St. Patrick's Day in Dublin!!!!

Well I can officially check that off of my bucket list!!!
I really did have to keep pinching myself to remember that I actually was in Dublin celebrating such a fun day!

Our trip started very very very very very early Friday morning. We caught a cab at 4:00 AM to go to the East Midlands Airport. Our flight left at 6:30 so when everything was said and done we had about 2 hours to kill. Lucky for myself and the 2 exchange students I was traveling with, we found some wonderful, reclining massage chairs in the airport and rested until it was time to board. The flight to Ireland was only 45 minutes so when we landed it was only 7:30. We took the time in the morning to walk around, get some food, and get oriented with the city center.

By the afternoon the weather was taking a turn away from our favor, so we decided to go take a tour. I mean, what else do you do in Dublin when its raining but go to the Guinness Factory?! We caught a bus and went into the massive factory that was full of other tourists escaping the rain and looking forward to the free pint at the end of the tour. The factory was very cool and had about a million floors. When we got up to the top there was a nearly 360 view of Dublin...very cool! It was also here that we got our free pint of Guinness that came with the tour. Now I am not really a beer drinker. I'll have a beer now and then (typically around football season), but it is not my go to for a drink. You can only imagine what I thought of Guinness. I had never had one before and it was much stronger than I thought. I didn't even get half way through my pint before I had to put it down because I just couldn't do the taste anymore. hahahaha

After the Guinness factory we went to check-in to our hotel and rest before that night. Unfortunately, the weekend makes a slight dip at this point because I have been fighting illness for about 4 days. It started just as a stuffy nose, but I knew leaving the Guinness factory that I was definitely getting worse. By the time I got to the hotel I had a fever and the works :( After resting and still not feeling well, I decided it would be best not to try and go out Friday night and get a good nights sleep in preparation for St. Pattys. My very sweet friend Elle stayed with me and we watched 500 Days of Summer in the hotel...and it was great!!

And....prayers answered!!! When I woke up the next morning my fever was gone!! I was still stuffy, but I can deal with that!!!! We caught a cab into the city center and met up with some other exchange students from Notts for the St. Patrick's Day Parade!! I have literally never seen so much green in my entire life! Everyone was decked out! It really was exactly how you would have imagined it. My pictures truly can't do it justice!! We watched the extremely colorful and artistic parade (that really had absolutely nothing to do with St. Pattys haha) then went to a pub called Arlington's Bar to warm up and get some food/drinks. This was probably my favorite place that we went! The atmosphere was super cool and they had live Irish music when we first arrived. Granted there were probably only 4 real local Irishmen in the pub, it was still a lot of fun. After the band, Irish dancers performed for us!!!!! So so so so so so so so so so cool!!!

Once we had been at Arlington's for a bit we decided for a change of scenery and went to another bar called the Old Storehouse Bar to watch the end of the Wales/France rugby game and the beginning of the England/Ireland game. People in Europe are very passionate about their rugby, so I'm sure you can imagine how enthusiastic everyone was about the games (until England absolutely killed Ireland 30-9) hahaha. It was really fun and we met some interesting people. I also was introduced to Gaelic Football, which apparently is the national sport of Ireland. It is like a combination of soccer, American football, and volleyball, with a splash of basketball...very interesting!

Next stop was a change of pace from the bars to a lovely cafe down Grafton Street. I obviously had to get a coffee with Baileys and some of my friend wanted to get Irish coffee. It was very nice to just sit down and relax in Ireland for a bit, while people were going crazy outside hahaha.While there they also had something that I nearly fell out of my chair over....goat cheese!!!! For anyone that has ever gone out to dinner with me, you know that one of the first things I look for is goat cheese. I love it so much! I don't care if its weird. I love it! There was a salad with goat cheese, basil pesto, roasted red peppers, and sun dried tomatoes...yes please!

Once I was out of my coffee and goat cheese coma we went and met up with our friends at another bar. These friends happened to be with an organized group for St. Patrick's, so this was the after party for them, which was great for us!! There was good music and everyone just had a lot of fun! I couldn't have picked a better way to end my St. Patrick's Day, with good friends and One Direction playing from the DJ (English boy band I am currently in love with....not ashamed!!) We called it an early night (midnight, which for anyone that knows me that is actually quite late for me!) because we had an early flight today.

It was such an amazing experience!!! I can't believe that I actually got the chance to be in Ireland for St. Patrick's Day!! I'm even more excited that I'll be going back to Ireland in June!!! Obviously, St. Patrick's Day is not the norm for Ireland, but when my beautiful Mommy comes over in June for our trip, we will be returning to Ireland for an adventure!! CAN'T WAIT! Watch out for part 2 Ireland!!!!!

This upcoming weekend, if all things go as planned, I will be taking a day trip to Oxford on Saturday and Stratford on Sunday!! I really am so blessed!!!!

Whitby, York, and JOHN!!!

Once again, I'm terrible at keeping up with this thing! haha 2 whole weeks...in England time that might as well be 2 months hahaha

The more time that passes, the more I am able to really be settled. I have started to establish as much of a routine as you can when you are temporarily in a place, but I like it. My weeks typically consist of going to class Monday and Tuesday, doing course work Wednesday, a trip to Beeston for some coffee at Bean on Thursday, then Friday either going on a trip or prepping for a trip....HOW BLESSED AM I? There are always other fun things going on during the week, but those are the consistent activities.

So two weekends ago I went with the travel society at UoN to a place called Whitby in northern Yorkshire for the day. I honestly didn't know anything about Whitby, but they were advertising that it was a seaside town and that it was where they filmed the Hogwarts Express scenes from the Harry Potter movies so I was sold!
It was quite a coach journey, but it was totally worth it! I have been fortunate to live near the water my entire life (I did live in Orlando when I was a baby, but because I don't remember that it doesn't count for this purpose haha). I have a deep love for the water and everything that goes with it (marsh, salt smell, ocean breeze). I realized on the coach that this was the longest in my entire life that that I had been landlocked. I had no idea how much it had effected me, because when we drove up a hill and saw the water in front of us, I couldn't help but shed a tear or two. Side note: I've realized on this trip how much of a crier I am...not in a bad way, but apparently any strong emotion that I feel, like happiness, results in me crying hahaha. Whitby was beautiful! It is a maritime town and we were literally just on the water. There were seagulls, sailboats, and that wonderful salt water breeze that I missed so much! There wasn't pluff mud, but this was the closest I have felt to home since coming to England. There were some absolutely beautiful sites, including the ruins of the old Whitby Abbey, a giant whalebone that represented the former whaling industry, and incredible cliffs leading down to the coast. Turns out that they didn't actually film Harry Potter in Whitby itself, but it didn't matter. It has been the prettiest place I have visited so far :)

The week following Whitby I basically couldn't do anything because I was too excited for what would be coming that Saturday........A VISIT FROM MY BROTHER JOHN!

I met John in the Pret-a-Manger cafe next to Kings Cross station 2 Saturdays ago. Poor guy got there about an hour before my train from Nottingham would arrive, but eventually I got there and we met up. I knew it would happen, but of course I cried! I did keep it pretty much together, but come on I was seeing my one and only sibling after being separated from my whole family for 5 weeks! Once I pulled it together we went and checked into our hotel that we would be staying at for the night and then went on an adventure. John had found, before he arrived, a bass guitar conference in London that was going on the day he arrived. For anyone that doesn't know (and everyone should because he is great) John is a musician and his primary instrument is bass, although he plays many others! So when he found this conference obviously we had to go! On the way we saw Big Ben, Parliament, and the London Eye. After a tube trip and a bit of undirected walking, we managed to find the conference center. For someone like me that doesn't know anything about basses the conference was really cool, but I think that John was able to get a better grasp on it than I did. He was able to play a couple different instruments and watch some other players. Once we had seen everything, we ended up going back to the hotel, getting dinner there, and going to bed. John had some pretty serious jet lag (very understandable) so we just decided to take it easy!
The next day we went back to Nottingham and I got to introduce John to several of my friends. Basically John got to experience my normal week but with some bonus features. We went to a cocktail bar for my friend's birthday, to the city center, to Bean (OF COURSE) and Beeston, to the formal that my residence hall was putting on, and around my lovely campus! One of the highlights for me was going to a bar for an open mic night that some of the girls on my corridor were singing in and John got worked into the set!!! SO COOL!
To change things up a bit, we decided to take a day trip to York on Thursday. It was a bit of a longer journey than I had anticipated, but that was just half of the adventure :) York was really cool, with lots of different shops, beautiful architecture, and a lovely waterway. We were exhausted when we got back to Nottingham that night and basically just crashed! We spent of the rest of the time just hanging out and relaxing a bit before heading to Gatwick on Saturday.
It was so nice having John here. It gave me a little bit of a boost actually being with someone from home!!

I'm superrrrr excited because this Friday I'll be getting on a plane to go to........DUBLIN!!! How else would I spend St. Patrick's Day?!

Sorry that the pictures are out of order hahaha

John at the Bass Conference in London

 John and I at the Willoughby Hall formal

 Whitby

Whitby

 York Minster

York Minster

My roommate Shamiso and I at the Willoughby Formal....SHE IS THE BEST!