Field Trip Time!

I started this post weeks ago and never actually finished it, so I'll attempt to now!

Being an exchange student is a funny balance: on one hand, we've traveled a few thousand miles to a new place on our own and are expected to complete the workload of a full-time Irish student, but on the other, we have several different groups keeping tabs on us to make sure no one falls through the cracks (literally and metaphorically). This was very apparent last Saturday when I went on a day trip with the International Students Office. They had a list of people on the trip and would count to make sure the same number of people always got on the bus, but other than that we were on our own. This made for a really entertaining afternoon when our bus broke down and we had to re-create where we were sitting so that they could re-count us (apparently they had been counting wrong the entire day...).

The trip was called 'Into the West,' so we saw three of the major sights on the western coast of Ireland: The Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and the Aillwee Caves. They were all really beautiful, and the caves were really interesting to walk through (benefit of being on the short side: I only had to duck once, but many of the people on my tour were bent over for most of the walk).

Of course Troll made the journey as well:

The lighting made it a bit difficult to get good pictures, but rest assured the views are breathtaking:

I'm always entertained by the signs:

Erin and I in front of the watch tower on top of the cliffs (the sun was so bright that we were essentially blind when this was taken):

Troll at the Burren:

The Burren is essentially a wide open field full of rocks. In theory, it should be pretty boring, but it has a strange sort of beauty to it and is just really interesting to explore. Once everything blooms and it's filled with flowers I'm sure it's probably quite a sight.

We had a lot of fun playing with shadows (from left: Michelle, Laura, me, and Katrina...I think):

I could have spent way more than the 30 minutes or so they gave us here:

This area was definitely not suitable for cliff-jumping:

It's impossible to get a decent picture in a pitch dark cave, but here's proof that I was there (I'm not even sure of the proper orientation of this photo...):

We randomly stopped at an ancient burial ground in the Burren on the way home:

Not bad for a single day's traveling!