It's the Monastic Semester!

Apologies for the lack of updates. We've been pretty busy the past two weeks, what with a Dickens research paper to write and places to see! I'm writing about Dickensian character doubling, specifically focusing on Estella and Biddy from Great Expectations. Currently, I'm writing from our hotel in Galway, Ireland, where we are spending the weekend.
Deciding what to write about for this blog past was hard, since we've done so many things. I could be serious and write about the serious topic of the British Troubles, or even of our experience with the Benedictine Monks hanging out down the road in Rostrevor (Northern Ireland, which is a completely different country). Going to all five services with the monks was quite an experience and is worth blogging about. Oh, and the monks happen to love our college, so they've been really nice to us. I could also write about daily life with this crazy group of people, but again it's another blog post for another time.
For the past 9 weeks Chris, one of the professors, has been making jokes about how this is the "prison semester." Last week in Dublin we visited Kilmingham Jail and earlier this semester we visited another jail for a presentation on Oscar Wilde. However, we've been arguing that this should be called "the monastic semester" because of the number of monasteries we've visited.
The Republic of Ireland is a beautiful country, and I wish we were spending more time here. As part of our brief stay in the Republic, and as part of the Christian college curriculum  we've been touring ancient ruins of monasteries. Irish Christianity is known for its Celtic influences, especially in the form of High Celtic Crosses. At first I thought, "well, they are just crosses, whatever." I didn't realize how HUGE these things are:

Granted, I'm a pretty small person anyway, but I hope this gives you an idea of how big these things are.

The Galway seaside at 9:30am. 

Today we took a day trip out to Inish Mor, one of the Aran islands off the coast of Ireland. We got up early to catch a shuttle to the harbor, where we then caught a ferry to the island. Because we're so far north the sun has been rising at 7:30am, which confuses me when we have to leave early.
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly hanging our heads over a 300 foot cliff, although I didn't. The sheer cliff face made me nervous, Danielle was brave enough to face death.

Danielle doesn't mind. Nope. 

The scariest moment, though, was when a small dog walked right up to the edge. We thought he was going to jump, but he was just a brave little dog.
Tomorrow we are visiting the Cliffs of Moher, which are better known as The Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride. Instead of a 300 foot drop it's a 700 foot one. So it's a pretty full weekend, and these outings are optional, but why not visit the Cliffs of Insanity?


I do have a presentation for Dickens to prepare for later this week, so I will work on my presentation notes before getting ready to face the Cliffs of Insanity. On Wednesday we will be participating in a charity mud run, which shall be cold but (I'm hoping) fun! Just know that we are having a blast in Ireland and are all singing drinking songs that our host in Northern Ireland taught us. So I'll end this blog post with a traditional Irish drinking song: