Arrival in BalliDesmond...

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We have arrived...we are in BalliDesmond which is part of Cork County (I think? I'm pretty sure....). We got in at 1pm...drove one hour with Derry back to the countryside and ate some traditional Irish potato stew, courtesy of Ruth. Air Lingus of course lost our luggage, so it is still in Dublin. Luckily we both have pretty heft carry on backpacks. I had my sleeping meds and my computer, that's all I really needed for one night. Our luggage is supposed to arrive in the morning.

We spent the afternoon going with Ruth to the market - they call the shopping carts "trollies,", visiting with little baby Sive who is now 7 months old, taking a walk into the little downtown strip of BalliDesmond (which included a few pubs, a post office, a futbol field - which Erica loved, and a church). Apparently every small Irish village has those three things - a pub, a post office and a church. We came back after our walk in the light rain and Ruth made us a snack of traditional irish sausage, bread and scrambled eggs before we went off to Irish Catholic Mass to watch Derry get ordained. As you know, Erica and I are Greek Orthodox, but the site of an extremely old catholic church with the beautiful stained class was stunning. A lot of the same rituals are apparent in the Catholic church as the Greek Orthodox Church - however, one of the larger differences is that the Greek's don't venerate the Virgin Mary, while the Catholic's do. We did not take communion, but it was very cool to take part in, especially since American Easter is this weekend (I say "American" Easter, because the Greek's celebrate Orthodox Easter, which takes place the wknd of the 20th). It was really interesting to listen to the priest talk through different parables of the Old Testament...for the first time in awhile, I actually remembered stuff and felt like I understood. The priest even washed several parishioner's feet, like Jesus did at the Last Supper for his disciples. I felt very "in-the-element."

We came back and it was about 9pm. We showered and by accident while Erica was setting her alarm on her iPhone, we realized that the internet was working, because all of a sudden she had a million emails come through. So...I grabbed my laptop to update the blog.

Not sure what is going on yet tomorrow, but will keep "ye" posted.

Best,
A&E

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