OmGz. Sweet potato cookiez.

short pointless post because i really don't have a lot to say. Went to the library at 830 this morning, worked on a paper all morning, went to a spinning class at lunchtime, ate lunch (veggie and chicken stir fry with rice), worked on the paper again until 6.

So yes paper is almost done now, and I feel accomplished :) I wanted to get a good amount of work done before going to GALWAY this weekend. Jenn and I leave at 5 tomorrow morning. It's a 5 hour bus ride, with a 1 hour layover in Dublin halfway through. We wanted to get there around lunchtime to have lots of time to explore. Saturday we're doing a daytrip to the Cliffs of Moher. These are the cliffs and basically the reason I wanted to come to Ireland..and thats not made up

Sweet life. Hopefully I'll have an awesome glamor shot in front of these guys by Sunday

speaking of SWEET, when i was procrastinating at the library today, I came across a recipe for SWEET POTATO OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES. now if you know me, there are 3 foods that are the keys to my heart. sweet potatoes and oatmeal raisin cookies and seafood. now seafood cookies is pretty flipping gross, so I guess getting 2 out of 3 of my favorite things in one delicious treat isn't too bad.
I made a couple of little adjustments

• 1 cup oats
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 cup mashed sweet potato
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• dash of cinnamon
• 1-2ish spoons of flaxseed

and dennn
excuse my lack of effort in taking good photos of cookies. they're fabulous. believe me.

ooook, well i should get my stuff together and head to bed pretty soon for my 430 am wake up call.
cheers :)

Christmas time is here

Good morning! err well afternoon. it's 1:42 and I finally decided to get out of bed. yesterday was Swedish Anna's 22 birthday! We went out for a fun evening that turned into morning at the Limelight club/pub and it was a great time. good music/good atmosphere/good people. anyways rewind on the day

the morning was pretty standard. classes>library>lunch>class. I FINALLY turned in my philosophy paper on utilitarianism, and I'm so glad that's its finally out of my hands. After class I hurried downtown so that French Anna and I could find Swedish Anna the perfect gift. This was no easy task. We went in store after store after store and everything was either too cheap and not good enough or crazy expensive. We were close to giving up when we finally found the PERFECT necklace at house of fraser (a store here...like Macys). We also got her a package of Lindt truffles to top it off. Job well done.
Shopping yesterday was particularly fun because ITS CHRISTMAS TIME IN EUROPE! Since they don't have Thanksgiving to break up the holiday season between Halloween and Christmas, all the festivities and decorations go into full swing in mid November. Seee
I love the holidays.
To top it off, yesterday was the kickoff of the Christmas Continental Market in Belfast! Cooooolest market ever. The square in front of the City Hall is jampacked with dozens of stalls that look like little Swiss chalets. The sell every kind of food or gift you could dream of. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Thats the city hall with its big adorable Be Festive sign. Oh yes, and at night the city hall is decorated with the craziest lights ever.
Nuts! I got hungry and got a little sleeve of almonds to snack on. mmmmmmmm.
Santa is creeping on the macaroon man.
ahh
um yeah. this is a local brewery that has set up a bar in a tent. inside is really intimate with lots of christmas lights and dark wooden tables
havent had this yet, but apparently its a holiday favorite
and then saving the best for last
cool! they also have alligator. i am very excited. i was heading to the gym after this so i didnt eat, but i'll definitely be going back

then HAPPY BDAY ANNA! 22 YEARS!
she loved the necklace
and then we went out! but not before pregamming with some gaga in the hallway.

ooo lala.

ok now time to do some serious work. i'm going to galway for the weekend with JENN tomorrow-Sunday.
OH YA, i also booked my thanksgiving trip to london. :)

Do Work

Basically my life now consists of going on wild adventures and doing massive amounts of schoolwork in between. I'm currently in that "in between" phase.

Yesterday was a Sunday. That's really the best way to describe it. Relaxing, productive, easygoing. I didn't set my alarm but still woke up pretty early, ate breakfast, and got to work on my Immunology paper. I went to the gym midafternoon for a short run followed by the core workout class. I go to this class a couple times a week and there are 3-4 instructors that rotate around. I'm at the point that I know how good or bad the class will be just by seeing the guy when i first walk in. There is one particular instructor who kicks our ass. He has one arm and I seriously think he tries to compensate for that by having the strongest core body in Ireland. Anyways, I am quite sore today from that.
After the gym I checked mail to find A PACKAGE FROM HOME!


I strongly stand by the statement that I have the greatest parents on the planet. Whenever I have an issue they're always more than willing to help me get it resolved when it's hard for me to do it on my own (like when i'm in a foreign country). And not only do they help me with that, but they go way above an beyond! I was expecting only to get my new debit card in an envelope, but they also loaded up the package with all these quirky/autumnish things because they knew I was kinda homesick a few weeks ago when I needed my new card sent over. I especially like the turkey mask (?) and glamor shot of Bode. Thanks mom and pop. :)
After getting this, I immediately went downtown to take out some much needed cash (I've been cashless for 2 weeks!) so that I could pay back a few of my debts and go grocery shopping. I always love the half hour walk to downtown Belfast. Lots to seee
I came back home and did some minor work on my paper before heading over to Patricks for dinner and a movie. We made a a bomb Chicken Tikka dish with stir fried veggies and rice. This was paired with the new Pear Magners, which is great! I'm not sure about the US, but it is really popular here in Belfast. I had been reluctant to try it because I thought it would just be fruity, sweet, and weird but it ended up being really tasty and refreshing, especially along side the flavorful Indian food. After we watched Lucky Number Sleven. It was a pretty sweet movie, just the kind that I was in the mood for.
So yep today I woke up bright and early for 7am spinning, went to my classes, and now I'm back in my room to get some serious work done. This is the current state of my desk and probably will be until i leave:


So the weather has been overall pretty good here for the past week or so but today it definitely came to an end. High speed winds and torrential freezing rain. I'm so happy to be back in my room and in sweatpants. I have no plan to leave this little jailcell for the rest of the night thank you

I'm going to Galway/Claddugh/the Cliffs of Moher this weekend on a personal Irish adventure. It was supposed to be last weekend but I put it off until I got my new debit card. yay!

Jack and Dad went to see Bob Dylan last night in Boston. jealous.

My airplane to the US leaves in 5 weeks from today. Happy Monday!

Great Scot

yawwwn, good morning! So i meant to update this last night about my whirlwind of a day over in Scotland, but I was just too exhausted to string a coherent thought together. So let me try again:

Yesterday started bright and early (alarm going off a little after 5) in order for me to get dressed, get my stuff together, eat breakfast and be over in front of Laura's apartment to catch a cab to the waterfront around 6. Several days earlier, we had booked tickets for a Stena-Line day trip from Belfast to Glasgow. For 18 pounds (~ 30 bucks), I got a roundtrip ferry ride (about 2 hours each way) to Scotland, and a roundtrip bus (about 2.5 hours each way) from the port city of Stranraer to Glasgow. With the little amount of time and money I have left, This turned out being an awesome idea. I highly recommend for anyone in Belfast with a free day to get out of the city.

Anyways, we arrived at the ferry port at around quarter to 7. The ship was scheduled to board at 7 and then leave by 730. Nope. Due to crazy inclement weather in the UK, the boat ended up being delayed by over an hour and a half. Usually I'm pretty chill about delays, but this sucked! As it was only a day trip, we were supposed to have 4 hours to explore Glasgow, but now our time was shortened down to just over 2 hours. Trying to see a whole city in that amount of time is just crazy, but Laura and I were up for the challenge. They offered to give people vouchers to return again today when the weather was nicer, but neither of us could do that with our schedules.
Anyways, at around 930, we were off! The boat was sick, and that made up for a lot of our disappointment with the delay. After about a half hour of being excited on the boat, we both crashed:


The ride was smooth and before we knew it, Hark! Scotland! We arrived in Stranaur ( a verrrry cute port city), and then loaded on to a bus. Many people chose to take a day trip to Ayr instead (a much smaller town that still had decent shopping) of Glasgow because it was much closer and therefore people would have more time in the town, but we had our hearts set on the bigger city. Most people on the day trip were going to do some Christmas shopping because shopping in Scotland is incredible (a fact I did not know).

The bus ride was amazing! The first leg of it was down the rocky Scottish coast, weaving through various seaside villages. Although I was still pretty tired and had planned on napping, I was too caught up in all of the scenery to sleep at all. Scotland looked pretty similar to Ireland, but it just had a different feel to it.
The coast was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. Out to sea were all of these rocky island that looked incredibly out of place. It reminded me of Lord of the Rings or something. I didn't take too many pictures of it because I really just wanted to take it in and completely appreciate what I was seeing. At one point I saw what could easily be the most beautiful phenomena that I've seen in nature. There was a rocky island off the coast several miles out that jetted way up out of the ocean in a crazy jagged way. A rainbow had formed so that it looked like it was shooting out from this rocky island. The rainbow only went up a little bit into the sky and then disappeared in the sunlight. I'm not sure how good that description is, but I know I'll probably remember that for the rest of my life and wanted to record it somehow. Laura saw it too and tried to take a picture but with no success. I absolutely love seeing things that I would have no way to predict seeing when waking up in the morning. This is why I love to travel and why I get restless so easily.
The busride also passed through millions of fields full of sheep. millions may not even be an exaggeration. I never got sick of them though because they were just so damn cute. HOWEVER, it one field I was looking at the sheep and noticed one that was not like the others. It was laying on its back, legs straight up in the air, completely still. DEAD. I was horrified and looked around to see if anyone on the bus had noticed, but we had driven by too fast and it seemed like I was the only one who cared about the sheep anyway.

2 hours later...Glasgow! I was severely underestimated what Glasgow would be like. I figured it would be a pretty small city, smaller than Belfast even. wrooong. It reminded me a lot of Seattle. There werent a lot of high buildings obviously, but it was very developed, with tons of modern shopping, restaurants, art, and cool architecture. We got off the bus and were informed that we only have 1 hr 45 min to see the city before being back on the bus for our trip back to the ferry. AH. Laura and I took off. I hadn't eaten anything yet that day, so I ran into a a convenient store and picked up a snickers for some essential fuel.
We had a Scotland guide and on the way we made a list of what things we wanted to see, but it was really hard to get our bearings right away. We finally decided to ask a police officer how to get to the coolest things in the city. but APPARENTLY, there was a huge demonstration going on that day around where all the biggest tourist sites were so we couldn't go near them even if we wanted to. This was kind of a blessing because I know I would've been much more disappointed if I missed out of stuff that I could have done. There were also lots of little gems a long the way that made up for it:

Laura and I took a minute to make our gameplan. We decided we had time to do 2 things, and each of us would pick one. Laura chose that we should take the subway (also known as the clockwork orange) out to the University and see some of that architecture. I chose that we should go to a pub (surprise!). It wasn't just any pub though, it was supposed to be a really good one with the longest bar in the UK.
So we were off! We got to the University in about 10 minutes, and we had plenty of time to explore and take all the necessary pictures. This place was incredible. It was founded in 1451 and probably doesn't look much different from how it did then. Pictures:

After spending time there, we hopped back on the subway to the city centre so that I could get a scottish ale in my pub of choice before the bus ride back. We ran around centre for a while, taking pictures, and being lost and we finally stumbled upon the bar. I asked directions as much as I could because I just loved hearing the Scottish accent. I couldn't get enough. As if we didn't have enough hiccups along the way, we arrived at the bar to find out that it was FULL because there was a party going on inside and that no one else could enter. w.t.f. With the time that we allotted to drinking, we decided to just slowly wander back to the bus and do some souvenir shopping along the way. I got a few gifts for some people at home and a "Baby Nessie" statue for my desk. This could be one of my favorite souvenirs of all time. seee!

We also got a dinner on the go at the "Creative food company". Basically you go in and pick a bunch of indredients from a salad bar type thing and then they chop em up and put em on in your choice of dish. Laura picked pizza and I got a cous cous bowl. They chopped up a variety of peppers, mushrooms, beans, onions, jalapenos, chicken, feta, sundried tomatoes, and put them in this delicious whole wheat couscous with a sweet and sour sauce. AND it was only 3 pounds.


After picking up the food we headed back to the bus and devoured it. Soon after, we were both fast asleep for the entire ride back. It was dark out this time so I didn't have the awesome scenery to distract me.
The ferry back was a million times more luxurious than the first one. They kept promoting it as the most luxurious, smooth, and speedy ferry on the planet. All I could think about was the Titanic (built in Belfast) and could just imagine the glorious boat sinking into the depths of the Irish Sea. I'm so positive.
But seriously, the boat ride back was through the same storm that cause our delays earlier in the day. There was some intense rocking, and a lot of the merchandise at the indoor mall (yes, it had one..) was crashing all over the place. It was pretty scary, but I also thought it was fun. I'm one of those people that enjoys turbulence on an airplane haha. is that weird?
So yes, I drank some coffee and looked at my Nessie toy while Laura went and got her nails done. Yep, luxury.
We got home at around 10 and went straight home for a hot shower and bed.
Although it was rushed and hectic, I loved the day in Scotland. I would highly recommend this as a travel destination and really hope that I have the chance to go back and spend some more time.

*******************************************************************************
Taking care of some other business:
I got my Northeastern housing assignment for the spring!
Pro: got placed in WVG! I've never lived in a West Village, but it seems nice enough and convenient. Hopefully this time I will be able to somewhat appreciate what on campus housing actually has to offer, even though obviously going back off campus is the ideal situation..oh well. It was way to hard to find an affordable, reliable, convenient, and clean sublet from 3000 miles away.
Con: not in a single?! shenme?! I put the highest emphasis on wanting a single bedroom on my housing preference form. I'm in great academic standing, have no little tiffs with OSCCR, and handed my form in minutes after they distributed them. I'm not anti social or anything, but after 2 years of living in my own bedroom, I've come to really appreciate the privacy. Anyways, I've already sent them an email of concern and hopefully they'll switch it up for me.


I've officially been here for more than 2 months. Thats longer than I've ever been away from home. 35 days left in europe :( / :)

Oh reading week...

So this week is the "reading week" at Queens University. Basically everybody is off from classes except for us science majors. Most people went on glamorous vacations (Jenn&pals -> Spain, Sean&pals ->Prague, Mike & pals -> Malta). Due to my little financial hiccup, the need to get some serious work done, and the fact that I actually had some classes (a lot of professors cancelled cause they get that no ones going to show up anyway), I stayed in Belfast this week to well...read.

So yep, there's really not much to report on except that this week has been a week of intense schoolwork and intense workouts. I started the week with a 7am spinning class followed by some weights and whatnot. Tuesday and Wednesday each had a 5 mile run followed by the hour long core class that is offered at the gym. I'm pretty sure that class is only meant to be done once a week because it is insanely hard, but I've gotten so much better at it since the beginning of this trip. I always feel great the day after no matter how much it hurts. Last night every muscle in my core was dying and whenever I laughed or coughed my abs killed....in a good way. I thought my knee was holding up alright with the 2 runs, but I woke up this morning and it was pretty sore. And so today is definitely an off day.

Aside from being at the gym, the rest of my free time has pretty much been at the library. I finished my paper for philosophy on utilitarianism (well...finished enough for now), and now I've moved on to immunology. I'm in no rush to get these papers done (the final 4 papers aren't due until I leave in mid December), but I really don't want to be stressed and pulling allnighters during my final weeks here. My goal is to get these papers at least started by the end of the month. awoo.

I had today off from all my classes so Anna and I headed to the library pretty early to get some serious work done. 7 hours of researching the applications of monoclonal antibodies later, I was beat. So, I came home to bake!
I found a recipe for healthy oatmeal raisin cookies online and did work

• 3/4 wine glass whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 wine glass oats
• 3/4 wine glass raisins
• 1/2 spoon baking powder
• 1/4 spoon sea salt
• 1/4 wine glass butter
• 1/4 wine glass plain yogurt
• 1/2 wine glass brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 spoon vanilla

Seeing as we are only here for 3 months and buying all new kitchen supplies would be just silly, I measured out the ingredients in the best way possible:
cheers. flour.
After using this brilliant method, voila:
I think more of that was consumed than the actual cookies.
After 7 hours in the library and 20 minutes of baking, we vegged out by snacking on these bad boys, perusing chick magazines, and watching trashy tv. basically... loving life.
ya buddy.

So tomorrow is going to be a lot like today. Waking up early for 7am spinning, followed by as many hours at the library as I can handle. I will also be checking the mail about 18 times tomorrow until Bank of America finally sends me my new debit card.

And all this work will pay off because Saturday i'm going to SCOTLAND! For 20 pounds, I get a round trip ferry from Belfast to Strenaline (a port town in scotland) and a bus from Strenaline to Glasgow. So I'll be leaving at about 6am, hopping over to Scotland for the day, exploring what Glasgow has to offer, then heading back later than night. I originally wanted to do a whole weekend in Scotland, but with time and money running short, this is really the best option. Not to mention it's an amazing deal.
Okay, that's about all for now.
:)


oh ya. and look at this. dear lord.

I get by with a little help from my friends

So I’m feeling completely better. The whole stressed/homesick/tired thing happened, I acknowledged it, and now I am over it. For the first time in probably two weeks, yesterday was a gloriously sunny day in Belfast. SEE!

Seriously I think that is all that I needed. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were tough days. Between sad things going on at home that I wish I could have been there to support, a sudden realization of how much school work I have to do here (this is supposed to be a European vacation right?), and the constantly gloomy atmosphere in this city, I was just about done. Having my banking get messed up was the last straw, and I was not happy.

BUT…between Saturday night and now, my attitude about being here has done a total 360. Saturday night there was a showing of The Big Lebowski at the Queens Film Theater, the movie theatre on campus that shows lots of independent, quirky, and classic movies. It’s also super cheap for students, so it’s turned into one of my favourite things about this place. Anyways, the BL night was awesome. I had never seen the whole thing, and I’m very glad that this was the atmosphere that I saw it in. There was a big party at the theatre before the 10 pm showing of the movie. A DJ was playing Big Lebowski ish music, they were giving out free memberships to the theatre (even cheaper than it already is, woo), and free White Russians for all (I forgot about how good those were). Anyways, the movie was hilarious. I’m jumping on that cult film bandwagon about 10 years too late, but I honestly did love it. Reminds me way too much of some family members of mine. The dude abides.

So yes, after the movie I came home and had some much needed skype dates with friends from home. Although it is just a computer screen, talking to 2 of my better friends really made me feel a lot better. It’s great to know that I have been away about 6 months of this year so far, and I feel closer than ever to certain people. I’m excited to be home (42 days?), but now I can take comfort in the fact that some people will always be there no matter how far away I feel sometimes.

Anyways, I woke up on Sunday to SUNSHINE. The temperature was warm, there was not a cloud in the sky, and there was no freaking way I was about to spend my entire day at the library researching for my philosophy paper. So, I put the books aside, packed a silly little lunch (I had to really stretch my groceries out until I got money this morning), and headed out to Cave Hill:

This is the place that I hiked my first week here and thought that I would return to every day for my entire stay. That didn’t realistically work out (hiking cave hill in the rain would be fatal.) but I’m so glad that I got out there again yesterday. This time I went alone (the first time I went there was a group of 8ish of us), and it was awesome. I could go whatever pace I wanted, explore some of the other paths, and sit at the viewpoints for as long as I wanted. Here’s a few pics of the awesomeness.

That cliff was my chosen lunch spot, where I ended up just hanging out for about an hour. I’m not going to get all sentimental about how much I enjoyed being able to reflect, but it was definitely time well spent. I have been incredibly lucky with the opportunities I have been given this year and sometimes I have to stop and pinch myself to think of everything that I’ve done. I’m trying to come up with a comprehensive list of the coolest things that happened in 2009, but I’ll probably save that for a New Years post or something.

I am very aware that not everybody gets to do stuff like this, and I am going to appreciate every single day I have here until I fly home. After hearing the news about what happened in Merrimack last Saturday night, I had a pretty intense reality check about how I shouldn’t be taking any of the little things for granted. Although I only knew him through my brother, I thought about Chris and how much he would have probably loved to be sitting where I was. No one deserves to go in the way that he did. I left his name in a rock at the top of the hill. Rest in peace Chris.

On my way down, the perfect hike was wrapped up with the most incredible rainbow that I have ever seen in my life. Not only was it ridiculously bright and clear, but I could see exactly where it started and where it ended. I sat down and just looked at it for a while, and then another rainbow appeared too! Ireland really is amazing.

After the hike, I headed back home to “work on my paper”. That turned into me having a long phone conversation with dad and mom. My skype actually works this week since most of the people in my building have gone home and therefore the internet isn’t as jammed up.

THEN I went and hung out with Lindsay at Patrick’s place. We made dinner with all of the leftover crap we could find (sautéed mushrooms, peppers, cauliflower, onions, etc with boiled potatoes and pasta). It was actually a very satisfying vegetarian meal considering all we had was random leftovers sitting around. Then we decided that we are going to London for Thanksgiving. I love that I met Lindsay here. She’s doing the coolest thing right now and even though she gets worried about where she’ll go next or what she’ll do when she gets home, I know that taking the time to travel on your own can be the most rewarding experience of a lifetime. So yes, today she is off to Rome, then Athens, then France, and then on Thanksgiving day I am going to meet her in London. In Amsterdam we met a lot of very fun people from the United States and Canada who we will meet up with. It’s definitely not what a normal Thanksgiving would be, but I can’t think of a better way to make it work while I’m here. So excited : )

I’m quitting the lab. It has been an incredible experience working in it fulltime the past 6 weeks, however my schedule has gotten tremendously busier and I have to make some sort of adjustment. I’m pretty disappointed to make this decision, but I want to enjoy my final weeks here and actually explore more of Ireland while doing well in my classes instead of volunteering 30 hours of my week to a resume builder. Yep. There it is.

This morning I did the 7am spinning class again. It kicked my ass, but it feels a billion times better for my knee. I can tell that I’m getting in probably the best shape of my life. Who knew that would happen in Ireland... the land of beer, potatoes, and fish & chips.

1 month til 22. Whoa now.

Can’t stop listening to new Jack Johnson En Concert CD. Get it.

Ok, time for Genetic Manipulation class. Awoo.

Who eats a debit card...seriously.

So I went downtown to the Barclays atm to try and finally get money..

AND THE EFFING THING ATE MY CARD.
The bank people were completely unhelpful and told me that there was nothing they could do. Now usually I am pretty chill in situations like these (...obviously it'll get worked out fine, there are bigger problems in the world), but I really just had a minor breakdown.
I havent' really been upset in a long time so it was about time this happened. Just the combination of being overwhelmed with schoolwork, only having 6 weeks left here, still having 6 left week here (ya there's a difference between the two..), being exhausted physically, wanting to be home to support my fam, missing home friends, and having no access to any money in a foreign country just wore me down.
Anyways, I walked back from downtown the long way and decided to skip going to the gym (at least for right now). I was not feeling the idea of being yelled at by some core-fitness instructor.
So nowww I'm at the library..the best *free* way to make use of my time right now. Getting this philosophy paper done by tomorrow is my goal. Having that out of the way will probably make a lot of things feel better.

Skype date with Olga later :) Just what I need