Its been a few weeks now and I am pretty much settled in. Classes are great. Despite the vast difference between my courses here and at F&M I am sincerely enjoying them all. It is actually nice to be somewhat anonymous in a class of 150-200 versus a max of 30 at F&M and although I thought I would hate it, it is a refreshing break from the rigor of "F&ML". I am finally enrolled in all my courses on Blackboard so I can begin doing readings (in theory) and getting the school-type learning underway.
School is going well, but it is only one small part of why I love it here. Mostly, I am overwhelmed with how beautiful it is. It's not just that its pretty. The only way I can describe it is as historical and understated beauty. My apartment mates and I have taken to going on walks (in search of castles of course). Now, our apartment is by no means situated in the country. It is in a pretty built up area (think somewhere between Rte 1 in Falmouth and Rte 22 in Jersey--- not that you all know of both of these roads). The thing is though that we are able to (within a couple minutes) walk down secluded Irish country roads.
We knew there was a castle nearby so we decided we wanted to go find it. Our first adventure did not take us to the castle, however (we took a right instead of a left) but instead took us down a long, secluded country road. Here are some pictures of our journey.....
First, a picture of our apt complex... this is our courtyard.
These horses live down the road from us. We see them every day as we walk to class!
A cool picture I took on our walk...
The little dog we met on our way!
Completely burnt out car we saw by the lake
This reminds me of the road in P.S. I Love You
The dock where we ate our picnic lunch
Another view of the lake
Our first Irish rainbow! So cool. You can faintly see a second one above it...
So that was our first journey.... we didn't find the castle but went on a great walk, and ended up finding some great places. The definitely don't have places like this in Lancaster (and especially not in Jersey). As I was standing on the dock, I realized how much Ireland can remind me of Maine... It's no surprise that I love it here! (They actually say "room" similar to how we do in Maine-- kinda like [rum])
A few days later we actually did find the castle... it was one of the coolest things I have seen since I have been here. It was just sitting there. In the middle of a cow field. On the side of the River Corrib. Completely easy to miss if you didn't know it was there. There were no signs, or directions pointing us towards the correct location of Menlo Castle. This is apparently not uncommon with castles here. I learned in my Castles class that they don't like the castles to be tourist attractions so they often just sit in a field inconspicuously and are studied by archaeologists (like my lecturer). Walking through the castle reminded me a lot of walking through the old burned down home (whose name is escaping me at the moment-- and Google is being of no help) at Fort Williams State Park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. No wonder, as both burned down. It was so cool just walking through a castle. there was no one else there, but us.
Here are some photos from our castle adventure....
As you can see, I am doing more than just going out and drinking Guinness (which I don't even like by the way). I'm having a blast. Can't wait to explore Ireland more. More updates to come later, but this one is getting long enough and I am tired. Night all. Thanks for reading!
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