Turn her down the Rocky Road

Location: Killiney, Republic of Ireland

Ireland is literally my favorite place on earth. The cafe I'm in right now doesn't allow USB access so I can't upload my pictures, but when I do, you'll see what I mean.

Dublin is such a great city. There was so much character and so much to see. I went to a couple different churches, my favorite being St. Patrick's Cathedral. Even though it was under construction, it was absolutely breathtaking. It had this great little park behind the church with some great fountains and a wall devoted to famous Irish literaries. I sat there for quite a while and managed to get some great pictures of the fountain with the sunrise in the background as well as the cathedral which was very medieval. After this, I walked to the Guinness brewery which I didn't have time to go into, but I did down a Guinness real quick and move on. I went to another great church in the middle of nowhere called St. Augustine & St. John's. It was a Catholic church and it was HUGE. Right in the middle of this little residential neighborhood.

After that, I went by the Jamison Whiskey distillery (thanks fo rthat newspaper article about that dad) and then to what I thought was the Dublin Castle. I'm not exactly sure what it was but, it wasn't the Dublin Castle. It was still beautiful though and had a nice park as well that a bunch of people were sitting in reading the newspaper and what not.

After this, I went down to Mary Street where the main shopping area is. It's kind of like a 6th street of shopping. They have the street blocked off for most of the day so people can walk accross it while they're shopping. There are vendors in the streets with their little booths selling fruits and sweaters and blankets and homemade toys. Anything you can think of. All I bought was a sandwich (a sweet corn, chicken and cheddar cheese toastie :) cute name... I thought it sounded interesting so I tried it, it was wonderful!!) Right in the middle of the center is this HUGE spear thing. It looks like a 50 story flag pole. I can't even begin to guess how tall it is, but it is literally the tallest thing in the entire city. I believe it's called the Spire. The base of it is about as big as a car and it just gets smaller and smaller until it goes to a point at the top. Not really sure what the purpose is, but it sure does look cool!! :)

After this, as advice from the the hostel owner. I got on a train to go to Bray. It's this small coastal town south of dublin and I really wanted to get out of the city and see some country side. He had told me it was about a 30 minute train ride, and I had mapped out my timing based on this so when I had been on the train for 40 minutes, I started to get worried. Suddenly, we rounded a corner and there was the beautiful beach. I didn't know where I was, but I just got off. Turns out I was in this tiny little town called Killiney. I went through the town a little and then went down to the beach. The weather was fantastic (it was 10 degrees C which I'm not sure exactly what that translates to, but I do know that it was -3 in Liverpool yesterday, so this feels like summertime). The beach was all polished pebbles and the sun was setting over the mountains. I sat there for a good 30 minutes watching the locals walking down the beach and playing with a couple of dogs that were running with their owners.

After this, I went back to Dublin, visited Trinity college and then picked up my bag at the hostel and headed to the airport. My plane was delayed slightly, but I got in just in time to run into Kimmie and Mike heading to my hostel to meet me. I dropped off my bag and then we went and had a beer and watched the first half of the Liverpool vs. Chelsea football game which was really fun. It felt so good to have some meaningful conversation. Afterwards we went to this cute little Chinese restaurant that Mike really loved from when he was a kid and it was so much different from what I was used to. We had fried duck which was AMAZING. They were so great to take me out and I was so glad to see them.

After that we just walked home (since all the bars were closed at 11... so interesting... and people were okay with it?). The hostel I stayed at last night was wonderful. The rooms were much smaller, I just shared with three other girls and we had our own bathroom. The girls were all asleep by the time I got home and had left when I woke up so I never got to chat with them. But I'm not sure either, that they spoke any English. They were all from China (atleast that's what the cute guy at the front desk told me :)

Alright, it's off for another day in Liverpool. The family comes in tonight!! I'm so excited and I'm sure I'll have much to update about tonight.

XOXO

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Now playing: Michael Bublé - How Sweet It Is
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Sweet Emerald Isle that I love so well

Location: Dublin, Republic of Ireland

The flight to Dublin was lovely. I flew on this airline called RyanAir (the ticket cost me $35 round trip from Liverpool to Dublin). If you had taken a plane out of the 1970's and replaced the one I rode on today (crew and all), I may have not noticed. The plane was neon yellow inside with bright blue plastic seats. There were no tray tables, no reclining seats, no seat back pockets... they were just chairs bolted into a plane. The flight attendants had on these lime green jumper things. There were also advertisements all over everything. Vodka ads on the overhead bins, hertz ads on the backs of every seat. It was a really interesting experience.

The flight itself was great. Ireland is literally, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The countryside is this color of green that I would have claimed was fake if I had not seen it myself. The hills rolled forever, it seemed and every once and a while, we'd fly over a farm with a HUGE cottage house and dairy cows or sheep dotting the pasture. Amazing. Once I got into town, it was almost dark. The traffic was out of control (trying to navigate downtown Dublin in 5 o'clock traffic was not fun). I'm going to just call it a night for now. Take a much needed shower (I've never wanted one so bad) and get up early to go look at the stuff around here. We're literally within 100 yards of the Dublin Castle, some huge church and the Guinness museum and brew house. Yum :)

XOXO

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Not such a good day sunshine, not much sunshine at all...

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I'm having a panic attack...

This is way more than I had anticipated. I need you to pep talk me and tell me to suck it up and finish this out. I'm exhausted, depressed, lonely, cold and did I mention exhausted?

:(

I need more sad faces. My eyes are closing too. I'm SOOOO freaking tired, and cold. Mostly cold... the cold keeps me a little more awake. I sat and waited for that stupid internet cafe to open up this morning for nothing. I sat on a freezing cold bench and ate buttery yummy toast that I hardly could taste because I was so cold. I am going to crash.

I'm obviously delirious.

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Now playing: Ben Harper - Whipping Boy
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Good day sunshine

Location: Liverpool, England, UK

I am exhausted. My bus got in at about 6 AM this morning. I sat in the station and read until the sun came up (at about 8:30) and then I walked to the main square in Liverpool. The architecture is beautiful, and as soon as I am updating from a non-library computer, I will upload pictures. These buildings are HUGE!! I'm currently in one of them (the Central Library) and it's much less impressive from the inside. There's a student dormitory that I can see from here though, that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like a castle.

I spent the next couple of hours waiting for the "internet cafe" in town to open up (it didn't have a set time, it's just whenver the guy showed up). After waiting (and freezing) for a little shy of 2 hours, they finally opened and unfortunately... have no computers; just wi-fi. So I hiked to the library and here I am!! Unfortunately, Kimmie has not been getting my emails (I assume) because she never called me about doing lunch today. I guess I'll just have to wait until Thursday to catch up with her.

I'm a little down today. I can't figure out if I'm just tired from jet-lag or if I'm really freaking out, but I'm definitely looking forward to being in Dublin tonight in an actual bed. Hopefully there will be a pub in the hostel so I don't have to go far. I have to atleast have one beer while I'm there!! Hopefully another update tonight.

XOXO

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Now playing: Elton John - Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting
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I've been to Europe

Location: London, England, UK

Yay!! My first official post on foreign turf. Today was EXTREMELY eventful and I am thoroughly exhausted. I still have a little over 3 hours to kill until my bus leaves, so I have plenty of time to catch up. I uploaded some of my pictures from today into an album. I've decided that to save time, and my sanity, I'm only going to upload a select few pictures onto the blog for each day. To put it into perspective, I posted 12 pictures and I took 79. I'll save you the trouble of redundancy.

So today started at about 11:00 when I got through customs at Gatwick airport. I took at train into London and wandered about aimlessly for about 30 minutes, completely overwhelmed by the Victoria train station. I finally managed to figure out that I would need to take a bus to the Waterloo station to catch the train to Windsor and that the castle closed at 3. So I had to hurry. I took the bus a couple of blocks and thought I needed to get off, but ended up in the wrong place. I stumbled upon Westminster Abbey and the Parliament building so I walked around and took some pics before heading back towards the bus stop. I found the train station and took the hour long train ride across the country. I made some realizations about how incredibly tiring this trip is going to be. We arrived at Windsor/Eton Riverside station where I walked up a huge hill and into the castle at about 5 til 3. The ticket man let me in and said that they usually didn't start kicking people out til about 4:30 so I had a decent amount of time to trek.

There were almost no people there. I talked to a tour man who was sitting alone and he informed me that most of the pictures I got usually have about 300 people in the foreground. I thought it was the perfect way to see the castle. I could really picture royalty walking around and being... well... royal. It was so quiet and the only noises were cute little British cop men chatting about things. Once inside the castle, there really wasn't much to see except walls and towers. St. George's Chapel was absolutely stunning. I literally cried when I walked inside. I guess it's a first timer's kind of experience but I really had never seen something so intricate. The wood carving, stained glass and beautiful marble tombs were breathtaking. After that I sat on a wall and ate a Tuna sandwich and watched tourist kids take their pictures with the guard and try to make him come out of character. After they left, he coughed, which I thought was really funny, and I laughed and I swear he winked at me. Haha... oh the things that entertain you when you're alone.

After that, I took the hour train back to London and met a nice man who kept me company. He actually had a very funny story and told me that the only time he had been to the states was when he studied abroad in college... And of all places, he studied in Madison, Wisconsin... strange. He said he loved it though. I guess anything new can be fascinating.

Once I got home, I got back on the bus to head back to Victoria station (because that's where my bus leaves, and I wanted to be close to here). I missed my stop and assumed that the bus ran in a circle. WRONG!! About 40 minutes later, I was in some town past Chelsea. So I had to get off, and get on a new train which took me back into town. Yikes!! Lesson #1: Do not assume that you know what's going on with busses.

I'm back in London now, about to go grab something to eat and possibly see if I can find a sports bar. Apparently, Chelsea has a football game tonight so I'm going to see if I can watch.

XOXO

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California... Here I COME!!!

Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

So LA has been fabulous. Tuesday and Wednesday, me and Emma drove around and looked at apartments. We went to the BCBG offices to look at where she is going to work and I took her to Santa Monica and Hollywood to show her the sights. Tuesday night we went to dinner at this cute restaurant called Ketchup where we had some wonderful truffle and crab meat macaroni and cheese. It was amazing!! We also made an appearance at Les Deux and Winston's. We met some great people and I can't wait until we get to move out here in June!!

The Christmas party for EDSG was fantastic as well. We went to a really nice restaurant in Laguna called Mastro's Ocean Grill and the food was WONDERFUL. We had a nice gift exchange and ate a ton of food. Of course the company was great as well :)

I'm currently back in Westwood at Katy's apartment. We're about to go see Juno and eat some Mexican food (my last for a LONG time). I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow. I still feel like I have so much to catch up on before I get there!!

I won't be updating tomorrow (most likely) because I will just be flying all day. My plane leaves at noon and arrives in London on Monday morning at 9 AM. I'll do my best to make an update then or at least that night. Yay!!

XOXO

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Am I really done with school?

Location: Austin, TX, USA

It's official. I am a college graduate. Not really sure how that happened. The family all got in town on Friday evening and the fun never really stopped. We had dinner at El Mercado then downtown on Friday. At midnight, we saw Master Pancake Theatre's "Home Alone" at Alamo Drafthouse. If you haven't been, it's this great event where they show a movie and three comedians get up and make jokes through the whole thing. It's great. Soooo much fun.

Saturday, we ate lunch at Cain and Abels (of course) and then took the van on a driving tour around Austin. We went through campus, down 6th, SoCo, Zilker Park, Town Lake, Lake Austin, the 360 bridge and ended at Barton Creek. Afterwards, we went to Salt Lick with a bunch of girls and the family. Downtown naturally followed.

Sunday started very early with commencement beginning at 10. The ceremony was nice (a little long and dull; expected). I realized how much I'm going to miss my little MIS clique. When we were standing in the setup room before the ceremony, we were all talking about this and that and it's going to be sad to not have them around anymore. As we sat through the ceremony, chatting and being immature, it hit me that we're actually done. Yikes.

After the ceremony, we headed to Trudy's for a little brunch before everyone left. The ice storms worried us a little so the family headed out pretty early to try and get home before dark.

Today, I took my last final, ever. I took it early so that I can head out to LA and so it was a one on one test in a classroom with my professor. We chatted throughout and it didn't even really seem like a test. I coasted my way out of school, that is for sure.

Everything is falling into it's correct place. I can't wait until tomorrow!!

XOXO

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Now playing: Bob Schneider - I'm Good Now
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Preparations really begin

Location: Austin, TX, USA

I'm back in Austin, about to start my last week here before my trip. Graduation is in 11 days which means LA starts in 13. I am so excited to get started. Things have been pretty calm around here. We've been spending a lot of time going out. Tonight was me, Sarah, Savannah and Lauren's last Wednesday night dinner in college. We went to Uchi and finished our 4 year tradition off right. It was fantastic.

This weekend should be very relaxing and finals next week will be relatively laid back. As far as Europe plans are concerned, I'm having to spend a decent amount of time rearranging plans now that my family is coming to London for Christmas. I think I'm going to leave for Liverpool a day early now so that I can definitely make my ship to Dublin for the day. I just have to figure out how to make an international call and I'm not having any luck as of now. I also sent my chaps and boots to Spain yesterday so that they will be there when I get there. I think I'm looking forward to that part of the trip the most.

XOXO

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