Early (and long) day today, first day of competition. It looks like Taelyr has made it through to the second round in all 3 events today. There are some pretty complicated calculations that come into play so at this point we are making an 'educated guess'. In the Solo routine, she needed to finish in the top 10 of 54 girls, which is pretty impressive. In 2 baton I think it was more like 24 girls, and in her 3 baton routine, there is only herself and one other girl competing at that level. So the good news is that she [View Full Entry]

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Practice today is from 3-7. I think all the girls are ready for this competition to start. Sacha's family arrived this morning. They are staying at a B&B in downtown Limerick. They went off to The Cliffs of Moher today, while the rest of us went downtown to see The Hunt Museum. We tossed around the idea of going down to the Mitchelstown Caves while Taelyr was practicing, but she spoke up and said that she'd like to go too, so I think we will stay with our original plan of going down there on Friday. The Hunt Museum was interesting [View Full Entry]

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We spent an amazing day in the former kingdom of the O'Rourke clan (Ryan's ancestors). Everywhere we went there were sites named after the O'Rourkes! We started in Dromahair (The Ridge of the Two Demons) where we could only see the ruins of the first O'Rourke castle through a gate (which Ryan tried unsuccessfully to break down). We did manage to climb around in the ruins of O'Rourke's Hall, an attached building, which was built by later inhabitants. From Dromahair we headed out to the other O'Rourke castle site which is now called Parke's Castle. Tiernan O'Rourke, King of Breifne, built [View Full Entry]

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(This sentence is difficult to understand.) Failte to Donegal, folks! I don't have much time today, so I'll make this quick, especially since I'll be able to tell any of this to you in person in a few days. But basically... I left Tubbercurry for West Donegal, the Northwesternmost county of the Republic of Ireland. The village of Glencolumcille, a three pub/one shop/one restaurant coastal village, is home to a premiere Irish language college called Oideas Gael, which attempts to resurrect the dying language of Irish Gaelic. Glencolumcille is located in a sort of isolated gaelthact region [View Full Entry]

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The training schedule is getting in the way of sight-seeing ;) Yesterday, Taelyr had a team meeting at 11AM and then training from 3-6PM. Kendall and I went swimming. Went to the pub last night for some "Irish music", but they close up pretty early around here. Training today is from 3-7PM so we got up a bit earlier and went to see The King John Castle right here in Limerick, then we walked to St. Mary's Cathedral. The Cathedral was built in 1168 and is the oldest structure in the UK that is still used for it's original purpose. It [View Full Entry]

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The time has now come for me to make one final assessment of Ireland and everything that goes hand in hand with the country: drink (and lot’s of it), the people, and the Irish way of life in general. In a nutshell, these elements have all impacted my life during my 6 month stay and it is now time to reflect upon those aspects that have helped piece together who I am today. Usually in order to do a proper field study of a culture, one has to have been immersed in said culture for at least a year. The following [View Full Entry]

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We arose this Lord's day morning and spent about 30 minutes in worship -- just the two of us. It is unknown just how far the nearest meeting place of the church of Christ lies from where we are (probably well over 150 miles), so with some planning ahead, we were equipped with even the emblems of the Lord's supper (thanks to the Grahams!). We headed out to County Leitrim's capital city, Carrick-On-Shannon. The beautiful River Shannon meanders through this quaint little town known for its many noted boating activities. From there, it was on to the town of Sligo in [View Full Entry]

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Everytime you travel somewhere new, there's a certain settling in period where you figure out the quirks of getting around the city. Since I didn't make it off Grafton Street for the first 5 days, I of course spent most of the 6th day wandering around lost (not a big surprise to those of you who know me well). Now, if you are planning to head over to Ireland, there are a couple of things that you'll find useful knowing ahead of time. First off, Dublin is not a friendly place for directionally challenged people who don't have an inner compass [View Full Entry]

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We have arrived in the storied land of the mighty O'Rourke clan! And since you're reading this, you can probably deduce that we do indeed have internet access....high speed wireless even!! After a few hours of driving from Belfast where we picked up our rental car, we pulled into our self-catering cottage -- which sits on a real working dairy farm. This will be our home for the next seven days, and we couldn't be happier! We stopped along the way in the resort town of Enniskillen (right on the Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland border. We had lunch and [View Full Entry]

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So i arrived to Cork on July 9th, a few weeks ago. The weather was no surprise...raining. I spent a few weeks just going for walks alone as Dave was working. He is offically "Retired" since July 27th as we say! Ronan is Daves friend that we are staying with here in Cork for a few weeks. They are still in training for the triathelon, so I had even more time to myself as I have no intentions of putting on a wetsuit and swimming in the sea, or cycline gor 40 miles!! The "King of the Hill" Traithelon was in [View Full Entry]

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