It is absolutely impossible to
believe that a month from today I will be back home in Minnesota. “Time flies”
is such an overused cliché, but I can’t think of a more accurate statement to
describe my time in Ireland. I have enjoyed absolutely every minute of being
here, and even though I can’t wait to see my friends and family back home, I
already know how much I’m going to miss this amazing country. The girls in my
cottage and I always try to remind each other that even though there are people
and little things we miss back home, we will have those things for years when
we are back, while we will only have Ireland for these three short months of
our lives. Right now I’m just trying to soak up every little thing I can as the
time ticks away. Tonight we’re going to go into Galway just to hang out in the
pubs and listen to some live music, because our opportunities for nights like
these are running low, and I know how much I am going to miss it.
Speaking of things I’m really going
to miss, I just wanted to take a little time to talk about my amazing Cottage 3
ladies. I fully admit that I’m being a bit of a copycat, as Sarah wrote an
amazing blog the other day about our cottage, but I just have to take a little
time to speak about this great group of girls as well. It honestly amazes me
how well matched we all were to live together, and I feel so blessed to be
living with these crazy, funny, and super sweet ladies. While our cottage is
the butt of pretty much all jokes, I absolutely wouldn’t want to be living with
anyone else. Our cottage is mainly known for how we always have a nice supply
of food and how we’re always snacking, as well as how much electricity we
waste. First I’ll talk about the food… Ok so we have a decent supply of food,
yes. But when we are already roughing with our heat and electricity, we don’t
want to add starvation on top of everything else. Also in reality it’s really
not that much food. Colleen and Ali are good little cooks so they buy a lot of
specific things for their meals, but it’s mostly all really healthy. As for
Sarah and I, well we eat a lot of eggs, pasta, and peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. Cooking isn’t really our thing. Secondly we’ll take a look at our
electricity usage… In reality, we actually don’t do that badly. We can make it
through the week with our 6, two euro coins just fine. It’s when JP doesn’t get
us our next round of coins on time that we struggle. I may or may not have been
making deals with our intense energy-conserving neighbors for some of their extra
coins last week when our electricity went out and we literally didn’t have a 2
euro coin to our names. No shame. But really, I’ve never regretted putting a
coin in so that I could take a hot shower. Normally we never even have hot
water in our sinks, so a hot shower is a very big deal for us. The cottage of
boys next to us actually hasn’t taken a hot shower for this whole trip and they
very rarely have lights on. They can make fun of us all they want, because
their cottage is like a cave and I couldn’t do it. Although they may have a
point about the fact that we often leave all of our lights on when no one is in
there, just so we don’t have to come to a dark cottage. Oops J
Besides our food and slight waste
of electricity, I will be the first to say that Cottage 3 is a blast. We are
always laughing, joking, or making fun of someone about something, and these
girls have been one of the things that have made this trip so great. If you
walk past our cottage you will almost always hear us laughing, or often times
screaming, about something. We also have a really bad tendency to scream every
time someone knocks on the door. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t
have visitors very often… Just kidding. We have friends. But really, some of my
favorite times are when all 5 of us Cottage 3 girls are sitting around in our
cottage, joking and laughing and just enjoying our amazing trip. Apart from Ali
who I was already good friends with before coming here, I did not know any of
these girls before this trip, which seems absolutely crazy to me. These girls
are now some of my best friends, and I can’t imagine my life without them. I
know I’m always going to miss the crazy moments when all of our power shuts off
in the middle of the night, our freak out over the hole in our roof in the
middle of a downpour, or our massive “slumbies” when we drag our mattresses
into the living room and rearrange our whole cottage. Cottage 3 ladies I love
you and God Bless. ;)
I know this post is getting a
little long, but I’m just going to continue the theme of people I’ll miss and
talk a little bit about all the other people on this trip. I talk about my
cottage ladies a lot, because I obviously spend the most time around them, but
I absolutely love so many of the people on my trip as well. It is so crazy to
me that I didn’t even know that some of these people existed at my school
before coming on this trip. I have made friends that I know will continue when
I’m back at school, and I have so much fun when we all hang out, go on
excursions together, or throw one of our infamous cottage parties. For
instance, I’m so glad I met Amanda Tate, who is one of the funniest people I
have ever met, has an amazing knack for sarcasm, and can tell a story better
than anyone I know. Molly and Katie are also incredibly sweet people who are
also very funny and sarcastic, which I can always appreciate. Then there’s
Kelly who is also incredibly funny and sweet, but also capable to kick some ass
if ever necessary. Danny Heck is kind of like the little brother I already
have, but he’s incredibly nice, always looking out for us cottage 3 girls, and
he’s great at eating all of our leftovers. Tom is always good for a laugh and
once of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. Garrett, well I hate him. Just kidding.
Garrett is a great guy as well, super fun to be around, and also has a great
sense of humor. I already feel creepy writing about people who probably don’t
even read this, so this is where I’ll stop. But I have not written about all
the people on this trip I would like to, because then this post would be more excessive
than it already is, but there so many more people that I have so enjoyed
spending time with that I could go on and on about. Maybe I’ll finish those in
the next post J
But the point I’m trying to make is that I’m so glad that I’ve gotten to know
all of these amazing people. I have so much fun with our whole group, and I
will truly miss being neighbors with all these people when we leave. I better
be seeing a lot of my Park Lodge family back in St. Joe.
Well I suppose it’s about time I
wrap this up. We are getting ready to leave tomorrow morning for our big
excursion to Belfast and Derry. We are all very excited to be spending
Halloween in Derry tomorrow night, as it is the birthplace of Halloween and the
biggest Halloween festival in the world. Personally, I am super excited because
I love Halloween, but also very concerned for myself because I have an
incredibly intense phobia of masks. We’ll see how this goes… But still, I
cannot wait for all the fun adventures we will be having this weekend, and for
the rest of the time on our trip. Thanks for sticking with me again, and I’ll
try to get my next update as soon as I can after we are back from our big
Northern Ireland excursion! Happy Halloween! J
I love you <3
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