My 51st Post!

Since I started this blog in the summer, my blog dashboard thing says that I am currently writing my 51st post! At this point I think I must have been allergic to that writing bug when it bit me last Spring! But, I haven't minded and I hope that I have brought some sunshine, entertainment into any one's life who reads this or at least provided them some time-wasting material :)

The count-down to being home now officially stands at 25 days! Again, please let me re-iterate that the countdown does not exist because I hate it here so much that I just want to go home, it exists because I'm really excited to finally be HOME! A year away is far too much for this Indiana girl- but its been great really! And Ireland is great- just wanted to clear that up!

I've been a nerd these past few days and plan to continue that pattern except for during my trip to Scotland coming up in about a week. I've been studying like crazy- cuz my finals count from anywhere from 60% to 100% of my marks here at UCD. Stupid really and I hate this kind of assessment- I don't do well with them, but its what they do here and I don't have a choice really. But I did go out for my roommate Ally's bday last night. We went to a new club that I hadn't been to before called The Palace. It was pretty cool I suppose- but really just the same old, same old: Broken class on the dance floor, annoying guys that won't leave you alone and the occasional alcoholic beverage spilt on you. I love dancing with my girls- and that's all I wanted- I literally had to shove a guy off of me three times last night... grrrr... was seriously going to deck him if he tried one more time! I was sober all night and I should be more positive because I tend to give that impression that I'm a positive person apparently, so I will say the music was cool, the lights and fog machine were redic and the place was decorated pretty cool. It was Ally's bday and that's where she wanted to go- so Happy BDAY Ally!

Last weekend's trip to Galway was Amazing! I know I blogged about it last Saturday night and the only addition I will make to it is a brief description of church on Sunday and then add some pictures for you. I went to a Methodist church Sunday morning like a 2 minute walk from my hostile. The main preacher was gone, but the associate gave me a warm welcome. I was actually the first one there, before the pastor before anyone and it was 3 minutes before the service was suppose to start! Once the music started going, I looked around to realize I was 1 of the maybe 15 white people there. The majority of the congregation was African, which was actually way cool! It was a very young church with plenty of little ones and it was a fairly high-energy atmosphere in the room. The sermon was somewhat scattered and long ( I had to leave before she was done to catch my bus back to Dublin) but the main part that stuck with me was when she talked about our relationship to God through our Spirit. This includes your conscious and your intuition- not feelings, emotions or thoughts. This was the kind of relationship that Christ has with God- so in tune with his SPIRIT that he could communicate to God in this manner. Something to definitely work on for all of us I'm assuming.

The Church

"Living on the Edge"
That's about a 100 meter drop!

Cliffs of Moher!

Going beyond the barriers - well worth it!

Again, living on the edge- these were smaller cliffs though.

I got an assignment back from my Farm Management class. Its a 400 level class and has proven to be somewhat challenging for me. This assignment was based on our farm visit to a dairy that we made and was basically a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for those of you who haven't had that ingrained into your head through marketing and management classes.) I was worried for a few reasons- 1) I'm not that familiar with Dairy operations to begin with 2) Definitely not familiar with an IRISH Dairy operation and 3) I sort of let the due date creep up on me like the night before at 11 pm. But here's the good news... I got a B on it :) Yay for having good writing skills. I think I lost the most marks on the partial budget aspect of it, but when the teacher was going over it I hit most of the main points that he was looking for and said that an A or a B were both very good marks :)

Alrighty... back to the books. Studying will help this time fly by and I'll be home soon! :) The Christmas decorations around Dublin aren't helping my case of homesickness.

Cheers!