Blarney Castle

Hello Everyone! After my Irish class on Friday morning (where a grand total of 8 of us showed up!!) I met Erin and Kristina outside the student center, then we walked to the bus station in town to go to Blarney! Round trip was only 6.20 euro, not bad I say.  The castle and grounds were so beautiful! I was just so excited to explore outside of Cork (both Erin and Kristina can vouch for that-I was a little hyper about it...) and I couldn't have pictured a better trip: The weather was beautiful with partially cloudy skies and no rain or wind, the place wasn't crowded at all, and it was just awesome! I took over 100 pictures so I will of course not be able to post all of them here, but I will put up some the more "scenic" ones here, and some of my fav's:

 

My plans for the day include in intense cleaning of my room and bathroom (organizing, vacuuming, cleaning shower, etc etc), laundry, homeworking, and cooking a delicious dinner.  

Groceries I bought today with Erin:

-Honeynut Cheerios (I bought milk earlier in the week)

-frozen corn

-eggs

-bacon

-sausage

-orange juice

-bread

I have so many food options now, it is wonderful! French toast, BLT's (I have lettuce and tomatoes already), scrambled eggs and sausage, still got a whole thing of pancake mix, my mac-n-cheese, corn, oh I am so excited. AND I made a "stew" type meal yesterday with onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes (along with some gravy mix I borrowed from the boys...hehe) with enough leftovers to last me another few meals during the week.  

I want to do another day trip next weekend, perhaps to Kinsale or another town in southwest Ireland, keeping it pretty close to Cork. THEN the weekend after that is my birthday weekend so I want to do a full weekend trip further away, still figuring this out! Some considerations have been Galway, Kerry/Kilarney, oh there are so many places to choose from! I taped my giant map of Ireland on my wall last week (its' literally like 4x4 ft) and it is cool to look at all the places I could go to. 

Speaking of more travel, I found out my exam schedule for May and it looks like I only have 2 exams! One on the 5th and the other on the 22nd! So not only do I have the entire month of April to travel (the parentals are coming too to visit so that will be great fun) but also the time in May when I don't have my finals! I don't think the exams will be that difficult either, if I keep up with things during classes. My "plan," or should I say "completely idealistic mind-thought," for all this time in April/May is to literally bus around Ireland. I don't think I will visit any other countries in Europe (I think we're going to Scotland when the parents come?), as I really want to explore the entirety of Ireland, as much as I can, as that is the reason I came here: I want to see ALL of Ireland. Plus, I can get a student bus pass each month and save uber-amounts of money.  I am so pumped. 

Well its nearly 4pm, so I will get started on my cleaning duties. Then dinner time! Woop!

Oh! Forgot to mention: I got my haircut yesterday by a professional. It was nice. Not that drastic of a change, just cut off the flippy-out parts and cleaned it up a big. Kinda like a bob. I like it. Looks healthier.