Half-Way!

I know I've been bad about updating and I'm sorry for that!  I've certainly gotten myself into a routine of school and such and things are going well.   I'm also pretty much at the half way point of my adventure here which is crazy, I can't believe how fast time is flying by.  Two weekends ago my friend Mari Walsh from high school came to visit and we had a great time!  We went back to had dinner at a nice Mexican place in cork (who knew!), went to the art museum, blarney castle and did a little shopping and adventuring through the city.  It was great to spend time with her and I am working on planning a trip down to Dublin to see her too!  I haven 't gotten out of the city in awhile but am really coming to love up on the little city that is Cork.  At first the place annoyed me, but now that I know my way around I have started to find some really awesome, cute and quirky shops and coffee places that I like to visit.  It is starting to get colder in Ireland, something I didn't quite expect, and I realize that I did not pack enough cold weather clothes.  Hopefully I can tough it out until my parents get here at Thanksgiving because everything is really expensive over here!  My classes are going well, although we are starting to have to do homework and such which is a bummer--aren't I on vacation?  The next half of my trip will surely fly:  This weekend is the jazz festival which is a huge event in cork, the following weekend in Halloween and two friends from home-Nori and Lauren- will be here!  The first weekend in November is my friend Alexa's birthday and my roommate from Denver, Allie, is coming to visit, then its off to Barcelona for a weekend, then my parents are here for two weekends and then it is December!  It is crazy to think about my time here in terms of weekends alone.

For my animal behavior class we are working on a project that takes place at Fota wildlife park which is a conservation park just outside the city.  Each student is given an animal to observe and we have to do a write up on their behavior.  I have the giraffe.  But the wild life park is an amazing place.  Most of the animals, besides the carnivores, are free to roam around in large enclosures with others species, making a more natural habitat.  Some species like birds, lemurs, wallabies and small rodent deer called mara, are just free to roam the park in general which is kinda neat.

I'm also still involved with the photography society and working on my techniques!  It's pretty exciting, but I have a lot to learn.  The choral society is working on A Ceremony of Carols to preform at our three night christmas concert in December, also pretty exciting!

Anyways I am excited for the jazz festival this weekend, and promise to take and post a bunch of photos, for now these will have to do!

Lemurs chillen in the grass

my giraffes!

view from the castle! So pretty

At the top of blarney castle!

Galway

This past weekend I took a short trip to Galway with a couple of my girlfriends.  It was interesting to say the least!  We arrived friday afternoon at about 1 after a 4 hour bus trip from Cork and proceeded to walk about the city of Galway after checking in at our hostel.  We toured a very beautiful church in galway and took a look through the various tourist shops.  We also got a nice Irish lunch at a hotel in the city center.  After being shopped out we went back to the hostel and got some pizza and prepared ourselves for a night on the town which turned out to be quite fun!  Once we returned to the hostel however, we realized that our new bunkmates were quite the crowd---2 of the 4 had already been in jail that night!  There proceeded to be a lot of awkward drunk singing by our new bunkmates and enough fear to keep most of us up for the night!  I guess thats what you get for paying 15E for a room!  Saturday morning we woke up and took a bus tour of areas around Galway.  Our first stop was the Ailwee cave system.  We took a tour into the cave which is in the side of the Ailwee (meaning yellow) mountain.  It was very neat!  There were remains of the European Brown Bear in the cave which has been extinct for thousands of years as well as an underground waterfall, impressive stalactites and stalagmites and fossils from when the area was under the ocean.  Next we began a scenic but somewhat long drive to the Cliffs of Moher, which were in a word, amazing.  We spent a lot of time at the Cliffs and I couldn't believe how impressive they are!  We lucked out with the weather and got to capture some great pics of the cliffs.  On one of the cliffs is the O'Brien's Tower, which is a three story tower, if you look at the building in the pictures it really puts the size of the cliffs into perspective as the three story building suddenly looks tiny!  We then headed down to the small town of Doolin and had some delicious Beef and Guinness stew before heading back to Galway, and then from Galway caught the late bus and headed back to Cork returning at about 11 at night.  It was a long day, but we got to see some really awesome things on the way and I had a lot of the fun with the girls I was with!

This morning I went to mass at the campus church and it was pretty neat, there were a lot of students and the mass was geared towards younger people.  This week will bring some more school work and on Tuesday  I will be going on photographic tour of Cork with the photography society so that should be real neat!  On Friday my friend Mari from high school is coming to visit as she is studying abroad in Dublin so this weekend should be fun as well!

Mosaic in the church in Galway

Center isle of church--So pretty!

DU girls!

stalactites in Ailwee Cave

Cliffs of Moher

Cliffs

see the tower?  crazy!