check my pulse!

yo peeps sorry to leave you hanging for so long, it has been an exceptionally busy week. marco made it on sunday to dublin. when fran and i caught the bus, 15minutes after his flight landed, to pick him up from the airport we discovered that low and behold it was the final hurling match of the season which means there were a few thousand people on the streets, i have never seen so many people in one place it was absolutely an awe struck event! so we made it to the airport, usually taking about 30minutes in an hour and a half! but he had only been waiting outside the airport for about 10 minutes! so we were told the wrong time in which he was landing, so good thing we were late! then we came home to have some dun dun dun pancakes. after that we went to the prison love concert inside a pub, but i don't remember which one, and i bought the CD but it's not as good as them live. and after the show, since we were the only ones in the pub not related to the band they sat down and chatted with us for about 20 minutes, how nice. later on we had pasta for dinner, let's have a contest to see if i can remember how many times i had pasta during this past week.

i forgot to mention i went and saw the film little miss sunshine with the guy from the american the office. it was cry because you're laughing so hard funny, fran and i had a great time. then afterward italian food at the taverna risotto with blue cheese and an auburgine smoke cheese with tomatos on top thing!

on monday we headed to bray, we picked blackberries and filled a container to bring home. we did the 8km hike from bray to graystones, and i am happy to report i feel in a hole! i was not watching where i was going and feel straight into a 1.5foot deep hole. no injury just feel over laughing. dinner that night was at the porter house where i had a portabella mushroom burger, it was nice then we listened to a blues band do covers of a bunch of songs and i split a brain blaster beer with francesca, which the porter house brews themselves.

tuesday: marco made his special pasta sauce and we had linguini with it. marco also bought himself his first pair of converse with flames...ooh,ahh!

wednesday: Corrine who, i met through couchsurfing.com, came over for pizza, we made a green olive pizza and a brocolli and mushroom pizza, paul even joined us for dinner! then we all headed to the palace bar for some piping music. unfortunately eoin dillion was not there, kila is touring right now! so it was kind of funny because there was a gaggle of musicians and far less audience. so it was wonderful to have corrine over for dinner she was here taking an english class, and she leaves this week to go back to switzerland!

thursday: this was the day of the hurricane passing, we thought our building might blow away! not such and eventful day but we had tortellini for lunch.

friday: francesca worked so, i had to entertain marco, i took him to the Irish museum of modern art, since it was culture night here in dublin, but fran got off early so instead of going to more museums we just met her at the taverna for dinner. then we walked around the city and looked at all the white collar people here for the ryder cup!

saturday: i made bean burgers for dinner and fracesca went and picked up some fries from a pub in temple bar! then we tried to get into the rock candy carnival, but alas it was sold out so we watched some drummers and then we took the walk home and went to bed at about 2am as march had to get up at 3:30am to get a taxi to the airport. and that was the last of our marco!

i learned to say a few things in italian like how to call some one a nerd, how to say someone is handsome, filthy, as well as some random words like greasy and snail i also learned a swear word and how to greet marco when i go to italy!

so that is all that happened this past week so in addition to working i had many to entertain! so hope this clues you all in on what has been happening.

xoxo,
christie

marco...polo!

ccTravelAbroad

Whew. sorry guys had to take a break from the old technology for a bit but here's what happened this past week in no particular order but i will try to keep it numeric.

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday (nothing really happened during this time frame except for my friend Abra had a baby, a girl at 7:20 (not sure if am or pm) 8lbs. 1oz. healthy baby girl, way to go abra and ben!!!)
Saturday: Paul, my flatmate invited me to go to the Docklands for the opening of the Fringe Festival, which was a great fire display by the water and the IFSC (Irish Finacial Serivce Center). it was similar to what takes place in the New England area called WaterFire. so i hung out with Paul, the other Paul and Patrick for most of the evening, nice...i told paul i hope that i behaved myself enough to be invitied back! then i went to bed about quarter to 3 and woke up at 6am to take a bus to Galway!!!

So the bus ride to Galway takes about 3 and a half hours, i slept for most of the bus ride, so did the person sitting next to me on the bus, laying their head upon my shoulder until they woke up and realized they were sleeping on me! LOL So i arrived in Galway about 10:30am i found my hostel and checked in for the evening and then left, after i got my complimentary map! i then wondered the shopping area and found a pub where i got a meal i would never in my entire life think of putting together: aka the vegetarian equivalent to the irish breakfast, beans in tomato sauce, sauteed mushrooms, fried potatoes, 2 fried eggs, a tomato, three slices of toast, a cup of orange juice and a person pot of tea all for 6 euro! so i probably had the calcium leeched from my bones this day by all the protein i had! then i took a bus to the cliffs of Moher(correction i missed the bus and it had to circle back to pick me up), beautiful i have photos (no rain yet)! then after driving through the country side (imagine the mountianous roads of the Andalusia area) I got back to Galway about 6pm where i wondered the city along the coast through the spanish arch i checked out the swans even though i don't really like birds, at all! then i hopped on the ocean walk and looked around until i discovered dun dun dah: purple oyster shells, i was so excited i brought some home with me, what i am going to do with them, i haven't a clue! then it was time for dinner considering it was sunday i decided to keep with the pancake vs. crepes tradition on sundays and had a savory crepe for dinner, it was great sun dried tomatoes with spinach and feta! then i went to my hostel to wash my face and find out where the pub playing traditional music was in town. at the hostel i met my workmate, Eileen's friend from Australia, Jared, he just so happened to work at the hostel i was staying at! so i chatted with him for about an hour, he told me some great walks along the rivers that go through Galway and then i made myself a tea and did some knitting until i got sleepy where i then went to bed.

monday a.m. i got up at 8am to catch the bus and then a ferry to the Aran Island known as Inis Mor, this is the largest of the 3 islands. and just as the ferry was pulling up to the dock the sun came out, like as in another summer day, i wish i had a different pair of pants for this hike kind of day, like my tan is renewed and my nose is sunburnt summer day! so it really made the day fabulous, i hiked to the south east side of the island where i discovered some loose cows which i walked up to and pet on the side of the road, they were really friendly, it was just the bull that was stuck inside the gate that wasn't to happy! so i found a nice rock sat down and had some scones and some trail mix. then i hiked up to the dun dubhchathair (the block fort) this was an amazing cliff that i hung my head off of it and looked down on to the water below that looks like the cover of the 365 days or degrees earth it's a short book but lots of pages, not earth from above it's the other one! then i walked back toward the village for a piece of apple pie at a local cafe, the pie was not so impressive but there was a pregnant cat that i made friend's after the pie at the outdoor cafe, i did pop my head into the aran sweater market but nothing great so i didn't get anything. then i hopped on the ferry to go back to galway, i then took the 7:30pm bus back to dublin. so in total i did about 8+ hours in vehicles on monday, after not riding in anything for more then 40 minutes this was a little intense, luckily i have this defense mechanism built into my body where i just fall asleep! so i got back to dublin about 11:30pm where i gave both my flat mates a hug (even if they didn't really want one):)

tuesday was preview day where i went and saw the new al gore movie "an inconvenient truth" where there was a free yes free 3 scoops of ben and jerry's ice cream provided by the company that planned the event (thank you fran and cultivate for these tickets) great time. scary sad and so on and so forth, i have been really watching my water consumption since this!

wed...not much fran made me dinner i cleaned up my dirty socks and hiking shoes and such that i left around the house.

thurday gallery of photography opening exhibition about dublin's central bank, the social interaction of the bank within the culture, and like in the US, every one hates the bank here in dublin! PC was nice enough to tell me about this so fran and i met him there. great to talk shop (photography with someone). which brings us to friday i'm tired and want to go to bed so that's the life i led this past week or so. did lots saw lots experienced lots once again and fran's brother comes in 2 days Marco...uuuuuuuuu! we're really excited he's coming, maybe even more excited then him! so we will see. lots of love.

xoxo,
christie

the roof is on fire (literally)

Hello, christie here to let you in on some more info about dublin. so on saturday night the spanish peeps that live below us decided to have a techno dance party at 4am, woohoo, more rude that my american neighbors. so fran went down and said something to them and she was treated very rudely and told by one of the party guests that she could go to her house and sleep there. which fran responded with, look i like my house! so not so fun with the neighbors, this is the second time in 2 weeks that this has happened, so three strikes and you get the garda and land lord called! also on sunday it was another pancake sunday, even paul stayed for brunch! i also made a sugar free apple/banana bread, it was great. fran took about half of it to sligo with her and paul, brother owen, and brother's friend Kiernan had some before i even got to it, so thumbs up from the surrogate fam! i also went for a walk around the city and then to Merrion Square, where they finally figured out that the lawn mower was too low (ding ding ding) and finally raised it so the grass was nice and long and a lot softer then Minnesota grass. so i spent about 3 hours just laying in the park in the grass reading my book. after that i went home to talk to Paul and friends. Before fran left on her trip she washed her duvet cover and sheets and asked me to bring them in the room before paul and friends were smoking in the kitchen, unfortunately i got home too late to save them from the smoke but they weren't in too bad of shape, so i asked Paul about the finer points of putting a duvet cover on the actual duvet, paul explained it to me how you should do it, and then said, "it's a lot of fine, you'll like it!" who knew house work could be described as fun, so if you ever need assistants with putting your duvet cover on your duvet i have done it once but it is rather fun.

at about 11pm i was laying in bed reading my book when i starte hearing a popping noise, like a fire cracker (fire crackers are banned here, along with guns) so i opened my window to see where it was coming from and low and behold there was a building on fire not more then 200feet away, like really on fire, but luckily the fire department came quickly and the fire was contained, no spreading to my homey home. some excitment you'll find only here in dublin.

on monday i was going to get up early and do some fun stuff but i got up late and decided to read my book instead, so i wound up at the Cheaster Beatty Library, lots of korans, bibles and chinese calligraphy it was great to see some of this stuff, like ancient gospels written by mark in papyrus from the 400A.D.s pretty crazy! i also so some actual prints from Goya, the Caprices, a series of prints depicting the horrors of the catholic church and what the monarchy was doing to people, here i never thought i would see one of these prints in my life and i saw 3 in the series, i also saw some turner prints, and turner was known for his paintings of the sublime, beautiful with some mysticisim. nice find for me, i also got a free chinese calligraphy poster out of the deal, so i will be mailing it home for myself! so that's about all for now, i am going to make myself a tofu dish, since all i have had today is bread products!

xoxo,
christie

i am going to plan a trip to galway this coming weekend woo hoo.

saturday night fever

ccTravelAbroad

wow it's saturday already and not too much new stuff has happened.

thursday: i went to the film "any way the wind blows" a comedy by tom barman (he's from the flemish part of belgium) he was at the film showing, he introduced the film and then left shortly there after.

friday: i took fran out for a beer after she got done with work she worked her last day for piggy Pordgy as we call him Pordrig is his name is reality which is the irish spelling of Patrick but he is quite rude and has come pretty close to sexually harrassing fran so we are both glad she is out of there. i also had my first croquette and i'm not talking about kroquet. a croquette is a little piece of mashed potatoes that has been breaded and fried for your eating enjoyment, i had organic frozen ones and i was not so impressed...at all so i will make them myself at some point.

saturday: i went to work tired and we had one of the busiest days i have ever seen, and i yelled at a gypsy on the street. i am starting to crack i need to get out of the city and away from the people. i also went to an art exhibition of art using those little road sign type figures going through life. it was making a comment like we are all the same and yet we don't interact with one another...not so sure what i think or feel about the exhibition. i did not have my allergy test done, but perhaps a later date...i want the tarot card read before i leave.

so that's all about my life for now.
xoxo,
christie