Food Comas & Game of Thrones

Salutations Readers,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with food, family, and some well-deserved rest. On this side of the pond, I had the privilege of attending not 1 but 2 turkey day dinners. On Wednesday, my UCC advisor took all of the Holy Cross crew out to dinner at a hip Great Gatsby-esque restaurant called  Electric. We indulged in a three course meal and by the end I was stuffed. The next day, my 2nd thanksgiving meal took place at the home of Frank and Jo Peters, advisors to the Christian Union. While they are originally Canadian, they did live in California for 12 years so they are honorary Americans in my book. I was tasked with bringing a dish, so I decided to make a throwback  from my childhood, carrot casserole (so domestic I know). Every year the Peters invite as many American/international students over to their house for thanksgiving dinner and while I did miss seeing my own family this holiday season, it was nice to be amongst such lovely people. We stuffed our faces with all the fixins (turkey, mashed potatoes, bread, and so much more) and after dinner we unwinded with some party games. It was an all around great Thanksgiving, the only thing that would’ve made it better would’ve been some time off, I still had class day!

In other news, this past weekend, my friend Bethany and I went on a Game of Thrones Tour! As many of you know, I’m a big tv-watcher and ever since I binged watched 2 summers ago, I’ve been hooked. After an early morning bus ride to Dublin (3am) we arrived in Dublin and waited at local McDonalds (they did not have bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits 🙁 until it was time to meet our bus at 7:45. We headed to Northern Ireland where 90% of the show is filmed. Our first stop was Tallymore Forest National Park where the scene where the Starks find the direwolves was filmed. Our tour guide would show us a screenshot and then tell us where the scene was actually filmed. We then stopped for lunch and we got to actually meet  2 dogs who played direwolves (Summer and Greywind) on the show and their owners, 2 heavily bearded men  with long hair who have worked as extras on the show (they were perfect for the roles). Our second stop of the day was supposed to be the castle that is used as the Stark stronghold, Winterfell but due to high winds we could not go into the estate. Our next stop was Inch Abbey where the real fun began. The tour company provided cloaks, swords (Needle and Longclaw included), shields, and a crown so that we could all dress up as Starks. This was the highlight of the tour for me as I got to bring out my inner Arya Stark! After our dress up session, we headed back to Dublin (a 2 hour journey) and Bethany and I headed to our 3rd bus ride of the day back to Cork. We ended our night in true European fashion with a kebab and some good conversation. The tour was definitely one of the most interesting tours that I’ve been on so far and I can’t wait for GOT Season 6 (April get here already).

Also classes are officially over and this week marks the beginning of study week. I’ve got 2 papers to write and 2 actual exams to take so if you find my body its probably buried under a pile of books haha. I can’t believe the semester is almost over, time flies. Anywho, I think I hear a paper calling my name until next time…

Keep Calm and Remember Winter is Coming.

Elena

Direwolves

Queen of the North!

Waiting on Jon Snow

I think we’re officially Starks!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.