A couple of weekends ago I went to Cork with the international society. It was pretty fun. My favorite is still Galway and the Aran Islands. We left on Friday at 3:30. Cork is south and 3.5 hours away by bus because there are no highways really anywhere here. Traffic circles are common and so are the pot holes, making the ride an adventurous one. It is a good thing that I do not get car sick anymore because those buses could make anyone sick. We took 79 people and out of that I would say that there were 15 lads. For some reason many more girls study abroad than lads. This is true of all the countries because we took many of the European exchange students also. I stayed in the girls dorm with 15 others. It was very loud to say the least because people were drinking and coming home from the pubs late. We went out to dinner that night to a cute cafe and then to a creepy punk pub. I did not like it much especially after I saw an advertisement for a band called Pontius Pilot and the Nail Drivers. I felt like boycotting after I saw that. There was a creepy painting on the wall of a gremlin-like creature. 
The next day we went to the English Market, which had lots of meat and fish and fresh fruit. I did not buy anything because I would have to walk around with it all day. This picture is of the fish market that had a really gross huge fish looking up at us. Later we went to Kinsale, "Ireland's center for good food." It was a cute little costal fishing town. We walked along the water for about 20 minutes which was wonderfully beautiful. They had a cute little harbor and some old forts.
We went to Charles Fort, which is huge, old, and covered in grass. We took some good pictures of the coast and some of us being silly. When we first got there we saw a wedding party leaving. This was just after it started pouring rain, but only for a short time. He was in a green kilt and purple kilt with a frilly white top and a brown bag thing. She was wearing a strapless white dress that was dragging in the mud. I think that they still had yet to get married that day. Poor dress. She also was all red from the cold wiping wind. Oh the lengths we go to to get a good picture!
We then went back to Cork on the bus, which was over full and they had to turn people away. We were the last 4 out of 6 people to get on the bus! If we did not get it, it would not have been a big deal. We could have gotten the next one an hour later. It was a good thing that we did get that bus because we were planning on going to a play that night in Cork. It was pretty bad, I am sorry to say. We thought that it was about Cork life in the 60's but it really was written for Britain. It was about 12 women who were at a stamp sticking party, which is something like the winning the lotto from what I could gather. It followed their lives and had some fabricated drama with a teen pregnancy but mostly it was just setting up things to get a quick laugh. Oh, well, now I know not to go to anything that I have not heard of before. 
The next day I went to mass at the North Chapel which was very big but not very well attended. The congregation was old people with one Hispanic family. Mass was short with very little singing. We then went to Blarney Castle after that. We caught the bus at 11:45, got some lunch at the grocery store in the town that had about 10 shops/pubs. We then went to the Blarney Castle. My liked the grounds the best. There was a lake, fields with horses, a fern garden, a large house looking like it was from the 1600's, and a horse graveyard. The fern garden was really neat and I felt like I was in Hawaii. The 3 or 4 story house is really cool from the outside, but it was closed for the winter. It is on top of a hill facing the lake. Adam and I had a discussion as to whether someone was living there because they had a private back yard sign but we decided that no one did. Then we went to Blarney Castle. I did kiss the Blarney stone, even though I was not really sure that I wanted to. It just does not seem sanitary! But I was in line and all of a sudden the old, grumpy man who holds your legs sorta pushed me to sit. I put my hands on the bars to prevent me from falling ten stories and giggled. The man told me not to giggle and to kiss it, which I did and then was whisked away so that the next person in line could go. I was not so afraid of falling there as I was when standing elsewhere in the castle. There are bars below the stone that would keep you from falling ten stories but if you did fall it probably would still hurt a lot. 
Here I am smiling but actually scared because those bars at my feet prevent me from falling to my death! I am pretty sure that they would hold, but I was not about to check. I was more afraid of twisting my ankle in them than anything. The castle is very tall and built without any of the machinery that we have now. There were many rooms one on top of another. I feel like they were inefficiently built for labor's sake, but I know that the point of it was to be well protected and going up is better than going out. There were many funny little signs talking about parts of the castle. The funniest one talked about an entrance way that had a hole in the ceiling. It was like that so that if you were not a welcome guest, then the guards of the castle could drop stuff on you like bricks or scalding oil from the kitchen. 
I also was afraid that the castle would fall while I was standing on it. It seems to be leaning on the edge of a cliff. Then we went into the dungeons and storerooms underneath the castle and I felt like something was going to jump out at me from the dark.
The funniest part of the hole adventure was visiting the horse graveyard. It consisted of a mud pit with four headstones with names like tinker and jasper. It is too bad that I did not take a picture. We walked pretty far to visit it too. There was a sign on the trail and it was on the map making it seem like it was this thing that you could not miss. It would not be so funny if the area was not just a pile of mud.
We caught the bus and went back to the hostel. There I met this girl who was pretty cool. She just had gotten off the plane from the US where she goes to the smallest college in the country, it only has 100 people. It is for organic farming and they live on a commune! A different life than what I am used to that is for sure. I'm excited for her to be here because she is working on some organic farms in Europe for a couple of weeks and then traveling for the rest of the three months that she is here. She has never been to Europe or stayed in a hostel before, but she was doing both by herself when I met her. What a girl!
Then I caught the bus home and went straight to sleep due to the big weekend.
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