First Days of Ireland

Well, I finally made it into Ireland Thursday with a local time of 10am.  We made it through customs easily, being granted permission to stay for until mid December.  When we got out of customs we found some classmates that had gotten into the Shannon airport a couple hours before us.  Then we waited until 12:30 for another group to arrive.  Our program director and assistant director picked us up in a bus and we started on our adventures.  The drive was about an hour and a half to our hotel, and as tired as I was from traveling, I could not fall asleep with all the sights to be seen.  We made a quick stop in Galway to pick up two other girls on our trip.  

The cottages are even cuter than the pictures that they showed us.  We brought all of our stuff in, picked rooms, and tried to unpack.  The closet that I share is tiny...so good thing I didn't bring a lot of clothes.  I'm about one of the only people who brought only one checked bag, but I'm confident to say that I definitely didn't overpack.  After we put some stuff away we had a group dinner that Geraldine made for us.  Of course it was meat, potatoes, and vegetables...and it was really good!  After dinner we started to explore our surroundings, first by taking the path to the ocean.  It was a rocky coastline and we had a lot of fun walking on the rocks trying to get to the water.  When we got back to the hotel we all quick got onto the internet to let our parents and everyone know that we made it here safe.  Later that night, some of us decided to venture into Spiddal to see what we were getting ourselves into.  The walk one-way is about half and hour...roughly 2 miles.  (oh, btw, I finally saw the mini horse that I heard so much about, it is adorable)  We went into our first pub in Ireland and ordered some Guinness.  The local crowd consisted of some friends talking at the bar and a bigger group of guys playing a round of poker.  The walk back...was a little scary.  Granted it was at like 9 or 9:30 because we were after-all jet-lagged.  We are hoping that it will be better later at night.  The path is pretty narrow and the cars drive insanely fast.  Anyway, we survived.

The next morning we got up and Geraldine had breakfast all ready for us.  (I wish she cooked all of our meals!)  After we ate, we met Jane Marie and she kinda explained how things were going to work.  Then we departed on our journey to Salthill and Galway.  We stopped in Salthill for about an hour and we just walked around the beach, climbed on rocks, the usual.  Then we ventured around the city of Galway for about 3 hours.  We split up into little groups and went our own ways.  My group went and explored two of the churches that we saw.  The second of which was the prettiest church I've ever seen!  Overall, the stain glass that I have seen in Ireland is absolutely amazing.  I have plenty of pictures, and will probably share them.  After the churches we went and saw the Spanish arches, which were on a really fast moving river.  People were just sitting along this river chatting with friend, eating lunch, and taking a nap.  It was really cool to see people just gathering at a public place like this.  Again, I have a lot of pictures and will post them on facebook.  For lunch I really wanted to try Supermac which is pretty much the Irish version of McDonalds...but they also have the real McDonalds there so don't get that confused.  I probably did some other cool things in Galway that have already slipped my mind because these past few days have just been so busy!  

So far the weather has been amazing!  I was ready for and expecting rainy-gloomy days, and it has been sunny our entire stay thus far.  Today we went to the Aran islands, but I will write about that tomorrow.  I hope all is well back at home, and I hope to hear from people.