IRELAND 2011: Crazy Busy-Last 2 Weeks!

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.