Time for a bit of history. Lonely Planet suggested that if you only have a day in Belfast, you eat at Maggie May’s (best suggestion ever!) and you see the murals. We drove around and tried to find as many as we could. Many of the murals were political and especially moving. Being that I have only learned little bits of the Northern Ireland “Troubles” as they call it, I decided to research on Wikipedia. So go ahead, enlighten yourselves! (All following text is summarized from Wikipedia information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Irish_murals, http://en.wikipedia. [View Full Entry]

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So technically the Oyster Festival was September 25th-28th but life has been a little busy as you can well imagine. So, every year people from around the world flock to Galway to witness the International Oyster Festival, which is centered around the Oyster Opening Competition and Pearl Competition. The Oyster Opening Competition is exactly what it sounds like. Every participating country competes to find the fastest oyster opener and then they come to Galway to find the worldwide champion. The Pearl competition is a beauty pageant to decide who is the “Pearl” of the festival, [View Full Entry]

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Ok . . . so now for a complete update of life in Galway. The Oyster Festival was just a teaser for those of you who don’t like to read too much of what we’re doing but just want to see cute pictures and know that we’re still alive. Well . . . we are . . . and here’s more . . . Living in Galway So life at Studio 54 consists of daily adventures into Eyre Square to sit in the park and enjoy the brief moments of sunshine, nightly excursions into the local Pubs (The Quays and the [View Full Entry]

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Its been a few weeks, so I figure now would be a good time to tell a few of the hopefully delightful but always hilarious tales Brian and I have been living here at Studio 54. Since before I left, Jenny, Cory and I had taken to watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark” on the awesome ripped off copies we received from Canada (thank you internet!) I will now proceed with the stories by titling them all with the “Are You Afraid of the Dark” beginnings. The Tale of the Mouse in the Oven Cheryl if you’re reading this, stop [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the brevity yesterday, but internet time is scarce until our service is hooked up. And although we’ve made several desperate and futile attempts, we have been unable to “share” the internet with our neighbors. So where did I leave off . . . ah yes. As we were leaving Dingle, there was one more little bonus it had to offer. There is a tiny little town as you leave the main city of Dingle called Spiddle. If you blink, you’d pass it by. We happened not to blink, and found ourselves on this quaint little beach. As Brian was [View Full Entry]

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So this entry will have no photos and no fun stories (if you've already stopped reading I understand). Brian and I made it to Galway, I recovered from my cold, and we have an apartment. Since we don't have internet set up and it costs a fortune in the cafes the brevity will continue for a bit of time. I fell settled, at home, and happy to be on this adventure. I set up the collage in our apartment and it keeps me motivated to continue on my journey. I also just finished reading "The Last Lecture" which if you haven't [View Full Entry]

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. . . but before we left Dublin we decided we needed one more night of destruction to really thank Rob for all of his hospitality :) First we were off to the largest club I've seen yet. Four stories of dancing and mayhem in a place that looked like it had been plucked straight out of Vegas. Lights flashing everywhere with gaudy statues and horrific paintings filling up every inch of space that wasn't already occupied by thousands of Irish kids and tourists out for 10Euro beer night. Thankfully we weren't there for more than a pint before we were [View Full Entry]

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There is nothing better than being in a foreign country and finding comforts of home. We found sushi!!! Becca you'd be so proud because we actually found several sushi restaurants AND it was still delicious. We sat at a table that had no backs to the benches or chairs (apparently its supposed to help your posture, but I felt worse after the whole experience), and sushi moved on a conveyor belt all around us. You just grab what looks good! I had an amazing tuna, cilantro, lime, and spinach roll with a wasabi sauce on top that would've brought Matt to [View Full Entry]

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After nine hours in the air with Brian beating me in a clean sweep at backgammon, yahtzee, connect four, and crazy 8's, we are here safely in Dublin. As we started to land and we were zooming down through the rain and fog, there was a moment where it was so thick that you couldn't even see the wing of the plane. There were about four hours of sunshine yesterday and so far only two today. We spent our first day sleeping in a hostel near the bus station and our first night out with my friend Rob and his Irish [View Full Entry]

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I find myself humming "Leaving on a jet plane" more and more these days, but I have been packed for over a week now so its hard not to. I have the essentials from California that I will most certainly not be able to live without over in Ireland (peanut butter mainly and all of my Halloween DVDs). This will be a short message since we haven't even left yet, (I still have to go up to Chico and pick up Brian :) but for all of you interested in how our journey is going you can count this as the [View Full Entry]

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