Ireland Travelogue by Amanda Grube, Plant Sciences major

Traveling abroad was scary. I won't deny that. I had never traveled more than a couple hours away from my friends and family before traveling to Ireland and this was my first time leaving the country. My first day in Ireland I questioned whether or not I had made the right decision to study abroad for 10 days my freshman year. It wasn't until the end of the second night that I was sure I had made the right decision. At the end of the second night everyone in our group went to a dinner theatre and watched traditional Irish dancing. Ever since I started Irish step dancing in 3^rd grade I wanted to travel to Ireland. I was finally realizing the real reason I had wanted to come to Ireland the first chance I got, to fulfill my lifelong dream. It didn't take long for the other students in our group to find out I had taken Irish dance for 8 years and request a jig or reel every chance they got. I of course obliged and even entertained a few other tourists in the lobby of our hotel on one of our final nights in Dublin.

While the busy city of Dublin wasn't my favorite part of Ireland, I soon found my favorite part. The West coast of Ireland was beautiful. Everywhere you looked there were lush, green fields trimmed with grey, lichen-covered stone walls. Sheep were a commonplace and were the focus of my in country activity I prepared for my fellow classmates. We visited a sheep research extension facility. Here we got to learn about the research they were doing on breeding Irish breeds with foreign breeds like the Texel. Coming from a sheep farm in Pennsylvania I was so excited to learn about the sheep industry in Ireland especially what were considered normal farming practices. Soon after we left the extension farm we headed to the Cliffs of Moher. This is where the picture attached was taken. It was so cool to be in a place I had seen in pictures in National Geographic and in movies like Harry Potter. In fact, one of the rock, much like the one to my left in the photo, was the rock that Harry Potter and Dumbledore landed on in the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was an amazing feeling to stand near the edge of the huge sea cliffs and hear nothing but the ocean hitting the rocks and the birds flying overhead. It was here along the "Wild Atlantic Way" that I experienced my favorite memories of the Emerald Isle.