Saturday, April 2, 2005

Hellos

Hello everyone--it's been a long time again, hasn't it? Three months. But hey--at least that's not five months like last time!! Anyway, it makes me sad to not have time for the myO anymore after I made such great friends, but my posts are probably going to be like this--whenever I have time to type them, and the courage to try and come back after who-knows-how-many months n_n;;. Anyway, I've been really busy with school--five AP tests coming up in May (NOT looking forward to that!!) I've successfully applied and been accepted to college--the University of Washington--and haven't had any major crisis in my life this year . . . (knock on wood). But enough of the boring stuff!! A couple weeks ago my band went on a trip to Ireland, and it was the awesomest thing ever. I'd been looking forward to this all year--since last year in fact. It was a lot of work trying to get the money together for it--it ended up being nearly 3000 dollars!!--and then trying to get a bunch of my work from school done in advance becuase I was going to be missing an entire week (and as you can probably tell by my upcoming AP tests, my coarseload is not light--I swear, I'm never going to do that to myself again.) But it was all definitely worth it. People keep telling me that it was "the chance of a lifetime" and talking about how I may never get to do anything like it again, but . . . I want to go back!! We were mainly going over to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. --In Dublin, Ireland!! It was awesome being over there, and you may think that everyone would just get all drunk and everything--and most people did--but it was a lot of fun. I mean, I don't know--like, there was just a friendly atmosphere that I've never felt anywhere else before. (and I didn't drink--even in Ireland I was still one month short of the legal drinking age (18).) Although the main reason we went was to be in Dublin, we were actually only there for three days. Before we went there, we spent a couple of days in London and played a sort of "concert" thing in front of the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (if anyone knows where that is--seriously, there've got to be about a bazillion Albert Memorial type things--but of the ones I saw, that's definitely the most impressive). I wasn't really looking forward to going to London, but when I got there I really, really liked it. Especially using the Underground--I mean, you can get basically anywhere you want in a half-hour or less without having to deal with traffic. And the traffic in London is horrid. One of my favorite things in London was using their money. It's just so much more fun to ask someone, "can I borrow twenty pence?" than to ask to borrow twenty cents. So after we left London we drove through Wales and rode a ferry across to Dublin--4 hour ferry ride! Then after Dublin we stayed in Dublin we drove across Ireland to Limerick, where we had another parade and concert. Driving through the English and Irish country side is just how you'd imagine it--rolling hills, green fields, hedgerows, stone walls, and lots and lots of sheep. And we also saw a lot of old castles and things--seriously, in Ireland, you're driving along the road and about every half hour you see a castle or ruined watch tower, or an old church with all the Celtic crosses on the tombstones. It was really impressive. Ireland is a very beautiful place. Near Limerick we got to see the Cliffs of Moher, which are amazing--650 feet high in some places!! And they let us run on this beach for like five minutes, so I got to touch the Atlantic Ocean for the first time (no, I've never been to the east coast.) And one of the best nights had to have been the last night (although after that we had three hours of sleep on which to try and stand nearly twenty-four hours of plane riding.) That's becuase we got to eat dinner in a castle. I saw several castles up close and personal when we were over there--we visited the Tower of London in London, Malahide Castle near Dublin, the end of the parade in Limerick was in the courtyard of King John's Castle, and then we ate dinner in Bunratty Castle. --Huge!! It doesn't look that large from outside, but it's got to be a least the equivalent of a six or seven story building. I guess it's not really that large compared to some castles becuase it only had a tower at each corner with two levels of central room (huge rooms, though), but it was certinaly impressive. The dinner was semi-authentic medieval, which of course meant no silverware--except for a knife. Quite fun. The Cow came too becuase he's also in the band, so getting to spend more than a week solid with him made everything just that much better n_n. This has stretched on for quite a bit, so I think I'll stop here and call it good. n_n;;

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