home sweet...Dundrum?

A sense of relief and of actually how tired i really am swept over me as i stepped off the bus in Dundrum around 3 pm this afternoon. It has been a LONG and fast 6 days.
I can't believe i went to Italy (i've said that like...89 times)



so this is me on the way to Belfast, to catch at 3 hour bus to Dublin, to wait 3 hours in the airport, to get a on a 3 hour plane flight to Pisa.  very excited.
  HI PISA!!! This is our traveling group (Carrie split off after Pisa (top left). Luke, Elizabeth, Emily and me.
So we fly into Pisa at...ah around 12:30 am and have directions to where our 'couchsurfing' guy (Steffano) is playing chess (where he usually plays chess until about 1:30 in some dark alley in the middle of Pisa). So we find him. YAY! After finding him (it's about 1 am) he gives us directions (to walk) to the LEANING TOWER OF PISA! so we walk all through this beautiful city of Pisa to the tower.
we're walking and talking and OHP there it is! it really is leaning...a lot more than i thought it would be. and of course since it's 1 am we are the only ones around. 
  that's us going 'mwah' to Italy. it was cold and a bit rainy, we had been travelling since 1 pm that day (so about 12 hours) and the first thing we do when we get to Italy was hold up the tower...good day.
so Steffano comes and picks us up and brings us to his new house, where he has one bed and one couch and there are 5 of us and him...AND it's 2 in the morning. so we managed and it was fun getting like 2 hours of sleep (none of us could actually sleep well) and we woke up and caught a bus to the train station to Rome!
AH Roma...amazing place. We got to Rome after a long train ride around 1:30 and had to find our hostel (which was SO awesome and fun) and find the Colosseum to meet up for our 3 hour walking tour. we have not eaten since we left Belfast mind you, so we decided to drop our stuff off at the hostel and grab something to eat on our way to the Colosseum.
I found this place called "Euro Pizza"
O...M...G...the best cheap Italian pizza in all of Rome AND right around the corner from our hostel.
So we take this amazing tour led by Valentina, a TRUE Roman (as she said many times). we walked ALL over Rome, told us amazing information about everything we saw AND she also really liked us 4 ;)
  us and Valentina...our wonderful tour guide of Ancient Rome
 i'm goin back to Rome cause i threw a coin into the Trevie Fountain.
We had a great time in Rome...WALKED probably about 25 miles those two days...literally.
I met some great friends at the hostel
  
ate some amazing pizza
went to Saint Peter's Basilica and climbed to the top...like about 743 stairs

 us on step 534 thinking...did we really just pay 5 euros to do this at 8 in the morning?
saw St. Peter's Basilica where Peter was the first head of the Church and his name was on the main list of Pope's...it was pretty sureal
  spanish steps

Rome was amazing and i couldn't love it more.
We hoped a train to Florence


Florence was calm and beautiful and a place i'd love to visit again. It was chilled and SO much fun!


i'm completely exhuasted and have a few more stories: so i'll give you a break and upload some more tomorrow! yay for Fall Break 2007

globe trottin'

Italia. Where eyeglasses were invented, where 98% of the people are Roman Catholic, has over 3,000 musuems, and is slightly larger than Arizona. Italy will be our hostess from Wednesday night until Sunday night. She will be a good hostess...giving us the Leaning Tower of Pisa and good pasta. Pictures to come, stories to follow.
HI POPE!!!!

gettin all cultured up over here

This is one of the three sculptures that was on exhibition Friday night


this is a similar sculpture to the one that was outside of Queen's...it's amazing and huge

Marc Didou has an exhibit at Queen's Univeristy.  We got the hook up and were all invited to a pre-opening showing...yeah...we're special.  It was incredible (small, but incredible).  The room had three sculptures that look like cut stones set on top of each other. When you look at it, it just looks like a tall sculpture, but at every sculpture there is some sort of mirror (somewhere close by, either hanging or on another pedestal close to the sculpture) and you look into the mirror and it shows what the sculpture is. All three of them at
the exhibit were skulls. It was so intense and morbid but totally awesome the way he did them.
We got dropped off on campus at 5 pm and Hadden was coming to pick us up at 7...so after about 30 minutes of looking at the three sculptures (i've used that word 8 times now) we got to hang out around Queen's. Some people went to meet up with a couple who just got married (Ben and Jolynn) from JBU and moved to Belfast so she could go to Queen's and they ate some dinner together. Other's went out to dinner, but i opted to just walk around. I went and got some coffee and talked to the people in the coffee shop for a bit, but then i walked around campus.  It was really peaceful, but it made me miss my friends. It would have been wonderful to have someone there to talk to.  Being here and the experiences and things i've been doing, i've noticed i'm really good (and quite enjoy) doing things on my own.  Loner. But last night would have been great to have a home friend, or even someone new to talk to.
The first few weeks we all were like, "we are going to go on Queen's campus and make new friends"... it's suprisingly harder to just make friends when you are in one class that is our study group and 35 people over the age of 70. So that's been a struggle, but there have been a few people i've met and hopefully get to hang out with again.
Did anyone know that Belfast is a 'happenin' place? Kanye West, Meatloaf, Rod Stewart, 50 Cent and Donny Osmond (what on earth could Donny be doing where he'd need the Odyssey Arena?) are all playin in Belfast. OH as well as "Starlight Express; the fastest show on earth"


After seeing some of the pictures of this Andrew Llyod Weber musical...i'm interested AND scared...they pretty much are clowns on skates.
So i've got an art paper due on monday, a few papers due next week AND i'm leaving for Italy on Wednesday night. I'll update y'all on that in a bit...i'm super excited! Pray that we find a place to stay...we're still working on that...but if we don't get anyone to keep us for a few nights through couchsurfing then we'll just do a hostel...but couchsurfing is free.

welcome mr. wireless!

this is my houses kitchen, which i seem to clean often...this is the 'eating house'...where our family comes together in the evenings to talk about our days. it's swell


this is the living room...it's a beautiful view and probably the most uncomfortable couches every produced in the history of the world


our back doors...all connected like true loves...it's awesome having 15 roomates



we went to a youth bbq for a church in Killyleagh and they had a swing. naturally Emily and i had to take some 'engagement pictures'


and Elizabeth and i got a bit nostalgic thinking of swinging 'spider' back in 2nd grade. so we did.
well my house welcomed WIRELESS INTERNET in with a bang. two nights ago (tuesday 16th) we got wireless internet and we are GID'in it (that's 'gettin it done').  i finally don't have to stress out when i ride 8 miles to just check email and not have enough time to response efficently! now i've got all night...literally. tuesday night, Alex, Emily and i stayed up till ... about 3 am having a great time doing homework and playing around and celebrating wireless!
this weeks been pretty awesome so far and gone by quickly. Stan McKinnon came on monday and stayed until today. He is currently JBU's on campus pastor/spiritual advisor and he's a hoot! we had a great time with him. he led us in a few small 'home church' sessions and did some more tourist-ing stuff. we went to Saul one day (it's where St. Patrick set up the first church in Ireland) and Armaugh another day (it's got huge churches).
at Armaugh we went to this huge catholic church where there was being held a 'special mass' to encourage or teach the students of Armaugh...so it was packed. We all stood in the back, and we were wondering why there were a lot of tv crews and media...apparently the newly appointed Cardinal was being introduced for the first time at that service. well...Elizabeth and i had to sneak out to go to the toilet (that's what they call the restroom here) and it was out and around the church...we we are walking and before we get to it we actually run into the Cardinal before everyone else saw him!!! it was awesome. Northern Ireland News writes:
Pope Benedict XVI made the announcement at the end of his weekly audience in St Peter's Square, Rome.

Ireland will now have three cardinals for the first time in its history, with Cardinal Cathal Daly and Cardinal Desmond Connell already in the roles.

However, only Dr Brady, the current Archbishop of Armagh, would have a vote in the choice of any new pope.

Dr Brady said he was "deeply honoured and humbled" by the announcement.

"Today's news is a mark of the affection and esteem of the Holy Father for the whole Church in Ireland," he said

So that was awesome!
But i've gotten to the point where i'm finished touring ha ha...i love getting to see all these beautiful places though.
My wonderful mom is currently at the end of her and her chick friends Grand Canyon hiking trip! woo hoo for them! i'm excited to hear about her trip...and i love that i have contact with my family and friend via internet AND phone!

it's hard to remember everything i want to write about...but i will say that now i've got wireless i'll be able to update what i do better...more descriptive.
this evening, Mollie (our 24 year old RD) and i went on a date! it was great! i love her and she's fabulous. and a great friend that i know i'll have for a long time!
Emily, Elizabeth, Luke and maybe Carrie and i are all gettin ready to go to ITALY for FB07! we have 'couchsurfing' accounts, trying to find places to sleep in Rome, Florence and Dublin. Couchsurfing is so awesome and i'm going to participate in it when i get home. You make an account and then type in the place where you want to go, members accounts who are in that area come up and you can read to see if they have a couch you can crash on, how many people they can take, or if they just want to meet people...and it's one of those, 'you crash at my place, we become friends and i'll come crash at your place' worldwide. so that's awesome! and i'm pumped up about just traveling around Italy with my great friends and a backpack for 4 days! yay!
i'm goin to go enjoy some INTERNET! yay
 

two weeks till Fall Break...1/3 of the way finished...flyin by like apple pie

Tollymore Forest day (Saturday) – this is a place that inspired C.S. Lewis in his writings…and believe me…it could inspire the most dense person to write about fairies and imagination things and nature. It seriously was incredibly beautiful. It can’t be described and the pictures give no justice, but it is something that I made sure to snap in my mental memory forever…and I’ve got a good photographic memory.
So over a month down. Only 2/3rds left…piece o’cake…which some cake would be nice. Mollie (our Resident Director, who graduated from JBU a few years ago) her friend Emily flew over here and stayed for a week and we had a great time…AND she turned 24 last Tuesday…SO (bragging time) I made an incredible dinner (thanks to the teachings of my fabulously amazing, can-do-everything mom) and a cake and HOMEMADE icing…oh yeah…it was absolutely phenomenal.
Friday evening the house in between the middle girls house and the boys house had a lot of people in it from Dublin and France. They were all here for windsurfing. They were from the ages of 18 to around 30 and a few of us (I started it) hung outside with them in our back yard talking about life and each other. They just could NOT understand why we were doing a semester in Ireland to study the culture and not drink. It was great to get to spend the whole evening just chillin outside, talking and getting to know about each other’s cultures and life. That is why I’m on this semester study trip.
Rick Ostrander (JBU’s Dean of Education) came on Sunday and left on Tuesday. He came to evaluate the ‘program’. We discussed a lot about living here and our ability to meet people our age, the living arrangements and class work. THEN he went for like a 4 hour bike ride with some of the students…he’s so cool. We played Trival Pursuit (Pop Culture mixed with Millennium edition: yeah we mixed it up a bit) to show him what we do in the evenings instead of the ambiguous homework assignments we get (which I should be doing instead of writing this). He left this morning, sad day for us all…but allows the time to be split up well. This coming weekend Stan McKinnon is coming for another few days…he’ll be here specifically for ‘spiritual emphasis’ week. We’ve got all kinds of things to look forward to from now on. In two weeks (as of tomorrow) is our Fall Break and I’m going to Italy with Emily, Elizabeth, Luke and Carrie…love them! It was kind of a spur of the moment decision, and I know it’ll be great. I’ve got no info on the trip or what we’ll be doing, but when it comes closer I’ll let y’all know. Then after that we are going to Oxford or/and Dublin a few weeks later, then final exams (I guess we’ll have final exams…?) and then a little time with mom cause she’s flying here to spend a little time here! WOO HOO..it’ll fly by. I can’t wait to show someone from home around…especially the most amazing women ever!
We are still trying to figure out internet…which is still ridiculously confusing and hard to get apparently. So I’ll be riding my bike 4 miles to go upload this, send some assignments and emails, and of course check facebook.
OH so we got to experience something special on Sunday. We went to a slightly charismatic church and got to hear speaking in tongues. I actually know the woman who started to pray in tongues, which was even more interesting cause it’s not something I expected at all. An older woman in the very small congregation of about 30 people translated, and I feel it was very focused on God. My church never really has addressed the whole spiritual gifts belief and so I’m open to learning about it, and getting to actually experience a service with that in it was definitely a conversational piece for the next few days within out group.

Well i've got to go but LOVE you all and miss you too!

i'm finished eating

this is a pic of us after we finished the stupidest game of trival pursuit pop culture

I took a bus to Belfast on my own...get OUT of Dundrum and walk Belfast and pretty much immerse myself in the culture.
I stick out like...well an American girl in Northern Ireland.
I know they can all tell that i'm a foreigner

Alright
It's hard getting through to me
I'm truly elusive
I got my own point of view
I am the one of a kind
And I tell you l'il girl
I'm fascinated by you
There's something about you
That makes all the difference
Like the night is to day
Well I can get along without you
But I know that within you
You've got what I'm missing
And I'll find a way

To get reaction to action
Hey, say the word that would thrill me
Yeah, I need reaction to action
Just one look that would kill me
 - Foreigner -

so maybe i'm not a foreigner cause i can't come up with lyrics like that, but it sure is nice to be in a new city and meet new people...i love this experience.

we played trival pursuit pop culture last night...not fun.
we're startin more work...sorta.
it's getting to be perfect weather...warm and cozy.
i love going to Queen's University for class once a week, meet people my age.
i got proposed to by a 20 year old named William. red head. he got on a knee and asked me to marry him because of my accent. love Ireland. i said no.

trying to plan a trip for fall break, but i'm not sure how that's goin to pan out...so if you want to come visit October 24-29 i'm open! it'll be a blast! WOO HOO