Days 2, 3 and 4

4th of July Journal - by Alex Dow

  The Fourth of July started off with our first day of classes.  After arriving at Aras Moyola (the name of the building we are having our classes in), we got to learn the names of everybody in our classes before continuing on to our first class notes.  At 11:30 we got a 1 hour break to take a tour of the campus with someone who works here, Rory O’Toole, so we learned where everything was in NUI Galway.  

 After finishing classes at 1PM, we all went out to lunch and went to the Global Village Square before returning for dinner at 6PM.  We then all went to see the 4th of July parade and Fireworks show sponsored by the Volvo Ocean Race, Galway City, and the United States Government. It was a great show and a great night.

July 5^th 2012

Today most of our group visited the cliffs of Moher, one of the BIGGEST cliffs in the world. We all took our turns progressively getting closer to the edge, for the guys, to exercise our man-hood, for the girls, to scream at the site of a massive drop. Prior to the cliffs of Moher we visited a deep dark cave, the Aillwee Cave, as we followed our guide deeper and further into the cave it became darker and more confined, until we reached a cavern, in this cavern the guide shut off all power to the lights. This was so we could experience what absolute darkness is, an intense moment to say the least, especially when the guide jokingly said, “Alright folks, that’s the end of our tour.” The highlight of the day, however, had to be the beautiful cow’s that seemed so much more interesting than our Canadian cows!   Mayve it's because they spend their days grazing on some of the finest real estate in Ireland - right on the Atlantic Ocean. 

Note from teachers - we have more pictures of cows than you might expect at this point.  We love the Irish cows.

6th of July Journal - by Cassie Hudaj

Today we got on a bus early in the morning and headed for the ferry terminal to go to Aran Islands. On the island, while some kids decided to take a bus tour others decided to take a biking tour.  On our tour of the Aran Islands, we stopped off at the old lighthouse (in the middle of the island built by an English Engineer), and got some crazy pictures.  We then went to andold church like the Abbey we saw the previous day.  The entire trip was highlighted by a tour to an old fort, Dun Aonghasa, with a twenty minute walk to to the top, the views straight down from the cliff were unbelievably... high. We then came back to the famous sweater market before returning for dinner at 6PM.  We had a free evening to enjoy the city of Galway and the university campus.