was really nice, not a cloud to be seen. ".We were happily chatting away when I saw a hair salon that looked fairly decent and I stopped in to make an appointment. This is when started going terribly wrong. I knew I was going to have to get my hair cut here at some point during the trip, so the last few weeks, I had been keeping an eye out for a salon with somewhat decent prices. Most places I had seen charged about 45 euro (about 65 dollars) for just a plain cut and there was no way I was going to pay that much. I had seen this particular place last week and they only charged 10 euro for a dry cut. That was the best I had seen so I went for it. When I went inside, I realized they didn't do appointments, just walk-ins, so Kayleen went home and I stayed. I'm really picky about who cuts my hair, but all I wanted was a simple trim just to get the ends off. How hard could that be? The fact the girl could barely speak English should have been my first clue. I explained about 63 times how I wanted it done and how much to take off, but from the first "snip" of the scissors, I knew it was going to be way to0 short. My stomach kept sinking lower and lower the more she cut. It was like she didn't know what she was doing so she just kept going shorter and shorter. She had to keep asking me questions about what she should do with the bangs, around my fact etc. I tried explaining calmly, all the while doing my very best not to jump out of the chair and strangle her. A trim! That's all I wanted and now I didn't know if I was going to walk out of there with any hair at all! Finally, she put the scissors down, did a quick blow-dry and said "all done". All I wanted to do was get out of there. I grabbed my stuff and pulled out some money to pay her. When she said it was 17 euro, I didn't even know what to do. I looked at the sign that clearly said "10 euro" and looked back at her, not able to say anything. She then proceeded to tell me that "it's 17 euros for long hair". I was so livid at that point that I just handed her the money and walked out. DIT was right across the street and I had to pick up my backpack from my locker, so when I got there, I went to the first mirror I could find. After looking at the damage for a couple of minutes, I realized it wasn't all that bad. She didn't actually do a bad job cutting, it just most certainly was not what I wanted. Somehow, half an inch off turned into almost two inches. I've been trying to grow my hair out for a while now and this definitely was not helping. I left the school and headed straight to the pharmacy to get some of those hair and nail vitamins. There were none to be found. I had to get a couple of other things there too, but, for the life of me, could not find what I needed. I was already on edge and this was not helping. I have never wanted a Walmart so badly in my life. Unable to get anything I was looking for, I stormed home and proceeded to pour out my sob story to Monica and Kayleen. Since then, I have recovered and ironically, the hair isn't so bad after all. I actually kind of like it. We'll see how it handles the usually humid, rainy Irish weather, though. I don't have a good history with humidity and having shorter hair is definitely not conducive to that. If I'm lucky, maybe this nice weather will stick around for a couple more months. I'm not holding my breath though.

Saturday, Jeanine and Monica left on a weekend trip, so it was just Kayleen and me. We started our day by doing an exercise video. Then we decided to rearrange the living room. There was entirely way too much furniture in that room and it had the most inconvenient set up, so we moved stuff out and around. Now it looks like a real living room and I cannot wait to use the fireplace in there! I've never had one before, so this will be a very exciting thing for me. Following the living room make-over, we showered and headed out for a while. We braved the insane wind and rain and went to one of the little towns next to ours just to look around. On our way home, we stopped at the grocery to pick up pumpkins! We bought three beautiful medium sized pumpkins and brought them home to begin baking. We cut them up and cooked them so we could scrape out the "meat". We made the most lovely batch of pumpkin bread. I was in heaven. Not only did it taste so good, but it made the house smell wonderful and very "fallish". One batch made three loaves. Unfortunately, we ate all of it in two days. We had so much pumpkin left over, though, we were able to bag it up and stick it in the freezer. There will plenty of pumpkin pies when Thanksgiving gets here. :)

Sunday was pretty quiet. I went to church in the morning, and sort of did homework the rest of the afternoon. Today is a "bank holiday" in Ireland, so everything is closed and no one has school or work. I don't have classes anyway on Mondays, but I enjoyed the holiday anyway. I took a nice long walk this morning, and worked on a little bit of homework during the afternoon. This week is called "review week" at DIT which basically means there are no classes unless a teacher wants to schedule an exam or something. The other girls in my class have an exam, or assessment as they're called here, on Wednesday. I'm not taking that class, so I don't have to go in at all this week! Basically, it's a fall break for us, so Kayleen and I are going to Edinburgh, Scotland on Wednesday! We're really excited! It will be the first country I've visited since I've been here. I'm not sure what all we're going to see yet, but we're going to do some planning tomorrow.

And that was my weekend. It was pretty good- haircut scare and all. Now it's time for bed because I have to get up early in the morning and babysit. Fun fun. If only I could get warm....

School?

Contrary to popular belief, I actually do go to school while I'm here! I know all I've ever written about are the fun things I've been doing, but I promise I've been doing the "academic thing", too. I can't deny that I've had it really easy compared to Purdue, though. This is what a typical school week looks like for me:

Monday- no classes for me!
Tuesday- two classes at 3:00 and 4:00
Wednesday- three classes at 10:00, 1:00, and 3:00
Thursday- three classes at 11:00, 1:00, and 2:00
Friday- lab at 10:00

Not too bad, eh? For the most part, I really like it. It took a little getting used-to at first. It's run very differently than Purdue. It actually reminds me a little bit of highschool in that most school days are from 9:00am- 5:00 pm for the regular students, we have lockers, the classes are all in one building, and the students travel from class to class with the same people! The girls in my class are really sweet and it's been fun getting to know them. There are only about 22 all together! DIT has campuses all over Dublin, but ours is the School of Science building. Another difference is that they don't run on a semester schedule. Instead of getting new classes at the start of a new semester, they continue the same classes throughout the entire year. Because they have the same classes all year, some classes only have one lecture a week instead of two or three like at Purdue. This has made it a little bit challenging to make sure that we are getting enough information while we are here to transfer back to Purdue as full credit. It'll all be fine I think, but I'm definitely getting off easy! I know some of the classes I'm taking here are so much harder at Purdue! Honestly though, I'm learning a lot and it's really interesting to get the Irish view of nutrition which is something I never would have learned at home. The EU has their own RDA values, so we are constantly discussing those as well as the American ones. I've noticed they incorporate a lot of American view points in their lectures.

I'm taking five classes: Nutrition (equivalent to Metabolism at Purdue), Dietetics (equivalent to Maternal Nutrition), Statistics, Microbiology, and Communications. Microbiology and Stat. are definitely NOT my favorite classes, but I'm managing. The prof. for micro. is so incredibly helpful. Kayleen and I have not had any microbiology experience so we're a little behind the rest of the class in that sense, but our teacher has been meeting with us outside of class to give us extra help! This is pretty typical of the professors there and I think it's like that because DIT operates on such a smaller level. It is much more personal and the professors are more than willing to be flexible with us because they know we're traveling and such. It's been great. For the most part, I really love my teachers. I'd have to say that my two favorite are my micro. professor "Paddy" McHale and one of the dietetics teachers, Mary Maloney. Mary has gone so out of her way to come up with health seminars and such for us to attend. In a couple weeks, she has arranged for us to go to a seminar in southern Ireland with her! She even cleared it so we could miss classes for the day! Also, she arranged for Kayleen and me to observe in a couple of maternal hospitals which is something we are really excited about! Originally, we were going to do a geriatrics project in one of the local hospital for class credit, but that fell through due to specific permission we had to have from the government. Instead, we are doing a survey for the maternal dietetics class about folic acid. Should be interesting.... We have Mary to thank for putting it all together for us! She has been more than helpful in getting us everything we need.

DIT doesn't have set exams before Christmas like Purdue does, so some of our professors are going to have to make up special exams for us to take. I'm a little nervous about how those will be. They don't really give exams throughout the semester. It's all mostly independent study until May comes around and then they're tested over a whole YEAR'S worth of information. I cannot even imagine that! And I thought semester exams were bad.... Anyway, because we won't really have tests until the end, I have no idea how they are formatted or really how to study for them. It'll be an experience for sure.




This is the outside of the building. Not much to look at, but I've been informed multiple times that the other DIT's in Dublin are much nicer and ours is just old and hasn't be redone yet.









The second floor hall where are lockers are located :)

















This is the recently-redone main entry.

A Weekend Away

As I write this, my thermometer reads 66 degrees Fahrenheit. I AM FREEZING!! I tend to be cold anyway, but this is ridiculous! My only source of warmth is coming from my recently purchased "frosted pumpkin" candle from a Yankee Candle that I found while in Galway last weekend.

Galway, I must say, was amazing!! This outing was our first big "weekend away" that we have taken since being here. We left Friday after class and took a four hour bus ride directly across the country to the coastal town of Galway. Riding on a bus is definitely not my favorite form of transportation, but it was much cheaper than taking the train, so we opted for that. Upon arrival in Galway, we found our hostel and headed out for dinner. After meeting up with some of the boys, who had taken the train earlier in the day, the rest of our evening consisted of enjoying the night life sights that Galway has to offer. Checkout of the hostel was at 10:00 the next morning, we were up early and ready for a day of shopping; at least the girls were. The boys reluctantly tagged along. The shops are so adorable and it was a lot of fun just to peruse through check out all of the unique and pretty expensive items. Afterwards, we had lunch in Eyre Square and got ready to head to the Aran Islands for the night. The Aran Islands are actually three islands right off the coast of Ireland, not far from Galway. We went, specifically, to Inis Mor by ferry. I love boat rides, so this was especially fun for me! I still don't understand why I don't get sea sick, but yet I'll get car sick after ten minutes.... Arriving at the island was not exactly how we expected it to be. It was already beginning to get dark and not a soul was around. Talk about an eery feeling. It seriously felt like we were walking into a horror movie. Jake's impression of a chainsaw did not help matters. The island was essentially empty with the exception of a few locals, our hostel beds were pretty much given away when we arrived, and none of the restaurants seemed to be open because the chef was in Wicklow on holiday (as explained by one of the locals). Awesome start. Eventually, we were able to work out room arrangements with the tenant of the hostel and we found an open restaurant. It was fun to finally relax and laugh A LOT at the ironic situation in which we found ourselves. I think we all had sore abs from laughing so hard. I know I know, it doesn't seem that funny, but it was one of those times that you just had to be there.....

After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and decided to turn in early, but not before conversing with Joe and Jake's hostel mates, Barbara and Helen, two eighty year old ladies. Believe me, that made the evening just that much more hilarious!! We laughed some more while watching the most recent episode of "The Office" on Jeanine's computer before going to bed. The island and the hostel seemed so much less ominous in the daylight the next morning. We enjoyed a lovely breakfast that the tenant provided and set out on a short hike before we had to catch the ferry back to Galway. The Cliffs of Moher are a popular tourist spot and known for their beauty, but we weren't able to book a tour to go see them. We decided we would have to settle with whatever cliffs were on the island. Our particular island was only about nine miles long and about two miles wide, so we hiked about a mile and a half from our hostel to the the other side. In my entire life, I have never seen anything as incredible as these cliffs. Seeing as we were the only ones around and could do anything we wanted, this was even better than the Cliffs of Moher. Everyone was in complete awe when we got to the top and looked out over the Atlantic. I loved watching the waves crash up against the the rocky beaches a the base of the cliffs. Completely awesome. I think we all could have stayed for a long time just looking, but we headed back down to catch the ferry back to Galway at noon.

Everyone except myself caught the bus or train back into Dublin, but I stayed behind to meet up with my cousin

Emily and her roommate, Amira. They had been doing some traveling around Europe and happened to be stopping in Galway that same weekend! I can't deny, it was GREAT staying in a modern hotel with a whole room to myself! It sure beat the hostels we had been in the previous two nights. Emily and Amira got in that evening and the three of us went out to dinner before going to bed early. We were all so exhausted. We spent Monday shopping in Galway and enjoying the cafe's and restaurants. It was so great to be able to relax and catch up with them a little bit. I caught the bus back to Dublin just in the nick of time. It didn't take but ten minutes, as usual, to start feeling nauseous and this time, it was even worse. Luckily, the lady I was sitting next to gave me the window seat and I was able to rest against it. At one point, I thought I was going to have to tell the bus driver to pull over because I honestly thought I was going to throw up, but I stayed calm, took deep breaths, kept my eyes shut, and made it back to Dublin four hours later all in one piece. Under the circumstances and with my notorious reaction to anything involving vomiting, I think I handled things quite well. Thank goodness for ipods. I don't think I could have gotten back without it.

I've been pretty tired this week, trying to catch up on lost sleep. It was a really fun, but exhausting weekend. This one will be much less eventful, for sure. Oh good, the heat just kicked on, so hopefully I'll be warming up soon. (It only comes on twice a day because it's so expensive). My feet are very cold, but I just painted my toenails and have to wait for them to dry-- horrible planning. I have a feeling this evening will consist of multiple blankets, warm dinner, many many mugs of hot tea, and a movie. Sounds perfect. :)