Ireland Spring Break

Though my spring break didn't set any wildness records, it was a fantastic one nonetheless. To start out, I joined Mom and Dad at a house in Killarney in Southwest Ireland. That served as a base for day trips all around the region; the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula, Killarney National Park, Bantry Peninsula, Tralee, and many small towns in between. As I mentioned before, Southwest Ireland is quite beautiful. And that's on the bad weather days. If you catch a break and get a sunny day, the land suddenly transforms into something almost magical. It really only rains twice a week in Ireland, though: once for four days and the other time for three. We did manage to grab a day that our Dingle tour guide called "one in 50," an easy consensus as the highlight of the trip. I'll get pictures of that up in the next few days. Much of Easter Sunday morning was spent in St. Mary's Cathedral, after being an hour and a half early due to a completely unknown Daylight Savings Time snafu of ours. Ooops. We managed to recover, possibly picking up a little extra holiness along the way. So we got that going for us...which is nice. After Mom and Dad left for home, I went to Galway for the final weekend to stay with Caroline and her family, an English friend of mine that has lived in Ireland since she was three or four. I got a walking tour of the city (an important Spanish port city way back when), met some of her friends, hung out on the beach in front of Galway Bay, watched some movies, and just had a generally relaxing, really nice weekend. Thank you, Sture's, for your warm welcome in taking me in. And thank you, Mom and Dad, for a wonderful week. It was a great opportunity to be able to spend it with you. Now that spring break is behind me, it's back to school. I have an essay due on Thursday about some Romantic critical essays, which will be my first piece of work that I've handed in so far. Amazing. I hope I haven't forgotten how to write a paper. More later, including pictures and a story about lamb liver and carrot gooey butter cake. Mmmmm.