arrived in NJ

we made it to NJ, flight to greensboro leaves at 4:30, arriving at 6pm. if it takes a half hour to get back to HPU, I should be back to raleigh by 9pm

shannon, intl

hanging out here at the airport, 3:30 USA time, but 830 ireland time.

our flight was delayed, but its not a problem because it just eats up some of our layover in jersey.

free wifi in the airport.

for everyone who read, thanks. i didnt buy a lot of nostalgic gifts. I have a really cool book about guinness, and a couple of lapel pins.

i would have bought ya'll postcards, but my pictures are just as good and ill print one for you. i would have bought you an irish tshirt, but you probably would never have worn it. i would have brought food/drink, but it doesnt transport well with security and freezing temperatures in the plane. and i would have bought you a wool scarf, but you really dont need one, did you?

i feel like i have over a thousand pictures, and an hour worth of video. and thats the true gift. memories.

andrew

special farewell dinner

so i just got back from our farewell dinner which was super awesome...here are some pictures for you...

andrew

special farewell dinner

so i just got back from our farewell dinner which was super awesome...here are some pictures for you...

andrew

if you order...

If you order water in Ireland, it will be fizzy water, not still. You have to ask for still water.

Thank you, Ireland.

Andrew.

winding down

So this should be my last official update post. I have some pictures of Galway, Connemara Marble, Celtic Crystal. The crystal factory was awesome because the 'master' cut a peice right in front of us. One of the professors asked him to customize it for HPU and we are going to have it once it is finished on campus.

Lunch was at a place called Durty Nelly's. Heard of it? Excellent ground beef burger. Tired of chips (fries). Oh but they have real good spicy mustard.

So I guess its nearing 7:00, and we are all at our hotel. We had a few hours to relax and unpack/repack before we fly out tomorrow. Tonight we have a traditional Irish feast. Imagine a Medieval times on a lower scale and less commercialized and more Irish. We eat with our hands, family syle, long tables and benches. Im looking forward to it.

And then we have to be on the bus by 5:50am Irish time and we are at the airport by 6:30am. I think we get to greensboro by 7:00 US eastern time, as long as we dont have any travel delays. So it will be a long long day. Upon returning to Raleigh by 9pm with the help of a few energy drinks, I will be making my priority stop for PF Changs fried rice, and my bed (it will be 2am Irish time!). And of course I get to turn my phone on.

so enjoy the pictures. Im going to go walk around the beautiful weather outside. I made it to the gym before I started writing this, and it felt AMAZING. Sauna on my to do list for Sunday.

Later blog world

Andrew

hey blog world

so here is my first post on international traveling and expenditures.

you get charged .75 cents every time you use an ATM ( by SECU), and then the bank in Ireland charges you for using their ATM. So, when I withdraw money, its in Euros (like 80 or so), and then when I look to record it in my checkbook, itll show up in dollars online. And the ATM always gives you the most current and best rate.

pretty sweet deal.

andrew

n.b. are you celebrating APAHM? I am.

mid afternoon

its nice outside, low 70's and sunny.

everyone is taking a slow day, doing some shopping, etc

we are right on the atlantic ocean, but its really not picture esqe, so no pictures of it for you.

its nice to take a deep breath since we have been on the go for so long.

tomorrow we go to a crystal place, so that should be nice, and we have our traditional farewell dinner.

andrew

jason derulo on the irish radio

Good morning folks...its before 9am on Thursday...I received a wake up call even though I did not order one, and thus I am already more productive than I intended for my free day in Galway.

Overcast and cool here in Galway right now. Most people are going shopping for gifts and doing some laundry because they are not good at packing.

There are a lot of choir tour groups that come to Ireland to sing.

Our tour guide Noel had breakfast with me this morning, and I was talking to him about Irish traditions, and he told me they dont have an equivalance of 'thanksgiving' or 'independence day.' Unbelieveable....they are really missing out.

so tomorrow we will go south down the west coast towards shannon. tomorrow night is overnight in shannon and we have to be at the airport at 6am (ireland time) Saturday. I think we are expected back in High Point at like 6pm (US time) with all the time changes factored in. This is very much dependent on ash in the sky and flight delays, etc.

We have been getting better and better value for the US dollar eveer since we have arrived. I think some people traded yesterday at 1.22 dollars a euro, which is great compared to the 1.32 it was when we landed last week.

Its hard to believe that we are already making those preparations to return.

But, a fun day in Galway first. Im off to explore, good day to you all, my loyal readers.

Andrew

cliff pictures

here are cliffs of insanity

yesterday afternoon

Hey folks,

It is about 4:15pm as I am writing this (yesterday). We are on the coach bus headed back to Galway. We spent the day in County Clare, Ireland, at the Aillwee cave and Cliffs of Moher. The cave was spectacular, and the cliffs breathtaking. The Cliffs of Moher were featured on Harry Potter 6, as well as the Princess Bride (cliffs of insanity). The cave was just discovered less than 50 years ago when a sheep farmer was trying to collect his sheep. So, in transit to all of these sights, we travelled through the Burren.

In the Ireland class we had in the spring, every student had a topic they had to research and write a paper and do a presentation on. We are also doing follow up presentation here in Ireland at the topic’s area. I did the burren, so I gave my presentation today. The burren is a 300 sq kilometer area of limestone rock. That’s about all there is to it.

They serve beef lasagna for lunch all the time here in Ireland. Im tired of potato anything.
Andrew

pictures

its 8:35, but apparently our departure was pushed back by 10 minutes..

uploading more pictures while I can...

andrew

first full day at galway--leaving in ten minutes

Hey, its 8:30local time, just ate breakfast and im catching up on my blogging. Today is the clifs of moher and burren, so ill have some awesome pictures coming your way soon enough...

here are more pictures from yesterday and such.....

andrew

n.b. weather is partly cloudy 40's...there has been a lot of on off drizzle in the western part of the country, but we are hoping to get lucky as we will need it for the cliffs today

five euro to sign on

this should have been posted yesterday...

Hey folks, there was no internet at the last hotel, so a little lapse in blogging. As you know, I am touring the whole country of Ireland, starting at around 9:00, and we went counter clockwise. Today and yesterday were spent in N. ireland (UK), and now we are in western Ireland at Galway.
But, before we get to that recap, how about another installment of things IRELAND SHOULD DO that America does. No hotel in Ireland has vent fans in the bathrooms, and they get really foggyish.
So starting with yesterday, we were on our way to Derry, also known as Londonderry. But before that, we had a beautiful excursion to the Giant’s causeway. Now, the legend says that the largest giant from Ireland dropped the gauntlet to challenge the largest giant from Scotland. The Irish giant built a walkway from Ireland to Scotland for the battle. The giant came from Scotland to do battle, but the Irish giant saw that it was outmatched. It dressed up as a baby. When the Scottish giant came and saw the baby, it was like, wow, I don’t want to even imagine what the father looks like, and it ran back to Scotland, destroying the pathway behind it. We hiked all around, and I have fantastic pictures.
From there we went to Londonderry, which is a place where a lot of conflict occurred between Irish and N. Ireland way back when. We had a guided tour, and a nice meal at the hotel for dinner. Stores close there by about 6pm, but a third of our group went out later that evening to one of the local places for fun.
Which now brings me to this morning, we left for Galway. Today has been mostly spent in the Coach bus…we had over 4 hours of driving to do today as we went from the far north of the country to the WNW part. We stopped at a folk park/museum that had all sorts of old homes. There were also chickens running around, and we fed them oats. One of our other rest stops was a church/graveyard where W.B.Yeats was buried.
As for tonight, we have successfully made it to Galway. Tomorrow we go to the cliffs of Moher, the burren, Ailwee cave.
Andrew

photos and correction

got my timing wrong...day 8 and 9 i just posted about are really an ellaboration of day 7, then day 8.

so here are now day 8 photos.

and you can read the official school blog at ireland.highpoint.edu, but not sure why you wouldnt want my intellectual insight and dazling litterary charm.

andrew

day 9 (Sunday)

So its 10pm sharp here in N. Ireland. We crossed the border into UK territory this morning with a 2 hour drive. Now, without getting all historical, there are simply put probelms between N Ireland (UK) and Ireland. This stems from culturally, but mainly religious diffrerences. We are in Belfast now, not the most safe of cities. In fact, we are staying in a hotel directly next to the Europa, where they had those bombings like a decade ago. to reassure you, I AM SAFE.

okay, so today's recap. but before we get into that, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor, APAHM. Asia Pacific American Heritage Month is widely celebrated during the month of May. Here in Ireland, citizens celebrate frequently, and I hope you are celebrating in America.

Back to the recap of today. We woke up and left Dublin after taking a cruise on the river liffey. the rest of the day was spent in transit to N. Ireland and doing a city bus tour of Belfast. We saw some art, belfast castle, and most significantly, where the titanic was built.

at dinner tonight we had carrot cake for desert and it was delicious.
andrew

day 8

so here is day 8 recap, as day 9 is winding down. Internet is so wierd, i never know when im going to get to post. its sunday night, nearly 10pm local time. still bright outside, as if it were summer in NC and 8:00pm.

the highlight of the morning was new grange. new grange pre dates those stones in europe by 800 years (its significantly older than the pyramids too!). basically we have stones getting to this area from very far away, and they dont even have a wheel to get them there.

now, newgrange is like a tomb. you go in this dark tunnel which is extremely small (I had struggles getting in at one point because of height.) its like a 4.5 foot ceiling.

inside, they have cool chambers, but you cant take pictures. this is a place so high in demand to see, that you have to make reservations 2 years in advance. now on the winter solstice, there is a gap, where light seeps in magically, and illuminates the whole tomb. from inside the tomb, you cannot see the sky. so thank you, aliens, for that bit. there are weird symbols all over the rocks too. but yeah, it was awesome.

day 8 PM was a 'pub crawl.' but it what I would call a facilitated pub hop. we took a bus to this one place, and heard excellent irish music live. then went to this other place with the same musicians, and heard part two. this was around 3ish in the afternoon.

evening was low key...a lot of us had to do some packing because we'd leave the next morning after our three night stay in dublin. irish have interesting TV i watched while sorting through my bag. strange humor on their sitcom, but they also had armageddon playing on another station.

alright, so im going to include day 8 pics. next post is day 9 (currently today).

andrew

Things America needs to catch up on. part deux

People here in Ireland are super duper communicators. They dont chronically text, cell phone, skype or facebook. They meet up over a meal or a pint, and talk face to face for hours.

We've had the chance to observe for a week, and everyone is so friendly and not preoccupied.

Meals take a long time, though. Im so used to NOW NOW NOW from my busy life in High Point...spending a hour and a half over lunch is kind of different, and 2 and a half hours over dinner.

Slow down America. But keep cook out drive through readily available.

andrew

things Ireland should do that America does -- vol. 2

Free internet should be available for all.

Take a lesson from starbucks.

Also, Ireland doesnt have theme parks. Get on the ball.

day 7

yesterday was a lot of good sightseeing...attached are pictures...

we are about to go on a river cruise, and then leave dublin for belfast...

its hard to believe that we are halfway finished with our trip, it seems like blur

andrew

more day six pictures

more pics

yesterday's recap

Wow. yesterday was a long and great day in the city of Dublin.
As I had described earlier, we had a hop on hop off pass…
Stop one was Trinity college where we went and looked at the book of Kells. The book of Kells are the four gospel manuscripts with illustrations. Very elaborate and beautiful, but could not take any pictures inside.
We had lunch right outside the school grounds.
Dublin Castle and Cathedral marks stop two. From there, Christ Church. Beautiful crypt underneath I couldn’t take many photos of, though. We passed St. Peter’s Church, very beautiful from outside.
We continued to the Gaol prison/museum. An old prison was super awesome to see. We took a guided tour of the facility, and learned about the brutal conditions and new advancements in prisons in the 18th century.
We had the day at leisure, and I think I got a ton accomplished. We went to the hotel afterwards, which is where I wrote yesterdays blog. Then I decided to go ahead and see the live production of Shawshank by myself—I couldn’t get anyone else to go because they were either going on a haunted nightbus going across city, or wanted to nap before they went out to Temple Bar district.
Seeing Shawshank was probably the greatest thing I have done in Dublin. Amazing. Fantastic casting, especially the man who played ‘Red’ (morgan freeman’s character). There were slight differences from the movie, but the movie itself is based off of a book. Really, it was so worth the money to do that. I left the hotel at 7:10, took a cab to get there by 7:20, bought a ticket and was in my seat by 7:25, lights dimmed at 7:30. I sat on the second tier first row center. It’s awesome going to a play by yourself because you get the best single seats that are left over. The theater was beautiful and decorative, about 2.5 times the size of Hayworth Fine Arts at HPU.
So since I had been blogging you, my loyal followers, and went straight to the show, I didn’t get dinner. Got some irish mcdonalds, and it tasted remarkably similar to USA mcdonalds. Imagine that.
Went out on the town around 10:30 to meet up with everyone in the temple bar district…there were a LOT of tourists out ( I guess I shouldn’t be talking since I was taking pictures of pretty lights)
Today is a special mound (called newgrange). Once a year light shines in and lights up the whole thing. Sort of an ancient burial ground with an alien element.
Im averaging over 70 pictures and 10 short videos a day. Looking forward to constructing the memory movie when I get back. To stay organized, I download the pictures every day onto my computer and sort them by day number of the trip. Camera is working fantastic with the netnbook.
Alright, Im leaving the hotel for an hour trip up to newgrange.
andrew