A Visit to the Country

Hi everyone! This is Lauren writing here. Aaron has been doing such a wonderful job writing the blog entries, and has received so much praise for his writing, I was hesitant to take the duty away from him when it came to describing our latest venture. However, he convinced me that people might want to hear from me too, so here I am!

Last week, when Aaron and I checked our mail, we saw a sign up sheet for a trip to a place called Glendalough. We were the first to sign up and checked our email regularly to see if the trip was really going to happen, and we're so thankful it did! We have both been aching to get out of the city lately. Dublin is wonderful, but it's also crowded, busy, and doesn't look at all like the Ireland you usually see in pictures. We were ready to see more of the country. As Aaron aptly quoted, "I need to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains!"

And mountains we did see! We met at reception this morning at ten and starting milling around with the students that were already there. I'm not sure that a single Irish person (besides the ones that arranged it) actually attended the trip. We heard that most of them had gone home for the weekend, even though they had just arrived last Friday for Fresher's Week...classes haven't even started! It was a very international group, and we were so excited to get to meet and talk to students from Germany, France, Spain, Holland, Britain, and a country we've never heard of before... Guernsey. It's an island located in the English Channel, and it's technically a part of England but not really. It acts as it's own country, but the Queen is its Duchess.

You learn something new every day I guess!

Once everyone was all accounted for, we piled into a bus and took off, passing all the roads with which we were familiar, and finally embarking on some new and exciting territory. We passed our mountains that we see from our windows, and headed even further south to Glendalough (pronounced by the native Irish group leader as more like Glendala).Glendalough was a monastic settlement, its church being built around 1120, but a round tower that stands in the middle of it having been built around 800. The tower looks like it's in perfect condition, I can't really imagine it looking much better in 800 to be honest with you. More on that later. For the first part of our trip, we were more interested in the trails that went up and down, all around the beautiful scenery of the park.

We hiked around the mountain, about three hours in total and got some really wonderful pictures.

Heather was everywhere!

The Kopfs at the top of an Irish mountain!

It's so nice to have people around to take pictures of us. It feels like we're on our honeymoon all over again, saying "hi will you take a picture of us in front of this cool thing?"

Fun fact: Glendalough is actually a glacial valley.

We also had many great conversations with our fellow international students, mostly about the differences between countries and customs. People are typically shocked to find out that we're married at such young ages, but one fellow from Belgium was completely floored. We asked how old people typically are when they get married in Belgium and he said, very matter of factly, "well, 30, 32... You don't get married in your 20s unless you knocked the girl up!" We assured everyone there was no baby in the picture! And that it wasn't that unusual to get married at our age, and younger, where we were from. We talked accents with the guy from Britain, who confessed that the Southern accent was his favorite of the American variety.

The boy from Holland actually studied at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, so we were very excited to get his impression of our home state. We talked mosquitos, hundred degree weather, famous people from Arkansas (Bill Clinton and Johnny Cash is really all we came up with) and when we came to accents, he graced us with an "Ah reckin. You all," for his impression. It was hilarious!

Halfway down the mountain we turned into this secret trail...

...that led to the ruins of an old church!

We thoughtfully considered the ruins.

Once we were at the bottom of the mountain, we had an hour to wander around the "Monastic city." The ruins of the monastery at Glendalough (placed here for their isolated location--all around it would have been forest at the time) and the old 1120 church were surrounded by tombstones where ever you looked. The round tower stood off to the side.

The door of the tower is about ten feet off the ground, and its sole purpose was to protect the community from Viking raids. Whenever they could hear the Vikings coming, they would put a ladder up to the door and it was everyone into the tower, and all the relics from the monastery too! Then once everyone was safe, they pulled the ladder into the building and waited until the Vikings were done pillaging their houses.

Aaron loved the tower.

Both of us loved the trip. It was a great opportunity to socialize with other residents of Trinity Hall, as well as see more of Ireland. It was really great for us because it was on a budget! 5 euro each, and we packed our own lunches. We dropped our not-so-subtle hints about Trinity Hall putting on more of these trips (especially since Aaron, as a non-student, isn't allowed to go on any of the weekend trips for the international student society that I recently joined) and they announced upon our return that they'd like future trips to be student-planned and organized.

Needless to say, Aaron and I are already scheming...