Catching up.

Hey everyone!

This past week has been an extremely full one as you will soon see! Although we haven't had a lot of class since the professor teaching our history course left on Tuesday, we've done a lot of traveling and site-seeing! It's crazy to think we've only been here two weeks in light of all we've seen and done, but at the same time I feel like I'm not quite (but just about) adjusted to being here. I think it's almost sunk in...

Anyway, I better not ramble much more because I have LOTS of pictures to talk about!!

This is Newgrange. It was built around 3200 BC, predating the Pyramids of Giza! It is called a passage tomb and when it was discovered it had the bones of five people inside on stones that together weighed 200,000 tonnes!!! We got to go inside. It was quite small and the entry passage had a low ceiling and was very narrow. The most interesting thing about the place is that on the winter solstice the sun lines up perfectly with the front opening and illuminates the entry and back to the far stone inside! The speculation is that this was because they worshiped the sun god and perhaps they thought the light would come in and take the souls of the corpses out of the darkness.

The stones used for the walls were quartz and limestone. The builders would have had to carry them from 30-50 km away!

This is a nearby smaller tomb room (and cute sheep in the background).

The design of three spirals showed up many places on and in Newgrange. They really don't know what it symbolizes and only speculate...

We also visited a site called Monasterboice. I was like a mini Glendalough and contained the tallest Celtic cross in Ireland. It depicts Biblical scenes. Maybe you can figure out which ones.

This bottom picture we were told shows the monks' sense of humor... it's two old men pulling one another's beards.

This is free porridge served every weekday morning at a local cafe and organic market called The Happy Pear. (The granola cost 1 euro :)

This picture has an interesting story behind it. My new friend Deanna, my friend Kayleigh, and I rode the DART back from Dublin one night. A curly redheaded man across from us randomly jumped in our conversation in the middle of it to give us travel advice and then ended up moving over by us to talk with us the rest of the way to Greystones. He was a brilliant recent graduate from Trinity in Dublin and VERY interesting to talk to (although much of what he said was over my head!) Anyway, he told us about a secret garden in Trinity. He claimed most people go through their time there without ever knowing about it. So, I asked him to draw us a map of how to get there and he did! This is the map on the back of a receipt. We enjoyed our adventurous search for it a couple of days ago, but sadly we couldn't find it! We think maybe it has since been gated off as we came to a few locked fences in our search. Also, this map isn't exactly very ornate.. :)

This is my first glimpse of Blarney Castle! This was the beginning of our first road trip of three days to Western Ireland.

This is us in the dungeon :) We had fun climbing through caves around and under the castle.

We got to climb through the castle. It was SO cool!! It wasn't furnished inside or anything, just stone. But it was pretty surreal and some of the room descriptions were pretty interesting!

This is me kissing the Blarney Stone. The legend behind it is that a king with a speech impediment saved a witch's life so she had him kiss this stone and it cured his speech impediment and made him eloquent. I've no idea where the laying on your back and kissing it upside down over thin air while a man helps you not fall came from, but it was an experience! Rest assured, he did have a spray bottle of sanitizer next to him, so the thousands of other kisses' germs were at least dead.

When we got to the top there was a rainbow! This was one of three I saw that day. :)

This is the view from the top of the castle of a nearby mansion...

This is the mansion up close. Unfortunately we couldn't go inside! We tried knocking on the door but we were ignored.

The next day we went to Muckross House (this mansion). It was beautiful on the outside but even more so on the inside. Sadly we weren't allowed to take pictures on the inside, though. I felt like I was in a Jane Austen book setting! I could've spent hours in it but we were hurried along by a tour guide. All the decorations are still in it from when it was lived in. Queen Victoria had visited there so lots of the ornate and expensive decor had been for her (it actually brought its owners to financial crisis when they tried to get it ready for her). It had canopy beds and bells in the rooms that went down to the basement to call the servants, just like in Cinderella!

Next we drove to the Gap of Dunloe and partially hiked it. It was very cold and we were all quite exhausted... I wished this was the only thing we had that day because these pictures don't do it justice, it was incredible! We were surrounded by mountains and green pastures and came across streams and a stone bridge and were passed by horse and carriages...

The next day we just did a lot of driving along the coast and stopped along the way to get out and take in the view. Again, it was breathtaking. I don't have enough words to describe the beauty of all the places I see! They're all so unique but all unlike anything I've seen before.

The roads we were on made me scared to death. I literally looked straight down the cliffs to the water from my side of the bus and the only thing between us and the edge were this wimpy fences... yikes.

This is my new friend Deanna (pronounced Dee-Anna). She's an art major from Westmont in California. She's amazing and we're quickly becoming good friends!!! I'm so thankful.

We got to walk down these stairs to an isolated rocky beach...

These boats were there and lots of lobster cages but no people.

Here we stopped to hike. I had no clue we'd be hiking that day and it turned out to be the most difficult climb of my life thus far... It doesn't look bad, right? Wrong. It was quite treacherous with thorn bushes we had to walk through and rocks to climb. I got scraped up but miraculously no one got injured. It was quite an adventure!

This is my view of the bus we came from. Again, this looks so easy! It's so deceiving!

Finally, this is an oratory we stopped quickly to see.

I guess this is a little cemetery?

I am amazed again and again by the variety of beauty just here in this one country!

This week will be a big change from our constant traveling. It will mostly be a reading week with discussions over our history book. We will also begin our Irish Drum and Dance classes which I'm really looking forward to!

I should also update you on Turkey! The family search is in progress. I am hopefully going to be Skyping with the Turkey coordinator on Tuesday. She has some more questions for me, I have some for her, and she's going to give me more Turkey-specific details. I'm hoping she may have some prospective families to tell me about, but who knows! One thing I would ask for prayer for is for the dates I'm going to be there. I originally planned to go around May 24 (that would give me 2 weeks after my Ireland semester to travel Europe before flying over) and to then go home around August 16 which would give me about a week and a half at home before going back to Taylor. However, my Turkey contact told me the summer vacation for the kids is from mid-June to the second week of September. I can still go at the end of May, but they may want me to stay longer, which would mean I'd have hardly any time at home after being gone 7 months before going back to Taylor. I'm trusting the Lord to work this out, because He knows what I can handle and what I need way better than I do. I'll just feel better when all the details are in place.

All my love!