In brief

Spring break so far has been amazing! I've done most of the traveling on my own and met up with various people so far. It was great to see Elise and spend some time with her and meet all her friends (and the food in France was amazing, which was a definite plus!) and I'm currently in Dublin catching up with Sarah Wheaton, who is an incredible sweetheart from my dorm. I got in here yesterday and they let me use the ND-Dublin computers and rooms and stuff and even share crepes with them for Fat Tuesday, which was really nice. Before I have to head out, I'll give you the 10 second rundown of my impressions of the places I've gone so far:
Lourdes had a cool grotto, but it is so closely surrounded by the basilica and all kinds of stuff that it just kinda melts away into a tourist destination, which was really disppointing. I thought the biggest laugh there were the plastic statues of Mary that were hollow and could be filled with holy water by unscrewing a crown! It looked so tacky haha! Angers had good food, but I did encounter a lot of snobbery and some outright rudeness from the guys, which according to the people I met there is a continual annoyance. Switzerland was COLD... the first two days were ok, but on the last day when we were there it snowed and that just added something to the town that really made it beautiful. If only we could have stayed outside for a longer length of time! I'm in Dublin currently and it's amazing. The people are so friendly and so proud of being Irish that they really make you want to be Irish too. It's way more green than I thought it would be, especially in the city! I can't wait to see the countryside. I haven't seen any rain here yet, although I arrived in sun, then it sleeted, then it hailed, and today started out sunny, snowed for 10 minutes, and returned to being sunny before clouding over- so I think I've seen every for of precipitation here except rain!!!