Top Of The Mornin' To Ya!

I have made it to Northern Ireland! NOT to be confused with Ireland.  Found that out as soon as I got here.  So without really knowing it, I've just been to two countries! ;)

I'm here in Northern Ireland for the next two months, working as an outdoor activity instructor for a camp!  It's been great fun so far.  I'm part of a summer team, of 9 volunteers.  3 from Czech Republic, 2 from New Zealand, 1 from Hungary, 2 from Northern Ireland, and 1 from the US (moi).  There's some other volunteers here as well, but they're here for a whole year!  Everyone here is great - it's been so fun making new friends from so many places :)

This past week and next week consists of training for summer camp.  We have so far been training on archery, team ropes courses, scavenger hunts, blind trails (leading the kids blindly around, while a "leader" tells them safety precautions a they go), and shallow bouldering (walking through rivers, over boulders and up waterfalls and into pools of water).  For training, so far, we have mostly just been pretending as if we were the kids and the directors have been leading the sessions.  As we go, we still are kinda the kids, but get to play the director part in leading part of the session.

We live in a beautiful area of Northern Ireland, right in Newcastle.  It's a cute, quaint resort town with a beach and some "mountains" nearby. ;) They're more like hills, but at least it's better than nothing!  And the town has a good amount of ice cream parlours along the main street of town! WAHOOOO!!!  Haha I went with one of the volunteers down to get some ice cream last night and it sure is tasty!!  And then we sat on the beach and ate our ice cream and watched the sunset.  It was beautiful!  And I just couldn't believe that I was there, in Northern Ireland, just chilling, watching the sunset on the ocean, while eating ice cream.  It was perfect. :)

My allergies have been extremely bad here.  I've never had allergies really before (except at my family reunions while catching snakes!), but here, I am never not sneezing or blowing my nose!  It's bad.  But I'm starting to catch on that it flares when I'm in the grass or stung by nettle.  Sooooo I'm staying away from that as best as I can!

I went to a pub for the first time in my life!  Haha!  That was fun!  I went to socialize, while the others did their things at the pub.  But I did end up joining in the pool playing that was going on!  I teamed up with a volunteer from France and we ended up doing pretty well, if I do say so myself ;) Team Luck. That was our name.  Haha!  And then we went again to the pub.  Two times in one week - that's definitely a record for me. This time around however, we I didn't do too well at pool.  But we still had a good time :)

The other day we went to the beach after a scavenger hunt in town.  While we were in the water, someone had taken my bag and then dropped it or just threw it into a big pool of water near to where we had put all our stuff.  My phone was the unlucky piece of that bag that got wet.  Sooo it's currently sitting in some rice while I'm praying that it will be okay!  Pray with me, will ya?? :)

I also got to go to church today!  The ward was so friendly!  And a wonderfully nice family took me to church, a 40 minute drive.  That was a huge blessing!

Because we have been so busy with trainings every day all day, I haven't been able to take many pictures.  And I don't have access to them anyways now because of the incident at the beach.

Besides this picture... view from Greenhill YMCA, sunset on the beach :)

But I'll be visiting places around Ireland, so hopefully my blog posts will be a tad more interesting as time goes on :) However, for these first two weeks, I'll be just talking about training. So bear with me!

Peace and Blessings! ;)

Hiking Augstmatthorn

A little reminiscing back to Switzerland and that incredible hike.  Here's a video of the adventure! :) Besides all the views and Ipex we saw, I think the last part of this video was our favorite thing. ;)

One Day, I'm Gonna Move Here

I have just spent the last week in the most beautiful country I've ever seen.  The drive from Prague to Interlaken was pretty!  And long!  But then when we turned a corner and came upon the bluest lake I've ever seen with the white capped alps in the background, I gasped and could not believe how beautiful this was.  I immediately wished I could live here.  I stayed a week in Interlaken in a hostel of tents.  The Tent Village.  

Haha it has definitely been the funnest hostel I have stayed in so far!  Tents with bunk beds, a grill, slack line, pool, hot tub, the lake not too far in one direction, and the other way the alps.  A wonderful location.  And such a fun atmosphere with people my age mostly staying there!  Met a lot of fun people who stayed in my tent!

My first full day there I headed up to Murren to go hiking!  Took the train to Lauterbrunnen, then cable car and tram up and over to Murren.  Such a marvelous vieww of the Jungfrau Alps.  I was constantly staring at the view.  I started hiking blindly (I hadn't planned what hike to do beforehand), and came across a small group of 4 from Illinois who invited me to join them!  We hiked the Mountain View Trail!  It was fun and nice not being alone!  

After that hike, I hiked along the Northface Trail.  Again, stunning views.  I thought Utah mountains were beautiful.  But honestly, they've got nothing on these Swiss Alps.  Pooped, I headed back to my camp and hung out that evening with my tent mates until heading to bed.

The next day was Sunday!  I went to church.  As I was waiing for the service to begin, all of a sudden I saw a familiar face walk into the chapel.  A friend from Provo!  That was a fun little surprise!  She was here with her family:)

Then after church 3 other girls and I started chatting.  They were all from Utah as well and found out that I was traveling alone.  So they invited me to go hiking with them!  Later that day we headed up to Lauterbrunnen and did a walk along the road with multiple waterfalls all along the trail!  It was a nice Sunday walk and so very pretty in the valley!

We then headed to Grindewald and walked around up there a little bit to see more views.

A random man asked us to take a picture with this lady - his wife/fiancee/girlfriend (we aren't sure)

Monday we headed out early onto a trail they had found that would take us along a ridge.  Hardergrat.

We started in Interlaken, hiked up the face of the mountain and then hiked along the ridge.  But we were surrounded by forest and it wasn't what the pictures showed when it talked about the ridge.  

So we kept going and going and going.  Eventually we came out into a clearing and could see the ridge that the website had talked about.  So we continued and finally got to it!  As we got there we saw there was a peak called Augstmatthorn, mayble only 30 or so more minutes to the top.  We couldn't have have already hiked 5+ hours and not summit when it was so close!!

So on we went to the peak.  We came across a heard of Alpine Ibex.  Kind of intimidating to walk up to, to say the least, with their huge horns.  I was frightened they'd try to ram me off the edge as I walked closer to them trying to get them to move.  Luckily they moved off our path without any problem and we finished our summit!

The view was spectacular!  The Jungfrau was covered in clouds mostly, but the lake below in the valley was clear and just as blue.

After a while, we decided to head down.  It ended up going quite a bit longer than it should've because I was having some extreme knee pain.  But we eventually made it down and caught the train back to Interlaken, as we had walked further than anticipated.  16 miles, 5000 ft incline, 10 hrs, and 3 ticks later.  Haha!  But so worth it!  It was incredible!  And fun having some friends to hike it with!

The next two days in Interlaken I couldn't move too well because of my sore legs.  So I relaxed in my camp and at the lake, swimming and reading in hammocks!  Finding ticks and pulling them out was kinda disgusting.  But glad I haven't found more!  It was my first time getting them - yuck.

After my time in Interlaken, I headed over to Zug to see some friends from Provo who had moved here a couple months ago.  It was fun, low key, and relaxing spending time with their family.

We explored Zug a little bit, climbed the clock/bell tower.  Walked to the lake.  Went swimming.  And just hung out!  A brilliant end to my time in Switzerland.

Maybe a little too relaxing because I feel a small cold coming on.  I think my body relaxed too much along with my immune system.  The stress and tiring strain of traveling hit me.  But I'm hoping it won't get too bad!  Fingers crossed!

Next stop is Ireland for my job!  I'm beyond excited!!

Czech Republic!

I arrived late into the Czech Republic but was graciously welcomed by my friend who let me stay with her!

My first impression while finding my way to her place in the dark was that I was in Russia again!  There were some people on the bus speaking Russian and then when I got off, the apartment buildings were very similar to those in Russia.

The next day I went into the city of Prague.  I had no idea where I was going as I hadn't had time to plan what I wanted to see yet.  Luckily some friends from the MTC had made a list of things to see.  So I pulled that up and pretty much followed that as best I could!  All day, I walked around.  The city is beautiful, with a great deal of history!  It was fun wandering the streets, crossing bridges, climbing hills, eating trdelnik, and listening to street performers.  They were quite good!  Probably the best I've heard so far! :)

Prague Castle (St. Vitus Cathedral)

Charles Bridge

Walking up the hill to Petrin

Wenceslas Square (Old Town)

Trdelnik

The next day I decided to take a day trip down to Cesky Krumlov.  Such a wonderful resort town!  It felt magical and was so pretty!!  The river running through it makes it very picturesque.  The castle is ginormous and was fun to explore!  And cobblestone streets with cute shops and buildings surrounding just made it that much better.  Again, I hadn't planned this day so I kinda just explored what I could see.

My last day in the Czech Republic was spent going to Karlstejn, an old gothic castle.  Built in the 1300s.  I absolutely loved it.  I climbed up to the top tower and had a stunning view of the castle and valley below.  It was amazing!  I'm pretty sure if my niece ever visits here, she'd never want to leave.  She loves princesses and castles and this is one castle she'd for sure love!

I also found a random little shop off of a street that had my favorite-est cereal bar!  I first found them while I lived in Russia on my mission.  Never have I found them in the states yet.  Last year I found them again when I went to Denmark.  And I've been searching for them ever since I came back to Europe this year.  I finally did!!!  So I splurged and got a good amount, hoping it'll last me through Switzerland!  They're soooooo good.  I have to exercise a dang good amount of self control to only eat one a day!

Anyways:)  Off to Switzerland I go!!