Irish Adventures (Ireland Blog #6)

Dublin, Ireland

10:07pm

Alrighty, so... after we went to Ashford Castle, we made our way back to Galway to get our stuff and say goodbye to our friends. Our drive back was significantly shorter than our drive there, which was nice. We actually have been surprising ourselves over and over again by how quickly we can move through these roads. We always think it's going to take us longer to get somewhere than it actually does, but ANYWAYS, we got back to Galway only to find out that our friends weren't at their house, so sadly, we didn't get to say goodbye to them. They had given us a key to their house, though, so we were able to get in the house easily enough. So we got in the house, got our stuff together, got on my computer and decided then and there where we were going to stay that night. We wanted to stay the night somewhere that had good ratings, was about halfway between Galway and Rostrevor (the YWAM base where I'm going to be doing my DTS), and wasn't too expensive. Good 'ole Tripadvisor is AMAZING! We decided to stay in the Annebrooke House Hotel in Mullingar, County Westmeath. So we packed up our stuff, typed it into the GPS, and left Galway. 

And I just gotta say something about GPS.... OUR GPS is fantastic. It took us everywhere we needed to go, even through construction, changed roads, and no road signs. The dang thing was spot on! We are both so grateful for that little GPS! It did us a lot of good! :D

Anyways... (I'm obviously getting sidetracked easily right now, I'm tired. lol!) we were driving to Mullingar and the whole drive there was this extremely ominous cloud in front of us. I was a little worried because we hadn't been through any rain the whole time we were in Ireland until that point. So we were driving and the big, scary cloud kept shifting from one side of us, to the other side of us, until it was far away enough, that I came to the conclusion that we weren't going to go through it. There were a few other patches of dark clouds that we saw, but I wasn't as worried about them. We kept driving and then we hit a little bit of rain from one of those clouds. I have to admit, it was pretty scary. Partly because the windshield wipers on our car were pretty horrible, so whenever they would go to wipe the rain they would totally smear and obstruct the view. It wasn't raining that hard THANK GOD, but it was still enough to make me a little freaked out. lol! I kept my cool, though, as I always do (at least on this trip), and we made it through it. It's pretty amazing that that is the only bit of rain that we've hit since being here. Other than that, it's been absolutely LOVELY! :D I mean, the other day, it was like Dublin, CA weather! It was so great! So anyways, we're driving to Mullingar, and we realize that our gas tank is about half-empty (yes, only half at this point. Our car was a diesel and it had AMAZING mileage). So we were like, "Okay, we should top off the tank." (this part of our journey was just chock full of new experiences) So we get to Mullingar, and we pull into the gas station and we have absolutely NO IDEA what to do. We see the diesel pump and regular pump, but we don't know what to do besides that. So we go into the little gas station store and there's this little old man who is the sweetest thing ever, but swears like a sailor (I thought it was hilarious, but Grammy didn't even notice because she couldn't tell with his accent. It was. SO. FUNNY.). So he helps us get the diesel pump into our car and says it'll stop when it's done. So we wait for a while and then we thought we heard the "Clank" sound that means it's done. So we go back into the little store and say we're done, and he rings us up and starts LAUGHING! He starts laughing so hard, he thinks it's the funniest thing! He says, "1.40 euro! 1.40 EURO! That wouldn't take ya over the *expletive* bridge!" We all started laughing so hard! And I said, "We don't know how to do it!!" haha! So he says, "I'll help ya, I'll help ya." So he saunters back out of his little store and we follow along like lost sheep and we get by the car and he looks at us pointedly, "Ya gotta HOLD the handle while it pumps ta gas!" Me and Grammy both chuckled and said okay. So we learned from the awesome, swearing-like-a-sailor, Irish man that in Ireland, you hold the handle up while it pumps the gas, or you might only get 1.40 Euro worth of gas in your car and get laughed at. lol! 

So we filled the car up, got some water, went to the loo, and asked the man where Annebrooke House Hotel was and he directed us toward it, saying that it was a wonderful place. So we got to the hotel and it really was beautiful and the service was great. They had pretty good hotel food, too! :) We pretty much chilled the rest of the day because the drive had been a bit exhausting with the rain and everything. I know, for me, that when I have so many different emotions going on, like I did that day, that I get REALLY tired from that. So we just rested and enjoyed our little hotel room and the good dinner that we had there at Annebrooke. The next day was absolutely beautiful and the drive to Rostrevor was going to be about 2 hours long. We were really excited about going and I got to explain to Grammy more about what exactly I was going to be doing there, and that made her really excited. So for those of you who don't know, Youth With A Mission (or YWAM) is a non-profit missions organization that has schooling and short-term missions trips that are more geared towards raising up youth in missions and teaching them how to go out and spread the love of Jesus in the most effective ways possible. YWAM has a base in Rostrevor, Co. Down, Northern Ireland that has something called a Discipleship Training School (DTS) that they do every year (most YWAM bases have this school) for people ages 18+. Next calendar year, 2013, I am going to do the DTS with YWAM Rostrevor, so it was a really awesome opportunity for me to go there. I'll tell more about that part of the trip in my next blog, coming soon! :D TTFN! :P

Prayer Points:

1. Good Sleep

2. Healthy bodies

3. Safe travels 

4. Good moods, even though we're leaving Ireland. :(

Thanks, guys! :)

Ahh... The Countryside! (Ireland Blog #5)

Oldcastle, Co. Meath
11:18pm


Well, I left off in Galway... so here's what happened after that. When we got there, our friends told us a lot of places that we could visit there in a day. I knew I had heard the city name of Cong, but I wasn't sure how I had heard it. Then, I remembered that that had been where Ashford Castle was. This castle was one of the castles I was looking at to stay in while we were there, because it had been converted into a hotel. Anyways, I'll get back to that in a second. So we woke up the next morning at our friends' house and it looked wonderful outside so we decided to go on a walk through the countryside of Galway! Our walk was absolutely amazing! Although we loved driving through the countryside, there's nothing like walking through it. You really get a sense of the atmosphere, the oldness, and the realness of the place. Ireland really felt real when we went on that walk, and as silly as it may sound, it was one of my favorite parts! I loved going on that walk! :D It was obviously so different than Dublin. It was great! We took tons of pictures, and I had a fun time with the cows in the pen on the side of the road. lol! :D They all started staring at me and walking towards me! It was hilarious! After that, we got back to our friends' house and decided that we wanted to go to Cong. I remembered that that had been where Ashford Castle, and thought it would be fun to go there, that we would maybe see some cool things along the way! So we drove to Cong, which was about 45 min from our friends house (according to Google, it took us about an hour). We didn't know the exact address for the Castle, but decided to just drive to Cong anyways. We had quite and interesting time driving to Cong. Most of the roads were really little and we even hit a little town where we got turned around and had a little bit of a scare, but our handy-dandy GPS lead us through! We were driving for a while, and still hadn't arrived at our destination when we decided to pull over because there was a line of cars behind us (we tended to drive a little slow), and when we did, BAM, we were at Ashford Castle! haha! We just drove right up to it! So that was pretty amazing! The guy had also just taken in the sign that said we had pay a fee to get in, so we got in for free, too! :D
So we drove in and seeing Ashford Castle come into view was just.... surreal. I mean, this thing was MASSIVE and really really old. It was just gorgeous. We parked the car and just walked around for a really long time. On our way in, I really wanted me and Grammy to have a picture on the Castle bridge. So I pulled this guy over and asked him to take a picture of us, and he said sure. So he took the picture, then, afterwards, he said that he was going to be doing a boat tour of Lough (lake) Corrib and going to Inchagoill (EEn-shA-geel) Island (where St. Patrick was banished). He said that there were ruins on the island from when St. Patrick was there, which immediately caught my and my Grammy's attention. We said we'd think about it, and then we continued walking on the grounds of the Castle. The grounds were absolutely beautiful. It was green and there were TREES!! And tunnels and gardens and stone stairs and willow trees and ponds and hedges and a bunch of other lovely things! It was so wonderful! :D So we wandered around for a long time, and then Grammy had to use the "toilet" (as they call it here, which seems kind of derogatory, but it's not) so we went up to the front (which looked very fancy and a little bit intimidating) and asked the man in front if we could use the toilet, upon which he lead us through the inside of this beautiful castle to the toilets. I only got to take a couple of picture of the inside, but it was so magnificent. When you stepped inside, you literally felt like you were stepping back in time. We were seriously considering staying in it by this point...
So we decided to go on the boat tour because it sounded fun and it was a relatively good price. The guy who was leading the tour was Irish (of course) and he and his brother had been working on Lough Corrib ever since they were boys. Their family lived by the lake and they knew every nook and cranny of at least the parts by Ashford Castle. Patrick (I think) was the main guy who was sailing the boat and guiding the tour. He knew so much about the history and really did a great job at recounting it all. I loved every bit of the tour and once we actually got on the island, the history was absolutely fascinating. The castle itself had been owned by the extremely wealthy Guinness family for a very long time as their winter and summer home. They would spend 2 weeks of the winter in it, and 2 weeks of the summer in it. My Grammy made a good observation when she said, "I wonder how much fun those kids had... they had full reign of the whole castle." I can't imagine what that would have been like. That would have had to have been "make-believe" PARADISE! So much fun! Many, many, MANY famous people have also stayed at Ashford Castle from the likes of King Henry IV, to Fred Astaire, to Mel Gibson and Brad Pitt, to the Reagan family! Once we got close the Inchagoill Island, he started telling us more about the Islands history. As I said, St. Patrick was banished to this island and he built a church during this time in the 5th century. This church is called "The Old Church". Then, there was another church built in the 11th Century called "The New Church" (Go figure). These ruins were soooooo pretty! And the scenery on this wild island was so gorgeous. It just looked so untouched! I loved it! We also saw the house that used to belong to the person who used to watch over the island, hired by the Guinness family. The Guinness family really cared about the things they owned, and I think that's one of the main reasons why they were so successful. They took care of the things that they owned. They had about 300 staff at Ashford while they were away, and they had a man on Inchagoill Island to watch over the ruins of these churches and makes sure that they were preserved well and were taken care of. This man lived on this island all by himself, dedicated to the care and keeping of these relics. We also saw this tall skinny stone in the graveyard of the "Old Church" that had ancient christian writings on it. This stone is the second oldest Christian inscription in the world (I believe). It was so amazing! So then we headed back and we were freezing from being in the open, cold wind of the top of the tour boat, so we sat below decks on the way back. We decided that we definitely wanted to stay in the castle that night. We were just going to splurge and go for that once in a lifetime opportunity.
When we got to our room it was absolutely spectacular! It was just a regular room, but it was so beautiful! They had peach and cream wallpaper and bedclothes, a flat screen t.v., lots of closet space, complimentary water (? haha!), and the service was impeccable. They seriously were so accommodating, and I have never been in that kind of ritzy-ness before, so it was a very new experience for me. We went down to "The Dungeon" bistro for dinner that night (the less formal one, since we were both wearing very casual clothes, and had nothing BUT the clothes on our backs) and the food was great, but I was trying so hard to be proper that I kept clanging my fork on things and flinging food. It was actually really hilarious, but I was kind of embarrassed at the time. Then, (something else I was NOT used to) we got back to our room, ready for bed, but when we opened the door, the room looked very different than the way that we left it. So different that I thought it wasn't ours, but what had happened was that the man who checked us in had made dinner reservations for us (which we knew) and then, while we were out, the maids had come and drawn the sheets for us and straightened up the room. It was so crazy! haha! Grammy and I both had a pretty hard time sleeping that night, but it still was totally worth it to stay in that castle. I mean, really... if you get a chance to stay in a castle in Ireland... do it.
So the next day we had room service breakfast and the poor man who brought the breakfast spilled some, but it was all okay. Then we "packed up our stuff" (my purse and Grammy's bag. lol!) And left to go back to our friends' house. Sadly, when we go there, they weren't home, so we didn't get to officially say goodbye to them, but they had left a nice note, and we left a nice note for them, as well. We packed up the rest of our stuff and then headed out towards Mullingar; our halfway point between Galway and Rostrevor...

And that's where I'll leave off until the next blog!




Please continue to pray for:
1. Good digestive systems
2. Good sleep
3. Grammy's doggy
4. More divine connections, even in these last few days! :)

Thank you! :)

Woohoo!! (Ireland Blog #4)

Mullingar, Ireland
11:30pm

Ohhhhhhh kay! So it's been a while since I've given an update, but to all of you who are wondering, we're doing GREAT! I haven't had good internet or opportunity to write anything since my last post. After that post, the next day we went into Dublin again, and had A LOT of fun! We took a while to get going (as it has most days, just because we're feeling lazy in the mornings. lol!) then we left the hotel about 11am and we caught the Dublin Tour bus, which was awesome because it was a "Hop-on, Hop-off" bus, so at any of the stop points, we could get off and explore. One of the first things that the tour bus guide told us (he was live and VERY funny) was that a lot of people just stay on the bus for the first round, and then go on the tour again (the ticket is valid for 2 days) and get off at the places that they want to go! Pretty awesome, right? So we went around to a bunch of different places, which he told us about like St. Patrick's Cathedral, a number of museums, the Guinness Distillery, the Zoo, and a number of other places. The tour guide was really funny with his occasional quips such as saying a different name for himself every time new people would get on the bus ranging from Sean, to Paddy, to Greg (which he SAID was his real name)and also saying jokes like "What do you call  a zoo with no animals?" "A shih-tzu." haha! Craziness... but it was great! :) So we went through the whole bus tour, except for the last few shops because we wanted to stop at a souvenir shop, where I proceeded to buy all the souvenirs that I needed for everybody! It was awesome! Grammy also bought a few things, as well. We decided then to get back on the bus (which dropped off right by our hotel) and go back to our hotel room, but by the time we were done doing that, the bus was almost done doing it's rounds. So we thought that we could just walk around O'Connell Street a little more. So we went down to what I think was called Henry Street, which was a walking street. We ran into some street performers and a farmers' market which was cool!! We also got a pay-as-you-go phone, too. Then, later that night, when we got back to our hotel, we packed up and got ready to leave in the morning.
The next morning, Sunday, April 1st, we went to a church in Dublin that was recommended to us by our friend, Angie, called Liberty Community Church. Going to this church was seriously so good for my heart. The worship to God was so genuine, it was SO GOOD! :D Everyone was really nice, and really accommodating. I was actually really surprised because when we go there, the greeters just grabbed me and my grammy into big hugs! It was really funny! :D The speaker during the service was actually this guy from South Africa named Dino. He was very energetic, but he really seemed to have tapped into something in God's heart. After that, Angie took us to the Dublin Airport so we could pick up our rental car. On the way there, we saw a BEAUTIFUL cathedral. Not sure which one, though, and then we saw this really heart breaking statue monument that was commemorating those who had fled Ireland during the Potato Famine in the 1830's. I got all choked up when I saw this memorial because I knew that that was probably something that my ancestors did during that time. Once we got to the car rental place, I realized that I had left my back pack at the church... :( Boohoo. (But I just learned that I'm getting it back soon! YAY!) After we let that go, we went to the car rental place, got some food, and then Grammy was psyching herself up for driving even more. I could tell that she was a little nervous, but I seriously am so proud of her because she really was pretty confident about it! Once we got all of our information, we found the car in the "car park" (As they call it) or parking garage (as we call it). We checked everything out, made sure Grammy knew how to adjust the seat, that we knew when the gas pump thing was, how to work the lights, all that good stuff, and then off we went! We probably started off in the hardest places to drive in Dublin besides the city center of Dublin itself, and this is why I was so seriously proud of Grammy! We even went through a round-about almost right away.
After we got through that hairy part of traffic, we were on our way to Galway! The drive there was pretty smooth. I just had to keep reminding Grammy to keep to the left, but not too far to the left. That's something they don't tell you, is that while you ARE trying to stay to the left, you also need to be careful about being TOO far to the left. Another thing, is to look right when you're turning... we've assigned me to look left when we're turning and then Grammy looks right. It really is a team effort. But anyways, after a long drive, a TON of round-abouts (which are still a little freaky, we finally made it to Galway! Once we got to Galway city, we still had a little ways to go before we got to our friends' house. They live up in the countryside, so that means 2 miles of LITTLE TINY ROADS. And when I say "Little tiny" I mean LITTLE TINY. They are so narrow that barely one car can fit through, but they go both directions, so literally every hill you come up on when you can't see the other side, you're going at a snail's pace because you're worried that another car is gonna be on the other side, heading toward you.  We traveled on that little tiny road for about 2 miles, like I said, and even thought it was scary being on those little roads, the scenery up there was BEAUTIFUL. I mean, really, it was the countryside of Ireland, and we had yet to really see that. Seriously, it was like the pictures you see of Ireland, or the movies. It was absolutely gorgeous. Once we finally got to our friends' house, we got settled in and hung out with them for a while. I met these friends, a couple who have been missionaries in Ireland for 4 years, in Dublin, CA on the Friday before we left. It really was a divine appointment because I had 1) never met Irish missionaries before and 2) really wanted to go to Galway when we visited Ireland, but didn't have anywhere to stay. So when a fried of my mom's told us that she had Irish missionaries staying at her house, we said that we had to meet up with them. We met up with them, connected immediately, and they said that we could stay with them when we went to Ireland. So awesome!! So when we got there, we talked with them for a bit, and then decided to watch "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne because a lot of the movie takes place in Galway. It was really fun to watch! After that we went to bed, because we were exhausted from the long day of driving! This trip has seriously been so amazing so far, and I will tell more about what happened the day before yesterday and on in the next blog, but NOW I have to go so we can get on the way to ROSTREVOR!! Which is the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) base in Northern Ireland that I am going to do my DTS ( Discipleship Training School) at. YAY!

Prayer Points:

1. That we would continue to have safe driving (PLEASE! haha!)
2. That we would be able to sleep well (that's been a difficulty, lately)
3. My Grammy asks that you guys could pray that Grammy's puppy stays well while we are in Ireland because her puppy has cancer and my aunt is taking care of her while we are in Ireland.
4. Also for our digestive systems, we've been both having some stomach issues.

Thanks guys!! :D