Ireland - Part 1

Ok...here is the Ireland blog.  I am super wordy, and I like to detail everything, so this will probably take a few blogs.  I could make it one superblog, but that seems a little much to me.  I should warn everyone reading that I will be writing everything that happened: repeating some immature jokes, detailing European guys, not being able to describe the views as anything other than beautiful, and one major instance of deep thought that could just be me taking myself too seriously. So, if you are brave enough, here goes nothing...

On our way!

The Ireland adventure began late Tuesday night when I began packing for the four-day trip.  I am notoriously bad at packing for even the shortest of trips, and we didn't want to check anything because it would cost more.  That meant for four days, I had my backpack and my purse.  Not easy.  Somehow, though, I made it work. 

Wednesday morning was a whirlwind of making sure I had everything and making sure the room wouldn't somehow catch on fire in the four days I would be gone.  (The more I live on my own, the more I realize just how much I am my mother's daughter.)  Sam's family had been in town for the week, and they were heading with us to the airport so they could catch a plane home.  We met them at the bus station and got on the incredibly crowded bus to Victoria Station in London.  

At this point, I think it is a rule that I must sleep on buses.  I have yet to stay awake on a bus ride that is any longer than 40 minutes.  Once we were at Victoria, we had to wait about 20 minutes for our next bus to Heathrow.  That was a shorter ride, and I was getting a little nervous for the flight, so I managed to stay awake.  At Heathrow, we found our way to our flight's departure to print our boarding passes.  At that point, Sam's family realized they were taking off from a different terminal, so we said a very short goodbye to them before they headed out.

After we had our boarding passes, we headed through security.  I think something about me must scream terrorist or something because I always have something extra done at security.  On the flight from O'Hare, I was pulled out and had to go through the individual x-ray machine.  This time, they took my bag with liquids and said they needed to do an extra test on it.  It only took about 45 seconds to do, so I have no idea what they were testing it for.  

Once we got through security, we found somewhere to eat lunch.  I feel like this shows how much better I have become at flying.  Before our flight to England, I couldn't eat a thing because I was so scared.  This time, we found an amazing little Italian place, and ate lunch before heading to our gate. 

I wasn't sure what to expect for such a short flight, but our airline, bmi, was really nice.  While I have gotten a little better, I am still pretty terrified of flying.  Poor Sam tried to take my mind off it, and she held my hand the entire takeoff.  The flight was fine until we were getting ready for our descent.  It was raining in Ireland, so going down through the clouds caused some turblence.  (If I thought it was bad then, though, it was nothing compared to our flight back.)  I felt much safer and happier when we finally landed on Irish soil :)

We went through customs, and I got a green stamp on my passport :)  We had a little while to wait before our bus picked us up, so we found a little cafe to get something to drink.  I got a hot chocolate that turned out to be the worst thing I have ever had in my life.  I made Sam try it, and she agreed.  I don't know what it was, but it definitely wasn't hot chocolate.

Our bus was very easy to spot.  It was green, of course, with the word PADDYWAGON written down the side.  It took about a half an hour to get to our hostel in the center of Dublin.  Paddy's Palace may not have been the best place, but for a hostel, I've heard it is pretty good.  We stayed in a ten person room that had 5 bunk beds.  Once we checked in and put our things in the room, we left to explore Dublin.  We were only a few minutes from the main road, O'Connell Street.  We walked up and down the street for a while and immediately noticed that the main road has two McDonald's and two Burger Kings.  If that doesn't make you feel at home, I don't know what does :) 

O'Connell Street also has a very large spire in the middle that we were pretty confused about.  It just seemed to be a huge spike on the main road.  It was apparently built to commemorate the millennium, but it wasn't finished until 2003.  The citizens of Dublin are not very impressed with it, and our bus driver was incredibly excited to tell us it has nicknames like: The Stiffy on the Liffey (Liffey is the river that runs through Dublin), The Erection in the Intersection, and the Stiletto in the Ghetto.  The best part was hearing the old man on our tour get a huge kick out of these names :)  The Spire did come in handy, though.  If we ever got turned around, we just needed to walk toward it, and we could always find our way back to the hostel.

As we walked up and down the street, we found a movie theater.  We were pretty tired from the trip, and we knew we weren't up to going out that night, so we figured a movie would be something good to do for our first night in Ireland.  We found a little restaurant to eat dinner, and then we went to see The Social Network.  (GREAT movie by the way. Andrew Garfield is amazing...and British!)  The best part was hearing the Irish accents in the little commercials while we waited for the movie to start :) 

After the movie, we found our way back to the hostel.  One thing about hostels: people go to sleep whenever they want.  That means that if you are staying in a ten-person room, and two people want to go to sleep at 9, you get to try to find your way around in the dark.  It's not always easy when you are trying to get ready for bed and not slam into the bar while getting in the bottom bunk.  (Or, you could just be mean and turn on the lights.  That happened later while we were trying to sleep.)  In the end, though, we were pretty tired.  We went to sleep ready for our bus tour the next day.  

So, that's the end of day one, so I think it's a logical place to stop.  Next blog should be soon!

~Taylor  





Letting Go

I adore this.  If only we could all live like this every day.

I don't know why, but I have dwelled on this all day, and I couldn't sleep until I wrote it out:

I had a great weekend.  I might have had a little too much fun ;) but between the friends, fireworks, and fun, I actually had some moments of realization. 

I was called overprotective this weekend.  Anyone who really knows me knows it's no secret that I am a worrier.  I have to know everything that is going on, weigh every possible outcome of decisions, and have control over everything in my life.  This also tends to cross over into the lives of those around me.  I make no apologies for that.  There have been many instances where that has kept me, and those I love, safe. 

However, looking at it this weekend, I can honestly see how it might also be a negative aspect of my personality.  Not only because worrying about any little thing going wrong makes me an incredibly boring and irritating person.  (That is one major realization I came to, though.)  It really prevents me from having full, honest experiences.  If I am so worried about what is going on around me, I can never appreciate the things I may miss. 

It also has an effect on those around me.  I have been called out for worrying too much, but I have never actually been labeled as overprotective of others until now.  I can honestly say that I hadn't thought about it that way.  By needing to make sure nothing bad happens to my friends, I am possibly keeping them from having experiences that may teach them something.  Sometimes the best lessons in life come from making mistakes.  By trying so hard to keep everyone around me from making any mistakes, I might be robbing them of something they need to learn.  I need to learn to trust that everything will be ok.

In the end, this is hopefully one of the good things I can take away from this experience.  I know being here is changing me, and it has all been for the better.  One of the best parts about this whole trip is being able to look at the different aspects of myself that I need to work on changing.  If I can learn to let go and just let things happen here in a different country where things have a higher probability of going wrong, it will be so much easier to do the same at home.  I can come back a more free, easier going person.

I know a lot of people who will be pleasantly surprised :)

~Taylor   

(I promise the Ireland blog will be up this week sometime. I am just trying to capture everything that happened.)



Election Day!

(Still working on the Ireland blog(s).  Hopefully they will be up later.)

This blog gets a little political at the end, so if you don't like that kind of thing, don't read it.

It's Election Day, and there is no excuse for people to not get out and vote.  After working on a campaign all summer, I am going crazy because I am not around for today.  If I were home I would be going crazy too, but today that ocean seems so much bigger. 

I lived the campaign this summer: Put a ton of miles on my family's cars, walked door to door in 9 different counties, suffered through blistering heat, made thousands of phone calls, had doors slam in my face, had people hang up on me, got yelled at, got barked at, almost got attacked by a chicken, and had the time of my life.  The last one may seem strange in that list, but if there is one thing I learned this summer, it is that I am meant to spend my life in the political field.  It is something I truly connect with.  Today is the culmination of hard work from so many people.  Compared to others, I barely did anything for the campaign.  Today is what we worked for, and I am bummed to have to miss it.

I would not have put in the time this summer if I did not believe in what I was doing.  Senator Demuzio is such an amazing person.  She has done so much for the 49th district, and she needs to be sent back to Springfield for the good of the people. 

Getting one partisan thought out there, we need the Democrats to be victorious today.  I am not the biggest fan of every Democrat on the ticket this year, but compared to the alternatives, the Democrats are the best candidates.  There are some pretty radical and frightening people on the tickets this year, and I fear for our state financially, and especially socially, if they are elected.

There you go.  Political blog.  I was going to go much more in-depth, but I fortunately thought it through before posting the other one.  The main idea I want to get out there today is that everyone needs to vote.

I voted absentee, so I don't have my amazing sticker.  Everyone needs to go and get one for me ok? :)  VOTE!

~Taylor 

Pictures from Ireland

The blog is taking forever to write.  Also, I know a lot of people who read the blog don't have Facebook.  I can't even begin to relay the stories of Ireland without pictures because they tell a lot of the stories themselves.  As a bonus, I put them to music because it is much more fun than just clicking through them on Facebook :)  The first song skips near the end, and that really gets to me, but I guess I just have to deal with it.  I hope you enjoy it!

The whole Ireland blog will take more than one post.  I am trying to get every detail included :)  Look for them tomorrow and later this week!

~Taylor

Three Day Weekend Trip Part 3 - Lacock and Oxford (Harry Potter Day)

(Sorry this is so late and so short.  Ireland blog will be up in the next few days.)

Oxford is amazing :)

After a longer than expected delay, here is the final day of our weekend trip!

If I thought it was hard to wake up on day 2, day 3 was about a thousand times worse.  We were super slow all morning.  Luckily, I had packed almost everything the night before, so after breakfast we grabbed our stuff and headed for the bus. 

We were heading to the village of Lacock to see the Abbey and places filmed in Harry Potter.  It was cold that morning, and after sleeping on the warm bus (of course), it felt even colder.  We headed immediately into the village and got to go inside a barn that hasn't been changed in over 600 years.  The only additions made were a few lights put in so people could see.  Next, we saw the house used in the first Harry Potter movie as Lily and James' house. 

There were other houses there also, and I'm sure the people who live in the town get pretty fed up with tourists taking photos.  I'm also pretty sure the people who live in the next house we saw probably want to move.

This is the Muggle house Horace Slughorn lived in for the Half-Blood Prince.  There was a car parked right beside it, so I assume people live there.  It would be so annoying to have tourists constantly at your gate getting pictures of your house.  It is a beautiful little town, though, so I guess that makes up for all the people.

Next, we went to see Lacock Abbey where more Harry Potter scenes were filmed.  It was a beautiful place, and Sam and I decided to walk further than everyone else to see where the road around the Abbey would lead.  I'm glad we did, because we got a beautiful view of the English countryside.  There was a small church I really wanted to go see, but we would have had to walk on a busy road, and we didn't have enough time.

After Lacock, we headed to Oxford.  The first thing you notice about the town is the architecture.  Every building is absolutely gorgeous.  There are 39 colleges at Oxford, and each has its own buildings.  I don't think there was a mediocre one there.  Walking around, we got to see the library where some Harry Potter scenes were filmed, and we were taken around different areas of the city.  Once the tour was over, we got to go on our own to look around.

We ate lunch at Cornwall's, and I had my first pasty since I've been here :)  It was awesome!  When we were done, we headed to New College where a specific Harry Potter scene was filmed.  We had to walk around a while because we couldn't find it.  I'm glad, though, because the campus was beautiful.  ISU has a nice quad I would say, but this is the Platinum level of a quad.  From the landscaping to the gates, everything was spectacular. 

Eventually, we found the area where the Harry Potter scene was filmed.  You can watch the scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lEb9ZPpJbg&feature=player_embedded .

After taking enough pictures to prove we were there (like the one above), we did a little souvenir shopping, and headed back to the bus.

The trip as a whole was great.  I enjoyed almost every minute of it, and I would definitely recommend it as a great tour for someone who has never been to England before.  I really had a great time!

~Taylor

 

Three Day Weekend Trip Part 2 - Bath

The Roman Baths!

Day 2 of the weekend trip - Saturday in Bath

It was really hard to get up on Saturday.  We were pretty exhausted, and I always think it is hard to wake up in hotels.  We finally dragged ourselves down and had our first real cooked breakfast since we have gotten here.  It was great.  We even grabbed extra croissants on the way back to our room :)  We finished getting ready and headed out to the buses to go to Bath.

Bus ride = nap time.  Always.  So we woke up as we entered the most beautiful city I have ever been in.  Bath is seriously gorgeous.  The city was founded by the Romans in about 40 AD.  Everything has the beautiful old architecture, and looking past the buildings you can see beautiful landscapes.

This was the first picture I took as we headed out for our tour with Andrew.  He is such a great tour guide.  I don't think I could do his job.  He has so much information stored away.  From dates to names to places, he knew everything.  This isn't the only tour he does either.  He has to memorize things about Scotland, France, Belgium, and Germany too.  It's amazing.

He told us about the Romans who founded the city, and apparently, most of them were lazy.  They spent their days at the bath houses just socializing.  The water is full of iron, and they used to drink up to a gallon of it each day because it was thought to have healing powers.  They also had people carry them around in little box-type seats called sedans.  They could literally wake up in the morning and be carried down the stairs and through town to the baths.  I feel sorry for the people who had to actually carry them.  That would be a terrible job.  

After walking around, we headed back toward the actual baths for our tour.  On the way, we passed the Jane Austen center.  She stayed in Bath for a time, so there are a lot of references to her in the town.  We walked up and were taking pictures with her statue outside when a man walked out dressed in 18th century clothes.  Apparently, he was supposed to be Mr. Darcy.  I would have gone along with that if it weren't for the fact that he was about 50 years too old.  Other people started to get pictures with him, so Sam and I decided to also.  That was when we figured out he was probably drunk.  We were deciding how to pose with him and he started yelling out, "Darcy in the middle!"  Then, while we were trying to get a good picture, he kept bending his knees and going down, then rising back up.  The whole time he was saying, "WooooOOOoooo!"  I wish I had asked them to take a video instead of a picture because it was a definite highlight of the day.  Our pictures are so funny because we are laughing really hard in them.

 After that, we finally made it to the Roman Baths.  We had to wait outside the building in a square for a while.  Once we got in, we were each given audio guides to take through with us.  They looked like big cell phones.  For each area, you would type in the number shown and press play.  It would then give you some kind of explanation or history about what you were looking at.  They also had a different number for a kid's version, so Sam and I tried that out.  We loved it so much, we used that version for every one after that.  They were just much more entertaining.

The baths themselves were really interesting.  When we first walked out above them, the view was pretty incredible.  The water was below us, and Bath Cathedral was towering above us. 

I have a ton of pictures from inside also.  A lot of them just look like pictures of old rocks, though.  It is really something you have to experience for yourself.  Standing in the middle of something that dates back almost 2000 years is a really weird feeling.  A few times our audio guides told us to imagine what it was like to be standing in that spot thousands of years ago.  I honestly couldn't, though, because it just seemed so weird.  It was an awesome place.  I really would recommend it to anyone.

After touring the Baths, we headed out to find lunch.  We looked around for a while, but eventually settled on Subway :)  We got to walk around after that and just take in the city.  We found the most amazing fudge shop I have ever been to.  Ironically, it was a company called the San Francisco Fudge Factory.  We saw a sign that said they shipped all over the world, so I may have to look into that.  I decided to go all out.  I got a piece of vanilla fudge on a stick that was dipped in chocolate then rolled in milk and white chocolate chips.  It took me more that one day to eat it, and it was amazing :)

When we finished there, we headed toward the center of the city where we had seen a lot of shops.  They have a great shopping area in Bath, and we spent the rest of our day going from store to store.  One of my favorite parts was when we found a Disney store.  I remember being so upset when the one at the mall was shut down.  We all walked through and got very nostalgic looking at all the stuffed animals.  I was so happy in there that I almost left with a stuffed Simba, but thankfully I talked myself out of it.  (My reasoning was that it was too big, not that I didn't actually need it.)  Disney has changed a little, though.  I had to pretend I didn't see the Hannah Montana merchandise because it was making me angry that it was in there with my Aladdin and Belle.  I want the old Disney back!

After going through a lot of nice stores, we headed back to the bus a little early.  Right next to our meeting place was an old book store that we decided to check out.  I fell in love with it.  There were some new books, but a lot of them were old or used.  The second floor had a room that was incredibly messy and disorganized, but I loved that about it.  It sounded so cliche, but I kept telling everyone that it had character :) 

The buses finally arrived, and we headed back to the hotel (sleeping most of the way of course).  Once we got back, Sam and I were ready to crash.  We didn't even leave the hotel the rest of the night.  We laid in bed, watched more amazing and hilarious British television, and slept.  It was a pretty uneventful night, but it was also really relaxing after two days of tours.

That about sums up day 2, so hopefully tomorrow will be the final blog from the weekend!

~Taylor

Three Day Weekend Trip Part 1 - Windsor and Stonehenge

Windsor Castle

I had an AMAZING time this weekend.  These blogs will be broken up into the three days.  Friday was Windsor and Stonehenge, Saturday was Bath, and Sunday was the village of Lacock and Oxford.  Here is Friday...

We were set to leave at 8:30 in the morning, so I woke up at around 7 to finish packing and get ready.  It was so early for me!  We were split onto two different buses to leave from Augustine House.  It was almost 2 hours to Windsor, so naturally everyone fell asleep.  We woke up just in time to pull into a coach car park.  There we met our tour guide for the weekend.  His name was Andrew and we got to be in his group all weekend.  I didn't know until later, but I was really lucky because he was the best.  He will be there for our trip to the Christmas markets in December, so I am even more excited about that now.

We split the groups, and our group walked toward the Thames River.  When we got there, we were met by a group of birds.  Ducks, swans, and seagulls were all mingling in the water, and they swam right up to us. They even jumped out of the water and walked up right next to us.  I'm sure they thought we had food for them.  Once we walked down a little further, we came upon a huge group of them.  I had never seen so many swans in one place before! 

We walked a little more and came to a bridge that led to Eton College.  Eton College is one of the oldest and most prestigious boys' schools in England.  Most notably, both Prince William and Prince Harry went to school there.  (We could have gone there during lunch, but we were really hungry, so we ate instead.) 

Next, we headed toward Windsor Castle.  As we walked up, we caught the very end of a guard change parade.  We weren't going to be able to go in the Castle, so that was kind of a bummer, but it was good to look at from the outside.  We walked around to the gate and saw the "Long Walk" which is a three-mile long road that the royal family would use for horse riding.  When looking through the gate toward the castle, I finally got a glimpse of a real royal guard.  He had the red suit and fuzzy hat and everything!  After that, we had a break for lunch so naturally we went for fish and chips :) 

After lunch, we had a little time, so we went into a few gift shops.  I didn't plan on getting anything in Windsor, so I was just looking around when Will told me to come look at something.  When I looked at what he was pointing at I freaked out a little bit because it had the Mind the Gap sign on it.  It took me a second to realize it was a thong with the sign on it.  I was tempted to get it because I have been looking everywhere for something that says Mind the Gap, but it was 7 pounds, so I decided not to.  After that, we met up with the group, got back on the bus, and headed for Stonehenge.

The drive was pretty long, so again, everyone fell asleep.  They woke us up when we got close so we could get a first look at it from the bus.  In reality, there is a road that goes directly next to Stonehenge, so people really don't have to pay money to see it close.  They could just take a picture from the road.  Andrew gave us the whole history and background of the monument, so when we were offered audio guides at the site, we didn't take them.  Everyone from ISU brought our study abroad shirts to take a picture with and send back to the International Studies Office.  We all decided Stonehenge would be a good place for a picture so we all took off our jackets and took pictures in the freezing cold in our very obvious American shirts.  It was the most "touristy" I have felt the entire time I have been here.  The pictures did turn out pretty good though, so I'm happy we did it.  Hopefully we end up on an International Studies poster or something :)

As for the monument...it was a little underwhelming.  I understand there is a lot of history behind it and everything.  It's a really famous place that I have seen pictures of, so it was cool to get my picture with it.  In the end, though, it is really just a group of rocks.  All there was to do was walk around and take pictures from different angles.  Still, no matter what the angle, they were still a bunch of rocks.  We walked around, took a bunch of pictures, and headed to the gift shop.  For a really famous landmark, their gift shop was super tiny, and when we all crammed in there, it was packed.  I decided not to get anything there, and we just headed back to the bus.

We headed to our hotel (asleep for the ride of course) and got there in the evening.  Sam and I were one of the first ones to get our room key, so we headed up to our room.  We were really excited to sleep in different beds for a couple nights.  When we got in the room, we had one minor issue - we couldn't turn the lights on.  We had a little box for our card key where the light switch was, so we tried putting the key in a few different ways, but nothing was working.  Finally, after giving up and asking Will what to do, we realized we hadn't pushed the key in far enough.  We had to leave the key in the lights whenever we wanted them on. 

The rooms were really nice, but the hotel was in the middle of nowhere really.  There was one restaurant, a McDonalds, and a Sainsbury's (like Wal-Mart).  We went to dinner at the restaurant then headed to Sainsbury's for drinks and snacks.  After that, Sam and I spent the rest of the night watching British television in our room.  We were pretty exhausted, so hanging out in pajamas and watching TV was great.  British TV is pretty awesome.  We found a channel with a lot of game shows that were really fun.  We were trying to decide when to go to bed when the announcer said the next show was about Mumford and Sons.  That made our decision for us because there was no way we were going to miss that.  (Seriously, if you haven't checked them out yet, you NEED to.  They are absolutely amazing.)  Once that was over, we realized how early we had to get up the next day, so we crashed.

Well, that's Friday.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get up a blog about our Saturday in the beautiful city of Bath!

Night!

~Taylor