Spring Break trip- Ireland & Great Britain!

Hello everyone,

Here's the scoop on my trip! We started in Dublin, and at first, it was really weird to talk to people in English. I really wanted to ask for my bus ticket from the airport in Spanish, and had to keep reminding myself of where I was. It soon became obvious that I was in Ireland, from the accents, the flags, the pubs, and just how green everything was. We checked into our hostel, which turned out to be pretty grimy, and then went and got some dinner at a traditional Irish pub. The next day, we went and did a free tour of the city. Actually, we did the free tour in each of the cities we visited. It was really nice to have someone explaining what everything was and the history behind it, because otherwise we would have been seeing things and having no idea what they were or why they were important. I think my favorite part of Dublin was Trinity College. The campus is probably the prettiest one I have ever seen, and if I could study abroad again, I would be there in a heartbeat. Maybe it was because I was missing Vandy, but out of all the things we did, just wandering around the campus was one of my favorites. Plus, we got to sit for a while and watch a game of Cricket.

Dublin was nice- it reminded me a little bit of Boston, but we really wanted to get out of the city a little bit to see some countryside and a little more of Ireland. The solution was a daytrip to the Cliffs of Moher, which are the Cliffs of Insanity from the Princess Bride, and also appear in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. More importantly they are absolutely gorgeous, and we got to see some really pretty parts of Ireland along the way. Here are some pictures:

The Cliffs!

The Cliffs again

Irish countryside

more Irish countryside

 The trip to the Cliffs of Moher might have been my favorite part of the entire trip, and I was sad to leave them. We spent the next day exploring in Dublin again, and taking a little trip to Howth, which is a smaller city on the coast that you can get to by metro. Unfortunately I don't any pictures from Howth, because my camera took a fatal tumble out of my clumsy hands that morning. Sad day. I had to buy a new one, which I had up and running for our trip to Edinburgh.

Our trip to Edinburgh started bright and early. We left our hostel at 4:00 am, and landed in Edinburgh by 8:00. We walked around for a while and then got on the free tour at eleven. Our tour guide did a really good job, but she was Canadian, which was rather disappointing to me because Scottish accents are my favorite, and I had been looking forward to listing to one for three hours on the tour. Oh well. We learned lots of good stories and history of Edinburgh. The next day we hiked Arthur's Seat, a hill that overlooks Edinburgh, and finished up seeing what we wanted to see in Edinburgh. Here are some highlights in pictures:

Edinburgh Castle

St. Giles Cathedral

to Arthur's Seat

Arhur's Seat

After two days in Edinburgh, we took the train to King's Cross Station in London. I was super excited about just riding on the train, and the fact that King's Cross Station is the one that they use in Harry Potter. We tried to get to Platform 9 and 3/4, but we couldn't get to it without a buying another train ticket. London was awesome, but proved to be the hardest on my poor feet. We refused to spend money on public transportation and walked everywhere we needed to go. We did the free tour in London, which took us to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament, and Trafalgar Square. We did another tour in the afternoon that took us to St. Paul's Cathedral, Tate Modern, the Globe Theatre, and the Tower of London. We had a day to explore on our own and go to some new places as well as spend some more time in places from the tour. Here are some pics from London:

Big Ben

Parliament

Buckingham Palace

Hyde Park

Travel Buddies!

On Saturday, we had a picnic in Hyde Park and then spent from 2:00 to 11:00 walking/bussing/flying/bussing again/metroing home. It was a wonderful trip (I should add that I never needed my umbrella), but I was really glad to be back to go to church on Easter Sunday. Now I have another week of spring break, which so far hasn't but probably should include some time in the library. I have about 4 more weeks of classes, one free week in Barcelona, and then I'll be home!

Birthday, Cavas, Sitges, and Palau de la Música Catalana

Hi Everyone!

Last Wednesday was my birthday, and it was so fun to be able to celebrate in Barcelona. A few of my friends surprised me with cupcakes at lunch, and we sat outside on the lawn at the UB and had a little picnic. Then I went to dinner that night with some other friends, and we went and celebrated with Gelatto afterwards. I also got lots of cyber birthday well-wishings, so thanks for those!

This weekend we had our last planned CIEE events. On Saturday we went on a tour of Codorníu, a Cavas company near Sitges. Cavas is the same as Champagne, but they can't legally call it that because it doesn't come from a certain region of France. Apparently Codorníu is one of the oldest family businesses in Spain, and also in Europe. The facility was beautiful, and we had studied some of the buildings and art work in my Masterworks of Catalan Art class. We got to go into their underground stores, and take a rollercoaster-like train ride through part of it. After the tour, we went into Sitges, and had some time to walk around and lay out on the beach. Here are some pictures:

The Cathedral in Sitges

The beach in Sitges

I went to church on Sunday, and I absolutely loved it. After missing it last Sunday, I was really glad to be back. Sunday night, we had a CIEE trip to El Palau de la Música Catalana (palau=palace), which is another place that we studied in my Masterworks class. I'm so glad I got to go inside! It might be my favorite of all the architecture here. We saw a flamenco performance, which was cool, but I couldn't see very well, and I'm probably never going to like a flamenco performance more than the one I saw in Sevilla. Here's a picture of the Palau:

Now I'm getting ready for Spring Break! woo hoo!!! I leave for Dublin, Edinburgh, and London on Thursday, and I get back with another full week of break. I can't wait to tell you all about it:)

Much love,
Kori

GBU retreat

Hello all!

I didn't blog last week, because I didn't have much to tell you. Until Wednesday last week I was busy with school work: my first midterm, and my first paper turned in for a class at the UB. Ahh!! The midterm went really well because it was a CIEE (the study abroad center) class, but I have know idea if the paper I wrote was really good or just flat awful. We'll see.

Spring is here! It's warmed up a ton and there are beautiful purple flowers blossoming outside of CIEE that smell like lilacs and make me really happy every day. Leaves came out on the trees on Las Ramblas. On Friday we went to the beach, and it was actually warm! We had a picnic, walked in the water along the shore, and sat basking in the sun for a while. It was delightful. 

Friday evening, a friend and I went to a retreat with GBU (grupos biblicos universitarios), which was really wonderful. I was a little nervous going at first, because I didn't know most of the people, and icebreaker games are not my favorite thing, especially when they are in Spanish, but it turned out to be a really great weekend. There were about 40 Spanish students there, 4 from the UK, 5 or 6 from the US, and a couple other international students. I thought they did a really great job with it. There were both Christians and non Christians there, and they started out with the idea of just stopping for the weekend, taking a break from all the busyness of life and thinking about what really matters. Saturday they did some workshops to get people thinking, and encouraging people to figure out what they believed, and to seek the truth. On Saturday, they had a panel of Christians, where everyone wrote down anonymously questions they had about Christianity, and the panel answered. There were really good questions asked and good answers that really presented the gospel. In our down time, we played lots of games, went to the beach and played volleyball, soccer, frisbee, baseball, and just relaxed and talked. Great weekend all around.