Almost Home!

Hey just a last blog to finish up!
I went for coffee with my group on the 20th as a goodbye before most of them went off to a conference in America. Laura and Kevin our presenting their work!We went hiking in the Wicklow mountains last Sunday. It was beautiful but was very different because of all the pine trees! There aren't too many trees in Ireland.

As a last celebration most of the interns rented a room and had a Kareoke night! It was a ton of fun! We were all hoarse in the morning! The system we were using had a lot of Linkin Park and Brittany Spears : p.

It has been an amazing summer! I have seen so many sights in cities and the beautiful Irish country side. I think that this opportunity came at a good time in my life. I have learned a lot more about what it means to work in academia and live in a big city. I had the experience of meeting people from all over the world. It was a wonderful learning experience and I hope I can use it to help decide what I want from the future. All the same I can not wait to come home to California, to the sunshine, and all the people I love!

Poster Session

This Wednesday at work we had a poster session. All the interns made posters summarizing our work from the past 11 weeks at Trinity. On Wednesday we hung them all up in a room and explained them to other interns, grad students, and professors which came. In a way it is like the advanced version of a science fair minus the paper mache volcanoes. There were three professors who walked around to each student and judge their poster and how it was presented by the student. At the end they gave out awards for the poster with the best scientific content and the poster which was presented best. I got awarded best presentation! I also got 60 euro to a book store in Ireland. So I have to get shopping!

More Beautiful Architecture

Edinburgh was probably the prettiest city I have seen. I felt like I was walking into a Disney fairytale. We arrived at night and there were fireworks above the castle!

Ryanair

So last weekend I had my first experience with Ryanair. If you don't know Ryanair is an airlines with notoriously cheap fairs. Basically they just charge you extra for everything you can imagine. So if you are young and just traveling with a small bag for the weekend it's fine. My experience wasn't too bad. The only bad thing was the rather rough landing. We left just as the sun was going down so I got quite a nice view. It was nice be up in the air again it has been a while.

Friday the 13th

So I haven't blogged in a bit so I'll try to catch up a bit. Yesterday I got rather homesick because it was the first ever true summer day yesterday. It was actually hot outside! I miss the sun.

This weekend I was in Cork. Another UCSB student, Matt, is participating in a internship in Cork so me and Michelle stayed in his dorm living room. Getting to Cork turned out to be a bit of a challenge for us. It was Friday the 13th and so I suppose I should have been more wary. Michelle, two other interns, and a I went to catch the bus at 7. We arrive in plenty of time. When the bus pulls up everyone shuffles in to line and we end up towards the back. When we make it up to the front of the line the bus driver says that there are 3 seats and we are 4 and that there are no more buses of that company. So we try and catch a train but learn that we are at the wrong station. So we head to the other bus stop and learn that the last bus for Cork left at 6pm. Finally we make it across town to the other train station and discover the price for a return ticket is 72 euro since we didn't book online. In the end we give up and go home. We then left at 6 in the morning to catch the first bus at 7am.
This is the bus company we usually take however the bus we took to Cork was a Go Bus

The Giants Causway and the 13 mile walk

On Sunday I went to see the Giant's Causeway! We (the group of interns and I ) took a bus ride from our hostel to a town with an ATM. Then we walked about 2 miles to the Causeway. It was an overcast day but the temperature was pretty nice. The Causeway itself looked like something that came out of a movie! I kept thinking that is I just pressed the right stone a pillar would rise out of the ground or a secret passage way would appear. My favorite part was where the rocks met the sea. It formed such a beautiful form of movement and a rich combination of colors and textures. After seeing the causeway we walked back to our hostel. This ended up being a 13 mile walk! It was full of a variety of pretty scenery though so I didn't mind. For a while we walked along the cliffs and at one point we walked down this long stretch of beautiful sandy beach. After, we all went to the pub in town for a nice big dinner.

Vagabonds Hostel

The hostel we stayed in this weekend was probably my favorite hostel so far. The staff were all very welcoming and the atmosphere was very fun. It reminded so much of my friend Casey Jane : ). She would love all the artwork that was all over the walls. It was a narrow brick building with a zig zag staircase in the middle. In the dining area with a giant map of the world. There was also a wall where they let everyone right something. I drew a flower and wrote the date the Irish way.





There was also a sort of living room which I thought looked very "hip" and comfy. It had this fun light in the middle.

Everything in the kitchen was from Ikea. They had a magnetic knife board and scrub brushes which had suction cups on the back end so they stuck out from the tile by the sink. The bedding zipped back up into a pillow!
We (about 17 interns and a couple friends) had a barbeque Sat night in the backyard of the hostel with their gas BBQ. It was a lot of fun! Someone had brought ipod speakers and there was a foosball table!
We had to pay for the hostel in cash so I decided to take a picture with all the money before we paid : )
This was the view from my bed! So if you are ever looking for a hostel in Belfast choose this one! ( The showers were also the best so far. They had murals on the inside of the bathroom doors of beach scenes.)