A slideshow of pictures is not worth 1000 words per pic...

...Or else I'm gonna be here forever.
No really, now i have time to actually write stuff, so this is what went down. We moved out of our dorms in Upland a little later than we expected, but had a super lunch at my house of lasagna and fruit salad and such... thanks mom! At the Indy airport, we met up with Vance Maloney (the prof in charge of the trip) and he saw us off, while apparently I missed seeing my roomie Reno and my good friend Ellen getting back from their respective JTerm trips. Not cool.
Our flight to Chicago was one of those itty bitty planes that from the door I could see right over the top... no standing up for me! It didn't help that O'Hare decided they weren't gonna be an airport for an hour and we got to cool our heels for an HOUR on the runway in Indy before taking off. I mean really- actual flight time between Indy and O'Hare has got to be like 25 min tops and it literally took us two hours from gate to gate. Lame. Not to worry, we had a long enough layover planned so that we still made our connecting flight after tromping through the endless corridors of Chicago's largest and busiest airport.
The next plane was a sweet 767 that happened to be carrying about half the people it could have carried, so we each graciously had two seats to ourselves. Oh yes, I spread out and napped like a king... if kings nap. Although there was this guy in front of me who insisted on sleeping with his reading light on (not too troublesome since they're well focused) until his sleeping head lolled into the light and his white hair reflected blindingly and sporadically into my seat. Anyway, I slept over Canada and Greenland and woke up to a hot crescent roll and strawberry yogurt as I saw the west coast of Ireland come into view. Most of it was covered in clouds, but as we descended into Dublin (and we had circled around to come at it from the east) I could see out my window the familiar landmarks of Sugarloaf, Howth Peninsula and Bray Head, hiding my wonderful home of Greystones.
Customs went simply enough in Dublin as long as we sent Kelsie (armed with her innocent charm and passport picture with pigtails) to go through first and convince the surly customs agents that we weren't up to no good. We got our luggage quick and found ole Brian King and his Transylvanian wife waiting to whisk us away in the little red coach to Galway. For a while, I was filled with glee about being back and looked aroud the country with excitement, but after 5,000 sheep and millions of green blades of grass I was remembering my body clock and nodding off.
We made it to Galway and found ourselves being led through the most foolish labyrinth of corners, fire doors and ramps to our rooms where everyone sat around and chatted endlessly while I contemplated the fact that I hadn't pooped since Upland. Awkward? Nope, I was too tired. Most of the rest of that night was a haze of jetlag, but we went out with Maren (an American intern here) to keep ourselves awake. We fed the swans in the harbor and went shopping for breakfast foods, then we had dinner with our professor Arden Autry and his wife June. Arden is way cool and kinda reminds me of Dr. Harbin only less business like. I was already joking with him by the time dinner was done.
Sleep was glorious and I might have been lost and confused in the middle of the night, but who knows with me, right?

Monday is typically the second day of our weekend, so the three of us spent the day exploring. We went out for lunch at a place called Finnegan's then walked to Tesco on the north side of town for dinner foods, came back to An Tobar Nua to drop off the food and headed down to the sea for a bit of tourism. Most of the pictures are from this part, such as the Spanish Arch, the swans up close this time, the prom(enade), the panorama of Galway to Salthill, etc. We went out to dinner for fish and chips at McDonagh's and it was good food, but a lack of seating forced us to sit awkwardly with random people at a table. Apparently that's normal: something I had missed last time.
Later that night we met up with Cat and Scott (two more American interns) and we went to a coffee place and got the inside scoop and jokes and such... a good time.

Today was our first day with the cafe open, but we didn't work. We went to staff devos which was really good, then closeted ourselves in a room with Susan while we reviewed procedures and rules for like three or four hours. Tough. Killer. Lunch, then intro to classes with Arden, classic beginning of class stuff with syllabi and all. Now we have a bit or time to ourselves to have our dinner then Bible study at 7.

Congrats if you actually read this far.

PS There will be no more pictures ever. Just kidding, but really, for the time being my computer decided it would be funny to destroy my memory card and now I get some error about write protection whenever I try to take pictures. If any of you have any idea how to fix it let me know.

Much love