This past weekend was a great one that I’ll never forget and that left me sore and tired – as all unforgettable weekends should.
The program with which I’m studying abroad brought together all of its students across Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Belfast, and Galway) to the Killary Adventure Center in Connemara. I should note now that I have a distinct lack of pictures from this weekend since it is impractical to carry a camera while adventuring.
We each arrived on Friday afternoon from all over the country and immediately were assigned to dormitories and instructed to sign up for a program for the afternoon. I signed up with a few of my friends from Galway to do the rock wall, the “Big Swing” and abseiling. What a day. The rock wall I’d done before, so it was pretty straight forward. Though there’s no way that I managed to get more than one-third up that wall – it was probably about 4 or 5 stories high. Although some of my able-bodied and highly impressive friends made it up to the top, and the rest impressed me with their height as well. Next was the “Big Swing”, which we found out was a contraction that lifts you 50 feet into the air and then lets you go and you end up swinging back and forth. My terror at the mere thought of a roller-coaster was quickly made known to my companions, but they are some of the most supportive and encouraging friends a girl could ever ask for and they made me do it (for lack of a better way to put it). So I was tied into the contraption in about a dozen different ways to ensure my safety (though it did little for my nerves), and I was hoisted up to the starting position alongside Matt, seeing as how the swing was a two-seater.
In order to initiate the drop, the swingers must pull a cord, and so my mind went blank with terror as I gazed ahead at a gorgeous Connemara mountain and Matt tugged on the cord. The drop was horrifying, and the instructors likened it to a place crash. I remember that at some point my eyes closed and soon enough I became aware that my screaming was probably audible to everyone within a mile’s distance. My friend Stephanie explained my scream to me at dinner that night. She said that it was fit for a horror movie and that she was impressed with my lung capacity as it didn’t seem to stop for the entire process (including swing-back – it doesn’t stop until it stops itself just like with a real swing). After getting unstrapped by the instructor, I ran away from it and proceeded to cry and hyper-ventilate for a few minutes, but I did it! And my friends all cheered me on and told me how impressed they were with me for trying to overcome fear. Didn’t work – in case you were wondering. Still scared out of my mind concerning roller coasters, this merely reinforced the sheer terror of dropping that I feel.
Abseiling is just repelling down a wall, and it was the other side of the rock wall, and thusly was the equivalent 4 or 5 stories high. This requires holding on to a rope while leaning backwards over the wall and walking down. Needless to say I did not partake in this activity. I think the Big Swing as enough for my nerves for at least the next few months. Please feel free to mock my sissy-ness, because it won’t change a thing.
That night I decided to make some new friends since I spend a lot of time with the Galway group and I spent the night with a group from Dublin. They were very welcoming and extremely nice. We ate dinner together and then formed a team for trivia afterward. We sucked to say the least. But it was a funny evening.
Saturday morning we all got up early and signed up for another activity. I did kayaking and gorge climbing. For the first time ever I put on a wet suit. At first I felt just disgusting, but it kept me completely warm in the fjord we were kayaking in (basically the Atlantic Ocean). We also had to wear sneakers for the event and it is a strange sensation to wear sneakers, a wet suit and a helmet while swimming. And swim I did, because each activity seemed designed only to make us tip over into the water. Also, when we first got in, our instructor paddled over and tipped me over because, he said, I just looked like a target. Granted, I was wearing a Barbie-pink helmet and sitting in a pink kayak…
However, that was really fun and the instructors made it really funny. Afterward they led us up a cliff to a spot called the Leap of Faith, where you jump off the cliff into the fjord. After much effort on the instructors’ part to talk me into jumping off the edge, I spent the whole time just freaking out about the drop and didn’t drop in. I watched the other kids do it a few times each, and then the instructors, and then we walked over to the gorge, which was basically a river coming down the mountain and we climbed up the river and its waterfalls, which was amazing and beautiful and really cool.
After a quick lunch, I signed up for a hill walk that promised a “pot of gold” at the end. It ended up being really fun, because our instructor for that knew the area well, and he carried a map with him and told us to dictate the walk. So we explored the hills of Connemara for a few hours. We often walked through the bog, which seems to envelope much of the area and we sunk – quite a lot. But it was really fun, and it was so beautiful to get up high and look around. We even found a little copse of trees that reminded me of my own back yard because of the rocky landscape and the kind of trees. Our “Pot of Gold” turned out to be a can of Guinness each halfway through the walk. And it was an interesting experience to hike while drinking beer. Only in Ireland. Oh, the sheep. There are sheep just everywhere in Connemara, seriously. And as we hiked around the mountain, they generally just scuttled away from us, but at one point, one of the sheep climbed up onto a rocky outcropping just to the left and ahead of us, and I had a staring contest with it for a good 3 minutes. Not entirely sure why he did what he did, but he got bored with it eventually and merely turned around and faded back into the mist. It was a little strange, but now I can say that I’ve had a staring contest with a sheep. Oh, and that I won.
After dinner, guitars were brought out and we all spent several hours milling about and enjoying the sounds of whatever songs the collective knew how to play on a guitar; which, turned out to be quite a bit considering they played for so long. We were very impressed. Additionally, the Adventure Center set up a “disco” for us, and fitted the cafeteria with Christmas lights and a DJ and we all danced much longer than I expected us to as a group since we were all clearly sore and tired from all the various activities we had been partaking in for the last 24 hours. (We actually all split into groups and did tons of different activities including zip-lining, high ropes course, laser combat etc.)
Sunday morning, there were a great many hang-overs and/or people just plain exhausted and there was low-participation in the activities, but I did join a group that did archery and clay-pigeon shooting. We had an archery contest and I am proud to say my group won both times (woo-hoo!), and then we switched over to shooting clay-pigeons. However, by this time, it was nearly lunch, and it was raining and the wind was so hard that I literally leaned back into it like I was going to lay down and it held me up. So after we each tried to shoot at 5 clay targets flying through the air, the rest of my group left, but I stayed behind and took about a dozen more shots or so. I was pretty disappointed in myself because I really only hit 3 targets and my dad is a competitive shooter that has brought me clay-pigeon shooting before. Sorry Dad, guess it’s not a genetic thing. I took my time walking back since I was on my own, and I just tried to enjoy the scenery and the whole thing and take it all in since we were set to leave after lunch.
All in all I really enjoyed the weekend and have accepted the fact that I enjoy a great many adventurous things in life without having to jump off of high things or plummet toward the ground. And I made some new friends in different cities that I hope to visit while I’m here, and whom I encouraged to come visit us in Galway. And, not to brag, but the general consensus this weekend seemed to be that the Galway group was the coolest of all the groups and the easiest to get along with. That’s right.
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