Just a little bit further

Today I wrote my scholarship essay. Thank you to the many who helped me with all sorts of useful advice!

I also caught Mom and Dad on skype call and Rachel on skype chat, not a bad way to start off... the afternoon?

I got a text from Mandy around 3 and we met up at 4 to go exploring in search of this castle that you can see from her side of the river but that is actually on my side of the river. None of her Irish friends actually knew how to get there, so it was quite the adventure. As we walked down the road that we figured might lead over there, we asked a man entering his house if he had any idea. He told us to keep along this street until you reach a T in the road and then go left, about a mile and a half total. I think the distance was a lie.

First off, the road that we were to follow was the windiest road, lacking in a sidewalk. So we kept switching what side we were walking on depending if it was a straight part or a curvy part. We were also fighting sundown because we didn't want to risk the walk back on that road in the dark. Honestly, each corner we kept thinking, well, just one more, maybe our T and castle are around the next corner. We almost gave up at one point and then the "just a little bit further" voice kicked in again. Once we reached a ruin like archway we knew the castle had to be nearby but could not, for the life of us see it! Luckily, we did go just a little bit further and lo and behold, we found the castle! Half of the joy was in finding it.

It probably wasn't even a "castle" but it was definitely a huge estate now a ruin and overrun with ivy up the walls and hollowed out inside. It was so cool to step inside of it and feel so insignificant against the size and age of it. It's amazing that things humans make can be around for so long. It's sad when even there you find remains from other humans, like beer cans. Mandy said the world will really wind up like in Wall-E... I'll do my best to keep that from being any time soon...

Anyways, I took a looong video while in it so that way you could get the feel, but for some reason my camera is not connecting well to my computer, lame, and I only could download a couple of images. My camera, while awesome, isn't so fun when trying to upload photos to the computer, I have to turn it off and start again a couple of times. Anyways, I'll get that video up, but for now these photos will have to suffice.