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. :)

Life in the Fast Lane

I must apologize for the lack of updates recently; things have been a little on the busy side. I'll have to go back a couple of weeks to bring everything up to speed.

There's so much to see in just Dublin, alone, that I don't think I'll get to do everything here that I want before I leave. Fridays have turned out to be good sight-seeing days in that all four of us are done with classes by either noon or one. Two weeks ago, because no major trips were planned for the weekend, we decided to get several items crossed off of our "to do" list. First, we went to the Guinness Storehouse for the afternoon after classes that Friday. It definitely exceeded my expectations. I half expected just to walk through a factory of some sort, but it's actually set up more like a museum. The building itself is really neat, with a open-window rotunda called the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor that looks out over all of Dublin. What a view! We could even see the streets by our house, over three miles away!

Saturday, Adam and Brian joined us for a day at Malahide Castle. It's a smaller castle only about a thirty minute DART ride away. It was rainy and cold outside, but a fun afternoon nonetheless. We enjoyed seeing the castle, but I think several of us enjoyed the playground even more. Not far from the castle is the most magnificent playground I'v ever seen; a dream come true for any kid. I think we were having as much fun as the kids! Jeanine happened to meet an American family that just moved here the previous week. Ironically, they had just bought a house about half a mile from where we live and fortunately for us, they are in need of babysitters! They were pretty excited (as were we) that they had found four very eager girls wanting to make some extra cash! Jeanine and I are going to babysit this Saturday for a few hours! Yay for more spending money!

After playing at the park, we rushed home to get ready for an opera, The Magic Flute, that DIT was putting on. Brid Ann, the department head at our school, had gotten us tickets, so we were pretty excited. Apparently, DIT has one of the best music programs in country, and I could definitely tell! The president of Ireland had actually gone to the Friday night production! They did an amazing job. It was fun to dress up and feel cultured for an evening. :) The weather, however, was not on our side, and we had to walk the two miles home in the POURING rain in high heels. Sweat pants have never sounded so good to me before...

The plan for Sunday was to go see a famous prison after church, but we were all pretty tired from the previous couple of days and opted to save that for another day. In fact, I think that may be on the agenda for tomorrow...

The Great Pumpkin

First off, let me say, I love being here! But, I can't deny that there are a few things that I miss very much. Besides the Christmas season, fall is my very favorite time of the year.
There's this certain smell in the fall that isn't around any other time. It makes me happy. Cheesy, I know, but it's true. Everything here stays so green for the most part. As much as I like it, I can't help but miss all the fall things back home. Just a little bit. :) I miss the changing leaves, "fall" apples, wearing sweaters, my neighbor's wood-burning stove, candy corn, the chilly (not cold) air, watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on tv, and apple cider.
But what I think I miss the most are the pumpkins. I miss pumpkin spice lattes, my pumpkin spice candles, my pumpkin spice air fresheners, decorative pumpkins, pumpkin pie around Thanksgiving....ok pumpkin anything. I've desperately been keeping my eyes open here for anything pumpkin/fall related, but the closest I've come are the scarce Halloween decorations in the kid's section of department stores. Even those are few and far between it seems. I thought I was going to have to settle for the pumpkin seeds that came in a box of granola cereal I had gotten. That was until Sunday, that is. Jeanine and I were grocery shopping after church when she excitedly informed me that there were pumpkins for sale at the front of the store. There weren't many to choose from, but they sure were there! I was thrilled, to say the least. So, I'll get to have my own pumpkin after all. Not only that, but we'll get to carve it AND make homemade pumpkin pie! I have searched high and low for canned pumpkin for pies but there hasn't been a can to be found. We've already started planning a little bit for our Thanksgiving meal that we're going to make, and I'm that much more excited knowing that it will not be lacking a pumpkin pie!


I shouldn't be complaining. We have three apple trees in our backyard. One has regular eating apples and the other two have cooking apples. We love it because we can have as many as we want without having to buy them! Apples with peanut butter has become a staple in my diet. We've eaten so many, I'm pretty sure I have them coming out my ears. Like yesterday, I had two small apples (and peanut butter) with my lunch, an apple tart at a bakery later in the day, and then Monica made apple crisp last night. YUMMMMMM!! Needless to say, we've had our fair share of fall treats. In addition to the apple crisp, we've had sliced cooked apples with cinnamon, an apple drizzle over cheesecake, apple sauce, and then baked apples tonight,
which I helped make. My roommates are all culinary experts and are responsible for all of the previously mentioned desserts, so I was glad I was able to contribute tonight to the plethora of apple foods. I'm bound and determined, though, to make baked apples and sausage that my mom usually makes every fall. We'll see how that turns out...

So, the next time you're at Starbucks and you order that grande low fat pumpkin spice latte on a crisp fall evening, enjoy it and think of me. :)