Today was a hiking day for our Hill Climbing PHP. The first hike was up Sugarloaf. The first part was just a typical uphill trek, but the second bit was literally climbing up to the top of the mountain. The view was well worth it. It wasn’t the clearest day, but the clouds stayed at bay long enough for us to see Wicklow County all around us. We had our typical photo shoot: group shot, picture of the girls, picture of the boys, and all of our other random pictures. We laughed about how we were out of breath, but we were probably no higher in altitude than Indiana is, probably lower even. It was a fun hike, but I will say I enjoyed coming down more than climbing up. The climb down was probably more dangerous because one misstep on a lose rock could send you tumbling down. Luckily, we all made it to the top and back down without incident.

The second hike was not as exciting as scaling a mountain. For starters, it was a path for mountain biking, so the path was probably about 6 ft wide. Second, our destination was a lake, but we took a wrong turn… 40 minutes later when we reached an impassable gate, we realized we had obviously gone the wrong way. We turned around and went back to where we started, having seen nothing worthwhile besides pine trees (that are not indigenous to Ireland), the deforestation of said pine trees, and plenty of mud. The bus took us to the loch we were supposed to reach, and we stopped there to take pictures.

Back at the house, Caitlin and I looked over our maps and guidebooks, planning our weekend in London. We’re leaving Friday and coming back Sunday morning, so we have two full days to do a crash course of touring London. We probably won’t completely stick to our itinerary, but that’s half the fun.

At eight o’clock Martin Nolan came and played the Irish pipes for us. He taught us a bit about the history of the Irish pipes as well. Irish pipes are similar to the bagpipes, but instead of blowing into the instrument, there is an air pump under the right elbow and the bag under the left. I suggest googling or Wikipedia-ing Irish pipes because I’m sure my attempt at a description would not even being to do them justice.

Tonight I have papers to write for the two hikes and two papers to edit for our group site visit papers, so I best get to work on those.

Quote of the Evening:
“In order to give something away you have to own it.” –talking about a present
“Not according to Obama.” Proving yet again how anything can be made political.