Sorry for the delay...I've been busy.

It has been a while since I last posted, but that's because March has been full of madness, and not the kind involving basketball either. I went to England for a weekend from the 9th through the 11th. It was a short trip, which is funny because it was England. I still can't get over how I can just hop over to another country for the weekend and be back for class, totally strange. Anyways, the original reason for us (Briana who lives in my house went with me) going over to London was to attempt to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform the Tempest...I know, I saw it when they came to Ann Arbor, but I still wanted to see it again, however, we were foiled and could not get tickets. The trip was still rather amazing though. We flew in on Friday morning and got the train into the city. From there, we decided not to take a map and just wander around for the day. In doing this we found a couple of neat street markets and stumbled upon the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The weather treated us nicely, the sun peaked through the clouds for the majority of the day, and it was not too cold. From there we took the Underground to the train station that had the train that went into Brighton, which is where we were staying for the night. A few weeks earlier, a couple of people that are from MCAD studying in England visited their friends here, in Ireland, so Briana and I made plans to go stay with them for a night. It was free so how could we pass that up. Once we were in Brighton, which is right at the bottom of England, about 45 minutes away from London, we pretty much just wandered around again. We went down to the beach and hung out there for a while and got dinner, all around a nice first night in England. On a side note, Brighton reminded me so much of Ann Arbor. There was this one street that I literally stopped at and had to take a picture because it looks exactly like North U and State walking towards Espresso Roayle. It wasn't just the looks of the city that reminded me of AA but also just the feel, it's a college town and kind of hip too. One of the major differences was the giant castle sitting in the middle of it, that something that you don't find in AA.

On the next day we all went into London. For the whole morning we did the whole, walk around London without a map which lead us to some pretty neat places, off the beaten path. I'm pretty sure that most of that time we were actually in Westminster, but still, cool all the same. In the afternoon we walked over to Buckingham Palace, Trafalger Square, the London Eye (big ferris wheel thing), Big Ben and Westminster's Abbey. By this point it was getting late so Lyndsey and Micah had to get on the train back to Brighton. We took the long route back to the train station through Picadilly Circus, which was totally and absolutly crazy. There were young folk everywhere! Something I haven't really seen since being back home. After seeing them off, Briana and I had a lot of waiting to do. Our flight didn't leave until early on Sunday morning so we had a whole night to kill. First we made our way back to the train station for the express train to the airport, only to find that the last train for the night had left about a half hour earlier, and they wouldn't start back up until about 4 in the morning. Pooped we just sat in the train station for a while, then once that closed we went to this 24 hour diner across the street. I slept there for a little bit, but tried to act like I wasn't because they were kicking people out that were doing it...Briana woke me up whenever they owner came by. Then the train station opened up, we got to the airport, got through security, got on the plane, and flew back home, got on the bus got to Kilcolgan, got picked up by Joe, drove around Galway, got back home and passed out. I was really tired.

After that weekend the weather got really nice and it was hard to force myself to do work. But I did, not as much as I should have, but I did do work. That Saturday was St. Patrick's Day and also the day that my parents were supposed to get in, and I say supposed to because they didn't, their flight got cancelled due to the bad weather on the east coast so they had to come in on Sunday. So on St. Patrick's Day I woke up with a sore throat, but still thought that it would be good to go into Galway to watch the Parade. In the morning on the walk down to the gas station where the bus was to pick us up the rain started to pick up. On the bus I started to feel worse, but thought nothing of it. We got to Galway about an hour or so before the parade was to start so we just wandered around, had some lunch, and I started to feel even worse. I got a shamrock painted on my face and then the rain picked back up just before the parade, which meant that the shamrock started to wither. The parade was ok, nothing too special, other than the fact that it was in Ireland. After that was over we walked to the theater a ways away to see what movies were on because we weren't being picked up until later that night, we had a lot of time to kill. We decided that Hot Fuzz was a good choice, but had a while until it started so we went wandering around. My body was aching real bad by this point and all I wanted to do was sit down and relax. Finally I had had too much and just broke down, I was in so much pain that I started crying, lame I know, but pain is pain and most of the time that means hurting is involved which can toy with your waterworks, which it did. During the movie I sat in the corner by myself trying not to think about the sick building up inside of me. Finally it was time to go home. Once I got home I just broke down because I was so tired and grossly sick that I wanted to magically be asleep and better. I tried to eat dinner and some tea, then went to sleep. That was my St. Patrick's Day experience in Ireland. Oh, and did I mention the rain and the cold? Yeah they never stopped throughout the day.

The next day I woke up still sick, but ready for my parents to come in. I got a taxi into the airport to pick them up, only to find that their flight had been delayed for two hours. This meant more waiting around in an airport for me. I waited and waited and waited, finally their flight got delayed a bit more, and it landed. I think 2.5 hours late, but they didn't come out until almost an hour after they landed, because the airline lost their luggage. Once they finally came out, we got the rental car and were on our way. The weather was acting CRAZY, one minute it would be snowing, the next minute it would be raining, the next sunny, the next hailing and then sunny, then rainy, then sunny, then snowy. Ireland was confused for a while. When Dad was driving through Ennis, he took a wrong turn and proceeded to hit a car. Only the mirror, but still. I think that was the point where mom had a fit...I told them driving was going to be different, but I don't think they really believed me until that point. For the week that they were here the weather cleared up and we went all around. Back to the Cliffs of Moher, around the area, they went into Galway, kind of, went to the pubs, ate good dinner. All around it was nice, minus the fact that I really didn't get any work done, oh yeah and the fact that I was sick the whole time. Today, they day after they left, is the first day that I actually feel good.

I think this is a good update, not really sure what else I can think of to talk about...I'll try to keep up the posts more than just once every month. Hopefully I'll actually do it.