Irlanda and test preparations

So last weekend Arianna, Mary, and I utilized our five day weekend and took a whirlwind trip to Ireland :-) It was beyond incredibly beautiful there. On Wednesday night we were out at 100 montaditos as per usual and we ended up just staying there until about 11:30 or so, and then we headed back to Mary's place to meet Pepi and Juan (her señora and her señora's boyfriend) because they had offered to drive us to the bus station around midnight (our bus to Madrid left at 1 am). So we get on the bus and look forward to some sleep on the SIX HOUR BUS RIDE. yeah. I am NOT kidding. We doze a little but ultimately the bus is loud, hot, bumpy, and uncomfortable. ugh. Needless to say we got to Madrid at 7am a little grumpy and a lot tired. We had to keep it together though because we would have to get ourselves from the bus station to the airport (hopefully without paying an arm and a leg for a cab). We saw giant signs for the Metro there and I had overheard Lola telling Kiri a couple weeks ago that there was a metro line that runs straight to the airport! hooray...except we had to figure out which of the 20 billion metro lines ran there and how many times we would have to change, what kind of tickets to buy, etc. Thank the Lord for helpful Metro workers. an hour later we were walking into the terminal at Madrid airport. We were a few hours early so we found some comfy looking benches and slept a while. we woke up to a mass exodous from our gate...hmmm. We go to check our screen and find that not only has our flight been delayed THREE HOURS, our gate has moved. anyway, we do get on a plane and land in Dublin safe and sound.

Our hostels in Ireland were amazing. Super nice, clean, helpful, etc. Our schedule in Ireland went as such: night one - Dublin... cheap dinner and bed. day two - Dublin --> Limerick --> Cliffs of Moher --> Doolin -->The Burren --> Dublin (PADDYWAGON TOUR!!!) night two- same hostel in Dublin. day three - Dublin --> Kilkenny (by awesome train)...beautiful day touring the little town. night three - hostel in Kilkenny. day four - Kilkenny --> Dublin (by train again) hangin around Dublin...even though it was FREEZING. night four - head to the airport (we have a 6am flight and are too cheap to pay for a hostel). day five - flight to Madrid, metro to the bus station, bus to Sevilla. I am pretty proud for all the stuff we got to see. Pretty amazing. It was super fun and exhausting.

I have most of my midterms next week so i have been studying (or pretending to study) all weekend long. But last week I did splurge and have all my hair cut off again...in a Spanish salon. it was a small miracle i came out of there with hair still on my head. A little confusing to explain what you want. haha. It was my first time in a salon (love you Mama). I like it lots :-)

love and hugs to you at home!
k