Welcome!
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Lucky you! You’ve found your way to Mike and Andrew’s study abroad travel blog, congrats! We’re super excited and blessed to have an opportunity to experience and interact with a host of different countries, cultures, and people these next 4 months, and we can’t wait to share it with you. And as we told our mothers, the idea for this blog came to us during mass one Sunday night, so despite their skepticism, we like to think our writing is “divinely-inspired”. While our posts may not be as revelatory or profound as St. John’s Gospel, we hope you at least find them marginally more interesting than checking your email and thus, an alternative filler for lulls in your dinner table discussions.
Lucky you! You’ve found your way to Mike and Andrew’s study abroad travel blog, congrats! We’re super excited and blessed to have an opportunity to experience and interact with a host of different countries, cultures, and people these next 4 months, and we can’t wait to share it with you. And as we told our mothers, the idea for this blog came to us during mass one Sunday night, so despite their skepticism, we like to think our writing is “divinely-inspired”. While our posts may not be as revelatory or profound as St. John’s Gospel, we hope you at least find them marginally more interesting than checking your email and thus, an alternative filler for lulls in your dinner table discussions.
For
those of you who don’t know both of us, we’d like to introduce one another. We
are both juniors studying at the University of Notre Dame. Outside of
commonalities like living in Siegfried Hall and sharing a passion for DH
oatmeal bar creations, we each took some time to note the defining characteristics
of one another:
Mike Breslin
Mike goes by many well-deserved nicknames including Electric, Handsome, Gullible, Big Booty Breslin, and so on. I suspect 2019 will bring big things for him. Having found love late in 2018, he’s been particularly giddy of recent and his particular affection for reading too much and subpar dining hall potstickers has only been amplified. Stay tuned as he finally breaks free from the intense supervision of past RA’s and explores the freedoms once withheld. Hopefully we will finally catch glimpses of Lax-Boy, Fairfax Mike of whom we’ve heard only tales and legends beyond belief. And, if we’re really lucky, he might even branch out from his favorite sparkling beverages and taste some Guinness.
Andrew Steiner
Andrew “Andy Man Candy” Steiner is generally thought of as the dad of our section, but lucky for him the kids are away at summer camp for the semester. Newly single, I anticipate Andrew will be scouring both the pubs and the cathedrals for a nice Irish lass to buy him jars of olives and put him to bed when undefeated knockout champ José comes out at night. After we were told that the Irish young adult fashion scene does not, in fact, include cuffed pants, Birkenstocks, and J. Crew sweaters but is instead composed of tighter-than tight ripped skinny jeans and punk rock T shirts, Andrew’s eyes were wider than his mouth at dinner. Free from Fr. John’s all-seeing eyes and judgment that he has “been overserved,” the pubs better be fully stocked.
Bold prediction: By semester’s end, armed with a paddy cap and his supposed mixologist skills in making blueberry mojitos and gin sours, he will take up a residency behind the bar at fan favorite Dicey’s Garden.
In
hopes of minimizing boredom and maximizing easy reading of our below-average
writing, our blog posts will take the following organization this semester
(some elements may be removed/added depending on our creativity and desire to
write):
Mike’s Time to Read - this will be quite simply an estimate of how much time reading this post in its entirety will take benchmarked by Mike’s 6th grade reading level. We promise to keep them all under 10 mins.
(Celebrity) Foreword - this section may feature excerpts from family and friends that accompany our travels or really anyone else we want to add something to the blog.
In Brief - this section will contain the cliff note version of our trip.
Main Events - this section will include some highlights of our trip and a selection of local activities ranked on a three part recommendation scale of (highest to lowest): “Must Experience”, “Do It For The Blog”, “Trip Advisor Approved? Fake News.”
Segments - this section may feature rotating themes of information such as Fast Facts or Mike’s Beer Review.
The Last Word - this will be a simple wrap-up of our journey followed by extra pictures from the trip.
That’s it for now! Thanks for sticking with us this semester! See below for some goals each of us have for this semester. If you enjoyed reading this and are interested, you can subscribe to our blog by clicking the “Follow Us!” link at the top of the page. And feel free to share this blog with anyone you think would find value in it! May the road rise up to meet you.
Cheers!
Mike
and Andrew
Mike's Goals for this Semester:
1) Experience as many different countries, cultures, and people as possible in order to gain a broader perspective of the world and my own place in it.
1) Experience as many different countries, cultures, and people as possible in order to gain a broader perspective of the world and my own place in it.
2) Meet new friends from both Notre Dame and Dublin, as well as growing closer and developing a deeper friendship with Andrew.
3) Expose myself to different ways of life and apply them to my own in order to better myself as a friend, family member, and all-around person.
Mike's Goals for "What's The Craic?":
1) Use this as a chance to reflect on my travels and time abroad in order to truly glean the lessons and biggest takeaways from each experience.
2) Share about my travels with my family and friends back home while also giving some insight into our day-to-day lives in Dublin.
3) Create a record of the semester with various anecdotes that might have gone forgotten otherwise.
Mike's Goals for "What's The Craic?":
1) Use this as a chance to reflect on my travels and time abroad in order to truly glean the lessons and biggest takeaways from each experience.
2) Share about my travels with my family and friends back home while also giving some insight into our day-to-day lives in Dublin.
3) Create a record of the semester with various anecdotes that might have gone forgotten otherwise.
Andrew's Goals for this Semester:
1) Become a part time bartender in an Irish pub
2) Eat Swedish Fish in front of an IKEA in Sweden
3) Spend more days outside Dublin than in a Trinity classroom
4) Play Twenty-five in a pub with Irish friends
5) Get lost in a foreign country
Andrew's Goals for "What's The Craic?":
1) Keep my mom informed of my whereabouts and ensure she knows I am safe, as well as share our experiences with family and friends.
2) Force us to document our experiences and encourage us to find things off the beaten path just for the sake of the blog.
3) Get noticed by Lonely Planet or Mr. Steves, fall in love with traveling, and drop the accounting career path. I'd even settle for Trip Advisor.
1) Become a part time bartender in an Irish pub
2) Eat Swedish Fish in front of an IKEA in Sweden
3) Spend more days outside Dublin than in a Trinity classroom
4) Play Twenty-five in a pub with Irish friends
5) Get lost in a foreign country
Andrew's Goals for "What's The Craic?":
1) Keep my mom informed of my whereabouts and ensure she knows I am safe, as well as share our experiences with family and friends.
2) Force us to document our experiences and encourage us to find things off the beaten path just for the sake of the blog.
3) Get noticed by Lonely Planet or Mr. Steves, fall in love with traveling, and drop the accounting career path. I'd even settle for Trip Advisor.
Great!!! Look forward to following along!!
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