Happy Easter everyone!

Life has been great as usual. Here's what we have been up to:

We had a stint with the school program in Caen, France to see the beaches of Normandy and to learn more about WWII & the D-Day landings:

In the background- you can see the left over pieces
from the landing bridges they made to get the gear to the beaches

Not normal hills- these are from aerial and naval bombardments

In Caen, France

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Steven in Caen. This is his smile when
I've taken too many picts of him :)

We crawled in and around a lot of different bunkers, went to beaches, museums, and cemeteries. Overall it was a fantastic trip!

Next came NewGrange. It's not too far from where we live- just over in County Meath. It's a prehistoric site that they date back to between 3100 BC - 2900BC. It was originally a burial tomb. There are several in the area, but this was the largest.  It is completely dark year around except during the summer solstice when the sun aligns with the roof-box. During the solstice, it lights up inside.

http://www.lookaroundireland.com/newgrange/passageway.htm

We have also had a few visitors recently. First was Steven's 5th grade teacher, Starr, and her husband Leon. We had a great time with them! Steven did his first walking tour of Dublin since we've arrived with them. I feel like we've toured everywhere but Dublin before then.

Starr & Leon Klube where it used to be part of the port.
The lines on the ground represent the eels that used to be in the port.

Next was Andrea, Steven's sister, who came to visit the end of March. We had a great time with her! Steven was able take her out to the west coast to see all of the places out there. We've been out there before, but it would have been fun for me now that I have a little Irish on me. (They mostly speak Irish in parts of the West Coast).

We put her to work the first day she arrived. We had a Primary Activity at church a few hours after she arrived. I'm pretty sure she was in charge of teaching kids to wash dishes. It seems like she enjoyed them though!

We were also able to take her to London. We really enjoyed it. Our friend Luke let us crash at his place in the Soho district. We were able to take her to her first Broadway shows- Blood Brothers (I would highly recommend it) as well as Phantom of the Opera.

On the walking tour, in London, on the parade grounds

On the pedal taxi's after a show

(PS Drea- sorry it took me so long to blog about you. You are def worth blogging about :)

Next comes our trip last week to Maastricht, The Netherlands. The pronunciation of which is still up in the air between Steven and I. This was part of his one week long course for the semester and it was on the History of Fortifications- which Maastricht has a long history of. Again, there was a lot of walking in, around, on, and thru tunnels and walls.

We really enjoyed this trip although the days were packed from sun up to sun down. It didn't hurt that it was in the mid-80's the whole time either! Steven and I have lost our vitamin D deficient looks (thankfully)!

The Class

Steven and Stephen M. in Belgium-
there are a couple of hundred
Belgian soldiers buried here.

Lunch the last day at the Chateau Neecanne.
That's right we went a Chateau and Steven is
wearing a Bodybuilding.com t-shirt!
Our whole group was underdressed though.

By far my favorite thing to go visit was the caves next to the old NATO bunkers. They belonged to Jesuits up until recently and date back quite a long time. There is speculation that the caves go back farther than the Roman empire.  If you only have a couple of hours- it's the best way to visit Europe. The Jesuits would go in and carve different things from around Europe, folktales, animals, cultures, etc. We were in there just over an hour and did not see nearly everything.

Represents the Syrian empire in BC times

Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs

There's a fountain and pool down there

Yesterday was Easter. We had a great time! Steven, Teresa and myself cooked for the good part of Saturday. I made my first ham from scratch. It was a success! After church, we had Kyle and YJ from Steven's program join us. We had a great time and even had a chance to end it with an addicting round of Monopoly Deal. 

Easter spread in a dorm size fridge.
I actually was able to fit another cake in there too!

Steven making his No Bake Cheesecake

The spread!

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

That's pretty much what this blog is- it's a lot packed into a little space and you can't help but say it really fast. Kind of like trying to catch up on your journal writing. I tried to include a lot of pictures to keep it interesting. So here it goes:

1) February we traveled to Berlin with Teresa. It was awesome despite the frost bite weather. Seriously, you should visit there just maybe rethink the winter time frame. Favorite thing besides the yummy pastries- the sculptures.

Brandenburger Tor/ Brandenburg Gate- Berlin

Sauchsenhausen Concentration Camp

Doors to the camp

Where we ate breakfast. They had fantastic food!

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial

Teresa on the walking tour

If he's cold, you KNOW it really is that cold!

2) We also had a chance to do some hiking/nature walking (it depends on who you talk to) over Valentines at Gleann Dá Loch. It was very quiet so it was nice to walk around with the waterfalls and birds that were just beginning to come out for spring time.  We saw several mountain goats out on the cliffs as well. 

3) Steven made it up to Belfast the end of February for the Mitchell Scholarship for the mid year retreat. They took a great tour and even had a kid throw an egg at their van. The tour guide told them that if it had been 20 years ago it probably would have been a brick- not an egg. They also met with people who were active during in The Troubles- I'm not really sure how to phrase that. By this, I mean that the group had the chance to sit down with two men who now are in an open forum but during The Troubles, were clearly on different sides and trying to kill the other. One was Jackie McDonald and Jim (I don't have his last name just yet). Google them... you know you want to. 

4) Next came Brussels. This was a great trip also set up by the Mitchell Scholarship program. We had the opportunity to learn a lot about the EU and it's inner workings. We met with several groups who work directly supporting the EU, we had a tour of the Parliament building, discussion with IBEC (along with many other meetings). And we had time the last evening to walk around the city. We made it to the Belgian waffles- they were great. But I think I still prefer the homemade stuff. 

Our trip was really made great because of the family that we stayed with, The McBean family. We had a great time getting to know them in the time we spent with them- especially playing a few rounds of Monopoly Deal. 

Fagen, Sarah, Ryan, Me, Steven, Ibrahim, Deirdre and Paul

So there are a few more things to write about... but they are going to need to be on the next post (cue the suspense) :) We hope things are going great for everyone!