Irish Studies: Pre-history, Frog Orgy, and Twisted Ankle

I am so exhausted right now, it has been such a long day. I find myself tired a lot actually. I mean, I know 9:30 am for check in isn't that early, but most days I wake up between 7:40 and 8:10 am to get ready for school, get to school before 9:30 and I'm there until about 5 pm when we are dropped off. Of course I don't go straight to bed after that, there is dinner, often times a movie, random shenanigans, or doing some late night artwork. There are also ALWAYS things going on at school and around Ballyvaughan that the staff at Burren encourage us to take part in. Between early mornings and late nights fitting in artwork, food, fun time, school activities, and downtime: again, I find myself tired. It's a good tired though because everything has been such a great experience so far.

On that note, I was just commenting to my friends Casey and Hannah about how lucky we are that part of our exhaustion at the end of a given day is due to hiking through the Burren with our incredible tour guide and professor Gordon D'Arcy. He is actually one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met and we all love him to pieces. His knowledge of the earth, the creatures that inhabit it (including the human race), and history blow my mind and I wish I could have a little D'Arcy to keep in my pocket when I go on adventures.

Today we learned about the prehistoric peoples as well as the farmers that worshiped the sun. Gordon started out by telling us that we were done with flora, fauna, and rocks and were now focusing in on people; but there is actually no getting Mr. D'Arcy away from his rocks. I realized this when almost every one of his slides included ROCKS! We actually focused on tombs today - Wedge tombs, Dolman (Portal) Tombs, Passage Tombs, and so on as well as what they were used for. On our adventure today we drove around the Burren in search of some of it's tombs.

We hiked over some pretty rigorous terrain today. Lots of poop, lots of broken ground, lots of moss, lots of holes but we saw some pretty cool stone structures. I think the highlight of this whole day, however, (aside from seeing the Burren's main Portal Tomb again which I still think is really cool) was the frog orgy that we stumbled upon. Yes, you read that correctly, frog orgy. At our first stop before we left some of our group seemed to be oggling at something. Of course we had to investigate and low and behold they had found a swampy basin of water which contained hundreds, HUNDREDS people! of frogs. They were mating and croaking away and it was quite a sight to see. Hannah and I were really excited. We touched some of them haha, but don't worry, I didn't try to catch any! Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera out of the bus at that stop so I don't have pictures, but I'll see if someone else does.

Anyways, it was a fun trip but we were all EXHAUSTED by the end mostly because there was a disco at logue's (the local hot spot pub in town) and we danced the night away the night before. The last stop had especially tricky ground and I think I may have twisted my ankle. I am currently in the bathroom soaking my foot/ankle in hot water for 20 minutes while alternating icing it with some frozen green beans. Hannah, Mandy, Erica, maybe Casey, and I are going to Galway tomorrow so I'm hoping it is better by then. We'll see.

That's pretty much all I have to say about that subject. I mean, there is more, but this post is getting a little long and I'm sure most of you are wearing thin already haha. I took a bunch of pictures so I'll post them once they are edited.

On a side note I had the best tomato soup I've ever had tonight. Sorry Panera, there is no going back now...

Also, I've been having some cravings that just cannot be fulfilled while being in Ireland, speaking of Panera. Namely: Coke slushie, DD Iced coffee, and asiago cheese bagel with cream cheese. There are more, but those have been the most prominent in the past few days. GAH! It's frustrating, but I guess I'll live.