Back to school on Monday is never fun for anyone, but it’s not as bad when you’re in another country and class is mostly a movie and discussion. Today, our class was in one of the UCC classrooms, which looked strangely similar to HHS at JMU. The hallways and classrooms were almost identical it was scary. We met to discuss our adventures from our weekend off and to launch us into an introduction before starting a movie called Calvary. The movie revolved around a Catholic priest in a small Irish town and his part in all his parishioners’ lives and the negative view on the Church at the time. The movie was very well done even with the dark humor and depressing storyline. The movie finished at 1 o’clock and we were free for the rest of the day until our group dinner in the city. We decided to split up for lunch and make our own meals back at the apartments before meeting up again a little after 2. Our group had heard of the Butter Museum and were very curious so we decided to go across the river and check it out. If you are picturing a museum filled with sculptures made out of butter, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. That’s what I was expecting, too. In fact, the museum didn’t have any butter at all and to our disappointment there weren’t even samples at the end. The museum contained mostly the churns and other tools to make butter and the routes the exported butter took. If it wasn’t for the movie on the history of butter we probably would have been in and out of that place in about 20-30 minutes tops. We all had a good laugh about it though.

We walked a different path home and found a huge church with a giant bell tower.  It was called St. Anne’s Church and Shandon Bells and Tower. The Church was old but beautiful with very colorful stained glass windows and a case of very, very old Bibles and other Catholic books that were hundreds of years old. The staff handed us each a pair of noise canceling headphones as we made our way up the stairs to the tower. We all joked about it and wondered why we would need these, but wore them anyway just to be safe. Later on our way down, we figured it out when the bells started to ring and one of the guys wasn’t wearing them and almost fell down the stairs they were so loud. The tower had different levels to it. The second had a song book and ropes hanging down that were numbered. The songs were numbered so we could play different songs with each number combination. Our group chose Star Wars, although it probably didn’t sound anything like it. We kept climbing to get small glimpses of two other floors one having a small exhibit and the other pretty empty. We finally made it to the top and had a 180^o view of the city. I could see so far out I saw the line where the city ended and the green, country fields went out over the horizon. It was amazing and we stayed a good amount of time to soak it all in and enjoy the peace above the busy city.

We made our way back down the very narrow, very steep stairs and headed to the main part of Cork. We passed a staircase with the walls covered in graffiti, but it was more like art. A lot of the graffiti I have seen around here is more pictures and artwork rather than names and tags, although there is a good amount of that too. It is really cool to see the different styles each one is and the ideas they focus on.

After reaching the city, we had about an hour to kill before having to meet our professors and a few of the other kids at the restaurant at 6. We stopped in a small pub right down the street from the restaurant, Market Lane. The staff sat us on the upper level where we had a big L–shaped table so all of us could fit. They had a set menu for us with a few choices for each course.I chose to get French onion soup, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and other vegetables, vanilla bean ice cream with caramel flakes, and tea. It was all very delicious and the dinner was so much fun eating and talking with everyone. We walked out of the restaurant thinking it had been maybe an hour and a half, but in reality we were there for 3 hours and it was still very light outside. The light would make you think it was still 5 o’clock. The majority of us, still thrown off by the light, discovered a really cool rooftop bar where we hung out for a little longer before making our way back to the apartments. We have to get some sleep before an early start tomorrow morning to catch a train to Cobh! Can’t wait!