Virtuous Friendships

This place is amazing.

We took a "field trip" on Friday to Galway, a town a little north of Limerick.  We got to visit Boston Scientific and the University of Galway to listen to people talk about companies, research, etc.  So there's the scholastic part of the weekend.  BUT it was a free trip to Galway, so after the tours 12 of us checked into our hostel and went exploring.  I was kind of nervous about this weekend because I'm very much an advocate of only traveling in small groups, but I WAY underestimated how cool the people I'm with are.  Tech students rock.  People are willing to step up when necessary but also let others make decisions.  While we ran into the occasional "Let's try to listen to every person's opinion and make a decision that everyone wants" discussions, everyone was willing to split off and do their own thing if it wasn't what the majority of the group was doing.  

Galway is awesome.  It's a small town on the coast, so in the morning it is INCREDIBLY peaceful to go sit by the river and watch the boats coming in.  The city has one street that's full of shops and pubs and a residential area with lots of personality. Other than accidentally walking into a funeral while trying to look at a church, the day was very successful. We went out on Friday night - I really like the night life here. We sat at a pub, listened to a live band, drank Irish cider/beer, and had life chats.  We didn't have to scream over loud music to hear each other or avoid people stumbling all over the place, we just got to spend quality time getting to know each other... it was really nice.

We stopped at a fish and chips restaurant
 that was recommended by a local for
dinner. Apparently smoked fish = fish
that is smoked and THEN fried.  At least
we tried to be healthy?
 

The pub we hung out in on Friday night! 

Victoria and I preparing for the night...
because everyone should put on fake nails
at least once in their college career.

 Saturday morning, we woke up and got on a tour bus to Connemara.  At first we thought we had fallen into a tourist trap, but the tour ended up being BEAUTIFUL.  We stopped at Kylemore Abbey, a castle-type thing that this rich dude build for his wife (I was struggling to pay attention to the tour guide).  My main take away's were that it was a beautiful old building over looking some beautiful scenery on a lot of beautiful land...  I think that's pretty accurate!

This is what happens when college students see fake sheep.

Kylemore Abbey

Take 2

George P. Burdell made it to the Abbey! 

Halfway through the tour, the bus driver dropped us off at The Connemara Hostel.  Actually, he dropped us off on the side of the road and we walked 1 km to our hostel, but that's just the next step in becoming a world traveler, so I loved it. I don't think a word was said on the walk that wasn't "WOW!" or "I can't believe how pretty this is" or "We're DEFINITELY staying an extra night".  We were hiking through purple flowers and surrounded by mountains that were green and sheep were randomly grazing as we walked by... it was amazing (sorry my descriptions are so basic... Tech doesn't really emphasize vocabulary development).  The desire to stay an extra night changed pretty quickly when we got to the hostel and realized that the restaurant we expected it to have didn't exist, so Vince and I hopped on the 2 bikes the hostel owned and biked 6 km into town. (World Traveler Tip #1: Do good research on the hostel). The way into town was GREAT - it was beautiful, downhill, and the wind pushed us all the way!  The "grocery store" was more like a convenience store about the size of my closet, but it had enough for some pasta, porridge, and PB and J for lunch!  The ride back was definitely not as easy, but it was still beautiful!

Biking to town! 

 We got back and decided to go for a hike.  Being the bunch of engineers that we are, about 10 minutes into the hike we realized that following the path was an extremely inefficient way to hike to the peak, so we just turned and started trekking straight up.   We stopped a little bit before the top because there was this ram who CLEARLY did not want to share his peak of the mountain.  We didn't want to get RAMmed (get it??), so we decided to "settle" for the view and leave him his peace. I think the best part of the hike was that everyone was starving by the time we got back, so the season-less pasta and canned corn tasted like a gourmet meal.

View from the top of the mountain

 Day 2 in Connemara was just as awesome.  We rented bikes from the adventure store across the street and went on a 3 hour bike ride around part of the Connemara Loop.  It was breathtaking.  It was slightly misty the whole time, and even though it resulted in us getting soaked, it made the scenery feel like we were biking through a dream.  I don't think I've ever been at such a loss for words.  I was doing something active with people I enjoyed getting to know who were willing to do fun things in a country that I was starting to love and it was slightly raining making everything quiet and beautiful - saying that I felt on top of the world is a completely inadequate way to describe how I felt.  We stopped at a pub for lunch and to get dry, only to realize that we had less than 2 hours to eat, bike back UP the hills we'd just spent an hour and a half cruising down, get our stuff, and catch our bus back to Galway.  Needless to say, we scarfed down food and booked it back to the hostel, making it back in PERFECT time (literally... we stood on the road for about 5 minutes before our bus pulled up) for the bus.

Biking crew!! 

The chosen spot to eat & get dry.
Tuna salad has never tasted so
good in my life.

Overall, the weekend was INCREDIBLE.  I never would have expected 12 such different people to be so uniformly down for adventure or quality conversation or "virtuous friendships" rather than friendships simply based on commonalities (credit to Robert for coining those terms).  I was in my element doing things that I loved - the weekend was a HUGE breath of fresh air (literally) and set the tone for an amazing summer.  

 

The friar we stopped in on the way
back to Galway.

Irish bank holiday tomorrow so... NO SCHOOL!!!!