LAST DAY IN IRELAND!

As I write this blog I am feeling overwhelming excitement. I feel like I could jump out of my skin, partly because I just had a latte and a huge rice krispie treat with chocolate on top, but more because I absolutely cannot wait to come home tomorrow.

This has been THE experience of a lifetime, and I would not take it back for anything. I have learned so much while I have been here. I have learned to be more independent and confident. I have learned to just go for things, although I may not know the outcome. I feel like I am so much more willing to step outside of my comfort zone and take risks now. Although I had Stephanie here with me, there was so much time I was alone. I am usually very much a people-person and get very bored while I am alone, but this experience has helped me to cherish a quiet moment and to use this time to relax and reflect instead of thinking of the next thing to be accomplished.

I have seen SO many beautiful things here, and I have met people who are kind, loving, and caring- people whom I will never forget. As my Uncle Jeff put it, "What a great time and such a beautiful country to top it off, an unbelievable ring as well. A trip of a lifetime." I will never forget how much this experience has done for me, and I am infinitely grateful that I have been able to take a chance that many people don't get.

But with all these things being said, the most important thing I have learned here is how important my home is- most importantly my friends and family. "Home is where the heart is" is now one of my new favorite quotes. I have realized how much I take for granted the daily comforts of life; such as small things like being able to hop in the car and run a quick errand, to bigger things like feeling safe, and having friends and family who love and care for me. I have a greater appreciation now for my immediate surroundings, even if they happen to be on flat ground with not much to see. Although green grass, mountains, and sea are beautiful to be surrounded by, family and friends are without a doubt the more beautiful things in life.

With this being said, I cannot wait to get home and catch up with the people I love. I am thrilled to begin planning a wedding with Andrew, and to start a new chapter of my life. I can't wait to walk my dogs, start working again, sit on the couch with friends while being unproductive, and to just live a normal life again. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read my blog, and comfort me during my homesick moments. I love you all!

Indiana, sin anall liom!

Which is Irish for:

Indiana, here I come :)

Sunday, May 23

I'm just now getting ready to go to bed for my "first to last sleep" here in Ireland.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. Hayley and I spent a day together. We went into Dublin and did some shopping, then we took the Luas (Louis) which is a tram into a place called Dundrum. There's a really big shopping center there, and a movie theater. We saw The Last Song together. It was a nice day. I'm glad to have gotten to spend a whole day with her before I leave.

Today was SO warm. It was 72 degrees! I have not felt sun actually beating down on me in "ages!" It was so enjoyable to just sit outside on the patio and eat breakfast and read. Diane did some garden work while I basked in the sun. Hayley and I also played a little "swing ball" which is sort of like tether ball, but the ball is a tennis ball and you use rackets to hit it. We also played some Hangman Deluxe which was "grand." She also helped me pack up all my things to go home, and she helped me weigh it to make sure I wasn't overweight.

At 6 we headed over to John and Nola's to have a dinner for Steph's family! Her parents and sister arrived yesterday to spend a week with her. It was a really great time, it's nice to be around people from Indiana!! AHH!

Tomorrow I am going to Hayley's school to spend the day. Diane works there as well. I think I'm just going to observe for the day. Then I'm going to Catherine's to have tea and say goodbye. Then I'll be going to bed for my last sleep in Ireland :)

Home on Tuesday night!!! And I will NOT be stuck by the volcano again this time.. I will NOT. I have been checking a website that shows which areas are affected daily, and for the past few days the only countries affected have been Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Volcano Eyjafjallajokull will not bring me down!

Last Day at Kill O' the Grange

Today was the best last day I could have had. I spent the day in fifth class, which is the class I have spent the most amount of time with. My Indiana students wrote them letters which arrived to Ireland this weekend. The fifth class students were able to write them back today, so that was fun. All the teachers were very kind to me and told me I would be missed. I didn't realized I would be so sad to leave, but I really will miss it. The fifth class students had a really big card for me, and one student even gave me a CD with a powerpoint on it. The powerpoint had several slides that said she would miss me, she enjoyed having me at Kill, etc. I was so touched that she would take the effort to do something like that. The most special thing about it was that I actually taught fifth class how to do powerpoints, so she was able to use something I taught her to do something special for me.

I want to share this cute comment. Yesterday was my last day with Senior Infants, so Mrs. Richards told them all I would be leaving. One boy gave me a very concerned look and said, "But what if your family doesn't recognize you when you go home?" Such cute things run through kids' minds, I love it.

After school I stuck around for a while to talk to all the teachers and to have one last tea in the staff room. Catherine took me home, as usual, and we ran by Tesco (the grocery store) on the way home. We were walking by the ice cream aisle and she was craving some, so we picked out a box of ice cream bars and shared some on the way home. She said she would like to go for coffee sometime before I leave so we can say a formal goodbye. I will miss her so much, she is so kind to me.

Now I am just reading and hanging out at the house before I go to a dinner for the teachers tonight. There is an appreciation dinner being put on by the PTA at the school, and any teacher who has been involved in the school during the past year is invited. Parents are invited too, so it will be nice to meet some of them.

This weekend will be fun. I am going to spend the day with Hayley tomorrow. Steph's family is arriving to spend a week here tomorrow, so my host family and Steph's are planning a dinner for Sunday night. I can't wait!

Wall Mural

Today was a nice day. Tomorrow is my last day at the school! It seems so crazy that I have been here for almost 10 full weeks.. it's all coming to a close!

I mentioned the wall mural Kill O' the Grange did a couple weeks ago, but I never showed a picture of it. Each student painted their own square then signed the bottom.

Some of 6th Class's works of art.

5th class girls working hard.

A mini beast from a Junior Infant!

The finished product.

It's kind of hard to see because it's so small, but if you click on the pictures they should enlarge.

Junior infants did the fish at the bottom

Senior infants did "mini beasts" which are the insects

1st class did the people with the red background

2nd class did the buildings with the orange background

3rd class did the vehicles with the gray background

4th class did the animals with the green grass background

5th class did the lighter blue sky

6th class did the higher, darker sky

The staff did the sun

I felt really special because this mural will be up in the school forever and they asked me to paint a square:) If you look at the one on the top row with the butterfly, and you move one down and one to the left you can see mine!

This was a HUGE project that was organized by Miss Caulwell. She did a great job!

Five More Days!

Everything is starting to come to an end to my Ireland experience. I have started to catch myself noticing "lasts," ie; last time to ride the 45 Bus, last time to do laundry here, last Thursday here, etc.

I have had such an amazing experience. It is funny for me to look back at the beginning of my blog and read about the different things that amazed me at the time. It has become more difficult to find something interesting to write in my blog each week because I have adapted to my life here, and don't find everything so different and strange.

Tomorrow is my last day in the school. I will miss all the kids so much. I absolutely loved Kill O' the Grange kids and staff.

I am really going to miss my family here as well. They have been so kind to me. There is something I will miss about each one of them.

I am getting ready to take a trip to Tesco, the local grocery store (I can't wait to pronounce it "groshery" again!). Hayley has asked if she could come along. She has started counting down the days to my departure, and I think she's trying to be with me as much as she can before I leave. I am so sad to leave her!

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog. I have enjoyed reflecting on my experiences with others. I hope it has been interesting enough- not too boring. I will be blogging for the next couple days as well!

Italy

We finally have arrived back to Ireland. What a crazy 36 hours this has been, but it was so much fun! This morning Steph and I left the B&B at 11, when our check out time was, and decided to walk around Bergamo for a couple of hours since our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 8PM. It only took one blog of lugging our suitcases around to make us realize that we were not really up for dragging them around all day, so we immediately headed to the airport.

Steph and I chose some seats wisely, because they would be our home for approximately the next 8 hours. We each purchased a book and began reading immediately. And we read. And we read. And I played Solitaire on the back of my suitcase. And we read. And my back started killing me so I walked for a little while. And we read... FINALLY our flight left on time at 8:20PM and WE MADE IT BACK TO IRELAND!

I didn't have internet access over the weekend, but here are the blogs I wrote while I was there (I was also behind on Wednesday so that is thrown in the mix):

Wednesday May 12

I went to visit Steph’s school today and it was SO much fun! We had a blast. She teaches at a school that has only three classrooms. She teaches Junior & Senior Infants, the next room is 1^st-3^rd class, and the last is 4^th-6^th class. It is most definitely the smallest school I’ve ever been in, and it is said to be the oldest school in the country. The water even stops running after a while if you use it too long! I was trying to wash paint trays after an art lesson, but it didn’t work too well because the water was just barely dripping out of the faucet. I think my favorite part of the day was when three of the girls decided to perform an Irish dance for us.

After school Sadie, the principal of the school, took us to Glendalough just to show us around. It was beautiful. There are two lakes, the name Glendalough actually translates to “two lakes” in Irish. She took us to a park area with a big tower that is thousands of years old. Then she took us to a museum that focused on the history of Glendalough.

She continued to drive us around to several different places. There were SO many hills to see, I told her I don’t think I’ve ever been able to see so much land at once. There were “loads” of sheep and cows everywhere, Sadie actually had to stop the car because a lamb was in the middle of the road! I think that was the highlight of our evening.

After about 4 hours of driving around Sadie was dropping us off at Steph’s when she said, “Are you constricted for time?” Steph and I instantly said no because we have been quite bored in the evenings lately, so Sadie decided to make our trip last a little longer by taking us to two pubs. One was called Johnny Fox’s. She said it is a very touristy pub, but it was neat because it was up in the hills. It reminded me of a pub version of Cracker Barrel. She then took us to one of her favorite pubs called the Blue Light. There were lots of Irish people there who just struck up conversations with us about anything and everything. It was a lot of fun.

We didn’t get home until 9PM! Sadie was kind enough to drive us around for 6 whole hours! We learned so much about the surrounding area and it was most definitely the kindest thing anyone has done for us here. She is great!

Thursday, May 13

Today was a fine day. I spent the day in Senior Infants. They did some standardized testing, so I didn’t get much interaction with the kids. They are so funny though; they did not understand the concept of “no cheating by looking at someone else’s paper.” They each had backpacks separating their papers on the table, but they still managed to sneak around the backpacks to peek at their neighbor’s work. It was pretty funny.

Steph came over at about 4:30. We are going to bed at 7 tonight because tomorrow we head for Venice!! We have to get on the bus at 3AM, which means we must get up at about 2:15, YIKES! So far the volcano is not seeming that it will be an issue, so we are keeping our fingers crossed!

Friday, May 14

We made it to Italy! Venice.is.amazing. The first thing we noticed when we stepped off the plane was that it is actually WARM here. I forgot what it was like to be warm. The sun has shone in Ireland while we have been there, but the air is never warm. Today in Italy was the first time I have not worn a long sleeve shirt, a jacket, a scarf, and a puffy vest in several weeks. We actually wore t-shirts and were still a little warm. It makes me excited to get home!

We found our hotel very easily. We were actually very nervous about this because the directions on the internet were not very clear, and most people speak Italian here which makes it even more difficult.

People drive on the right side of the road here.. this has been nice, except now I’m confused because I finally got used to looking the opposite direction when I cross the road.

After we took a bit of a nap we headed into the city center of Venice. It is like nothing I have ever seen before. I absolutely love it. The streets of water are so neat, and we are hoping to take a gondola tomorrow or Sunday.

We managed to get ourselves some gelato and some pizza today. We just wanted to fit inJ

We are absolutely exhausted because we barely got any sleep last night, so we came back to the hotel at about 3:30. We are going to go to bed soon because we are tired and there is nothing to do since all the TV shows except BBC news and CNN are in Italian.

Right now we’re watching BBC news and there is “terrible” news about how the Euro is the weakest against the dollar as it has been in the past 18 months. Not too terrible for Steph and meJ

Saturday & Sunday

Venice has been great. Steph and I spent the entire time just walking around and souvenir shopping. It rained the entire day on Saturday. I knew it was supposed to rain but I said to Steph, “Every time they say it’s going to rain it only does for a little while and then the rain stops. When does it ever rain throughout the entire day?” I jinxed us for sure because it truly did not stop raining from the time we left the hotel until the time we arrived home (expect for a period of about 30 minutes when we were inside a museum).

We have had SO much fun. It's so beautiful and I can't count how many times I have said the word "picturesque" in the past few days. We have loved every minute!

I loved seeing all the laundry hanging outside.. it seemed to be everywhere we turned.

And seeing people actually hanging the laundry from their window was even better!

One of my main Venice goals was to ride in a gondola. If we came to Venice, walked straight to a gondola, then went straight back to Ireland I would not have cared. All I wanted was a gondola. Steph and I were all ready and excited to go until we found out it was 80 Euros for 35 minutes. No way.. that’s way too expensive. So we took pictures of other people on gondolas instead!

Check out this gondola.. it was tilted so far over to clear the bridge. I was sure they were all going to topple out, which would have been fine because I am an excellent swimmer and would have come to their rescue (not true).

Have you ever seen fish in the middle of the street? I have!

These kids were so cute. I felt like I was at the scene of a movie.

Monday, May 17

Today we got up at 5:20AM to get on the bus to Venice. We then caught a bus from Venice to the airport. We got to the airport at about 7:15 to find out that our flight had been cancelled due to volcanic ash. The Dublin airport closed last night and re-opened at 2PM. If our flight had been 4 hours earlier we would have made it back. We had been watching the news and were aware that this might happen, so we were prepared to make the day as exciting as possible. We did not know what was ahead of us though.. we thought maybe we’d just get on another flight from Venice tomorrow morning or something, but that would be way too easy wouldn’t it?

We went straight to a ticket office where a woman gave us about 5 options of how to get back to Dublin. The first available flight going to Dublin from Venice is on Friday.. four days from now. Steph’s family is supposed to be in Dublin on Saturday morning so that’s cutting it too close, and neither one of us wanted to be stuck in Venice for another four days.

The best option was to fly from Bergamo, Italy tomorrow at 8PM. So, we had to ride a bus back to Venice in order to get a train to Bergamo. We lugged our suitcases to the train station, and managed to learn what to do from there. The train ride was three hours long. Steph and I played rummy and had a really fun time, we made the best of it for sure. We had a “connection” train, which was confusing since everything is in Italian and there was no one working there to help us. Thankfully we made it and everything was fine.

We finally got to Bergamo, then had to figure out what do to from there. We got in line to ask what to do, but the woman spoke no English and we speak no Italian, so that was no help. We ended up finding a “do it yourself” machine where we could buy bus tickets to get to the airport. Our plan was to go to the airport and ask them what hotel we should stay in because we had no idea what to do. While we were waiting for the bus (not even sure which bus we were looking for since, again, everything is in Italian) we decided to maybe just go walking to maybe just find a hotel on our own. We happened to stumble upon a tourist office, which was the most exciting thing I think I’ve ever seen.

The woman in the tourist office helped us find a B&B, and the man who owns it actually came to pick us up! It was the first form of non-public transportation we’ve been on in awhile, AND it was the first car that drives on the right side of the road that we’ve been in for 9 weeks. Oh the small joys in life J

The man started talking to us and we suddenly found out that he speaks no English, and again, we speak barely any Italian (besides the few words we “Google translated” before we came here). We managed to understand one another enough to pay for the B&B and find out where breakfast and the restroom is located. He was very kind.

We were very hungry at this point, so we then decided it was important that our families know our whereabouts, so we found an internet café to email everyone.

Steph is feeling very sick.. she’s had a terrible cough for a couple weeks now. We are back at the B&B and are watching the only English channel available, MTV, which is accompanied by the most loud and echoing dog bark I have ever heard.

We have had a long, exhausting, expensive (we’ve spent over $100 just trying to get from one place to another today), nerve-racking, but yet fun day. There have been several times people start speaking to us in Italian, we always just look at each other with a confused look, hoping that the other one suddenly has learned Italian and knows what the person said. It hasn’t happen yet, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow being fluent in Italian. Yesterday we were saying it would be fun to get stuck in another country; it has had its fun moments, but I will definitely be quite grateful if we make it back to Dublin tomorrow.

Ciao J

Stuck in Italy!

I am currently sitting at an internet cafe in Belgamo, Italy. Our flight back to Dublin got cancelled this morning due to volcanic ash. Our flight was scheduled to come arrive to Dublin at 10:10 this morning, but the airport was closed until 2PM. The next flight from Venice didn't leave until Friday, but we didn't want tto wait that long so we took a 3 hour train ride to Belgamo and hope to leave here at 8PM tomorrow. It has been a scary day.. it's difficult to make rushed decisions, especially when most people around you aren't speaking English, but we are making THE BEST of it. We have seen more of Italy than expected, and it will be a fun story to tell some day:) I don't have much time left on here, but I just wanted to give a small update!

P.S. Venice was awesome, I'll upload pictures ASAP!