Lesson learned: even the desperately ungraceful can survive the Cliffs of Moher

    I've officially been living in Ireland for over a month now, and have survived four weeks of school.  The scary thing is that there aren't that many weeks left! I've been looking forward to my time here for months and months, and already 1/4 of our time in school here is over, and I feel like it's not even begun yet.  I don't know if I'll be ready to say goodbye to this place come June. 

    In other news, a few friends and I started going to this step-aerobics class that takes place every weekday night at the 'Arena' on campus.  We actually have to stay towards the back, and we have our own instructor because we're new, and we don't know the (at times extremely complicated) steps.  I'm learning, but my natural inability to maintain my balance is fighting against me.  I'm just not the most coordinated person.  But the real instructor is a super-energetic man with big curly hair and tight spandex outfits. He is the Irish's Richard Simmons. And my hero.

    I've finally got all of my schedule worked out, and I decided to drop my crazy German Lit class because I think it might have slowly killed me as the semester went on.  And it would have made it a lot harder to have actual fun, which is really the whole point of being here.  I mean, to hell if I'm going to just sit in my room studying all week when there's a whole country out there to see. 

  

    So now I am taking four classes: Consumption and Consumer Culture (a marketing class), EU Economic Environment, Government and Politics of Ireland (the class that instilled in me with the ability to spell terms such as Taoiseach, Dail, Fianna Fail, and Fine Gael without looking them up), and Traditional Irish Music (complete with an Irish Dance performance class, in which sixteen of us American girls all hop around in various formations, and I attempt to appear not completely hopeless and ungraceful). 

    Today we had a little adventure by going to the Cliffs of Moher.  The hour-and-a-half drive there took about two and a half hours because apparently our driver, James (who is the Irish house-mate of Kim, Lauren, and Katie), didn't think about google-mapping the route there or something.  But he asked for directions in some small towns, and finally found the place.  

   James then had a problem with the idea of paying €5 to park, so he just pulled over on the side of the road next to some gate into a farm.  We learned that being cheap doesn't pan out well, however, because when we came back a few hours later he had a parking ticket waiting for him.  Of all the possible differences in laws across the world, I'm glad to see that parking tickets are still handed out in mass quantities, even on little country roads in middle-of-nowhere Ireland. 

   The cliffs were really beautiful.  There was a spot where the official path sort of ended, because beyond it was too dangerous.  But since we're the brilliant people that we are, we hopped over the barrier like everyone else and walked along the edges of the 500-foot cliffs, with crazy strong gusts of wind blowing us about. 

Notice the people directly behind the sign.  And yeah, we joined them. Rebellious, I know. 

    Apparently it's one of the biggest places to commit suicide in Ireland.  I can't imagine jumping off one of those things, into the freezing water a million feet below. Not to mention the huge rocks in the water.  

The drop

   Not my ideal way to go.  But thankfully there were no jumpers on our visit. That might have put a damper on the beautiful views.