"Put a 'Cork' in it"

That's just what I did this weekend! I put Cork into my Ireland experience! Cork is the second largest city in Ireland and my friend's roommate planned this massive trip for like 17 of us to go down for the Folk Festival, which meant lots of live music!

It was a lot of fun and we filled up our entire weekend with day trips to the near-by cities of Blarney and Kinsale. Both were very beautiful in their own ways. Blarney is where we visited the Blarney Castle, which was awesome! Kinsale is a very pretty harbor town that held a lot of its own unique history as well.

Take a wild guess at what we did at Blarney? We kissed the BLARNEY STONE!!!!! I was sooo excited for this! Who cares about Swine Flu, H1N1 or whatever you want to call it. So apparently I now have the gift of gab, although my parents would probably like to claim that I had that before kissing the stone. A neat little fun fact for me was that when my mom and dad came over here about 30 years ago- my dad kissed the stone as well. So we did the same thing, about 30 years apart. It was neat to think that I was taking in some of the same views and in the same spot as my parents, would have been better if they were here though!


Kinsale was a cute town and we had a guided tour and the guide was very informative and all the stories of the town were neat to hear. We then tried to hoof it out to the fort, but didn't have time to really get to see it before the bus left back to Cork, so we could catch the bus back to Dublin. But, we got to see some amazing views in our attempt.


The vote is done on the Lisbon Treaty as well, so that's something else that one can put a 'cork in.' All the campaigning, while not necessarily as bad as campaigning back home can get, got a little old. In the end, the "Yesses" had it, as over 60% of those who turned out to vote checked Ya over Na. Basically, this strengthens the EU and Ireland's ties to it. Honestly, I didn't pay that much attention and didn't really form my own opinion about the subject. It was interesting though to see all the signs and how they changed from down-town Dublin's "Yes" signs, to the country side's "No" signs.

School is picking up hardcore. I have found myself out of the system far too long, and a little hard to get back into it, especially being at another school. But, I'll find a way to deal, I always do. Friday morning I'm flying to Liverpool, England to stay the weekend with my friend Brett from Camp Tecumseh! I'm really excited about this, but not necessarily having to be at the airport by 6 am :( But I suppose that's the price I'm willing to pay to maximize my time over there. That last sentence sounded like I'm in an Econ class or something, wait, I am and it starts in about 20 minutes- better run!