I'm back!

Hello all!

I am back from Spring Break and it was great!!
Heather and her family are here now so the party is continuing in Dublin!!

I haven't had time to upload the pictures from Morocco onto my computer yet but once I do I will put some up on here. I also plan on writing about all my trips but it may take awhile because I am still very busy. Don't worry, it will be up eventually!

packing again

Hello all!

I am back from Spring Break part 1 and Spring Break part 2 is starting way to soon for me to possibly write about everything that I did so far this break. So, the best I can do is post a few pictures from each place and fill in the details when I return again. My flight to Madrid is at 7:25am... I have to wake up at 4am, yuck!!! We have a 2.5hr layover in Madrid before flying to Casablanca, Morocco. I am so excited to check Africa off my list!

I have been walking around the city the past two days and people watching all the crazy tourists in town for St. Patrick's Day. The huge hats with attached leprachaun beards or the painted faces are my favorite.... and all the street performers that have come out of nowhere. Last night we went out and everywhere in Temple Bar area was packed, even the street was hard to walk through! It was a weird crowd too, much older than normal and of course a lot more green than usual. It was fun though.

Today I bought an air mattress for all my visitors!! I am so excited for Heather to be here when I return from Morocco!! I also vaccuumed my room and am thinking about tackling the kitchen too before I go to bed.

Be back March 21st!

Destination: Amsterdam

I amsterdam.... also known as a climbing place for all young children



Typical view in Amsterdam

One of those houses is where Anne Frank and her family hid......... yeah, I would have never known either.


Just chillin' in a big wooden shoe

Destination: Vienna (Wien)

Vienna Zoo! The oldest zoo in the world... they have 3 real pandas along with this statue of 2 fake ones.

Delicious dinner, I will never remember the name of it though

Schonbrunn Palace, no big deal

People really live in these apartments!

Destination: Munich (Munchen)

Hofbrauhaus, famous beer house

Nymphenburg.... summer residence of the King

City Hall

Old school merry-go-round in the Coach exhibit at Nymphenburg

packing

I am taking a break from packing for spring break part I to give a final update before my adventures begin.

This week has been very busy. I spent the entire day on Tuesday writing a paper for Irish History (it is due March 25 but I won't have time to do it any other day before then), and studying for my midterm in International Monetary Econ. The midterm was today, I think it went well. I also printed out all my itineraries and directions to hostels and hotels. Packing is going ok, I just dont know what to bring! And it isn't even like I have that much here to choose from in the first place, haha!

Here is my itinerary for anyone who is interested:

Amsterdam, Netherlands- 3/5-3/9
Vienna, Austria- 3/9-3/11
Munich, Germany- 3/11-3/13

then back to Dublin for 2 days to regroup, repack, and rest before Morocco!

Look for another update sometime between 3/13 and 3/16 =)

Tuenti

As I continue to slip into the habits of the Spanish.... it is after 7:30pm and I still haven't eaten dinner.... I have been forced to join the social network site "Tuenti"

It is pronounced like twenty and apparently all the rage in Espana. You can't just join it, because it is too cool for that, you have to be invited. So they are showing me pictures on Tuenti and telling me why they like it so much better than Facebook, etc when they get the genius idea to have me create one. Let me just tell you that they searched the entire website and there is definitely no way to change the language....

They sent me an invitation. It is an email that is completely in Spanish, which I put into an online translator to get the idea of what was going on. I changed my Facebook language to Spanish so I would know the common verbs. It was quite the adventure trying to create my account.

I got stuck when they asked for my universidad, colegio, o trabajo..... the university of illinois was definitely not an option... and which provincia I was from, Illinois was not an option. So I used my newly downloaded msn messenger to ask andrea where I could pretend I go to school and live. She said to just do the same as her. So according to Tuenti I now attend universitat de valencia and live in valencia.

Once I set up the account I figured out how to upload a picture and add a friend. I already had Violeta as my friend because she invited me.

I now have four friends, two tagged pictures, four comments on my wall, and fourteen profile views!! woot woot! Celia just showed me how to add youtube videos on 'me perfil' so I am going to have to try that sometime.

If any of my readers have a Tuenti account you should definitely add me, thanks!

So busy!

Thanks to Ally and the dude at the race track for this pic!

I know I have been slacking on the updates but I have been so busy!
I am leaving on thursday afternoon for the first part of spring break! Amsterdam, Vienna, Munich!!
There is so much to do before then....
I have a midterm on wednesday in International Monetary Econ.
An Irish history paper due right after spring break... won't have time to do it during SB so I have to start/finish it ahhh!
Lots of laundry to do, hahaha
then I have to pack, yikes!

Quick run through of what I have been doing......

On Friday Celia, Violeta and I tried to study for our Econ midterm.... we got through like half the slides. Celia definitely understands a majority of the English business terms because at her university in Spain she takes her classes in English. Violeta has a much harder time so we have to stop so Celia can explain to her what it is in Spanish.

Friday night I went to the cinema to see Confessions of a Shopaholic with Andrea, Violeta, Celia and Sandra. After the movie Heather met up with us and we all went to get pizza. Andrea went home after pizza because she was sick and wanted to sleep. The rest of us went out to temple bar area. We hit up a pub that Celia likes because of their band... we listened to like three songs and left. We ended up at Turks Head again. Heather got tired and went home. by then we had somehow turned into a group of me, Celia, Violeta, Sandra, and about 7 Spanish boys. 2 of them were from the Canary Islands which I thought was very cool. they were all nice but it is intimidating for them to talk to an American. one tried to talk to me in spanish and sandra was like "no, no! en ingles!!" hahaha.

Saturday afternoon I went with Sandra, Violeta, and Celia to a nearby town called Howth to check it out. We took the DART and it was pretty close. It is a coastal town... we had fish and chips, walked along the beach, watched the crazy jet skis out in the freezing water, and just hung out.

Ally has some friends visiting so we all went out to twentyone on Saturday night. I really liked the club and they played good music!

On Sunday afternoon Jackie, Ally, Heather and I went to Leopardstown to the horse races. It was a nice day except the 5 mins that it rained. It was completely different than horse racing I have been to in the States so I had no idea what to do! I bet on two of the races and lost both times.....

Mardi Gras

Celia, Me, Andrea, Violeta

For Mardi Gras the school was having a party for the Erasmus students..... they are the students who are here on exchange and basically from every country except the US. the US has their own program because we are study abroad and not exchange students. Anyways, Andrea and Celia invited me to go with them. We wanted to dress up but realized none of us owned anything fun to wear...

The party began in the student centre so Jackie, Violeta, Andrea, Celia and I headed over. They had free (Jamaican) beer for us..... it was 'best before Jan 08'.... I didn't have any, haha. There wasn't really anything going on and people were just talking to the groups they came with. Since it was only 8:30pm, Andrea and Celia had not eaten dinner. After a few minutes Celia decided "vamos!" and we left... with some extra beers in Violeta's purse and Celia's pocket.

We stopped at Centra to get some bread, wine, and diet coke. Andrea and Celia made us some dinner and we drank calimocho- red wine and coke. I did not want to try it, but I actually enjoyed it! I provided the music and cookies for dessert, haha

Celia made me wear her hat for awhile because she was sick of it....

Around 11:20pm we decided we should get going. Jackie didn't come with us but we picked up Violeta on the way to the bus. Once we were on the bus the three of them opened some more expired Jamaican beer, I still passed. The school rented out Turks Head for us. I had never been there and it was actually a really nice place. It was 1euro to get in and we had the place to ourselves. The dj was pretty horrible. I even went up and asked him to please play some better music, he really didnt. Andrea was surprised, she said they usually have good music there.

Example of an unflattering picture I took of Celia, haha

I was the only one who brought a camera so Celia borrowed it and took a ton of unflattering pictures of everyone. When she gave it back I made sure to take just as many of her. We also took a bunch of group pictures and Celia didn't have a normal face in any of them... it truly is hopeless!

This would have been a nice picture if it didn't look like Celia was eating my hair

At 2:30am the pub was closing so we made our way out to the line of taxis.... we got a group of 7 and took a van back to campus.

London!

sorry it has been so long! once I got back from London I was very busy, but it is the weekend now and I have some time to catch up on the past week....


Ally, Heather, and I left for the airport around 6pm thursday evening. we only brought a small bag each, no checked luggage, because it costs a lot for even one bag. we got to the airport, checked in, and through security no problem. grabbed some dinner at the food court and boarded the plane. It was very nice because it was not a full flight and I had the aisle and another guy had the window and nobody sat in the middle. The flight was just long enough for me to listen to like five or six songs on my ipod before electronics had to be stowed away again for landing, haha.


We bought an oyster card at Heathrow.... it gives you discounted rates on the tube, I put 10 pounds on it to start with. the three of us got on the Picadilly line and headed to the city. Ally was staying with a friend so Heather and I got off at our stop and changed to the District line... our hostel was right across from the Bayswater station (one stop after notting hill gate, which made me want to watch that movie so badly!).


So, my first hostel......the main area was pretty active when we arrived with people hanging out, playing pool, drinking, etc. Since this was the first time Heather and I had booked a hostel, we did it seperately. Not a good idea, we were in seperate rooms. good thing only one person booked for everyone for all the other hostels from now on. We got our keys, sheets, and tag to put on our bed and headed in. There was a weird smell everywhere, hahaha. We were each in a room of 14. My room was packed, and everyone was already sleeping! I had to get Heather to come help me find the bed that was open because I couldnt find the empty one in the dark. Bottom bunk in the corner... I put my sheets on in the dark and shoved my bag under my bed. We walked around the block but pretty much everything was closed so we just went back and went to bed.

The London Eye with Big Ben in the center

We woke up early the next morning and got our free breakfast, which turned out to be toast with butter and jelly, hahaha. We took the tube to Westminster and took pics of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. Since Heather had never been to London I decided it would be best to just do the hop on/hop off bus tour so we could see everything. We found the stop and a man was selling tickets that were valid for 48 hours, perfect! He gave us a 4 pound discount for paying in cash! We hopped on the bus and started seeing the sights, haha. We didn't want to actually go in to everything because we didn't have much time so we would just get off and take pics and get back on the next bus.

We met up with Ally in the shopping area between oxford circus and bond circus. We ate lunch and then shopped til we dropped at H&M. The prices on their clothes are in Euros and Pounds and since the pound is weak these days it was so much cheaper than buying things in Ireland. By the time we finished browsing in the other stores we had to go back to the hostel to get ready for our night out.

Big Ben and Houses of Parliment

Heather and I met Ally at the South Kensington tube station and we walked together to her friend Tiffany's apartment. A group of us went to dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant down the road and stopped at Tesco afterwards to get some wine. We hung out until 10:45ish and then all 11 of us headed out to the tube station. We went to Fabric nightclub. It was crazy. Soooooo much techno my head was hurting, but it was fun! I made the mistake of wearing heels and my feet were killing me by the time we got there, yikes! The place was cool and had a few different rooms along with a vip like section. we ended up in a less crowded corner by a roped off section with only 4 people in it! As one of them was walking by us to go get more drinks he asked if we knew who Blondie was.... Heather said yes, and he said she was right there. After he walked away we looked at each other and realized neither of us knew who this person was, hahahaha!! I still don't.

The bus Heather and I needed to take home definitely flew by us as we were trying to wave it down, along with a few other people at the bus stop... so we took a different bus to hyde park corner because we figured it would get us closer at least (our hostel was on hyde park but we didn't know how close to hyde park corner it was because it is quite a large park). When we got to Hyde Park corner we got a cab to take us to the hostel.... we were definitely on the opposite corner of the park, hahaha!

We got up early on Saturday, had some free toast for breakfast, and went off to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. After that we went to Harrods and rode the bus some more, haha. We were going to get tickets to a musical, but they were all sold out at TKTS. So we had some time to kill. We had a yummy meal in notting hill at a tex-mex restaurant and then walked back to the hostel. We stopped at some little shops along the way. Once at the hostel, I definitely took a nap. When I woke up heather and I got ready for the night and went to get dinner. I got a waffle with gelato, hahahaha. It was soooooooo good. heather had a cheeseburger from McDonalds. We walked around the mall that was across from McDonalds and tried to kill some time.

Buckingham Palace- changing of the guards

Finally we went to meet up with Ally and her friends again. This time we went to the Ministry of Sound. it was even more crowded and loud and sweaty than the first night! Benny Benassi, a dj I have never heard of, was playing in one of the rooms. I guess it was a big deal but I definitely couldnt not have cared less, it was just more techno to me. ally and I went to get some fresh air outside and ended up spliting a hot dog from this cart in the smoking area that was delicious. We made friends with the men working in the cart and ally even took a picture with them, hahahaa!

This time there was a direct bus to Queensway... a 3 min walk from our hostel, so that was really nice. Another late night and another early morning... this time to catch the plane. Heather and I had our last free toast breakfast and packed up our things. we got on the tube and headed back to Heathrow. I returned my oyster card to get the 3 pound deposit back and we headed to the gate. The plane was full this time. I had a man all in my space most of the time but since I found an US Weekly magazine near the hostel before we left I was perfectly happy just reading that.

We got on the bus when we arrived back in Dublin and I was actually really happy to be back. I just wanted to have my own bathroom again, and sleep in my bed. Once I got back to my room I took a very long nap to make up for my lack of sleep in London.... it felt great!