We are halfway through our third week in Ireland, and we cannot believe how the time has flown!
Morgan, Aly, and I had planned to walk to the college today, but when we saw the dark clouds warning of rain this morning, we decided we would wait for Robert and the van. No longer than a minute after this decision, it started pouring. Morgan made a snarky remark about making the right choice, and Aly and I agreed.
After the short ride to the college with our cottage-mates, we waited in our studio barn for the next activity. Today all of us students met with Baker individually to discuss our approaches to the final essays (which will be posted on the blog, so you all can see them), so a couple of us met with him in the morning before the guest speaker, Margaret Corcoran. Margaret is a painter, and she talked about the paintings she gets inspiration from and the techniques she uses in her works. She also projected images of her paintings and her inspiration to aid her presentation.
After lunch and with our stomachs full of carrot and parsnip soup, fish pie, and/or bagels, those who did not work on photos with Priscilla yesterday went to the digital lab, and everyone else was free to go back to the cottages, take more pictures, or do whatever they wanted. Meanwhile, Baker met with more students to give feedback on their essays. As a break from photo editing, Robert the younger (affectionately known as “Baby Robert”) took out the copy of the Book of Kells again for the students who did not have a chance to see it yesterday. Greg said, “I was really impressed with the amount of effort they put into replicating it, even down to the burns. And it’s really hard to read Latin when you can’t even read the script.”
The road into Ballyvaughn from the direction of the college.
The weather had cleared up by afternoon, so Morgan, Aly, Greg, and I walked back to the cottages. We enjoyed the beautiful countryside, the cute cows, and the conversation with each other. When we got back to our cottages, we relaxed and worked on some homework before meeting up again to have dinner at Logue’s and take advantage of the free Wi-Fi. At Logue’s, we discovered most of the other Gusties were there, and we sat down with Brendan. Over dinner and dessert, we intermittently watched the cricket game and talked about nerdy TV shows. Despite having to write the rough drafts of our essays, we are hoping to get plenty of sleep tonight so we are well rested for our outing to Limerick tomorrow.
Overhead while editing our photos in the digital lab:
“Have you ever seen a more sassy cow?” –Amanda
“I hate stained glass windows!” –Aly
“I’ve never seen a more majestic-looking sheep. Everything around him just screams ‘king of the woods!’” –Jessie
“David: Don’t quote me on this….
Aly: Can we put that on the blog?”
Cute (but not sassy) cows.