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Tuesday,
July 19th
07.19.2005
Pictures |
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Here I go! I'm
finally embarking on my Europe trip, and I'm super excited. After staying
up late getting everything packed, I missed my first wake up call (missed or
ignored... I remember my mom telling me a few things in the morning but thinking "Well,
she didn't
tell me to get up, so I guess I can go back to sleep." She claims
otherwise.), but I still got to the airport with plenty of time to make my
flight. Europe awaits.
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Thursday,
July 21st
07.21.2005
Pictures |
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Well I'm now in Ireland, where it is perpetually cold and wet,
but I still love it. Just now my internet access looks pretty iffy, so I'm
not sure how often updates will be coming. Hopefully that situation will
improve soon.
Galway is really nice. Yesterday I had some
time to walk around the city and get something to eat. I'm hoping to go to
City Hall today and get a map so I can figure out what things are. The
streets here are not well labeled and addresses do not include numbers, so it
seems to me that it's pretty difficult to get around no matter what.
My hotel is about a 25 minute walk from the
center of the city. It took me a little longer last night, since I
was going off a map I found on the back of a gift shop's brochure I got at the
hotel, which was neither to scale nor very conducive to getting downtown.
There's a nice body of water that I think eventually leads to the ocean across
the street and down a little bit. The street my hotel is on goes along its
north side, and along its west side there's a nice long road with houses on the
non-watery side and on the other side above the water there is a row of nice little
gardens. I'm not sure if they belong to the houses across the road and are
some sort of yard-extensions of if they are independent.
Today getting into town should be a little
easier. I saw an Internet Cafe yesterday that so far seems to be my best
shot at getting any of this online for others to see (I'm at the hotel at the
moment, getting everything ready so all I'll have to do will be upload), so
hopefully that won't cost too much. Last night I ended up spending about
€17 on food (although that included tip, so it
wasn't all on food), which is hopefully a little higher than what will be customary for me.
Well,
that's all for now. Look at some pictures and send me some e-mail if you
have some time. (Although I have no idea how often I'll be checking it)
|
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Later... |
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Getting into town today took less time, as I
had a better idea of where I was going. I also had a map that the hotel
gave me, which gave me a little more direction, but again, streets here are
poorly labeled, so drawing a correspondence between what the map showed and the
world around me at times was difficult.
I discovered that yesterday I had just barely gotten into downtown Galway.
If I had gone a even a block farther, I would have gotten to the shop-lined
streets full of shoppers and street performers. My initial destination was
a tourist office I had seen on my map, and on the other side of the map I
noticed a cathedral across town that I thought would be cool to see, so I had a plan of sorts. I got
to the tourist office, which had various overpriced items and a few brochures,
none of which were terribly useful. There was a map outside that had a
nice layout of the city, though, so that gave me some more direction.
I continued walking through the city and found
more interesting shops and streets. On what seemed like the edge of
downtown there's a series of rivers and canals, some of which run right up to
the buildings, giving a sort of Venetian feel. There were several bridges across
these waterways, one of which led right to the cathedral, so I was able to go
right across to it.
The cathedral was awesome. It was rather dark and all stone, which
I liked a lot. I spent some time
looking around and took a few pictures, and just as I was about to
leave a priest came out to say Mass, so I stayed for that. After Mass I
decided to try going a little farther on the streets leading away from downtown,
and in doing so I unwittingly stumbled across the National University of Ireland,
where I need to be tomorrow to catch the bus to Cararroe. I was hoping I'd
be able to walk, but it looks like that'll be a little far to lug all my suitcases.
As I started making my way back through downtown,
the streets and restaurants were getting more crowded. I didn't have any
cash on me at this point, so I had to find a place that would let me use a card,
which I did without too much difficulty. I had a yummy meal of Irish lamb
stew with carrots, cabbage, cheesecake, and tea while listening to the street
performers play didgeridoos outside the restaurant, which was unexpected to say
the least. After dinner, I walked
through the city a bit more, looked in a few shops, and then was quite ready to
be back at the hotel, so the 20 minute walk ahead of me was not entirely
welcome. Back in my hotel there appears to be an elderly French people
convention, which thoroughly crowded the lobby and hallways. I managed to
get to my room, though, as I am eager to rest up ready for the big
day tomorrow.
|
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Friday,
July 22st 07.22.2005 |
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Today was the day for the bus
ride to Cararroe to begin the Irish program. I checked out of my hotel
without incident (whew) around 1:30 and waited in the lobby for my taxi to take
me to NUI Galway at 2 so I could get there in time for the bus, which was to
leave at 2:30. Everything went smoothly, and after about an hour and a
half on the bus we arrived in An Cheathru Rua, known more popularly to English
speakers (although not many of them, I suppose) as Cararroe.We were dropped
off at NUI's Cararroe branch, Acadamh, where we entered to register while our luggage was
unloaded. After finishing registration we went to the kitchen, where they
told us they
had tea, coffee, and biscuits (they meant cookies) for us. There
are
about 30 students total involved in the program to be distributed through all
the four levels of instruction, so classes won't be very big. We began to notice that several of us had the same color folders
containing our schedules and maps, and that the colors corresponded to the
houses we were going to. In all, there were 6 people going to the house I
was staying at: My roommate, Kevin, from New York; Jessica, from Texas, and
Catherine, from England, who share a room; and Sarah, from Boston, and Eiichi,
from Japan, each of whom have individual rooms.
We are staying at the house of a woman named
Peig (Peg), who lives in Cararroe, about a 20 minute walk from town. She's
a very nice lady and has a very homey and rustic little place (although not that
little, as there are about 5 or 6 bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room,
and several bathrooms, but it's rather compact). She gave us a very good
dinner soon after we arrived, with chicken, ham, coleslaw, carrots, potatoes,
and soda bread.
After dinner we watched a little survivor with
Irish subtitles while we waited for everyone to get ready to go pubbin.
The town isn't very big, so there's one pub, An Chistin ("The Kitchen") where pretty much everybody goes.
It takes about 20 minutes to walk there, but it's a pretty nice walk along water
most of the way, if you aren't frightened by the cars that go zooming by, as there isn't
really a shoulder and there's no room next to the road a lot of the way, and the road is usually just wide enough for
two cars to get by. The pub wasn't very
crowded when we got there, since it was only like 8:00, but more people from our
program started showing up as time went on. It was cool to see all the
Irish people actually speaking Irish to each other. The man behind the bar
even greeted us in Irish, although we didn't "have any Irish" (as the locals
say) to say back, so we
just responded in English. They had some music scheduled to play at 10:30
so we waited around to see what that was, but it turned out to be some country
band, so we didn't hang around too much longer. Two people from our house
had already gone back, and a little after 11:00 I headed back with Kevin and
Jessica, with Sarah staying behind. We were a little concerned about being
able to identify the house, but on our first guess we turned out to be right.
|
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Saturday,
July 23rd07.23.2005
Pictures
|
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Today was the day for class to
officially begin, so we were all pretty excited. We had arranged to have
breakfast at 7:45, since the bus was coming to pick us up at 8:30, so Kevin and
I decided to get up around 7.
Irish breakfasts consist of meat, meat, and
more meat. We had sausage, ham, bacon, and weird little things that looked
sort of
like sausage slices but were probably something we wouldn't have eaten had we known what they
actually were (one was sort of meat colored, the other was black...
they tasted fine, though). We ate, took the bus to school, and waited for
everyone else to be brought (it's a mini bus, so it just picks up and drops off
one house at a time, and we're first on the bus stops this week). Around
9:30 they had us go to a rooms for placement, which was basically where the
woman organizing everything talked about what would happen and then asked us to
classify ourselves based on whether we understood pretty much everything, got a
basic gist, understood a few words, or basically nothing. I already knew I
was starting in the ultimate beginners' course, but I was regardless reassured
in understanding absolutely nothing of what she said.
After that she introduced the teachers and had
all the people in the very beginners' course go off with the teacher to a
room in another building, where all the classes are held. We went there,
got situated, and then started with basic greetings, asking and telling names,
and asking and saying how we were feeling. From there we moved on to
numbers 1-10, members of the family, and random objects in our environment.
Everything was taught in a communicative approach to language learning,
which takes as its fundamental principle that grammar is at the heart of all the
world's problems, so you don't go anywhere near it. In place of
teaching grammar, where you are shown systematically how
things work and so you can create with the language, you are basically given a
bunch of sentences and phrases to memorize, and you just keep memorizing sentences and
phrases, learning each as if it were its own mysterious irregularity (when, in
fact, most are extremely regular and would be quite easy to learn, use, and develop if
any rules were given, but we are left to magically discover the rules for
ourselves AFTER learning the language). The idea is that you continue this
process until you reach the level of a native
speaker, although the chances of that happening seem rather slim with such an
approach.
Anyway, I don't particularly care for the
communicative approach. I'm a grammar man myself, but this was only the
first day, and they just want to teach us some things to say, but when you just
have to memorize something and know that this is the sentence to use to say "I'm
doing well, thank you, how are you?" without understanding what the words
actually mean or how to use any of the
individual components it leaves you feeling rather swamped and helpless.
Hopefully the level of grammar instruction will increase as time goes on.
So it was interesting, and we did learn how to
say some things. The real difficulty (which, I might add, could be helped
by a systematic and rule-governed presentation) is that the Irish spelling
system is slightly insane. Yes, I understand that as an English speaker I have
little right to make that claim, but it is. The word feoil, for example,
is pronounced like "fyole," plodaithe (crowded) is pronounced plo-dee,
or a haon (one), pronounced uh-hee-uhn.
That last word is slightly irregular, and generally the spelling system works
a little better than that, or so I'm told, but I am definitely uneasy with it at
best (Syllable stress is at least generally constant: it's almost always on the
first syllable, and there's a very finite list of exceptions where it's on the
second syllable). I
feel so accomplished if I can just pronounce something correctly, but then I
remember "Oh yeah, I have to figure out what it means in English," which is a whole other can of
worms.
In the evening some of us went exploring, but
we didn't get to the beach we were looking for. We did get to the water on
one road, but it was just a few houses near the edge of the water. There
was some nice scenery though, so there are some pictures. |
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Sunday,
July 24th 07.24.2005
Pictures |
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Today we had our first trip, which was first
to the house of the Irish writer Padraic Pearse, who moved to the area to learn
Irish and is famous for having the same name as me (that's actually not a very
uncommon name here, but with a "c" at the end is a slightly older style; they
usually use a "g" nowadays). The house
was interesting and had a big lake out front. I discovered a path down to
the water, so there are some
pictures of that. We also went to a hotel that had a tribute cabin to "The
Quiet Man" outside, a gift shop, a bar, and a restaurant. There wasn't
much to do there, but I did get a good Irish mythology book and a pack of
Guinness fudge at the gift shop. The Guinness fudge wasn't even good--it had that sort of weird waxy texture and didn't taste like chocolate
(or Guinness).
I later noticed that the actual Guinness content was something like 0.4%, which
apparently is enough to warrant a black bag with the Guinness logo slapped
across the top. The book is good though, so I'm very happy with it (AND
it was on sale).
|
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Wednesday,
July 27th
07.27.2005
Pictures |
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I have now completed the mid-week hump of my
first week of class, and I'm getting more settled into the routine. Here's
what my day looks like:
| 7:30am |
Wake up, take shower |
| 7:55am |
Get to breakfast |
| 8:30am |
Minibus picks us up, takes us to Acadamh in town.
Since we're the first to be picked up, we usually have some tea in the kitchen
and study while we wait for everyone else to arrive. |
| 9:30am |
Class begins
|
| 11:00am |
First break, usually spent having tea and biscuits in the kitchen |
| 11:30am |
Class resumes |
| 1:00pm |
Lunch and break time, in which I
have my allotted half-hour of internet time, and during which I also have to remember make my
daily AMT withdrawal to pay for my tuition and housing (I have a
daily limit on my account that I had arranged to be fixed, but if you don't
remember how my bank works you can just check the India log around the day where
I was checking out of my hotel) |
| 2:00pm |
Class resumes |
| 2:55pm |
Afternoon break |
| 3:05pm |
Class resumes |
| 4:00pm |
Class is finished. At this
time we generally have the option
of going to the study room or taking part in some sort of cultural presentation,
such as regarding singing, poetry or literature |
| 5:00pm |
Bus takes us home |
| 5:30pm |
Dinner |
| 6:30pm |
Bus picks us up to take us to
Acadamh on the evenings when they have lectures, which concern things like
dancing, song, politics, or literature in Ireland. |
| 7:30pm |
Lecture/activity begins |
| 9:00pm |
Evening things ends and we go to
the pub for a bit, returning home at varying times (he he...) |
So that's what my life is like nowadays.
Nothing particularly exciting happened today, so there are just a few pictures
of the sunset. |
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Thursday,
July 28th
07.28.2005
Pictures |
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I went in to Galway tonight with some people
to see some plays that had finished their run, but are now being continued since
Galway is currently having its big racing week (horses). I guess racing
week is pretty big, because when I was there last week, everyone I talked to
told me that it was a shame I wouldn't be in town while the races were going on.
There were five of us who went, and since one
girl had a car, she offered to drive everyone, which was very nice
since it meant we didn't have to be restricted by bus schedules. We left
Cararroe around 6, getting into Galway around 7:00. We parked near NUI,
which was very strange, since I had just been there exactly one week before, and
had no idea I would be back any time soon. It was very convenient, though,
because I knew my way around the area well.
They did two plays, which were interesting and rather strange.
They were both from the first half of the 20th century, when there was a
movement to form a specifically Irish form of theater. The first was about
a woman who had a older husband who was dying, and she was faced with what to do
after her husband's death. The second was far more bizarre, and was about
a town that took in a man who had confessed to killing his father because the
townspeople
were messed up and fascinated by violence. There are just a few pictures of my return to Galway.
|
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Friday,
July 29th
07.29.2005
Pictures |
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I found out today that my sister
had her baby, which is awesome news! I am now the proud uncle to another
baby nephew.Today Cararroe held a parade
to begin some boating festival. They have the boat races every year, but they've never done a
parade before, so it was something of a special occasion. They
started at a pier outside town and took the procession right down the main
street. The pier is on the opposite side of town from us, and it would
have taken us about an hour to reach it
from the house, so we just walked into town to meet the parade when
it got there.
It turned out that we had
perfect timing, because the parade was getting into town just as we were.
There were bagpipers and people with giant puppet things. Several
people were carrying a giant/monster they had constructed. I was
told that the priest had blessed it at the pier with holy water from a bottle of
whisky and they were bringing it into
town to set it on fire, and the heavy scent of gasoline in the air seemed to
confirm the story. Sure enough, they wasted little time in standing it up in the parking lot
by the school at lit the thing up. It was blazing in seconds, and didn't
go out for awhile. The bagpipers started up again and marched away, after
which everyone wandered back home (or to the pubs). In all it was a fun
experience, and something about seeing actual Irish bagpipers was really cool. |
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Saturday,
July 30th
07.30.2005
Pictures |
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We had bus trip #2 today, which
took us first to a little area with a shop and a restaurant (for a bathroom
break), then to a little town with a fjord, then to Kylemore Abbey, and finally
to Clifden before returning more. The first two stops weren't anything
too special, but it was nice to be able to get out and walk around a little.
At the fjord place I got a "Not for Girls" candy bar, which was interesting.
There's a picture of it in there somewhere.
Killmore Abbey was cool. The main building
is an old castle that a guy built for his wife in the 19th century but it now
home to Belgian nuns and a school they run. Only about 5 rooms were open
to us, but they had some cool stuff in them. There was also a little
votive area, which upon close inspection I noticed was actually a panel of
little lights with buttons in front of each of them to make them like up for an
unspecified amount of time. I did one, and when
I pressed the button a flickery light came on that was quite reminiscent of
candlelight, but I remain skeptical of button-operated candles. I don't see why
conventional candles are so much trouble (plus
they're a lot less tacky).
After the Abbey we ate lunch in the bus and
went to Clifden, which is a bigger town than Cararroe, but not nearly as big as
Galway. It was just nice to be in a town where things could actually be
purchased (For things like clothes, books, or DEFINITELY electronics, Cararroe-ians
plan a trip to Galway), although they were still so expensive I contented myself with tea at
a very strange sit-down-and-be-served coffee shop we went to. They had a
book store, which I was eager to see, since I was hoping to get some sort of
Italian book for my time in Italy. I found a phrase book and dictionary,
but since it's not like I'm actually going to try to learn Italian before I get
there, I decided I'll just speak Spanish in Italy and hope they understand me
(Hopefully I'll understand them...). |
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Sunday,
July 31st
07.31.2005
Pictures |
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Today a trip to Crough Padraic was
planned, where there's a shrine to Mary. I had been planning to go, but
I decided I didn't really want to go with the whole group of people, and I had
some stuff I had been wanting to do. I had my day planned to go hunting for the beach that we didn't find
last week when we tried. I went to Mass last night and got up with
everyone else this morning to have breakfast, after which we set out around 7:30. The
road I had to take was just before town, so I walked in with everyone else from
my house and parted ways as they went off to the bus.
I shortly saw the road we should have taken last
time, from which you can pretty much immediately see water (we walked on the
other road for about 30 minutes longer before seeing anything). The road
winds on for a bit before actually getting near the water, and it stops just
above the beach. There was a big cemetery (who remembers chemistry?).
The really old graves were very worn so it was hard to tell just when they were
from, but they dated at least back to the mid-19th century, and there were many
from up to the end of the 1900s, but it didn't look like there was much room for
anything more recent than that unless there was an area I wasn't seeing. I
forgot to continue my search for the oldest grave after I got to the church,
which I'm told is from the 16th century. It's tiny, has no roof, and it
totally overgrown with plant life.
After taking lots of pictures and jumping
around on rocks, trying to see how far from the beach I could get (I fell in
once and messed up my hand on a rock), I sat down on
some of the giant rocks that made up the majority of the beach to do some
studying and reading, which were also things I had told myself I would get done
today. The woman of the house (or "Bean an tí,"
as we call her) had made a bag lunch for me along with those going to Crough
Padraic, so I worked and
read (mostly read) until I ate at about 11:30. After that I putzed around
for a little longer before deciding to go home via the shoreline. Our
house is near the water, so I figured I'd be able to find it pretty easily (if I
could identify it from an angle I never saw it from, that is...). There
was a little marina I had forgotten about that we always pass on the road, so
when I eventually got there I just took the road (there wasn't much shoreline
just past that area). I noticed a little dog following me that I thought
I'd seen outside a house by the marina. Just when I was thinking I might have
to take him back he stopped following me, but as I continued walking I suddenly
heard the yelps of the little dog, which had run across the street and been hit by
a car. The dog hopped around for a minute and wasn't really visibly
damaged, and I went back to the house I thought I'd seen him by and told a woman
there who said it was her dog that a car had hit him. Two people had
stopped who I think also lived at the house, so I told them I had told the woman
there about it and, not really thinking there was anything else I should do,
continued on my way.
So I had a (mentally) relaxing day with a bit
of excitement. We have an oral examination on Thursday, so I want to make
sure I'm well prepared. I didn't really get as much studying done as I'd
like, but maybe I'll get some more done before tomorrow (if I can finish getting all
this website stuff taken care of, that is).
|
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Wednesday,
August 3rd
08.03.2005
Pictures |
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Today we had our trip to the Aran
Islands. Everybody actually only got to go to one (of the three), which we
chose ahead of time. I chose Inis Oírr ("Innish Eer," blame the Irish
spelling system) as did everyone else in my class, since it came highly
recommended by our teacher.Our ferry
ride, which made me extremely grateful I don't get motion sickness, was
considerably longer than I expected it to be. I was thinking we'd get to
the islands after about 20 minutes, but it ended up taking a little over an hour
to get to Inis Meáin ("Innish Myahn"),
where the ferry made its first stop and let off everyone going there.
Getting to Inis Oírr took another 15 minutes or so.
As soon as we got to the island we went to a
pub where they had arranged soup, sandwiches, and tea for us for lunch.
After that we went back down toward the shore, where we met our guide, who
showed us around the town. We ended our tour seeing the castle, which was
very small, but still pretty cool. One side was sort of crumbled away,
making an excellent area for climbing, but I didn't get a chance to try it out.
We had an hour after that to wander around as we pleased, and there were a few
of us who wanted to go see a shipwreck from the 50s over on the other side of
the island. The ship was very surprising, first because it was really far
up on the beach, and secondly because it was the entire rusted out metal ship
(except for a big hole in the side). There was some beach there too, which
was very nice aside from a group of about 300 kids that wandered up just as we
did.
We walked back to the main beach with enough
time to make the ferry (but not enough time for me to get back to the castle).
The ride back was even worse than the ride there. It was far windier,
making for an extremely rocky ride, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. If I get
a chance I want to go back and climb that castle.
|
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Wednesday,
August 10th
08.10.2005
Pictures |
_______
We had our big Galway trip today,
which everyone was very excited for since most people seemed to be itching to
spend some money. I managed to drop a fair amount myself, but since some
of it was gifts I can't communicate the exact details of what I got, but lets
just say I managed to spend upwards of €100... whoops.
We left for Galway (which, by the way, is spelled
"Gallimh" in Irish and is pronounced "gahl-yeh") from school this morning on a
bus. We stopped by Spiddal first, which has some nice shops but they're
all together in one area away from the middle of town that seems so sterile and
touristy, but the shops all feature nice, authentic, Irish-made stuff, most of
which is made in the shops themselves. That, along with Ireland in general
just being expensive, resulted in my first big spending-spree.
After spending an hour in Spiddal, which was
just the right amount of time to see everything without being rushed but also
without having tons of extra time spent waiting for the bus to leave, we
continued on to Galway. My first mission upon arrival was to find an
electronics store where I could buy a microphone, since I forgot to bring one
from home and I want one to record Irish speakers and do nerdy Linguistics
stuff... Anyway, Michael (who was accompanying me on my search) and I started
out going with Jeff, who was headed for an internet café and knew of a Sony
store on the way. They only had really expensive microphones, but they
directed us to another electronics store that was sort of far away but actually
near the hotel where I stayed when I first arrived in Galway, so I was at least
familiar with the route we would have to take. We had to hurry since we
had arranged to meet up with people and had a long walk ahead of us, but we made
it with time to spare. I found a microphone that seemed to suit my needs
(the main one being that it was cheap) and also remembered that I had wanted to
buy some CD-Rs, which were available in a 25 pack for €15 or a 50 pack for €15.
While I didn't really want the extra CDs to carry around, I couldn't bring
myself to only take the 25 pack and had to take all 50.
After we got back and met up with the others
(after slight confusion since we had arranged to meet at the end of Shop Street
which actually ends earlier than it seems to, but it was all right) we stopped
at a Fish and Chips place that was quite good and then looked in some more
stores where I spent more money. I wanted to find some shoes since mine
are sort of old and I don't want to kill my feet while traversing Europe, but I
didn't have the patience to sit and look long enough to find anything I liked.
Ireland is definitely not the best place to buy anything since it is one of the
more expensive countries in Europe, but I'd rather start out my journey with my
feet taken care of. My current thinking is that I'll fly from here to
Madrid after this program ends (next Friday, which seems inconceivably strange)
and store my luggage in a locker at the airport, assuming one can do such
things. I'll take what I need in my backpack and set off with my Eurail
pass (that I need to work on getting) to go to France, Italy, Russia, or
wherever. I'm going to start planning out my travel itinerary and looking
at flights to see how I should go about things.
I did end up finding an Italian phrase and
grammar book for €3, which was too good of a deal to pass up. I will
probably have overwritten all the Spanish in my head with Italian by the time I
get to Toledo, but at least I will be well equipped in Italy. I also got
some little locks for my backpack zippers, just to deter any potential
pick-pockets. In the end I managed to make it back to the bus after one
last-minute errand, at which point we were all thoroughly exhausted and very
excited to get to sit and sleep in the bus on the ride home. We had one of
our Irish dancing classes last night, which was super fun and in which we
learned Kerry and Connemara sets. We were told there was another lesson
tonight for a different set of students that we could attend if we wanted, but I
don't want to spend any more time on my feet and am currently skiving back at
home. We have our half-way party tomorrow night (for unapparent reasons)
and then our end-or-term party next week, so there will be plenty of occasion
for dancing then.
_______
Friday,
August 19th
08.19.2005
(Yesterday's)
Pictures
(Today's)
Pictures
|
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So today we headed back to Galway
for the last time. The term is finally over, which seems so weird and a
little sad, but I'm also very eager to begin exploring Europe.
Last night we
had our end of term party, which was at the big hotel in town. We had
dinner, followed by dancing with talent show events mixed in between the
numbers, as performed by faculty, staff, and students of the program. Some
of the highlights were Hilarai's (who did all our dance classes) step dancing
and lots of sean nos singing, although the latter doesn't always translate into
video so well. It was a good time, and afterwards a few of us went to the
beach for a late-night hoot nanny that featured the best music I've heard during
my entire time in Ireland, courtesy of Colm, a guy in the program, and two Irish
guys he knows.
Today was the time for all the final goodbyes and all that as
we left the house this morning. After the bus arrived in Galway I walked
with some people who were going to the train station, as it's pretty near my
hostel, said goodbye to them, and then headed here. Now I suppose my
Europe time has really begun, as my program in Cararroe has officially finished,
so this is the last for this page. Slán anois! | | |
