Golden Castle in the Sky

February 27, 2010 5:47 p.m.
Since returning from Barcelona I have been kind of a lazy girl...but it is well needed considering my lack of sleep in Spain! Wednesday I did nothing but slept and pit putted around the apartment like a zombie. My roomate Meghan and our friends that were going to Morocco finally got home at 2 a.m. Thursday morning. Ryanair is refusing to refund their flight too due to it not being their fault that France went on an air strike. It's awful and I feel so bad for them. Thursday Kristen and I sat in her room for literally 6 hours trying to get a general outline for what we are doing for the 3 weeks we will be travelling after classes are over. After that we went to Corinne, Maral, and Kate's room and had supper with everyone. Then we were all so exhausted we came back and went to bed. Friday I got up and loaded my rolly suitcase up with almost every piece of clothing I have over here and took it to Mr. Tubs to do laundry. I was sick of handwashing and everything just needed a good cleaning! I was nervous at first because all my friends have gone and had awful experiences with a cranky woman who works there. The washing machines are different than ours and she refused to explain how to work it to anyone, instead just called my friends stupid. I got lucky and had a really nice lady who pretty much did everything for me!! I am now wearing completely clean clothing and can't begin to describe how awesome it feels!!! I was smiling while putting everything away because it smelled so nice...I'm weird I know! After that Kristen and I went on a walk to find the hotel her mom will be staying in while she is in Dublin visiting. It ended up being a 45 minute walk away but we had a great time. We took pictures and did some grocery shopping. By the time we got back it was supper time so we decided to make our whole chicken that we bought earlier that week. I'm slowly becoming a cook!! We put the chicken in the oven and played some phase ten while we were waiting for it to cook, when all of a sudden we heard a weird noise. We opened the oven and our pan had split in two!! It was the weirdest thing! But now we have no oven dish except for a little pie tin to share between 6 people haha. We put our chicken in the pie tin and put the potatoes around it I had sliced earlier. We finished our game of phase ten then made gravy to put over it all. It was so good!!! Turned out pretty dang well for our first time cooking a chicken! I have discovered that the secret to cooking is just guessing what you think would taste good together and just trying it...scary.
Today was wonderful, I woke up at nine to the sun shining on my face. The first time in forever that that has happened! I got up and went jogging (mainly a power walk) up to Pheonix Park where the President of Ireland lives. It was so beautiful out. I just had my columbia on for a jacket and was sweating! Therefore, when I got back and told the girls how beautiful it was outside we decided to take a little mini day trip. Kristen, Corinne, Kate, and I hopped on a bus and took a twenty minute trip to North Bull Island. It was pretty spontaneous, but those are always the most fun! Ireland is bipolar about it's weather so by that time it was raining, but we sucked it up and walked down the pier out into the water to look at the beaches. It turned out to not really be a beach but kind of a bunch of mud surrounded by water, but it was still pretty and typical Irish. It was green and a lot of people were out walking their dogs. We saw the cutest elderly couple with their puppy walking hand and hand down the pier ( I took a picture ). My title is because in the distance you could see Howth, a little Irish town, and on it's corner was a shiny building and from the distance it looked like it was sitting on a cloud, so me being the dreamer that I am said it looked like a golden castle in the sky. That made everyone laugh and they decided that I had to of been that little girl who just sat around believing in fairies. I totally was, but I wasn't about to tell them that!! At the end of our walk we went to a coffee shop and got some coffee before heading back home. It was a good day! Tomorrow Kristen and i are trying out the Methodist Church from us to see what it's like..it's nice to be in Dublin a weekend so we can actually go to church!