Today is my last day in Good Relations at the Belfast City Council :(. I am really sad because I have grown really close to these people and have learned so much from them. I think that the hardest thing about leaving Belfast is knowing that I may never see these people again. However, I have been looking at Queens and Jordanstown law schools here in Belfast so maybe in a couple of years when I finish SMU I may return to do my law degree (Yes that means that I would live here). But, I have some time to make this decision. The people that I work with surprised me on Tuesday with a "going away" type of party. They tricked me into thinking we were having tea time at 3, which would not be an abnormal thing here. There were some tears shed as reality set in that these people have changed my life in so many ways, and that like I said I will never see them again. Tea time was not a joke though, we had tea/coffee, brownies, and little chocolate rolls. They staff in good relations was very generous and gave me a silver necklace with a little diamond in the middle of St. Bridget cross, an official Belfast City Council pen, and a black leather purse. After I opened the gifts and card they wanted me to give a speech, so of course I whipped out my 4-H speaking skills and gave them a speech. Little did the staff know that I had been planning on giving them something the next day. Being I grew up and am Minnesota nice (the people in my group think i am SO Minnesotan) I had got them monster cookies over the weekend, as well as wrote each of them a thank you note. So Wednesday morning I came in a little early to drop off the cookies and thank you notes. They were both a big hit because the cookies were so big they called them American sized cookies which I thought was very funny. Tonight I have to pack up my room (which will consist of throwing stuff into suit cases) so that I can move back to Portrush tomorrow.

I am not sure if I will blog again before I leave because we don't have internet access in the flat in Portrush. So if I don't thanks to everyone who read my blog! This summer I will continue to work at Sun Place tanning, take two summer classes, be a Centennial Leader at SMU, catch up with friends, live in Winona, and finally be interning with the Winona County Attorney's Office. Yup I will be a busy girl this summer, but I am excited for it.

P.S. Now that I am international student I feel the need to take another semester abroad.......... So I am looking into going to Australia in February- July of next year! I have to check through the school first to see if they will accept the program. Wish me luck!!

Greece

I just realized I have not posted for 17 days. Oops, time really goes by fast here. Well as some of you may know I went to Greece for my spring break trip!! Well we went to Athens to be specific. Athens was a beautiful city, but it was not what I thought it would be in both a good and bad way. Athens is a beautiful city with all of its old Greek mythological historical sites. However, Athens is very citified (probably not a word) meaning that around all of the historical sites there are hotels, businesses, and flats. Athens is a very touristy city, with lots of hotels, hostels, restaurants, and gift shops. All of the gift shops basically had the same stuff so I felt like once I had seen one shop I had seen them all. One interesting thing that I learned about Athens is that there are no houses, everyone instead lives in a flat, which I thought to be weird because then basically everyone lives in apartments. We did a lot of site seeing on the trip (Oops this trip was from Saturday- Sunday). I left Belfast for Greece on Saturday afternoon. I had a layover in London which was exciting for me, because I left the airport and checked into my very first hotel room that I paid for! The hotel was only a few minutes from the airport so I did not see any of London except for the airport and what I could see out of my window in my hotel. The most exciting thing about my room was that I had a California king bed, which was plenty big for me. Then I got to Greece on Sunday, when we got there we just spent the day walking around and figuring out what we wanted to see. Monday and Tuesday we got on a hop on- hop off bus that took us to different sites in Athens and Piraeus. Some of the sites that we saw were Zeus Temple, Hercules Library, Greek Parliament, Syntagma Square, Hard Rock Cafe, Acropolis, Socrates prison, Aegean Sea, Ports for major cruise ships, Agora, Ancient Agora, Flee market, and a food market. There are not very many grocery stores in Athens, so people just go to a massive food market to get there food. It was pretty cool to see the meat of animals just hanging out in the open for people to take. Of all of the sites that we saw I would say that Ancient Agora was my favorite because there was a big rock that we could climb up to the top of and see all of Athens from (I could also see snow covered mountains). Ancient Agora had a temple that was still mostly standing which was pretty cool to see, as well as many foundations of buildings. The weather in Athens was GREAT and a well welcomed change from the rainy cold days In Northern Ireland. Greece was between 65- 75 degrees everyday, and it only rained once while we were there! On our last full day in Athens we took a tram for about an hour to the beach to see the water and just relax. The water was so pretty and blue. Their beaches are a little different then ours are, because theirs mostly consist of rock and little sand. However, this did not stop me from sitting out in the sun and basking it up. Little did I know that I was getting extremely burnt. I left Athens early early early Friday morning and got  back to Belfast late that night. I was running on no sleep for 46 hours so that was a lot of fun :(. I had another layover in London where I had to go through security twice, and two bio metric scans again. I assumed this was due to different travelling rules. As I got off the plane in Belfast it was a shock to my system because I was not prepared for how cold it was going to be there, but I quickly adjusted. Getting into the airport was very welcoming for me because I got to hear those all to familiar Irish accents. Greece people speak Greek, which is not easy to understand so I was glad to be with people that I could understand. My weekend was filled with little relaxation as I quickly realized that there are only four weeks of the program left, and I have three MASSIVE papers due in that time, thankfully one of them is a group paper. Being I am in Belfast and the Titanic was built here we had to go and see Titanic 3-D as it was the 100 year anniversary of it sinking this weekend. Belfast is having a lot to do with the commemoration of  the Titanic and that also opened up this weekend. Well that is all I have to say for now. I am going to head out and grab a coffee before I start my work day. O this is my last full week at my internship, as I leave for Portrush again next week.

P.S. pictures will be put up later. They are taking awhile today.