Well, I am back from Belgium (which was awesome). Unfortunately I couldn’t get ahold of an adapter, and my camera ran out on the second day. But I still got 37 decent pics. Check them out on the photos page. 

Check out the cool dragons at the Arts Festival. I couldn’t get the silly movie to embed, but you can download it here.

Dingle was amazing. Check out the photos at the link above. I’ll try to write more tomorrow…

I can’t believe I haven’t gotten around to posting since last Friday. Yikes! Lots has happened since then…trips, classes… Over the weekend, I went on a bus tour to Connemara in West Galway. Connemara was absolutely beatuiful––huge, rocky barren mountains were quite different from the mountains of Asheville. And there were sheep. Everywhere. The sheep are marked so farmers know who owns what, but I still don’t understand how they can round them all up. We saw sheep wandering around everywhere, even along the road. Unfortunately, these were black-faced sheep, which means their wool isn’t really used––they are instead bred for meat. In addition to the sheep, farmers harvest peat bogs; the peat is used for fuel. I didn’t realize how much of Ireland is covered with the stuff––16%.

Our main stop was Kylemore Abbey, which is the Monastic home of the Benedictine Order of Nuns in Ireland. Mitchell Henry originally built Kylemore for his wife in 1868. The Abbey also features some beutiful gardens that reminded me of a miniature Biltmore estate–check out the pictures. The next day I went to Athenry (pronounced Athen-rye), which is one of the most preserved historical sites in Ireland. The towns’ roadplan has remained unchanged since the 1200’s. I saw a castle and an abbey, which were pretty neat.

Then, class started…but more on that later. Slan go foill! (Goodbye for now.)

Today was rainy and depressing, and the grocery store kind of sucked. But the opening lecture was funny and interesting, which was good. I think Pory the Voodoo Panda* had a better day than me in his own bed: *For those that don’t get it, Rory was supposed to go with me to Ireland.Some ridiculous complications followed, and he couldn’t go. So he gave me a Panda and imbued his panda-ness on it (Rory is himself a Panda, or so he claims.) Thus, Pory the Voodoo Panda was born. Here’s a pic of a castle (yes, it is a castle) that I pass to get to the university:

Well, I’m typing this from my room in Gort na Coiribe, about 15 minutes away (if you know where to go) from the university. The trip itself went pretty smoothly; in fact the most stressful experience was probably finding a parking space. The international flight’s food sucked (which was to be expected, but also there were no veggie options) and I almost had to sit next to a baby, but luckily I changed seats with his grandmother. It took us a while to get going––first a mysterious maintenance issue, then added baggage that had to be put on, and then they managed to break the toebar. This was my view for 1:45, gradually turning darker:     You could actually hear it break. That took another 20 minutes. But the delay didn’t really matter because I was able to get the 8:55 bus to Galway. The bus was great––the scenery was absolutely beautiful. If Emily was a country, she would be Ireland. Lots of horses, sheep, really old stone walls, and very, very, very green grass. There was also not one stoplight. Some of the intersections seemed more than dangerous.I lucked out with the rain––with the exception of a small drizzle during the busride, it was mostly a dry but overcast day. I was able to walk with some people in my program to the university and later (with slightly more difficulty) to the student residences. We also got a short little tour. Not many pictures yet, but here’s the university’s Quadrangle building:

cats, the universe, and everything will be dedicated to my trip to Galway, Ireland over the coming month. I owe much thanks to Phil Tseng for his generous hosting and his CSS knowledge. If it weren’t for him, I’d be using a much more boring Kurick theme at wordpress.com, there wouldn’t be a cool RSS button, and I wouldn’t have this nice Photobook that integrates with Facebook. Thanks again, Phil! For my trip, I bought a Canon Powershot SD1000. The first picture taken was, of course, Emily. Although I haven’t used it much yet, I’m loving the camera so far. It’s tiny, even tinier than I realized. I also love the very compact battery charger––the plug folds up just like an Apple power adapter. Very nice!