Newgrange, Hill Slane, and Mellifont Abbey

Today was a busy and exciting day. First we got up early so that we could have breakfast, make lunch, and leave the YWCA at 8 or a little thereafter so that we could get to Newgrange at a decent time. Newgrange is an ancient monument built around 3200 BC which is before the Great Pyramids and Stonehenge, making it over 5000 years old. Many archaeologists believe that is was some sort of burial ground as several human remains were found when the site was excavated in the 60s. The outside is basically a reconstruction of what people think the outside must have looked like originally. The inner chamber is in the shape of a cross, though this was thousands of years before Christ so they weren't inspired by that - but to me it makes me think about perhaps God inspired them to somehow shape the chamber to be a message of what would happen in the future - dunno really, just my interpretation of it. But the chamber starts off being one long passageway that I only had to duck my head once or twice...but not at the entrance like everyone else. The tour guide was like "When you enter and exit watch you head." Yeah...I didn't have to. But when you get to the end you see three small chambers which make the shape of the cross. One chamber is decorated with lots and lots of carvings which many scholars believe symbolize the Sky which is where all the gods and spirits lived, the once across from the is the Earth which is where we humans live, and the one in direct center is the Underworld and it only has one carving which is the Three Spiral Carving which is only really visible during the Winter Solstice when the sun is able to aligne with the Sun Box above the entrance and sends a shaft of light through the passageway into the back of the Underworld Chamber. The tour guide even did a reenactment of what the solstice looks like with the few electric bulbs that are in the inside though when it was pitch dark it was really creepy.

Next we went and ate lunch on Hill Slane where there is a ruin of a church and graveyard and my friends and I ate in the graveyard section. It was so cool and some people were even buried there as late at the 90s. But we ate there and then went exploring all over the ruins and there was so much stuff to climb and the view was absolutely breathtaking! It's as if God made Heaven and then Ireland...but yeah, that was the highlight, the majority of us all enjoyed doing that because it was just so FUN! We could see the green hills and pastures and the blue sky just went on forever and the breeze just gently whipped at our hair and the air was clean and....there's just so much that one cannot put into words. We were quite upset to leave.

Next we went to Mellifont Abbey which while the history was interesting...the tour guide was boring. We weren't the only group at Mellifont though. A group of basketball players from Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a basketball tournament. We took a group picture with them. I also mentioned that a friend would be going to Lancaster Bible College and they knew where that was. Then Megan, Hannah and I "sunbathed" on the roof of one of the buildings of the abbey.
After we arrived back at the Y for dinner, Megan and I went out and sat on the rocks by the Irish Sea and read. It was a bit chilly but it was amazing. I could smell the salt water, hear the waves crashing against the rocks that were beneath us and the rock cliffish thing we were sitting on. We staid there for an hour at least before climbing over some of the rocks to stretch then we went back to the Y because the sun was setting and it was getting cold.

The first picture is of the River Boyne which is where Newgrange is located. We were walking to the place where we would catch our tour bus. The second photo is of the front of Newgrange. The third picture is at Hill Slane and it's a window the bell tower that we unfortunately couldn't get into because they had blocked the entrance. But we were eating lunch in the graveyard under that window, looked, and suddenly realized that there was a creepy head there. The last picture is us FISP students with the basketball team from Franklin and Marshall. Yeah...we Americans must stick together!
And that concludes today. Now I must do homework.