My exam went well, I ended up getting an AB on my final paper in the class and I think that I did pretty well on the exam. Hopefully I get an A in the class as my grades transfer and I could use any of the help I can get! I am so happy taht the class is over though because now I only have class until 5pm on Mondays and Wednesdays with free days after 11:30 on the other days of the week :) Now it is more possible for me to enjoy the beach after class or lay in Parc Ciutadella, the beautiful park that is across the street from my University. The weather is really actually getting quite hot

So Thursday I cannot really remember what I did, but I don't think it was very much. I ended up packing for Dublin and leaving the next morning. We arrived to Dublin with the sun out, something that is pretty rare for the city. We got picked up by a free shuttle and taken to the hostel that the girls I traveled with were staying with. My friend Lisa who is studying in Dublin at UCD was in Edinburgh for a couple of days and would be returning that night, so I ended up just leaving my bag at their hostel. We met up with a bunch of friends that came up from Seville as well, so that was really great to have everyone all together. I was with Katie and Lisa Bower and we ended up wandering right away over to the Guinness factory and meeting up with some other people from Barcelona.

The Guinness factory was pretty cool. The only other brewery that I had been to was the Estrella Damm factory which was cool, but definitely not as intricate as this one. I think one of the coolest parts was seeing the famous contract that Arthur Guinness made for the land of the brewery. 9,000 years old with a 45/yr rent thereafter. Kind of insane! My only complaint about the factory is that there is no way to actually see how it is produced, which i suppose makes sense because they have so many tourists everyday. At Estrella, we got to actually walk in the factory and see them bottle and package everything. Here, we only saw videos of those things. But it was still really cool and we ended the tour at the top with a 180 view of Dublin city from the top bar called "gravity bar." there i had my first pint of Guinness, which I actually somewhat enjoyed. It tastes a bit like coffee to me, I only don't like that it's not very carbonated, and I'm more of a blondie cerveza drinker myself. Anyway, we sat and got to watch how they pour the beer and see the beautiful city from above. We met up with the other girls that got a little later than we did and all walked back to the hostel.

There we called to book a day tour for the next day. We didn't really know which one we wanted to do, but we called a guy that told us that the 2 buses he was sending out the next day were completely booked. He said that he had the day off but was planning on going to do a bit of rock-climbing and asked us if we would like to come with him and 2 of his friends. It would basically be a private tour with only us and him. So of cousre we said yes to this offer!

After that, we went to have some dinner, but something somewhat funny happened. We went to this cool pub that my friend Lisa had told me to go to, but when we walked in, it was 10:30 and they had closed the kitchen. Of course, our habits of eating are much different, 10:30 is the typical time for a spanish meal. Other coutnries in this world are not so crazy, so we did not get to eat at this pub :(. instead, we could not find any place open nearby, so we went to burger king which i'm not happy to say! but we didn't relaly have a choice, we just got ready too late.

after this, we went to temple bar which is the most famous bar in ireland. it is really old and in a cool part of the neighborhood. we stayed there for only a little while, and then i ended up going to meet up with lisa. My friends from Madison (and my old roommate) Angie, Maggie, Sarah and Elliott were there to visit Lisa as well. We all went to this bar/club called Maguire's and danced for a couple of hours. This place was really cool, it looked like an antique apartment buildling that was turned into a club, which I wouldn't be surprised if it had been. After that, we went back to Lisa's apartment on the UCD campus and fell asleep on any part of her apartment that we could find!

The next day, I was running on about 2 hours of sleep, but had to be to the hostel by 8am to catch the guy and our tour. When I left Lisa's, I really could not have been in a more chipper mood. I couldn't believe that I would actually say this, but the weather was extremely crisp and chilly, and it was really like I was in Wisconsin again. That made me happy. The weather in barcelona is much more humid and warm, Dublin weather reminded me of Wisconsin :). So i went to the hostel and we all met our tour guide, Keith, and hopped on a tour to Wicalow mountains.

Wicalow mountains are about an hour drive from Dublin. They are in a huge span of bog that covers most of Ireland. We drove and walked around in the bog for awhile and even went to a small city called Glendalough where there is an old monastery and a beautiful lake. We walked aruond a bit and just enjoyed the beautiful scenery, I really thought it was unbelieveably geren and gorgeous. Then we went to Johnny Fox's which is a pretty tourist place to eat, and we devoured the soda bread that was brought to us. Unfortuneatly the food was not all that great because they did not have lunch menu and none of us could afford the other food. Bad choice on my part for wanting to go to a place that was so touristy.

After lunch we went to drive to a quarry to rockclimb!