IRELAND 2011: 2011

FRIDAY
On Friday morning at 4:15am...I woke up to finish packing and getting ready for London! Other than the fact that i went to bed 3 hours before that, I was extremely excited for London! Our flight was set to depart at 8:15am, but it ended up being delayed for a half an hour. Once up in the air the flight was only an hour and 10 minutes. The only nice thing about Ryanair is that you don't get assigned seats, so with that being said you can pick any seat on the plane. So the Api girls and I went for the seats over the wings. We had ample leg room, it was crazy, I never knew you could have that much space on a plane! We got to London-Stansted around 10:15am, the drive to our hotel was about an hour drive, but were we stayed was in the center of London. Once we got to our hotel, that was situated right in the middle of Trafalgar Square and the River Thames, we met up with the London Api contact. She was super nice and took us out to lunch and showed us a couple of good places to shop. She also showed us this places called Neal's Yard, which is down an ally, its an off the wall coffee shop and some cute little shops. Its painted crazy bright and cool colors. Most people don't know about it because only allies lead to this court yard sort of area with the shops. We then went to the British Museum. One thing I find awesome about the Museums in London are that they are all free. In the British Museum they have the original Rosetta Stone, ancient Egyptian Mummies and a TON more. You could probably spend all day in there and still not get through everything. We spent a good hour inside, but we were all super tired, so we decided to leave and get coffee. Also we had to go meet up with the other Api groups that were coming. We got to the hotel and the other groups weren't there yet, so we took and hour nap...so need! Once the Cork, Galway and Dublin groups arrived at the hotel we went over to the London Eye. It's a giant Ferris wheel that extends 443ft in the air to over look London. Its said that you can see 30 miles on a nice clear day. When we went up it was around 7:30pm so it was dark and the city lights lit up the sky! The city of London is beautiful at night! After the 30 minutes experence we split up and went out to dinner. Us, the Limerick group, and a couple of the people from Cork group went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. The food was really good. Afterwards we went to Sherlock Holmes Pub, for a pint.

SATURDAY
We wanted to start off the day nice and early so we could experince as much of London as possible. We left around 8:30am to get some breakfest and coffee at a local cafe. Then we were provided with a 48 hour hop on hop off bus tickets from Api. With our hop on hop off bus tickets we get a ferry ride as well, so we took the ferry from the London eye up to the Tower Bridge. We walked around the Tower of London for a while then I went with a couple of people from Cork, Allison, Sam, Hannah and Braden. We toured London together for the afternoon.We caught the bus to Westmister Abbey. This was where the Royal wedding was held. It a beautiful building on the outside and unfortunately we were not able to go inside. It closed at 1:30pm on Saturday and we got there at 1:45pm. We were able to see the beautiful architecture on the outside though. We also got to see the arch where they walked through after they were married. We then walked up to Buckingham Palace and walked around there and then spent some time in the park outside of the Palace. We were so blessed with BEAUTIFUL weather. The whole weekend it was in the 60's and sunny! After a while I had to get back to the hotel to meet up with the Limerick girls for dinner. I walked back to the hotel, it was a beautiful walk, in beautiful weather in the busyness of a Saturday afternoon. It was so awesome to spend some time with the Lord on the walk back home! The Limerick girls and I went out to dinner and to Wicked, but to get there we got to experience the Tube...which actually isnt all that tricky to use. Wicked was an AMAZING musical! I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone and anyone! Also, it was just awesome to experience a musical on the West End! It was extremely well put on and the actors and actresses were amazing as well with wonderful voices!

SUNDAY
Once again we thought we would get an early start to our day so we could experience as much of London as possible. For the third day in a row it was a beautiful day outside. I woke up to a beautiful view of the sun rising from the hotel window. What a great way to start the day. His creation is so extravagant and beautiful, its so awesome how he reminds us how wonderful His creation is. As some may know I was able to go to Hillsong's home church in Sydney, Australia. Well they have a branch in London as well, so on Sunday morning I got up and walked about 25 minutes to church. It was right on Oxford street, in Dominion Theater. It was so awesome to be able to start of the morning worshiping the Lord with a 1,000 other individuals. It reassured me that no matter where I am in the world I am here to live for the Lord in all I do! Afterwards I went shopping on Oxford street for a little while, it is one of the most popular shopping streets in the world. Then i met up with Jordan in Trafalgar Square and we went to the Photo Gallery and National Gallery together. We walked around and got some Starbucks coffee and Nutella Crepes...so good! Our time in London was coming to an end, but it was a wonderful weekend, filled with wonderful weather! I definitely want to go back there in my life some time. There is so much that London has to offer, from musicals on the West End, to all the wonderful history and beautiful buildings. I had a fabulous weekend, but also I am very exhausted.

Until next time...

~Nicole

Hey everyone! Sorry for not updating in a long time. The past couples weeks have been a crazy one. It started out with a 3am hospital visit, don’t worry everything is fine. Just a scare with the appendices. But I was able to witness the medical care in Ireland and its one I never want to ever visit again. As soon as I walked back into the emergency room area, it was kind of dark with poor lighting. There were people everywhere on beds in the hallway. Some had IV’s, while some were waiting for emergency surgery, others waiting to see a doctor, all were together in the hallways, no privacy what so ever. I had to wait for about 5 hours to even get back there and then another hour or so to actually been seen and asked why I was there. There system is nothing compared to the medical system back in the states. I find myself extremely lucky to have the medical care system we do. I know our system isn’t perfect, but its leaps and bounds better then the Irish system. They were having budget issues so they closed a hospital in Ennis, which is about a 40 minutes drive from Limerick. Unfortunately Limerick is the closest hospital to Ennis. Thankfully they have an ambulance system still in Ennis, but as soon as the ambulance reaches the person they have to drive 40 minutes to the Limerick hospital. Sadly many people have died because of this, and not having a hospital closer to Ennis. So needless to say I feel very fortunate to have the type of medical care system that we do.

On the first of October we took a trip down to the Blarney Stone and to Cork city. The Blarney Stone is just outside of Cork. The thing about the Blarney Stone is that you are supposed to kiss this stone at the top of the castle and you will receive ‘the gift of the gab.’ To kiss the stone you have to hang backward over a steep drop off on the very top of the castle, for some it was quite scary, but I just thought it was quite unsanitary lol We walked around the grounds for a while, checking out a lake near the back and the beautiful gardens it has on the castle grounds. Then we headed up to Cork, we had 3 hours to walk around and check out Cork. The thing that was not so fun was that it was pouring rain the entire time we were there, so we ended up shopping and spending our time indoors. Also, I was not feeling well this day, so I wasn’t a big fan of Cork.

In the beginning of the school year they had this clubs and societies meeting, this is where I decided to sign up for rowing. We row in groups of eight 2 to 3 times a week. I absolutely love it, it is a great way to meet people and experience a sport I would never have been able to do in La Crosse. The cool thing about the rowing team at Limerick is that the head coach used to be the USA women Olympic coach. So to be learning from such a great coach has been absolutely amazing. The neat thing is we have an indoor boat house that has a full eight person stationary boat to where we can learn how to row together and really get our technique down. When we get out on the water it’s mainly about learning how to balance and row as a team. We have about a 2K stretch that we row on. So its super nice having the River Shannon go right through our campus, and having our own boat house on campus.

This past Friday Simone and I took a walk along the Shannon River! It was a gorgeous day and I had no class, we took some time to spend with the Lord! It was so awesome to finally take some quite time outside in His creation. To be able to hear the birds and see the flowers as the sun warmed my face was amazing! God is so good!

Then this past weekend, Saturday and Sunday, the API group and I went to the island of Inis Mor, part of the Aran Islands. The group consisted of 10 people from Cork and 12 people from Dublin and then there was the 4 of us from Limerick. There are three islands that are just off the coast of Galway area. The names of the Islands are Inis Mor, Inis Meain and Inis Oirr. We stayed on the big island which was Inis Mor and is the most popular for tourist and has a population of about 850 people. The next in size is called Inis Meain with about 500 people and the small island is called Inis Oirr with about 150 people. To get over to the Aran Islands we had to take a ferry over, it was about a 50 minute ferry ride. On the way to the Island the swells were only about 5 feet, so definitely bearable. When we arrived on the Island we grabbed lunch at a restaurant in the hotel. Sadly, only to Dublin group stayed at the hotel, the Cork group and us Limerick people stayed at separate B&B’s. Then we got a tour around the Island in vans, we went up to this place called Dun Aonghasa. It is a spectacular semi Circular Celtic Stone fort; it also has a gorgeous view as it sits right on the cliff, it kind of looks like the Cliffs of Moher. This fortress was built by Celtic Tribesman c.2000B.C. After we toured around the island for a couple hours we headed back to our B&B. The next morning we woke up bright and early to get a good start to our day! We rented bikes and biked around the island. Our first stop on our bikes was a seal colony. At low tide the seals are easily visible; they weren’t super close to the shore but still a sight to see. After that we headed to a beach and enjoyed watching the tide come in, all that was about a 4 mile round trip bike effort, so easily done. The island itself is only about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide. After lunch we headed to the other end of the island where there is another fort called Dun Dunchachair (the Black Fort). It was extremely windy up there, but whats new that’s Ireland for you! Also something kind of funny, this whole day we had this Dog follow us everywhere. He was super friendly and hyper, but that helped out because when we biked this dog just ran right next to us…the whole way. So from about 9:30am to about 3pm we had this dog follow us all around the island. We are pretty sure it was a sheep dog, because if one person fell behind the others, the dog would whine and run around you until you caught up with the group. Needless to say it was a cute little experience that we had while we were on the Aran Island. On Sunday evening we left Inis Mor to head back to the mainland, on this crossing we were not so lucky with calm seas. The swells were around 12-15 feet. At one moment you would be looking out the window and see only water and the next moment all you could see was sky…yep that was a ruff crossing for a lot of people! We got back to Limerick around 9pm at night, and I was exhausted, so I crashed as soon as I got home.