I am Home

Pretty self-explanatory, really. I am now back in the 406. Woot. Let's sum up the past two weeks, shall we? {Ahem}:

1. For some reason none of the clocks in my house are showing close to the same time and consequently only ONE has the right time (and all of the clocks are still working. Odd.).

2. I have FIVE loads of laundry to do. Woof. Not to mention the whole stack that I have to drop by the dry cleaners.

3. I was in Utah for a week in the glorious, glorious hot weather and now that I'm back in Montana I'm starting to wonder if summer will last for more than day-long spurts before reverting back to storms.

That's about all I've got. So moving on to what y'all want to ACTUALLY see--as in pictures from the last couple of weeks I spent in Ireland. Here they are, enjoy! :)



This is the only coral beach in Ireland.


Nifty signs, eh?


These are the Shandon Bells


This is how one would play the Shandon Bells.


The salmon weir on the River Lee in Cork.


Tandem biking around the Aran Islands!! :D


Oh yes, sheep. Lots and LOTS of sheep, especially in the middle of the road.


Working boat races in Carna.



These are the Cliffs of Moher. Freakin' sweet.

School's out for SUMMER

I finished all of my classes three weeks ago, so what have I been up to? I will tell you--Dublin for a night, Morocco for a week, Cork for the better part of five days and back to Galway. Since then we've gone out to the Aran Islands (it was GORGEOUS) and rode a tandem bike around for a couple of hours, drove through Connemara, went to some boat races in Carna, went to a coral beach, and went to the Cliffs of Moher. That is the past two weeks in a nutshell. Here are more deeeeets and some pictures (they should all be fairly self-explanatory):

MOROCCO






I'll post pictures of everything else later, later as in 'when I'm back in Montana'. Weird. Tonight is my last night in Galway and that is tragic. I leave tomorrow morning for Dublin and fly out on Tuesday, travel 19 hours, and finally get home. Oofka. Yeah. So in entirely stealing the idea from a friend I have made a list, two actually. Things I'll miss and things I won't. Here we go,

Thing's I'll miss about Ireland:
Squash (the drink, not the veg)
Melissa and Sinead
Good chocolate
Walking everywhere
The ocean
Being able to take the bus and be across the country in a few hours
Trad music
Walking on the prom
Everything being green ALL YEAR
Watching entire episodes of tv shows on YouTube
Everything running late ;)

Things I won't miss about Ireland:
Leatherjackets (aka flying daddy long legs. gross)
Hanging clothes to dry (I'm a whiner, I know ;))
Wood lice in my bedroom
Conversion charges at the ATM

Those were just what I could think of on a whim. If I think of anything else, I'll post them up there. Anywho, it's getting late and I have to be up early to finish cleaning everything up and scoot out the door.

My music recommendation for now is the album Films About Ghosts by Counting Crows. Amazing. Ireland, I heart you.

Hey! Guess Who's Back?

Shady's back, back again....bhahahaaa just kidding. Anywho, so here's how the past week has gone:

I was walking to the bus after class on Friday and ended up in the most delightful little shop that is owned by an Indian (I think) lady and I'm pretty sure she makes most of the clothes in there. Anywho, they sell the most spectacular fitted hoodies that I have ever seen, and not only are they super comfy they are also super cheap. I was in little Kelty heaven. Moving on. I got on the bus and on the way to Dublin I started reading "Angela's Ashes", it is sad, but still very well written. I think I'll have it finished by the end of the weekend. So I got to Dublin, went to YSA conference where we proceeded to have a treasure hunt. Yep, I didn't last doing that very long. I ended up with a sweet uber expensive camera so I took pictures instead of the activity :D Oh, I think it would be a good time to interject that this conference invited everyone from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. I think about 100 people showed up so it was really fun! I met tons of people and had a super duper time in the process. I think I kinda needed that ;)

On to Saturday, we did a service project and went to an adventure park with a rock climbing wall, high ropes course, an orienteering activity and all that sorts of wonderful stuff. That was up in the Wicklow Mountains and it was GORGEOUS!


By the way, Ireland kinda looks a lot like southern Idaho in case you were wondering. So after that we went back to the church and there was an Irish dancer that was teaching us all sorts of Irish dances. After that a couple of us went to Eddie Rocket's where I proceeded to spill a chocolate malt EVERYWHERE. Fail. Then we went back to the dance (which by this time was a normal dance).

Sunday: We all invaded the family ward, had some workshops in the afternoon, had an excellent fireside on Adam and Eve, and ended up watching the first half of "The Fox and the Hound". However, then we had a technical difficulty and moved on to "Transformers 2". There was also a hitch in that plan--we couldn't find the remote, so we shut off the movie before it was too scandalous to show in the church.

Monday: We planned a semi spontaneous trip to Howth (I say 'semi' because this plan was hatched on Sunday and announced to all the YSA on Sunday night). There were about 25 of us that went; we all met up Monday morning and took the train there. It was GORGEOUS! It is a little town on the coast north of Dublin.


We hiked a trail up on the hills behind town, but then it started downpouring, so we turned around. When we got back into town we ate at a little fish and chips shop and it was AMAZING! I don't even really like fish. Yay for their mad skills. Then we went to go find a castle and had to run across a golf course in the process. A golf course on which people were golfing. We all busted out of the trees and ran for it :D


So we got to the castle and went to a church and then took the train back to Dublin. We ended up at Eddie Rocket's again where I proceeded to spill an entire container of straws. Hmm...maybe I shouldn't go in there anymore...But after that I went to a Boyce Avenue concert and it was SWEET! Because I got there when the doors opened I was at the front and they are amazing live. Then I went downtown and met up with a couple of the peeps and we wandered around for a little while.


Tuesday: Caught an early flight to Leeds, got to the airport there, rode the bus into town, walked to the bus station, went out to the bed and breakfast that I THOUGHT was booked (it took almost an hour to get there), turned out it wasn't booked, so I headed back into town. I got on another bus and an hour and a half later, I had no idea what to do. No place to stay, had to catch an early flight Wednesday morning and the concert that night wouldn't get over until pretty late and it was in the sketchy part of town. HMMM....what to do. Dilemma. As luck would have it, I saw a STATravel agency (they are for students studying abroad and I am actually a member. How handy!). They told me where a hotel was that was close to the concert AND the bus station AND how to get from one to the other and to the airport. How nice of them! So I went and checked in at the hotel (Leeds has NO hostels and this was actually one of the cheapest rooms I could find) and paid a tragically exorbitant amount to stay there. I explored for most of the afternoon and found the City Market; this is basically an entire city block with a roof. Neato burrito!

The concert was Motion City Soundtrack and it was EXCELLENT! I was right at the front and it was glorious :) So then I went back to the hotel and caught the 6 a.m. bus the next morning so that I could catch my plane on time.


Whoa buddy. That is my [extended] weekend in a nutshell. Now I am working on a project that is due tomorrow and it is almost finished. So, now I've gotta jet. Class is calling.

Procrastinaaaation

At the moment, I have this, YouTube, a page for the Harvard citation style, the Patagonia webpage, the Horizon Organic webpage, a 15 page learning journal (still in progress, hence the Patagonia and Horizon Organic pages), the outline for the said learning journal, iTunes, and 2 windows for Windows messenger open. This does not even take into account the semester's worth of notes, a text book, an Institute manual, my scriptures, and the random assortment of other papers that are currently taking up almost HALF of my bed. So, what I SHOULD be doing is finishing the learning journal as it is due next Friday and I am taking a 5 day sabbatical between now and then (not only that, but in finishing it I could put away 92% of the list mentioned). But, obviously, that is not happening.

Now that that's covered, MOVING ON. Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. For those of you who don't know (I am guilty. I did not know this until yesterday), St. Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland and that is the start of this glorious green holiday. As a celebration, I went to Dublin with Sinead, we watched part of the parade (I'll post pictures), watched a hurling match, watched a Gaelic football match, saw a friend that I hadn't seen since high school, hopped on the train and came home. I must say, when we got back to Galway, I was astounded. We had walked through town that morning and it had been clean. On the way home however, I have never EVER seen that much garbage in my life ever. It was shocking. The poor city didn't stand a chance ;) So here are some pictures of our delightful Dublin outing.



Hmm...nice outfit. I'm sure your friend, Lady Gaga is around here somewhere....



This is what my nightmares are made of. He had a creepy female counterpart, but I didn't get a picture. Sad day. Ok, not really.



Croke Park before the matches. That is the band on the field. Woot!



Sign for the Gaelic football match. Yep. That is definitely in Irish.



Gaelic football, baby!


Moving on, for those of you who want to hear a proper Irish accent, go here. In there you will find a little ditty talking about the word 'situation' I didn't really get that until today. I was sitting in class and 15 minutes into it, I started to notice how often the professor said it, so I started counting. Over the next 30 minutes, I counted that word 25+ times (I did zone out of the lecture entirely for about 5 minutes in there). Holy buckets! So that's that. Anywho, tomorrow I am leaving until Wednesday morning, and I must go pack and all that jazz, so this is Kelty, over and out.

Smooching the....

Ok peeps, after a week of being AWOL I will expound on the savage wanderings that I have taken. Last week was "Go Green" Week for NUIG. Because I have TONS of free time, I decided to volunteer. It's not one of the causes that is generally on the top of my list, but it's a good one nonetheless, so I helped out with that. Next item of business, last week it was my roommates birthday and she wanted to go home for the weekend, so Thursday afternoon came and we caught the 2 o'clock bus out of here!! Woo! We went down to Cork and stayed with her sister and brother-in-law.

On Friday we went swimming. Here is how it all went down: I stepped into the pool and promptly stepped back out. I figured, 'Hey, I've been cold for the last month, why on earth am I getting voluntarily into a cold pool?', so instead I sat in the glorious, glorious sauna. I usually even like saunas, but it was warm :) Anywho, later that night two other girls from Galway came down and we all (us four and one of my roommates friends) went to the Blarney Castle on Saturday. Yes, this is the castle that houses the Blarney Stone. And you'd better believe that I smooched that beast. After that we wandered around the shopping center for awhile and ended up in the English market, which was sa-weeet! The the two chicas from Galway left and we went home and took a nap. Later that night, we were with some of my roomies friends, and because I'd never been there, they decided to take me to Kinsale. This is a little touristy town outside of Cork and right near the water. We went pretty late at night so it was completely dark out and we went to a castle. The kind with a moat. In the dark it was kinda creepy ;) Then we hopped around town for a little bit and then came home.

Sunday was pretty chill and on Sunday night we went to someones house and just played games for awhile. Then at 11 or 12 the Superbowl came on. It was strange that it was in the middle of the night. Anywho, we were there and all sorts of rumpus went down and then we went home. Today we took my roommate to get her ears pierced. Neato! After that we caught the bus home again. When we finally got home we made some delicious tuna salad and watched a movie.

That was my past week in a nutshell. I'll post pictures tomorrow (later today technically in Irish time). However, it is a ridiculous hour of the morning and I really should be asleep. Noches.

*I am now awake and it is not a ridiculous hour of the morning anymore, so here are the pictures :)


Cork



The English Market



Smooching the Blarney Stone



The Blarney Castle



Kinsale

Killarney. BooYah!

Last week on Thursday and Friday I volunteered at the teddy bear hospital; this is where all of the 4-7 year olds from around town come on a field trip and the college students take care of their stuffed animals. The purpose of this little shindig is so they are less scared when they have to go to the real doctor. It was pretty fun :) We made the first THREE pages of the Irish Independent on Friday which was pretty sweet (because it is one of the bigger national newspapers). Anywho, after that I left for the weekend and here's the story:

This weekend we went to Killarney. It is a little town in the southwest part of Ireland and five of us went. We took the bus and it was about a four and a half hour ride (if there were no delays). However, on the way there we missed the connecting bus and had to wait in a town called Limerick for about an hour and a half. It ended up working out because we ate dinner there. Anywho, once we got to Killarney we went to our hostel and it is a delightful little place :) Then we went out and ended up at a pub that was in a hotel, had a live band, and was connected to a club. We listened to the band for awhile then went dancing. It was fun :)

On Saturday we rented bikes and rode around. We went to Ross Castle and the Muckross House and took a few detours in between. We were on those bikes for quite awhile and it ended up being a pretty good time :) By the time we got back to the hostel we were all exhausted so we took a nap. Then we went out again last night BUT for the sake of not going into a huge, long story, we ended up getting into the same club that we'd gone to the night before for free. There was supposed to be a cover charge that night, but we were able to get in as a group (Paddy Wagon! Woot!) and get VIP access to the back. It was sweet.

(*For clarification purposes, the club to which I am referring didn't play any nasty rap, or rap at all for that matter, and there was no scandalous dancing. SO, it wasn't sketchy and ended up being a lot of fun :) )

That brings me to today. We came home on the bus and a few hours later, here I am. I'm sleepy, so I'm going to bed. Lata.


Muckross House. This is a side view; this house has 65 chimneys.


Ross Castle.


The hostel.

Foggy Day (In a Galway Town)

Last night the roomie and I went to a concert. It was all music composed by Schumann-- I think it was called "Fantasies and Fairytales"; I must say that it was very good indeed. That's not the sweet part of my story, however. It was at 8 p.m. and not that far away (just across campus plus a little more) so we walked. It was SUPER foggy and I had some fun taking pictures. Here they are :)

What Happens When I Don't Have Class

It is currently in the wee early hours of Thursday here on the grand ole Emerald Isle (versus the US where it is late afternoon), so first and foremost, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! to my wonderful oldest sister :) Secondly, I just got home. For the past couple of days what have I been up to? Let's see...Yesterday I had a couple of classes, came home and had some lunch and had another class in the afternoon. Then I came home, cleaned myself up a little bit and had a blind date of sorts. He was nice, and it was fun, and that is that.

That brings me to today (which is technically yesterday now). The way my schedule works out I don't have class on Wednesdays, so I got up and went to campus. It was societies day--this is where all of the societies on campus set up booths and students go and join them. Which is exactly what I did. I am now officially part of the art, choir, nothing specific (random fun activities. next week we are playing human chess. look to your right and vote on which side I should play for), international students, classics (study ancient Greece and Rome and take a trip :D), best buddies (mentoring program with mentally handicapped students in the area), flirtFM (college radio station), BACon (some art society that does sweet stuff), business, and President's challenge (involves 13 weeks of a learning a skill, volunteering, and being physically active) societies. Whew. I needed something to fill up my time and I figured this should do it :) Haha! I'm actually pretty excited.

After all of that hoopla, I decided to go out exploring. It was a B-E-A-UTIFUL day, so that is exactly what I did. However, there was a small kink in my plan. The shoes that I left my house wearing weren't exactly suited for trekking long distances. So I went shoe shopping. I am now the proud owner of some of the sweetest multi-colored Keds known to man. Oh yes. They are purple, green, yellow and pink. Back to the story at hand. After I got shoes that I could actually walk in, I started walking down all of the little side streets that the main crowds were generally passing. I ended up finding some pretty nifty little shops and restaurants and eventually ended up at the docks. It was the first time that I had seen the Atlantic Ocean. Whooo! I don't know if it counts because it was a bay, but I'm counting it. But it was gorgeous and not that many people were out. I think there might have been about five of us in the entire area. I was there for awhile and started wandering around again. I went in a few of the big churches and those were cool, found lots of fun graffiti, got lost downtown some more, watched street musicians play, happened upon 2 guys juggling, did a little bit of grocery shopping and came home. Oh and I took lots and lots of pictures.

That covers everything up until early evening. Blah, blah, blah, and then there was a meeting of sorts for the international students society at a pub downtown. Ok, the pubs here are more like Ireland's answer to a coffee shop. People don't really go there to get drunk, a lot of them just go to socialize. So this little shindig was downtown and there were tons of people. I ended up meeting up with some peeps that I met this week and last week and we had a grand old time :) (just orange juice for me, don't you worry). Then I got some food and came home and that pretty much closes down the night.

So, now I am really tired. My little excursion today was a good few miles long. No joke, I was all over this town--the historical part of it at least :) Have a super duper day!

Oot and Aboot on a Saturday

So not that it's Saturday anymore, 'cause it's technically Sunday, but that does not change the fact that I am in bed and can't sleep. Again. This whole 'seven hour time change' thing is KILLING me. I mean, let's be honest here, I never go to bed at a reasonable hour anyway. Take that and pair it with the fact that I can now stay up until 3 a.m. and not feel the least bit drowsy? HMMMMM......I think we all know where this is going. For the past week and a half I have not gone to bed before two, so really, I am still getting over the time change. Slowly but surely it will happen eventually :) Haha.

Anywho, as for the rest of my Saturday, I went out and explored Galway and it is SWEET! I walk everywhere, so I get to see some pretty cool stuff. However, last night I accidentally never turned my camera off so the battery was dead this morning. Sad day. So that means in all of the exploring I did I only have ONE picture. That is ok, it was still a blast ;) On my way home it started raining and so I had to walk quite a long way in the rain and it was delightful! Then my roommate and I went to the store, came home and cooked a TON of delicious and random food and had a girls movie night. Woo hoo!!! Those are the best :) Now I think I should try to go to sleep.

What's the Craic?

Doop-doop-a-doop. Today was another rather uneventful day (I seem to have a lot of these with no job, church only once a week, friends that go to bed at a reasonable hour on weeknights, and no homework yet.). But don't you worry, no complaints about that here :) I went to class, learned about some Celtic mythology from Caesar's perspective, picked up my student ID, went to the post office, took a bunch of pictures, hung out with my roommate for awhile, we went to another girl's house and watched a movie, ate some Chinese food, and I think that about covers it.

In other totally FANTASTIC news that was by far the best part of my ENTIRE day, I found out that my adorable little REDHEADED nephew gets to go home! Yeah, buddy! Almost two and a half months after coming into this wonderful world, he will get to finally leave the hospital and go home :) I really cannot adequately express how excited I am! Fo' shizzle.

Here are some more sweet pics. Today I was messing around not so much with taking pictures of big things, like buildings or scenery, but little things. I wanted to try out some of the different settings with my camera--I really haven't messed around with it since I got it. I hope you like them!!!


This is a snail that lives in this little brick grate. I have taken the liberty of naming him Harold. He is there every day.


These are vines growing up a pole.


The top of the older wing of the business building.




This is the little path I take to get to campus.

Happy Wednesday!

It is a happy Wednesday indeed. Today I went to class, cleaned my room, the weather is getting better (it rained off and on all day, but at least it's not snowing. and I love rain, so...), I'm reading another book, and I finally set up my Skype account so I can talk to people. Yay! The book I'm reading is called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". It's written from the perspective of a teenager with...autism, maybe? I'm not sure. Anywho, it is interesting and quite good so far. Nope, I just looked on the back cover and he has Asperger's Syndrome. Back to what I was saying, it is quite good, but I'm only halfway through it, so I hope it ends well.

As for the last book I finished reading ("The Witch of Portobello"), it was not my favorite. Coelho is a great author, but it seemed to me (I'm sorry if you disagree, and if you do, feel free to tell me) that it was just a story glorifying some kind of strange hippie religious movement. The book itself was well-written and was done so with an interesting approach. It was written from the present looking back at events through a series of interviews with the people that know Athena, the main character. The overall concept of HOW it was written was good, but the story was a little too off-kilter for my liking. Would I recommend it? I would have to say...no.

Anywho, as for things that are new. I figured out my schedule for the semester and that's about it. Also today, I discovered the First Presidency Message for the month. They are always good, and this one is especially. I would HIGHLY recommend reading it--there will be a link to it at the end of this post.

Here are some more pictures that I've taken. Once again, captions are under each one.


This is just more of the pedestrianized shopping center next to Eyre Square.



This is my bedroom. When I took this picture I was literally mashed up against my closet door trying to take a picture that would fit everything in it.



This is the other half of my kitchen. On the left side of the picture you can see my bedroom. My bathroom is to the right of my bedroom.

Apparently I can't put in a link to the First Presidency Message. Just go to lds.org and it is on the left side and titled "Hold on a Little Longer" and it is by President Uchtdorf. It is EXCELLENT.

Ok, I'm Back

Hola! The last couple of posts I've had to do on my iPod, so they were rather short. I have my laptop again (I've had it the whole time, but for awhile I didn't have an outlet adapter and the battery was dead), so I'll fill you in on everything. Ireland is good, it's starting to warm up a bit, the frost is gone, but the wind has picked up. Either way, I can bundle up and be fine :) No matter how much I look like a goober, bomber hats + scarves + gloves + down vests can keep me warm, no matter how cold it gets. SO, all is good on that aspect.

As far as my roommates, one is a Ph.D. student in economics, one just graduated in nursing and will actually be moving out soon, and the third is my age and in the Masters program for accounting. They are all delightful. They are all Irish girls and super friendly.

My house is a two-story mini condo. It is painted in bright colors--the kitchen is a tangerine color, my bedroom is yellow, etc. I have my own bathroom and my bedroom is one of the bigger ones in the house. The weird thing is that I have a double bed. It is the biggest bed I've had in my life ;) I have my own bathroom, which is nice.

For classes, I am taking four business classes and two Irish studies classes. One is Celtic mythology and the other just studies castles and various fortifications used in western Europe. Freakin' sweet :)

In general life is good :) It's beautiful here and the people are SUPER nice. However, I am already getting homesick. This is the first time in my life that I've ever gone somewhere COMPLETELY alone and I don't know how much I like that ;) I'm getting used to the culture and such, so everything is going well.

Anywho, that's about all I've got. Except for these. Explanations are under each one. Enjoy!


This is half of my kitchen.


This is the front of my house/condo thing. My bedroom is the window by the red garbage can.


I took this picture while standing on a bridge looking right at the Cathedral. I walk across this bridge and past the church every time I go into town. As you can see, it is very foggy :)


This is looking out at the River Corrib from the aforementioned bridge. It never gets cold enough to freeze in Ireland, so frost is a novelty. Lucky for me I'm here to see it. Oh wait... ;) But it did make for a SWEET picture.


This is a nice little stream that runs through campus. The walls also go all the way through campus and has nice little stone bridges where there are paths :)