Learning in Dublin

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UK '12

After an eventful year living and teaching in Germany, summer finally happened upon us. I'm so happy to be done with school. Although I miss home and my old job at times, I know this was what I needed to do at this time in my life. I feel like I was getting stagnant at TFN.
My new friend, Kathy and I have headed to the UK for the two weeks before I start my masters program in Dublin for the month of July.

Our trip began in Edinburgh. I had never been to Scotland, so I was excited to see it. My brother John had studied in Scotland a long time ago, and used to speak about how beautiful it was. He was right. Edinburgh is gorgeous. It's a hilly town with a lot of beauty and I fell in love with a Scottish accent. The castle is marvelous, sitting high upon a hill overlooking the city. Sometimes I forget how old these cities in Europe are. The castle has been standing for over one thousand years! Crazy. I enjoyed the hike up to Arthur's seat; great workout that was! The gardens and monuments were very pretty, but the Scottish houses of parliament are butt ugly! I don't know what the architect was thinking!

We left Edinburgh after two days and took the train to Newcastle. There was a debate about renting a car, but I'm soooo glad we didn't. Newcastle would have been a nightmare to drive in. I really liked Newcastle. It was a bigger town than I had anticipated, and lots of things to see. We went to see where the castle stood (the New castle) and the Tyme river. It was a very walkable town, so we got to see Charles Grey's memorial. He is the "Earl Grey" whom earl grey tea is named after. 

Upon leaving Newcastle, we went into the medieval town of York. Wow! Petty incredible city, with a lot of history there. The medieval wall from roman times is still standing and Kathy and I did this awesome cat tour through the city. There are cats positioned throughout the city, to scare away pigeons and mice and rats, and the statues are found all over. We found all 16. It was a great way to see the city. The weather in York was terrible; rainy nearly the whole time we were there. We took a ghost tour. Cool to walk through the town and hear old spooky stories about it. I really liked York and would like to return. 

 


We left York to go to Cambridge to see Kathy's friend Luke, who is studying there. He gave us a great tour of Kings College and the town, then we went to tea at this cute little tea house out of town. I had a fruity tea and it was delicious. Luke invited us to the graduate ball that night, so we got to get all dressed up and go party with the other grad students celebrating the end of the school year. Good times; we were out til 4am! Yikes. The next morning we were leaving to go to London so you can imagine that was as pretty rough day,

We needed to be in London early because the two of us were heading to Wimbledon to queue for Monday tickets. (I'll explain more about the queue later.) We camped out overnight to get our tickets and we got awesome, like 7th row, Centre Court tickets. And we got interviewed in the queue to be on tv! Crazy. Wimbledon was awesome as usual. 

I took Kathy on a mini tour of London the next day after we visited Kensington Palace. I really liked the way they did the palace layout. There was a lot of interactive type stuff while going through the palace as well as being informative. I like that. We went all around London to see all the big sites, and then headed to a movie to relax. We had had an action packed past week. We took a London river cruise which I would highly recommend to anyone. It was educational and entertaining. That night, we headed back to Wimbledon for the evening session ( tickets are cheap at the end of the day) and got to see some great tennis. I even had a player on court speak to me! It was so exciting. 

Besides Wimbledon, the highlight of my London trip was getting to see Top Hat on the stage. As some of you know, I am a huge Fred Astaire fan, and I couldnt wait to see this play. I was doing my best to keep an open mind and told myself that it would not be the movie, but I still found myself comparing Tom Chambers who played Jerry to Fred. He was a great dancer, but his American accent and singing was average. I really enjoyed the show though because the dancing and the Irving Berlin music was outstanding as expected!

And now I'm in Dublin. Its a pretty town, but it's much smaller than London. I'd put it on the same scale as Edinburgh. I start my monthlong classes tomorrow so today, Kathy and I are headed on a bus to Galway. It should be eventful to say the least,

BFA

I'm sitting in our library on a Sunday, feeling delighted that I actually have internet that works.  I've been trying to get caught up on my grad work which has taken a backseat since I have no internet at home currently, and the website I need for class doesn't work at school.  It's been beyond frustrating.  There aren't a lot of places here that have free internet, and I'm not comfortable going to one my friends' houses and being total antisocial because I need to use their internet.  So the library it is for right now.  I hope my professors will be understanding.

Yesterday my team played at Black Forest Academy near the Swiss and French borders.  It was a nice school, and very nice to not be on a base for a game.  It's a private, boarding school, and we played two good games, but lost both.  I'm so frustrated we can't make lay-ups.  Unfortunately, I don't think anyone ever taught them how important they are in the game of basketball.  It was a 7 hour bus ride there, then we spent the night, and got back at about 10pm last night.  Needless to say, I didn't sleep a lot while we were there, so I crashed when I got home last night.

I'm trying to get caught up on all my bill paying, unpacking, and class work because this week, we'll be at Europeans in Wiesbaden, and I'll be missing school for THREE days for this tournament.  I'm not excited about missing school, but I can't wait to see how this tournament is run!  Should be interesting.  Not sure I'll coach again next year, though, because there's just too much drama and unimportant stuff to deal with here.

Softball starts March 5th, so that will add another element of fun for the spring, and I'm sure there will be drama with that as well.  My iPad's home button is broken, which is a challenge, and I want to mail it home to get fixed, but I think I finally found a way to make it work even though the button doesn't work.  At least til I can get to Frankfurt and an Apple store.

My apartment is coming along nicely, even though I don't have a lot of stuff in there.  I just need to get internet set up and then I should be able to function much better all around.  My stove/oven doesn't work, but my landlord said he'll get that fixed.  The problem with getting anything done over here is that people don't work past 5pm (sometimes 4pm), and obviously, I'm never done working by that time, and I HATE taking time off.  I'm a little homesick now and then, but I think that's normal.  My friends here have been wonderful, but I miss my mom, siblings, and nieces and nephews; and of course, my friends at home.

[caption id="attachment_192" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="River next to BFA; campus is to the left of the river"][/caption]



[caption id="attachment_193" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="BFA"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_194" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="We played two games at this boarding school."][/caption]