It's All For Charity!

This week is Rag Week here at DCU. Rag Week is all about raising money for charity. Tuesday I went to the Campus bar and donated money and danced with my friends and had a great time. Wednesday night we had a lot of fun! We had a lot of the rugby team over watching the rugby game on tv since my roommate Andy is chairman of the rugby team. My roommate, Tamara and our friend Sally-May learned about the wonders of Fluff and are absolutely addicted to it now! They don't sell fluff here in Ireland, so they're pretty amazed with it...



After the rugby game was over and Tamara and Sally-May were done eating spoonfuls of fluff, we went to the Rag Ball in the student union! It was a lot of fun! One room had a live band, another room had a "silent disco" where everyone listens to music through headphones and dances so it is funny to watch! I was most interested in the 90's stage where one of my favorite bands from when I was little was playing...B*Witched! They were so cool!!



It was really hard to get a good picture of B*Witched because I was so far back, but I had fun anyway!

For the past week I have been raising money for charity and I ended up raising 115euro. Because I raised that much money, I had to go bungee jumping!



This crane was 275ft up in the air!!! crazy!



should the bungee have broken, this big air-filled thing was supposed to break my fall and save me :-/



Before going up I made sure they strapped me in VERY tight!



Then I got in the metal cage to be lifted 275feet in the air!!!



This is me going up!



This is where it got a little scary!!!



After the initial shock, it was actually a lot of fun!



I spin a lot and got very dizzy!

If you want to watch me jump over and over again, my friend Ellen took a video of it!



Altogether, it has been a great week and our campus raised a lot of money for charity!! I've had a grand time all week.

Hope everyone else is having a lot of fun too!!

Glendalough!

Hi Everyone!

Next week is Rag Week here at DCU which is a week to raise money for Irish charities and do a lot of fun activities! I decided that I am going to try to raise 110 Euro. If I succeed, I will go bungee jumping at DCU on Thursday!

Valentines Day was Thursday, so my roommates and friends invited me to go out to The Purty Kitchen to go dancing. It was a lot of fun!


Sally-May, Eimear, my roommate Tamara and me at the Purty Kitchen.

Today our study abroad program took a bus trip to Glendalough in Wicklow County. Glendalough means "land between two lakes" which is exactly what it is! The two lakes are the Upper lake and the Lower lake. St. Kevin built a great monastery here between the lakes in the 6th century! There are many monastic ruins left of the monastery, including one of the few round towers left in Ireland.


This tower is the best preserved tower and was used by the monks when the vikings and Danes invaded. Beyond the tower, there is also a huge cemetery and ruins of churches.



Also, St. Kevin's Cross is here, which is a beautiful High Cross.



I read that anyone who can get their arms around the cross will have their wish come true! Had I known that before we went, I would have made a wish! St. Kevin had a rock bed in the side of one of the mountains that is only reachable by taking a boat across the Upper lake.



However, people are no longer allowed to go to his bed because the Upper lake is known as a bottomless lake and too many people have lost their lives to it.



On the way back to Dublin we drove to a beautiful place between the Wicklow Mountains and took a couple quick pictures.



So, altogether I have a really fun week, especially today. I am so tired out, so I am taking full advantage of this weekend night by relaxing in my room watching some Irish TV and reading some books for class. I am far too tired to do anything else!

I hope you all had a great Valentines day and are doing well! Please let me know how you're doing! I love to hear from you, even if I can't always write back to all of you individually!

Malahide Castle!

Today I went on a tour to Malahide Castle right outside of Dublin and the North coast line of Dublin, both of which are absolutely gorgeous!

Malahide Castle was built in 1185, when Richard Talbot, a knight who accompanied Henry II to Ireland in 1174, was granted the "lands and harbour of Malahide". The oldest parts of the castle date back to the 12th century and it was home to the Talbot family for almost 800 years, from 1185 until 1976!

The estate survived many losses, such as the Battle of Boyne. On the day of the battle, fourteen members of the Talbot family sat down to breakfast in the Great Hall, and then they all died by that night in the battle. The Talbots even survived the Catholic Penal Laws, even though the family remained Roman Catholic until 1774.

In the 1920s the private papers of James Boswell were discovered in the castle, and sold to an American collector (they are now on display at Yale!) by Boswell's great-great-grandson Lord Talbot of Malahide.

Malahide Castle was eventually inherited by the seventh Baron Talbot and when he died in 1973, it was passed to his sister, Rose. In 1975, Rose sold the castle to the Irish State, because she could not afford the taxes.

Behind the Castle was a really old run down church.


It had a cemetery in the yard of the church and looked kinda creepy if you ask me! We didn't learn anything about it, so I can't give you a cool history about it like I did with the castle!




After the Castle we went along the North coast of Dublin where there were beautiful beaches where people were actually swimming when it was only 55degrees out!



We also saw special lighthouses that were built in the time of Napoleon to help defend against French attacks, if they ever were to come.



We also saw an island about 4 miles off the coast, which was where the Vikings first landed! The Vikings used this as a pathway to invade Ireland, but many Vikings ended up staying and living in Ireland!



All together it was a really fun day!

Oh, and Don was able to find a guy to fix my chair so it charges! I've been getting around fine and having a lot of fun! I went downtown yesterday and got a green jacket because its a bit windy here.

Anyways, I'm having a lot of fun here and I hope everyone is doing good back home!!

My First Week!

My first week in Dublin has been very exciting! There is so much to say! I slept for most of the plane ride except for when they woke me up to eat (if you want good food, don't fly Delta!) I was ridiculously excited when we landed in Dublin at 6:45am (which is 1:45am in Rochester).

When I got off the plane, I met my program directors Don Niall and Brian Doherty. Brian took me to DCU and showed me my room. My room is nice, I have a double bed, a nice desk and a TV! Most people only got a single bed and no TV!



I also got a really nice bathroom, it's very big!



I share my apartment with 3 other people. An American boy, Patrick, is right down the hall. Across from his room is a room with an Irish girl from Belfast, Tamara. Then my neighbor is Andy (he is also from Ireland.) Andy, Tamara and Patrick are very nice and fun, so its nice sharing the apartment with them. We each have our own rooms and bathrooms, we just share the living room and kitchen!



After I was settled in, we went through orientation and then the directors organized a bus tour of Dublin for us. It was a lot of fun! I definitely recommend anyone who comes to Dublin to take the bus tour! Then, the next day I took the regular Dublin Bus to the center of the city and met my group in front of Trinity College for a walking tour. Everyone in Dublin was wearing green and all of the businesses in the city were displaying the Irish flag because there was a rugby game against Italy that day. It was really great to see all the Irish people excited on their way to the game.

On the walking tour we went to St. Stevens Green and there was a beautiful arch and we also walked over the River Liffey.



In the center of the city there is a tall stainless steel spike that is called the Spire. It was built in 2000 and replaced a statue of an Englishman that was destroyed during the Rebellion. We also learned all about how the center of the city has many bullet holes in the buildings left over from the Irish Rebellion.


After the walking tour, a couple of us Americans decided to stay in the city to get something to eat. We found a pub that was showing the rugby game and had great food.



Most of my friends ordered Fish & Chips, but I got Bangers and Hash, which was a great choice! It was so good!!

Other than all of that, I have signed up for all of my classes and I only need to go to class for 2 hours once a week!

I have had a little bit of difficulty with my chair... it won't charge! The man I talked to before I left said I would be fine, but turns out he was wrong! However, Don and Brian are doing absolutely everything they can to help me and will hopefully have a solution tomorrow!

Anyways, I hope everyone is doing well in America!

oh, and I do love mail! So if you'd like to send me a letter, my address is:

Ms. Stephanie Woodward
Room WG14C
College Park Apartments
Campus Residences Ltd.
Ballymun Road
Dublin 9