Today was like Ireland Bootcamp. I have worked out so much I feel absolutely exhausted. It's not like all of it was a really hard work out... it was just all day long. But it was fantastic!
This morning started out with a beautiful 3 mile hike along the coast. We took the DART to a town called Brey and followed the trail back to Greystones. It was barely misting and there was a little fog covering the top of the mountains... perfect hiking weather. It was also a great time to chat with some of the people on our trip. I really feel like I'm starting to connect. It's fun to hear about their lives away from the Emerald Isle. In order to keep finding out new things about each other, we try to come up random questions to ask each other, but we're starting to run out... so if you have any suggestions they would be much appreciated!
We came back for lunch, and then 6 of us headed over to the leisure center. It's a little over a mile there, so we run the whole way and call that our warm up. At the center, I finished lifting weights. I had done about half my program yesterday, but didn't have enough time to finish. It's great because they have the same machines that we have at Taylor, except for one important difference. Everything is in kilograms! I had Coooooach convert all my weights over, but they weren't always exact so I had to do a little experimenting. For example, I'm supposed to bench press 38.6 kg. But they don't make that weight. Plus, I know the bar is 45 lb... but who knows what that is in kg. So I tried a few different things, before I asked someone and found out it weighed 20kg. From there it was a little easier to get my weight right. After that I taught Alyssa the TU Women's Soccer Team's favorite ab work out- AFOH. Then I had some extra time, so I biked for 20 minutes. This is also an adventure cause the distance is in kilometers..... By that time, we had all had enough of a workout. So we finished up and ran back to Coolnagreina.
That would have been a great work out for the day... but it wasn't over! After dinner, one of the local guys, Luke, found us and asked if we wanted to go play soccer. I can't turn down soccer in Ireland with local guys under the lights. So Ryan, Audrey, and I joined Luke and we all drove to the local "pitch" (field). It was so cool. It looked like soccer jail. There were 4 small fields. All with walls around the outside and then nets on top of those that went really high. The goals were short and maybe half the normal width. 11 of us played for an hour and a half. It's always funny playing with guys. At first they're nice to you and don't put a lot of pressure on. But once you score a couple goals and make great passes, they realize you're actually worth defending. It was a great game. I love soccer and playing in Ireland only makes it better.
But after all that, I'm beat. We're watching Pride & Prejudice in the "Red Room". Our hang out, chapel, computer lab, and tonight, our theater. But I'm really tired and we're getting up early tomorrow. We're going to try to get into the Irish president's office. They take the first couple hundred people who line up on Saturday morning. So we're catching the 7:30 DART to Dublin. I wonder if the office is oval shaped... Or maybe it will be something more Irish... like a shamrock!
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