In celebration of my 6 month anniversary I have put some Ireland pictures up for in. I have some more of get-togethers and Hogmanay and random pictures of people that I shall put up in the near future.

Ireland update. What a great trip. Of course. Pictures will follow because I took my film camera so have to mooch pics off my mate. I'm too tired to write in complete sentences so I apologize. It's annoying how only a few days have passed but I've forgotten much of the detail and small funny stories. I promise I'll write more if I remember them later.

Wednesday morning all 5 of us flew out to Dublin (the other 2 were meeting up with us that night). We spent about an hour standing in wrong lines at the airport but other than that it was all good. No sketchy landings this Ryanair flight. The lot of us were going to be crashing at our friends friends flat. Here's a funny beforehand story. We get a forward from this girl who's place we were staying it. It was basically an itinerary/list of rules for the time we would be there. I found it hard to believe that someone actually expected us to take it to heart. I have included some of my favourite parts just because it is so hard to believe. Rule number 1 - there will be no yelling, screaming, swearing, fighting or anything else unpleasant while anywhere in the apartment block. 3 if it looks breakable or valuable don't touch it. Etc.. Plus they sent us a list of what we were allowed to bring. I can understand some nervousness since there were 14 people sleeping on the floor of a 2 bedroom flat but come on! Anyway. Turns out she was mostly taking the piss. Which was good. Back to the trip. Wednesday we went out to do a little sightseeing, saw the Christchurch cathedral and then I got a migraine to that was that for me.

Thursday. I had wanted to take half a day and go hiking out in one of the towns surrounding Dublin. Everyone else decided that it was a good idea (I got nominated for the best ideas award at the end of the trip because all my suggestions kicked ass) so we all headed out to Howth. It was a cute little town right on the sea. And the views were wonderful. As for weather it would rain for 5 minutes, then be sunny, then all of a sudden it was a snowstorm. It did this the entire day. We hiked around the town, then out to the lighthouse where we nearly all got drowned by a huge stray wave. I fell down some stairs and was then soaked for the rest of the day. Ha ha. We then took to the hills and walked up around the cliffs. On the way we picked up a cute old golden retriever who was our pal for a while. The boys freaked us girls out by climbing down part of the cliff (while it was snowstorming) but no one died and it was all good fun. We spend the rest of the afternoon warming up with hot chocolate and cake in the local cafe. That night we hit up a local pub and I had my first pint of Irish Guinness.

Friday was St. Patty's day. Let me say there is no better place to spend it than Dublin. I enjoy the fact that I was lucky enough to be in Ireland then. It's really neat to think about all I'm getting the opportunity to experience. But I digress. The day started with the parade in city centre. We all wore green and painted our faces and acted like dorks and it was great. The parade itself was ok - too many marching bands for my liking - but they had some very creative and sometimes slightly disturbing costumes. We ended up leaving early because all our toes were frozen in our cons. The rest of the day was set aside for pub crawling. The girls left us at like 2 in the afternoon so I spent the day with the boys. Which apparently I am one of. Not sure if being one of the boys is a good thing or not. We found a really neat (I almost typed in Irish) pub to spend the afternoon in. Met some neat people, and ran into our friend from Edinburgh. There's not much to say about the day other than it was one of lots of beer, listening to Irish music, and meeting lots of new people. I held my own too and didn't get really drunk and act like a fool until the end of the night (which was like midnight because we'd been drinking all day). Oh and we went to a Mackers and everyone was drunk and we saw a fight with the security guard. Which I guess isn't that exciting.

Saturday, by some chance, none of us were hungover. All a little sore from cramming 13 people and 1 random into a tiny room but it was all good. We walked around Dublin a little bit, including the Ha'penny bridge, and did some shopping. Pretty low key. That evening Jen and I went to theGuinnesss brewery. It was great fun and we were so tired and giddy that everything was hilarious. We even tasted some barley along the way that we weren't sure we were even supposed to eat. Yes. Anyway it was neat to see the process. We headed up the elevator to the top floor to get our free pint. The gravity bar was the most amazing one I've even been in. The elevator doors open and you're greeted with a rush of Irish music and a beautiful view. There is a 360 degree view of the whole city below you and the walls are all glass. Jen and I sat there (on the floor since there were not seats), drank our Guinness, and were like ' man this is the coolest thing ever'. I can't remember what we did that night but it probably involved drinking. Oh yes - I think we went out onto the rooftop in the apartment buildings we were staying in.

Sunday. Headed up to Northern Ireland for a few days with Jesse and Matt(2). Got slightly lost on the way to the bus station (after the boys told me I couldn't be in charge of the map because I was a woman and my brain was 30% smaller than theirs) and we had to run to the bus. We literally jumped on it JUST as it drove away. We had a few bouts of good luck along the trip. This was one of them. We arrived in Belfast and decided to do a Black Cab Tour. It was about an hour and a half and really interesting. Our tour guide took us around to all the political murals in the city and gave us a good background on the religious history of the city. We got to see the 'peace wall' and the gates between the Catholic and the Protestant sides. It was surreal how high these walls were, and how much barbed wire was everywhere. On one of the murals it said 'Only in death, is man truly not at war'. There was an opportunity to write a message on a section of the peace wall but none of us felt we had the right too. Plus a guy we met in the hostel said that the day before some residents had thrown stones at him while he was writing. The entire tour was very sobering and the three of us kind of sat around a pint afterwards and thought about it. I feel quite lucky not to have to worry about that in my everyday life. There was one church that had a big sign saying 'The church of god' and was completely covered with barbed wire. When Matt commented on it back in the cab our tour guide said 'well they need to protect it' - like it was just common sense. Shows the huge lifestyle difference.

That night we went out to the Crown Saloon Bar. There were mosaics on the outside of the pub, and inside it was set up in little booths that came from the time where woman were not allowed to drink in public. You had to press a little button and someone would bring a drink to you. Also in front of the door there is a crown on the ground. Depending on your loyalties you either stepped on, or around the crown. But being the dorks that we are, we totally missed it and none of us could remember if we had walked over it or not. None of the locals seemed mad though so we must have done the right thing.

This post is turning into an essay. Only one more day to go. The best one too.

Monday. Giant's causeway. The top thing on my 'list of things to see in Ireland'. Another stroke of luck was when we were standing in line and I got the last ticket for the day-long tour. The boys were behind me so I said I wasn't going without them and the lady let all three of us on. Woot. Our tour guide for the day was a funny, short, Irish guy. We took the coast road up Northern Ireland. I have fallen in love with small Irish towns. I want to live there. There are hills, and cliffs, and water, and baby lambs everywhere. Such a pretty place. Plus it's really cheap to live there. A house will cost you £30 000 and a whole ton of land about £ 40 000. That's nothing! In Edinburgh you have to pay half a million to get a crappy house. I'm considering now doing that in the summer instead of England - or perhaps I'll wait and do the other coast of Ireland on my VISA. I digress again.

After a few towns, we arrived at the Carrick-a-Rede bridge. This is a rope bridge about 80 feet above the water connecting the mainland to a little island. The views there are absolutely beautiful, and walking across the bridge is a bit of a rush. Sort of like high ropes. The scenery was so lovely though (I'm excited about posting pictures of it soon). The boys found it kind of scary since they're both over 6'6 and it was hard for them to reach the handles. Ha ha. After this we headed to the Bushmills distillery- the oldest whiskey distillery in the world. Interesting enough even for a non whiskey drinker and the smells were something. But then we got to taste the whiskey. I tasted a shot of whiskey that would cost 1100 dollars to buy! That's the most expensive thing that will even be in my mouth. It was good too. Didn't make me want to gag. Ha ha. So classy.

Then came the Giant's causeway. We got there late because all the old people on the tour got excited about the Bushmills gift shop so Jesse and I were ready to kick all their asses on the bus ride over. We walked around the cliffs above the causeway and then went down and played on the rocks. In case you don't know what it is, the Causeway is a huge area hexagonal basalt columns that were formed from volcanic activity and rapid cooling of the lava. They look like huge stepping stones. Surrounding these rocks there are beautiful cliffs and now what I know as typical Ireland scenery. I just loved it there. We gallivanted around for a few hours until we realized we were late and therefore holding up the bus. Oops. Take that old people who like shopping.

That's pretty much the trip. We took a whole load of buses then and a flight and got 30 minutes of sleep that night so of course I didn't make it into work like I said I would. I'm sorry this was so terribly long - mostly I like reminding myself about the trip. It was a great one.

IT'S BLIZZARDING!!!