Ireland

Ok, I know that I have been majorly slacking in regard to updating this blog... whoopsies! I get distracted a lot. Not a really good excuse... more of an explanation, I suppose.

So, I have a lot to catch you up on! My first trip of the semester (to Ireland) was amazing, to say the least. And, like the vast majority (or perhaps all?) of trips this year, plans changed, and we had to expect the unexpected.

The original plan was this: fly in to Dublin on Friday. On Saturday, make a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher. Sunday, spend the rest of the day in Dublin, then fly back to Germany. Then a little thing called the NORTHERN LIGHTS decided to show up on the internet in an article claiming that the northern lights could be seen from County Donegal, Ireland. I showed this article to Chelsea, our fearless leader, who has had pretty much a life goal to see the Northern Lights and saw this as the perfect opportunity. So, through a series of changes we finally came up with a solid plan: fly into Dublin, spend a few hours there, and then take the bus to (somewhere in) County Donegal, then from wherever we ended up, take a taxi to our hostel in Malin Head.

Things for the most part went off without a hitch. The one problem with our departure on Friday morning was that there were only two options with the bus to Frankfurt Hahn Airport: one at like 5 am and another one that would get us to the airport with only about 45 minutes to get on our plane. We decided to play it safe and get up ridiculously early (we could nap on the bus anyway, right?). Once we were in the airport we had hours to hang out until we even needed to go through security, but we had fun being our delirious, sleep-deprived selves.

We landed in Dublin at around 3 and found a pub in which to eat lunch (dinner?). There we sampled some authentic Irish food while hearing some great live music.

The group! Completely filled with awesome people.

After that we essentially spent the rest of the day on public transport making our way to Donegal (and catching up on sleep again!).

We finally reached Sandrock Hostel at about 11 at night. And you know what? The long day of travel was so worth it! Our "hostel" was really more of a cozy guest house, owned by a very sweet Irish man who stayed up late just so he could be there when we arrived. He gave us maps of the area, told us what interesting things there were to do, warned us about the dangerous tides, and even made us tea (which was ridiculously delicious, by the way).

Drinking tea in the living room of our hostel

The next day we got up relatively early and walked around the area, exploring the gorgeous Irish countryside. It was cold and windy, but none of us really minded because it was so gorgeous! We saw excessive amounts of sheep (and took excessive amounts of pictures of sheep) and explored the coastline of Ireland's northernmost point. I can't even describe what a fantastic experience this was. The beaches were covered with beautiful pebbles (we took a few...or more), and the hills were covered in long, green, squishy, soft grass. We also kind of almost got blown off of a hill into the ocean by the most powerful wind we have ever experienced. But don't worry, this was all perfectly safe! Maybe.

The beautiful, rugged, northern coastline of Ireland. Watch out for the waves. Seriously.

All the girls :)

This was higher above the water than the picture makes it look.

Giving up on movement in the face of ridiculously strong winds or sitting meditatively taking in the extreme beauty all around us. However you want to look at it.

Much frolicking ensued.

After that we got an early lunch and most of us headed back to the hostel to arrange our afternoon plans: horseback riding. Tom wasn't feeling the whole horse thing, so he said farewell to go on a solo manventure with promises to meet us at the tower at 5ish.

Horseback riding was so much fun. Unfortunately due to the weather (I wasn't kidding about the cold and the wind...), we had to have our lesson indoors instead of out in the beautiful Irish countryside. But it was a great experience regardless of what we looked at while on our horses.

Genesis with lucky. He was a big flirt with everyone. He also tried to eat her coat.

All of us in our snazzy riding gear in the stables. The funny thing on Chelsea's head is her GoPro camera :)

We had to take two separate taxi trips to the tower to meet Tom because we were using one taxi driver who had only four seats. I was in the first group (along with Genesis, Jaimy, and Emily), and once we got there we realized something: if we thought it was cold and windy before, we didn't know anything: there, at the tower (literally the northernmost point of Ireland) it was so wind thatit was hard to stand up straight! We met up with Tom and heard his adventures, but we weren't sure how long we wanted to stay at the tower.  Don't get me wrong: it was beautiful and we were still having fun. We just weren't sure how much more cold and wind our bodies could take

We took shelter from the wind in some random buildings there.

Meanwhile, the ever fearless Tom stayed outside of the random buildings and made friends with this Irish guy named James. When the second group came up in the taxi, we told them we planned to go back to the hostel soon, so if they wanted they could get out of the taxi real quick and take pictures and such. We were thinking of maybe taking two taxi trips to the hostel, but instead those of us who had been waiting ended up getting a ride home from James. I know, getting in the car with random strangers in a foreign country is rather inadvisable, but we figured it was okay: we were in small-town Ireland (so small that James' family had been living there for over 200 years, and he knew the owner of our hostel (whom our taxi driver also knew)). Plus, the Irish people we'd encountered so far were all incredibly nice (seriously, I think that as a whole the Irish are the nicest people I've encountered in my travels thus far) and we figured we could trust him.

So anyway, we hopped in the car with James and started talking to him. He mentioned that some lambs had recently been born on his farm and when we city-slickers were overcome with excitement, he asked us if we wanted to go see them. So we said YES. He turned around right there in the middle of the road (not like anyone was on it anyway) and took us to his farm, where we got to bottle feed and hold a week old lamb. Then he even showed us his day-old lamb!

The week-old lamb!

So fluffy!

The day old lamb! Inside an unoccupied, super old farmhouse that belongs to James' family.

So precious! Also, the lamb's not dirty. That's just its coloring.

The neighborhood dog Scooby tagged along. Even the dogs in the Irish countryside are super nice and friendly!

We had been looking at sheep for about an hour (maybe even an hour and a half?) by the time we decided it was probably time to go home-- after all, none of us have cell phones, so we hadn 't been able to tell the other half of our group about our spontaneous change of plans, and they'd been back at the hostel for who knows how long wondering where we had gone with this James they had never met.

When we finally got back, we found that only half of the other group had been waiting up, worried. While Chelsea and Edith had visions of us getting human centipeded (Edith's words), Josh and Ben were sitting in the living room playing connect four, wearing war paint (aka coal used for the stove/furnace thing). They weren't worried about us since they though (in their words) we were adults who could take care of ourselves (even if James had wanted to murder us, it would have been five against 1), while Edith and Chelsea had rather sensibly been wondering, "Who on earth is James?!?!?!?" and understandably doubting whether he could be trusted.

After all was explained, we settled down, made spaghetti, and played zoo (one of Chelsea's favorite travel games. We played it in Croatia, too. To those of you at home, I'll have to explain in person). We even got our new hostel-mates, some Irish guys, to join in the game too, although they were thoroughly confused and probably scared by our weirdness.

All in all, the trip was an absolutely incredible experience. We never did get to see the northern lights (both nights were too cloudy), but it was all worth it anyway. Our crazy quest to see the natural phenomenon led us to the most random Irish town, far away from all the usual tourist attractions, straight to the reality of what life in Ireland is really like. It was both low-key and an adventure, and most certainly a weekend I will never forget with some of my favorite people.

Ireland, I hope to see you again sometime. Maybe soon :)