Saturday it was -still- nice! So we rode bikes to Galway Bay (it's really close) and the sea was chilly and calm:




There's also a market on Saturdays, we went a couple weeks ago as well but I didn't have a camera. Some street corner veg:


Wooden barrels full of yummy Italian marinated olives, cheeses, anchovies, artichokes, etc. with baskets of lavender and soaps:


Plenty of Indian imports and patchwork paraphernalia:


I ended up getting some eggs, sheep's cheese, garlicky homemade hummus, and assorted mushrooms and onions. There are a couple cheese booths and I want to buy all the cheese...

Finally, baby pony!

Look at those feet.... Hope y'all had a good weekend, thanks for reading!

Craic is Fun

This week in pictures, mostly, because classes were relatively uneventful and mostly canceled/introductory. I think I'll be taking Anatomy (with real cadavers!), Memory and Cognition, Human Sexuality, Celtic Civilization, Polymer Technologies, and Climate Change.

This weekend was the Galway Americana Festival, featuring lots of free music at our favorite pubs. We saw Without George at Monroe's on Friday night, and The Molly Hicks on Saturday at the Crane Bar.

The weather has been so beautiful that people are getting nervous, but Saturday we decided to go on a bike ride to Brigit's Gardens, a little nature park with all sorts of ancient myth and tidbits about Ireland's greenery. The ride was a lot longer than anticipated (thanks, Googlemaps) and it ended up being about three and a half hours roundtrip - rental bike seats are not meant to sat upon that long. Luckily we stopped in a small town on the way, and they had a bakery with the most perfect cupcake.

Anyway, here are some pretty flowers from Brigit's - they were scattered around like sprinkles on a big green, glazed donut:








And, my favorite:


There was a massive and very accurate sundial that showed not only the time, but the date and season as well. It was around 4:30 pm...


There were several rock formations specific to certain ceremonies and times of the year:


Also, wishing trees. I was going to make one but someone had already done it:



We tip-toed around so as not to wake her...


Walking through the woods revealed some less traditional seeming (and much creepier) Celtic ceremonies...


So ghost-tree dresses do not haunt you, I'll leave you with this adorable chubby pony - her shaggy baby was hiding in the grass, but there'll be a photo of him coming asap. Thanks for reading, hope y'all are doing well!

Beds and Breakfast

Every night we've ended up at The Crane Bar since it never fails to have awesome live traditional music and sporadic singing bouts. There was a guy in a too-small white polo shirt with the collar popped that stood out from the get go, like, what a douche right? Which is why shock and awe and crazy applause happened after he got up in the middle of a song, stood in front of the musicians, took a deep breath, and busted a Riverdance explosion all over us - complete with kicking-while-jumping and spinning around real fast. He did it once more before leaving as well, what a gem.

Unfortunately, we found out that we wouldn't be having Irish housemates coming to occupy the other empty bedroom. Fortunately, I now have a totally baller single with a double bed, private bathroom, and sliding glass doors:


In case you're curious about food, we live about 5 minutes from a supermarket called Dunnes, and there's another shopping center about 10 more minutes away. I am particularly fond of these beans, and they're on sale a lot.


The sizes of things are very different in Ireland. All the water glasses in restaurants are about 4 oz. while the soup spoons look like salad servers. I've been eating with teaspoons, which are the perfect size, but basically nonexistent in the states. Here's an illustrated example - this is what a Carr's Table Water cracker looks like here, it is not an illusion:


Classes start tomorrow, starting with Climate Change, Anatomy, and shopping some psych courses. I'll let y'all know how it goes, thanks for reading!

Walk on the Eyre Side

Hello, from Galway for real now! It's lovely here, but it does rain about 98% of the time. Since this will be more fun to look at than read, here's what my walk from apartment to campus is like:


Everyone has nice flowers growing in their lawn, I don't know what type these are but I like 'em.


There are at least four ponies living within two blocks of our place, many more pictures of them will follow...

These are some kind of strange watertower or water treatment formations. The inverted cone is a good landmark when I have no idea what direction I should be going (a.k.a all the time).

Here's a little leg of the River Corrib, which we have to cross to get to campus.

This is also a little tributary of the river, and there's a lone swan who's always hanging around. See that white speck? That's him.

So, I have an awesome walk (when it's not raining) to school and the apartment is really nice as well. We just had an incident with the washer/dryer, which decided to flood our kitchen but it's not the end of the world. The repairman's wife, however, just went into labor so it might be awhile before we can do the washing here.

Last night I went to a great pub called the Crane. There were some older guys playing traditional music and everyone hanging out. We met another American who was on vacation for a week from Queens, NY, and the bartender was from Australia and had been in Ireland for about 7 months. Apparently down the street another place had Blitzen Trapper playing for free, and Okkervil River is going to be there sometime soon as well!

Other than that, just orientation stuff and me getting lost around campus. Classes start Monday so I have to weekend to figure that out, and our Irish housemates should be moving in soon too. Hope you all are doing well!

Still in Dublin, the last couple of days have been a mix of fairly boring orientation activities and fun walking around the city. We had a lengthy walking tour of historic Dublin in chilly rain, and then a couple guys and I had lunch at the Queen of Tarts and the abroad group was given tickets to a play called 'The Rivals' written by Y.B. Sheridan in the late 1700's. It was cute, along the same vein as 'The Importance of Being Ernest'.


We passed this building but didn't acknowledge it, even though it's called 'Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society.' Apparently, it's the oldest charity for the homeless in Dublin and just has a crazy name.


There was also this large, pointy monument that isn't really as tall as it looks because it's tapered. It's pretty tall though, at 390 ft. The Dublin Spire was built recently to replace Nelson's Pillar, a similarly tall structure that was destroyed by the IRA. It's also known as "the stiffy by the Liffey," the Liffey being a river that runs through Dublin.

We went to a pub in the Temple Bar area where an Irishmen warmed my hands by sticking them down his shirt - I don't know if that's a customary post hand-shake activity, but I did get a free drink out of it. The famous warmth of the Irish!(?)

Tomorrow we're leaving for Galway - at least there won't be any surprises with the weather: