Category: 2021-22

After a big adjustment period in January, I’m happy to report that I’m feeling much more at peace and at home here in Ireland. I owe this all to February, even though it’s been a whirlwind of a month.

February has been filled with plenty of events and new experiences, both big and small. Everything from more school work and a trip to Paris, to lots of soccer matches and local excursions. Let’s recap some of these adventures!

McCall and I both play soccer at Linfield and while it’s technically our off season, we couldn’t be stopped from seeking out a way to get touches on the ball. We joined the NUIG Ladies Club team and so far we have played in four matches. Our team is even set to play in the league final next week! It has been such a fun experience to play with and against local girls here, and it’s also been a great way to meet new people. Fingers crossed we can continue performing well and come out on top next week.

One of my favorite experiences so far this spring was showing my friend Jakob from Linfield all around Galway. He’s currently studying abroad at the University of Nottingham in England, but the Irish hills were calling his name so he booked a trip for the weekend. I had the pleasure of showing him around the NUIG campus, city centre and even Salthill Beach. 

On Saturday we made our way to the Cliffs of Moher. We lucked out with dry weather and even a brief appearance of sun! It was crazy beautiful and definitely a destination worth exploring if you ever find yourself in Ireland.

We had booked our bus tickets to give us a three hour window at the cliffs. At the end of it, I did wish we had a bit more time as we could have easily kept hiking and also spent more time looking at the indoor exhibit about the cliffs. That being said, as soon as our bus pulled up to take us back to Galway it started to rain, so the timing worked out well in the end.

I’m glad to see short, but sweet February coming to a close- but not because it wasn’t good! Really, I’m just excited to see what March will bring.

Best,

Laney Green

 

Hello from Galway, Ireland! 

The month of February seems to be flying by here in Ireland. My group and I are settling in nicely in our second month of study abroad, and the work has definitely started to pick up. While we are currently planning for a few bigger trips and events, we have been having a wonderful time surrounding ourselves with all the fun things to do in our local area.

 Galway is a wonderful spot for all sorts of different restaurants, pubs, and bars so we have been exploring new places to eat and drink every week. We have found some delicious places that have become favorites of ours, and other places to check off the list in the future.

I was told by lots of people that it may be difficult to find good food options here since I am a vegetarian, but I have been delightfully surprised at the number of options I have around this city. We frequent a café with wonderful coffee and pastries where we like to read and work on our schoolwork (where I am currently writing this blog from).

My roommates and I have made it a mission to find the best avocado toast in Ireland, and so far, we have had lots of good ones to pick from, and when we need to save money, we make our own at home.

While we have been kept pretty busy lately with schoolwork and other events, we have also found ourselves diving deeper into local places and the beautiful outdoors.

The recent storms that have hit the coast of Ireland and the UK have made it a bit difficult to participate in outdoor activities because of the intense winds and constant rainy conditions.

Once these storms are gone, we hope to go back to exploring Ireland, but for now we are pretty content on reading in cute cafes.

Best, 

Isabel Brown 

Last week’s adventure consisted of a quick trip to Paris with two of my roommates! We planned this trip about a month ago and after much anticipation it was finally time to head over.

We left our apartment at one a.m. on a Thursday and made our way to the Galway bus station. From there we had a three hour bus ride to the Dublin Airport and then a short flight before we landed in France. Even with the lack of sleep we were ready to take on everything Paris had to offer; especially some chocolate croissants and coffee.

We had three full days to spend in the city which we split up by dedicating two days to be complete tourists and go exploring, and saved the third day for museum visits. Our exploring consisted of trekking through the streets that led to major landmarks of Paris. This of course included the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc De Triomphe, and an impressive lookout point on the roof of a ritzy shopping center.

We did a lot of walking to get from landmark to landmark, which ultimately led to a lot of good eating along the way too. I had some of the best pizza and pasta of my life on this trip!

As for museums, we all visited the Louvre and it actually exceeded my expectations. It was just as big and beautiful on the inside as the outside architecture is. My favorite part of the museum were all the sculptures, but we also stopped to take a selfie with the ever famous Mona Lisa.

My roommates went on to visit the Musee d’Orsay while I wandered the gardens and trails around the Louvre.

On our last night we got caught up in riots which was a stressful way to end our trip. However, once we made it back safely to our hotel it only added to an overall memorable experience!

More adventures coming soon.

Best,

Laney Green

Hello from Galway, Ireland! 

One of the best things about studying abroad is being in a completely new environment from the one that you are used to. My friends and I are very adventurous people that love to get out and explore our surroundings. So far, we have had a variety of different adventures that range from local to a couple of hours away. 

One of our very first adventures in Ireland was to visit a castle. Ireland’s countryside is known for the sprawling green hills, and amazing architecture from centuries old buildings, abbeys, and castles. We decided to go and walk to one that seemed like it was fairly close to us called Menlo castle.

A group of us from Linfield headed out earlier in the day to “hike” the one hour to the castle. The first thing we learned is that you can’t actually walk to the castle, and most of the way we were walking along the side of the road. When we arrived at our destination, we found out that it was closed to the public (always check online first, guys) and we ended up not even being able to see it. We walked to the entrance of the grounds for some cool photos and ended up walking even farther to visit the castle’s cemetery which actually gave us a view of the real castle from a distance.

This adventure ended with a long walk back and into town to get Italian food and ponder over our journey, even though we didn’t do what we set out to do in the first place.

One of my favorite experiences so far has been visiting the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs are an attraction that most people visiting the West coast of Ireland set out to see, and our group was no different.

We found a bus that would take us to see them earlier in the day and bring us back in the late afternoon for a fairly decent price. After we got off the bus, we purchased day passes and entered to see one of the most beautiful sights in Ireland. The Cliffs left us all speechless and we walked up and down the trails along them to get in every view. We took lots and lots of pictures and even went inside O’brien’s tower at the top of one of the cliffs.

We were all happy to look at the view of the ocean and natural beauty that surrounded us for hours, but we eventually checked out the visitor’s center to learn even more about the cliffs around us. We were able to get a hot lunch after the chill of the sea air, get some awesome things from the gift shop, and warm up before the journey home. The cliffs are a must see for anyone visiting Ireland, and we all hope to adventure out there again before the semester is over.

Aside from our bigger adventures we have also been checking out the natural beauty surrounding us every day. We have beautiful beaches close to our school, parks, and my roommates and I have a reading spot down by the water that we like to go to after class sometimes.

Ireland is a beautiful country full of places to explore, and we have lots more exciting adventures in our future here.  

Best,
Isabel Brown 

Hello from Galway, Ireland!

With a little under a month of my study abroad experience tucked under my belt, I feel like I have already learned so much. This exchange has been a whirlwind of crazy and amazing adventures that I am excited to share with you. To anyone considering a study abroad trip, or even just an adventure to a country you have not been to before, I have a brief list of some of the experiences I have had so far that could help you out with your own adventures.  

1. Be able to advocate for yourself: Study abroad has proven to have its fair share of challenges as well as all the super fun things. These challenges often put you into situations you have not been in before, and being able to advocate for yourself and use the resources available to you will make life so much easier. Some things that my group has experienced include flight delays/ changes, cards being frozen, not having service, figuring out how to work the showers, etc. We were able to solve all these problems ourselves with help from those around us, and now we have shared experiences to look back on and laugh at.

   

2. Get involved with the people around you: I was so fortunate to come to this exchange with a group of great people from Linfield, and even more fortunate to live with two of my close friends in our accommodation. While these people have been an amazing part of my experience so far, I was even luckier to be paired up with three other amazing roommates. The three of us from Linfield also live with a girl on exchange from Canada, and two girls from different parts of Ireland.

   

   These people have quickly become my friends, and through them we are able to get an entirely unique experience than we would have if we were just living with Linfield students. The girls from Ireland are able to tell us insider information on the best restaurants, cheapest grocery stores, what classes are fun to take, and so much more. We meet more people through our other roommates and broaden our social circles. I have so much fun living with them and getting close to people from around the world.

   

3. Manage your time: Being in a new place is so exciting, and it can be hard not to do everything all at once. Something that my group has had to learn to get better at is time management. It is hard because you want to be able to explore across the whole country, try every cool restaurant, go into every pretty store, go to all the interesting classes, and have fun with your friends at the same time.
4. While you can accomplish all those things at once, we have learned that spreading things out and planning adventures makes it to where we have more energy and overall, more fun. Even though we are only here for one semester, there is a lot of time to spread exciting things out while still getting a great education.

   

So far this semester abroad has been wonderful, and I cannot believe we are just getting started. You really do get a plethora of new perspectives while abroad from things like conversations with roommates and new acquaintances, to having a class schedule jam packed with Irish history, philosophy, archaeology, music, and folklore. I know this adventure, even with its difficulties, has contributed greatly to my life and education experience.  

Best,
Isabel Brown  

Hello from Ireland! I have officially completed my first two weeks of school at NUI Galway! Figuring out how to register for classes was a hurdle, but luckily even though it’s a pretty big university, professor email responses were timely and I made it to every class I intended to.

With my class schedule now set, I’ve had the ability to figure out the quickest route to campus and my five classrooms in particular. The next step regarding school life is joining clubs to try and get more involved on campus and meet new people! So far I’ve joined the mountaineering club and the soccer club.

While classes are my priority during my time across the pond, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun on the side– right? That being said, my roommates and I recently took a day trip down to the southwest coast of Ireland known as Cork. I didn’t know much about Cork or its surrounding area before we departed, but that honestly made for a more exciting experience.

Cork is about a three hour bus ride from Galway, and the bus fare round trip is just about 35 euro– very affordable! Once we made it to our bus stop we called a cab and made our way to Cobh, which we chose as our main stay for the day. The town of Cobh is absolutely beautiful and I would go back in a heartbeat. It’s small, but filled with brightly painted buildings and sits right on the harbor.

We specifically chose to come to this part of Cork as Cobh Harbor was actually the last place the Titanic stopped before making its way to America. We were able to get tickets to the Titanic Experience which is an interactive experience about the Titanic and the 123 passengers that got on at this port.

 

After the Titanic museum, we spent the rest of the day roaming around by the water, the colorful streets, and up the hill to the Cobh Cathedral. It made for a great place to watch the sunset before heading back down to call a cab. The cab took us back to the station and from there we hopped on our bus back to Galway. I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Cork and Cobh, and it’s safe to say I’ll be back to see more!

Below is a list of dos and don’ts I learned from our outing to Cork:

• Do book your bus ticket online the night before, as ticketing may close or sell out by the time you get there in the morning. It’s also cheaper online!
• Don’t pay the extra 0.40 euro for them to text you your ticket information… you won’t need it. 
• Do call your cab before the bus drops you off, otherwise you’ll be standing around waiting for Richard in a midsize taxi for an extra 30 minutes.
• Don’t speak in an American accent or else Richard will stop for gas and a light snack while your cab fare continues to rise.
• Do go to the Titanic Experience museum. It was a really cool presentation and you’ll leave with your head filled with facts about the Titanic.
• Don’t get too distracted by the sunset and wait too long to call a cab; internet connection is spotty and cabs become a delicacy in the early evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best,

Laney Green