A Fun Video

I know I said that I probably wouldn't post much this week, but this is just a quick one.

This is this guy that we call the Curly-Haired Man. He is the singer of the 'band' that plays at Thirsty on Sunday and Wednesday nights. He is totally crazy and really fun. We're kind of befriending the band members because one of our friends, Dave Didnt Die (we call him that because he got a strain of e-coli at a shady restaurant about a week after he got here and survived it, then threw himself a party called "Dave Didnt Die" and that's where most of us met him, so the name stuck), plays with the band every once in a while. Actually, this is the pub that we go to the most and we're friends with all of the bartenders and we actually got invited to their staff Christmas party. It should be really fun. So, this is Curly-Haired man dancing.

Horseback Riding in Kinsale!

A few weeks back we had a bank holiday that gave us a Monday off so we decided to take advantage of it and go to Kinsale on our day off. Jenna absolutely loves horses so she found us a place to go just outside of Kinsale called Ballinadee Stables. It ended up raining almost all day, but as soon as we got to the stables it cleared up and we were able to go on an hour long ride just around sunset. It was AMAZING! Definitely the best 25E I've spent while I've been here.

We got bored on the hour long bus ride to Kinsale so we started taking stupid pictures.

When we got to the stables we found out that they had puppies there!!!

We got a bit distracted by them.

And continued playing with them as we got ready.

I wanted to take her home sooo badly.


Then they followed us over to the horses.

Jenna and her horse, Jessie.

Me and my horse, Big Boy.

Kelly and her...'horse,' Laddle.

This is Dinny. He was sooo sweet.

Our first glimpse of how beautiful this ride was going to be.

We passed some cows. Luckily we weren't chased by these ones.


Then he led us right into a stream.


Soooo beautiful. I just couldn't stop smiling the entire time.


Kelly and Laddle tended to fall behind a lot...






The fabric started falling of my helmet toward the end.
All four of us and our horses back at the stables.


Laura and her horse, Fernando. Fernando had an eating problem and ended up being put on a leash for most of the ride.

And then back to the puppies!! (I wish someone had mentioned how terrible my hair was after that helmet...)

We had some time to kill before our bus back to Cork so we stopped into a pub for some dinner. We all got some fresh fish chowder. It was amazing!


So that was our very fun afternoon spent riding horses in Kinsale. It was really and truly incredible. I cant wait to go again! (We're going to try to make it back in the spring).

I'm going to try to put up more pictures this week, but dont count on it because I have a paper due, Thanksgiving to host, and we leave very early Saturday morning for London!!!

In other news, my plans for Christmas are officially set. We have all of our hostels, trains, and flights booked and I cant wait! We leave Ireland on Monday the 15th (after spending the night in Dublin) and head to Prague. We're staying in Prague until the 19th when we're taking a train to Vienna. We stay in Vienna until the 22nd when we're taking a train to Budapest. We are staying in Budapest for about a week, until the 28th, then it's back to Dublin, allowing us to be back in Cork with plenty of time to recover before New Year's. It is going to be amazing!!!

Archaeology Field Trip

For my Early Medieval Ireland Archaeology class we took a day-long field trip to a few sites near Co. Cork (though none actually in Co. Cork).

At this site I forgot my camera on the bus so I only got pictures out of the window while we were driving away. This is a round tower in the foreground and in the background there is an early medieval 'cathedral.' I think this was somewhere in Co. Waterford.

This is just in the little town, Dungarvan, that we stopped in for lunch.

This is at the second site, a ringfort, which I believe was in Co. Waterford. At this point we are actually inside of the ringfort and yes, it was raining...a lot.

The interior and bank of the ringfort.

This is a break in the bank where cows have climbed over it through the years.


This was the official entrance to the ringfort. The guy in the hat on the right is my professor, John Sheehan.
Did I mention that we had to trespass to get to it? This was the fence we had to climb over into some farmer's land to get to the ringfort. I'm sure it was cleared with the farmer, but it was still pretty shady just climbing over someone's fence.

The bank of the ringfort from the road.

That's what it looks like from the outside...not that special.

These are the evil cows that charged at us while we were climbing the fence. We all freaked out and ran into the fort.

The bus couldn't come up this road, so we had to walk back down to the highway.

This is a little graveyard somewhere in...Co. Tipperary? I think..

We came here to see the high crosses.

This is the other one.


There was super intense detail on them.

This is only special because it's one of the only known head stones that has English, Latin, and Ogham on it.

More of the graveyard and landscape.



View of the graveyard from the bus.