Day 10- It's my blog day, We're doing what I want

Good Evening Lads and Lassies,

Today we parted from our elegant stay in Limerick for many interesting adventures that began our journey in Galway. The first bus ride, Limerick to Lehinch Beach, Jayla had already decided to catch some flies.

As we arrived at the beach, we soon realized we were in for a treat. It was very windy and wet, not our ideal beach scene in the States, that's for sure. We only stayed for about 20 minutes for some awesome photo ops (as always) and we headed out. During this 20 mins, Jaclyn and I decided it was a good idea to take our shoes off and go in the water. Our feet were pretty close to falling off I think! 

From here we visited the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs were obviously beautiful as I'm sure you've seen in photos, but it was a different type of beautiful today. We had to try and see them through the fog and rain!

We walked on the Cliffs for about 45 mins which was awesome. A couple of us even got right up on the edge! We came back completely drenched from head to toe, so we all had to change our clothes before lunch.

We also visited the exhibit, which happened to be indoors, thankfully. Here we learned about "Life at the Edge," which explained the many types of marine life, wildlife, and plants that there is a wide array of at the Cliffs. We saw explanations of how Earth and the Cliffs have evolved over time from 4.6 million years ago to present day. It also showed why the climate is always rainy and cold here and how it is changing. In the exhibit, we saw that by 1978, 100,000 people were visiting the Cliffs each year and in the next ten years it was expected to increase to 250,000. Most of the architecture and pathways along the Cliffs was built by Sir Cornelius O'Brien who was the landlord of the property in the mid 1800's. 

From here we took off to Galway (YAY), and on the bus ride we learned that Jaclyn must have been reincarnated from an Irish whistler of some sort in another life and that she plays glorious Irish tunes (not really). The bus driver took us on the scenic route which was a road that followed the west coast of Ireland from one city to another. On this route, we decided to stop for yet another group photo (go figure) on the side of the road where we could see the ocean crashing against the rocks. After the picture, we all hid from the weather on the bus while Jaclyn and Marlee spent 15 mins taking selfies by the ocean, meeting a snail friend, and getting completely soaked again, who needs a shower?

FINALLY, we arrived in Galway after a long bus rude of Jaclyn's awful whistling and getting stuck in the worst traffic we've seen in Ireland thus far. After we all showered and got cleaned up, we went to Rockin Joes for a nice greasy dinner before we went to see, yep you guessed it, Pitch Perfect 2! I know what you're thinking, "Accascuse me?"... Well, accabelieve it. We had an accaawesome time. The pitch was defintely perfect for us here across the pond. #squad

That's all folks! See ya in 4 days!

Cierra OUT

Day 9 - U of L

After a fun night out on the town, we all got some sleep and were up for breakfast by 8:30.  We headed out to the bus stop that was non existent for the bus we needed.  A nice Irish woman directed us to the right stop.  Once on the bus, it was about a 15-20 min drive to the University of Limerick. U of L was founded in 1972 so not too long ago and especially young when compared to Marietta College. About 14,000 students attend U of L.

The first stop on campus was to the International office to meet up with Gemma.  Gemma is an intern and she took us on our campus tour.  The campus is rather large but very beautiful.  The weather was super nice out too.  Along the tour, we stopped at the U of L Boathouse which houses the mens and womens crew teams.  The boathouse was really aweome and it had an indoor rowing pool!  The dock outside was also really nice and very peaceful.  After finishing up the tour, we headed to the Plassey house which is the original building from the start of the campus.  This building houses the presidents office. 

We had a nice lunch in the Plassey House which include potato lentil soup and various sandwiches.  We also had the normal coffee and tea.  Jayla tried tea for the first time on the trip and won't be tryinig it anymore.

After lunch we had about and hour and a half until our next meeting.  Most crashed in the visitor center and took naps which were much needed.  Others looked around and passed the time playing the game Buzz.

Gemma collected us at about 2:15 to take us to the sports sciences building to meet with Jaime a professor in the PE department.  Jaime along with another lady are originally from the states and have been working at U of L for 2.  They are on a 5 year contract.  Jaime started the talk by mentioning differences in the education systems between the US and Ireland.  One major one that stuck out is that  students in each class may only have 1 paper and 1 exam that determines their entire grade.  Students are finishing exams now and won't graduate until August!  Jaime also talked about the different research that she and her colleagues are doing and the different graduate programs they offer.  

We then took a tour of the building and we were able to see the different posters of current and past research that has been done in the department.  We met up with DJ who is the master lab guy making sure the labs are setup and giving access to different people.  We viewed several of the labs which could be either instructional or research based.  Some of the labs we saw were physiology and biomechanics. It was really cool to see what they use in their undergaduate labs.  We were able to get a few group pics along the way.  Jaime and DJ did a great job showing us what U of L sports sciences has to offer.

Our last stop was to the student union to learn about the clubs and societies. Unlike in the states, sports are not a varisty sport instead it is a club.  We were given some information and learned a lot about what students can be involved in. The students are given a lot of responsibility and get to do a lot of really cool things like skydiving in Italy or going to Morocco for surfing.  

Our day ended there with a bus ride back into city centre.  The students were dragging a lot by this point and needed food and sleep.  Later in the evening cards were played and the last night in Limerick was low key for the students to recharge for the Cliffs of Moher tomorrow!  All in all it was a full good day and we all have really enjoyed Limerick! Heading to Galway tomorrow!!