Last days in Ireland

Well, I’m currently flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way back to Texas. I’m actually very excited and not sad to go as I thought I would be. I think a large part of this is that I will be seeing most of my friends from Ireland in a week at Windmill Windup (so excited!) and because I had a great last few days. I loved my time here, it was a great semester and wonderful experience. I’ll do my reflecting later, but here’s what my last few days looked like.

After my last exam before the week-long break I spent the morning doing laundry. I had literally worn everything I brought with me except for the dresses, and had even worn some of those and so was desperately in need of laundry time. While waiting for it I went and tried a mexican food place that my friend wanted an ‘expert’ opinion on, and they did make quite good enchiladas (I was pleasantly surprised to find good mexican food in Ireland, though during my last week). On Friday I had my going away party. I spent the morning trying to study a bit and then made salsa with Courtney in the afternoon. She, Jen and I went to a maritime festival that was along the Liffey. It was pretty cool, and they had lots of food stalls so we got paella for dinner. We headed back to my apartment before people started coming. It was great to see everyone and have one last night out. We ended up in Doyle’s, which I thought was fitting. It was a really good night.

The next day I studied until the library closed at 4 (Trinity doesn’t believe in long library hours during exam time) and then tried to study outside but ended up just throwing on the cricket pitch (this was exciting as normally they will bodily drag people off of it to keep the grass nice) for a while. The next two days were my Belfast adventure which was way cool, and even though it did mean I studied far less for my last exam than I should have it was definitely worth it. I spent all of Tuesday studying and packing and then had my exam Wednesday morning. It went well enough and I was very excited to be done :D I finished packing and then me, Jen and Courtney went to the Botanical Gardens in Dublin for the afternoon. The gardens were lovely! I took nearly 200 pictures of flowers :P but now I have had my fill for a while... at least for the day ;) Courtney and I had lunch there and then went to Penney’s where I bought a dress (I know, crazy right?) and Tara met us. She and I tried to go to the Guinness Factory but sadly got there after it closed :( So we went to Trinity for a bit of throwing instead. I finished up packing, watched two episodes of Friends (I have a feeling I won’t be watching nearly as much of that back home as I did here) and then went to the Pav with my room mates. When we got there some of the frisbee kids were throwing so I went to say hi and ended up staying for an hour :) We then went to the Pav and had time for one beer before they closed and then I went with my room mates to the Globe. We finally made it to a pub together, though Steph had gone home and Breda was studying for her last exam. Overall it was a great last day, and a wonderful way to end my stay in Ireland :)