Lexi's Study Abroad Spectacular

      This past week I spent the day in Cork. The main purpose of this visit to Cork was for a group audio tour of the jail. I was very excited for this trip. I am glad that we decided to do the audio tour. I enjoy taking things at my own pace when doing tours, and it was nice that this was at my own pace. Everything I learned at this jail I found to be incredibly interesting, which was fun, and also confirmed that adding criminal justice classes to my course schedule was the right choice. I also enjoyed the audiovisual presentation at the end of the tour. I thought that including testimonies from people who were imprisoned in the jail. This made me feel like I was able to better understand the stories and the wrongful imprisonments of the time.      When we finished our prison tour, we were given the rest of the day to explore Cork. Some of the girls and I made appointments to get tattoos. This was something that I was very excited about in the days leadin...

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 ...

This weekend I spent some time in London and for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to go to London. When I was a kid, this was because I was convinced that I would meet Harry Styles while visiting the city, but since then I have grown up, and realized that I would love to see the architecture as well as appreciate the city that so many of my favorite shows and movies were filmed in.  The first place that we visited in the city was Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. This was one of the things that I wanted to see while in the city, because I knew that it was something that was unique to London, and this palace specifically. When we arrived, it was incredibly crowded and we had to fight to get a spot for the viewing, and even then, we could not see all that great due to the crowd. In the image, you can start to get an idea of just how big the crowd was at this event.  The actual changing of the guards took much longer than I was expecting and ther...

  This past Wednesday I went to my first hurling match. Since arriving in Ireland, I have heard that hurling is one of the most popular sports on the island, but I had never heard of it before this trip. Going into the match on Wednesday, I was excited to learn about what exactly was going to happen during the match, but I also had no idea what I should be expecting. I was expecting something similar to field hockey due to the equipment used in the game, but I found that it was its own completely unique sport. I learned that the scoring is the same as Gaelic football, where a shot through the uprights is worth one point and a goal in the net is worth three, but other than that, I have zero idea what the rules are. We were trying to figure out how the game worked without googling what the rules were, or what was happening, and we made it through the game, but I think I would have been able to enjoy it more if I actually knew what was going on, and what the rules were.  I found ...

This past weekend I took a quick trip to Paris. I was with two fellow classmates. We spent time sightseeing, walking around, shopping, and eating. On Saturday, we spent most of our day at the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is one of Paris' major landmarks, and I can say with complete confidence that it lives up to the hype. I knew that the Eiffel Tower would be pretty, I just did not realize how much I would enjoy looking at it, no matter how much or how little of it I could see. The image above is one of the first photos that I took of the Eiffel Tower, and it is also one of my favorites. The day was so beautiful. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, as it had been raining when we went to bed the night before, but Saturday was all sun. After walking around the tower for a while, we decided to head back to our hotel for a little while.  We started heading back to the Eiffel Tower around 4, to stop to get dinner, a treat, and do some shopping. We stopped and got macarons on th...

  Saturday morning, I was wandering to the Eiffel Tower, and along the way, we decided that we were hungry. It seemed unfortunate to us at the time, but we did not pass any cafes that looked like what we wanted when we were on our way. When we arrived at the tower, we were all starving, so our first priority was finding something to eat. We walked to the other side of the tower, where we stumbled upon a cafe that looked promising. By this point, we were starving and would have eaten anything, but this cafe had crepes. One of the main things that I wanted to eat while in Paris was crepes, because that is something that Paris is known for.  The picture above is of the crepe that I got at the cafe. It was the first crepe that I had ever had, since I am usually scared of trying new foods. However, since leaving for study abroad, I have gotten into a mindset where I only live once, and I should try everything I can while I am here. I tried a fairly plain crepe, which just had banan...