Lexi's Study Abroad Spectacular

This week, a group of us took a trip to Lismore. This town is not very far from Dungarvan, only about 30 minutes when using the bus. When we arrived, I did not have much of an idea of what we would do in the city, and the only thing I knew about Lismore was that there was a castle. Throughout my time in Ireland, I have enjoyed looking at its historic castles, so you can imagine how my spirits dropped when I found out that I could not actually go inside Lismore Castle, because people currently live there. They should have been much more prepared for me being in town, and told them to leave so that I could wander around inside a functioning castle.  When we got off the bus, we made our way towards the heritage center, where we were then paired with a tour guide to see all of the important sites in the town. I actually really liked this tour guide, and I thought that he was very personable. He took us to the church, the cathedral, and the castle. At each spot, he would stop and talk t...

  On Friday, I went on a spur-of-the-moment drive with Dr. Snyder and some classmates. We drove about 25 minutes out of Dungarvan, towards the mountains. When we arrived, we parked at the start of a walking trail and began making our way up the mountain, looking for a westward-facing spot. The first obstacle that we faced was a sheep fence, where we had to climb over it using this very strange stair contraption. Once we made it over that, I assumed we would be smooth sailing up the hill. It was not. I spent that entire trek up the mountain dodging sheep poop with every step that I took. It was not my favorite activity. I also wasn't very fond of climbing the mountain, but that was mostly because I had leg day in the gym, and then followed that up with climbing a mountain.  The photo that I have attached below this is of the sunset that I saw from almost the top of the mountain. I have to preface this with the fact that I absolutely love sunsets, but generally my location prefe...

 This week we took a spontaneous field trip to Ardmore. Ardmore is an incredibly small town, smaller than I had been expecting, and I researched it before going. The bus dropped us off on the main street, really the only street, in the town. As we departed from the bus, we started making our way down to the water, which was so pretty, and where the picture on the right was taken. There we met up with our tour guide, who knew so much about this town.  My favorite part of the tour was when we went down onto the beach. The steps were a bit uncertain; however, I love being close to water, so that was really all I needed to have a good time. The shells that I found on this beach were perfectly intact and very large. They looked unlike any shells that I had ever seen before. Following this, we continued to walk around the town and see historical landmarks that are important in Ireland and Ardmore's history. We saw Saint Declan's well, a mass path, and a graveyard. I found the mass p...

 I love dessert. I am a sweet treat after-dinner person, and I don't think I would ever pass up the right dessert. On our first full day in London, we were trying to find a place to eat dinner, and I stumbled upon Creams Cafe. I was intrigued by the name of the restaurant, and you can imagine my joy when I found out that it is a late-night dessert joint. We ended up deciding to go that night, and after looking at the menu, we decided that dinner was going to happen after dessert that day. The image to the right is what I ordered at the restaurant. It was called the triple treat cookie dough, and I made the decision to order this after looking at the menu for an hour. It had chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough, and white chocolate cookie dough. Then it was topped with white chocolate drizzle and shavings, an Oreo, a chocolate, and Oreo gelato. It also came with a side of soft serve ice cream. This was one of the most delicious things that I have ever e...

  On Saturday I went to the British Museum in London. This is one of the city's free museums, which makes it a popular spot for tourists. This museum was something that I had wanted to see, due to the amount of stuff that there is to see within the museum, and the added bonus of there being no cost to enter. We arrived at the museum for our designated time slot, and ended up having to stand in line for nearly 30 minutes before we were able to get through the line, security, and get into the museum.  We started going through the rooms, following a map to ensure that we saw everything the museum had to offer. After a while this got more and more difficult, as rooms would split off of each other and we got confused about where we had and had not gone. I think that we were able to see almost the entire museum. We ended up leaving before we saw everything because it ended up getting very warm the farther into the museum we got, which made it hard to appreciate everything we saw....

  While I was in London, I visited the National Gallery, which is a free art museum in London. We spent our second day exploring London, visiting its museums, and this was our second of the day. When we arrived at the museum, I was surprised by how busy it was outside. There were different street performers and protesters in the area. We saw a violin player, and she was very good, and had drawn a fairly large crowd. Two people were dressed in solid gold and silver and were acting as statues. We saw protests for Iran and for LGBTQ+ rights and beliefs. There was also a fountain outside that I did my poetry reading by, as it was one of the calmer sections of the outside area of the museum. I found this outside area to be just as interesting as the art museum, because I was able to see people interacting in a neutral environment. There were no expectations for anyone in this area, which I think allowed for very open interactions.  At our designated time, we started making our way ...