May 4 - Bart, the coach driver of champions

Arrived in Dublin! The guy at security was amused that I was wearing my "Lucky Shirt." He felt it was appropriate for Ireland. The airport was a neat surprise. All of the signs in Ireland, turns out, are in Irish AND English.

I don't know if it just hasn't sunk in yet or what, but just looking at the greenery and the cows...it just feels like home. Everything feels so familiar even though I've never been here. It's been a long time since somewhere has given me such an overwhelming feeling of "home."

Ok, so we have a great coach driver. His name is Bart and he is delightfully chatty. In the few hours we spent riding around with him today, we have learned all sorts of interesting things and he has this endearing wheezy awkward laugh, and tends to end his long tangents with "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." It's only been a day and I like him already. The other girls all concur.

We stopped by Corcomroe Abbey for lunch. It randomly began to rain, so we ate our sandwiches and fruit huddled under what was left of the roof. It was such a cool ruin to wander around. Sister Blackburn said that the effigy we found in the Abbey indicated the way the person died by the placement of it's feet. The statue's feet were straight and propped up on a pillow, indicating death during sleep.

Next, we went to the CLIFFS OF INSANITY! Aka the Cliffs of Moher, also where they shot scenes from Leap Year. Anyway, it was raining when we got there. The rain was salty, and it stung my eyes a bit, but we all had a blast anyway. There was a fortress tower there too. It was 2 Euros to go up, but the view was great.

After we all piled on the bus, Brother Waddell told us the people there were impressed with our behaviour, and they gave us all free postcards. :) Next, we were off to the Burren (also called a Portal Tomb).

While I was there, I talked to Sister Blackburn, who was our conscience on the trip. We had a project we had to work on during the trip which involved using the time we were abroad to work on a character trait we wanted to develop and I discussed mine with her. The project was called ALYCBYG, or Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide. Hence the reason why we had a "conscience" we had to talk to about it. Only she knew what trait each of us was working on.

After we were done there, we went to Barnacles, the hostel we were staying at in Galway. Dinner there was delicious. It was some kind of vegetable soup, soda bread with Irish cream butter and blackcurrant jam. Yum! <3 After dinner, we wandered about the town.

Wandering in Galway was interesting. Most of the girls in the group were still scared of the unfamiliar, so they all walked around in large groups. A lot of people wanted to listen to live music in the pubs but they were pretty full and there wasn't enough room to accommodate 6-10 American girls in any of them.

We were all grateful later for the earplugs we were given before the trip. The pubs were loud and rowdy into the wee hours of the morning and it would have made sleep almost impossible without them.