Olympics? What Olympics?!

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I turned on the television the other night....and there was nothing on....so I flipped channels all the way up to BBC2, my last resort here for tv stimulation...and to my amazement, there were these "opening ceremonies" for something called "The Winter Olympics" in Turino, Italy, of all places!

Needless to say, I was very excited, not only because this was way more entertainment than I'd been expecting from tv that night, but also because I love the Olympics, and had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER that they were supposed to be on. Now I thought Beloit was a bubble, but damn-Ireland?! Whats the deal?

After much discussion with Norman, I was enlightened. somewhat.
"Where would anyone in Ireland practice winter sports?? We don't have any snow!"
"Ah, well what about indoor things like hockey and other skating things?"
"The only ice hockey pitch is in Dublin. We never win anything in the Winter Olympics, we're just terrible"
"Ah, I see"
Which still leaves me wondering, then, why Australia seems to do well in Winter Olympics sports? I can only come up with the fact that they're a lot bigger (have a lot more space?), and must just have more interest in these things than the Irish, whose interests seem to lie chiefly in drinking, Gaelic football, drinking, rugby, drinking, and hurling(the sport). and soccer. All very rough, team-oriented affairs. So according to Norman, the Irish just aren't interested in watching the Winter Olympics because they're no good at them. I feel like I've always been interested in them just because it's fascinating to watch the best athletes in the world, but would I still be so interested if the US didn't regularly send a ton of athletes to them and regularly come away with dozens of medals? I honestly don't know. But I'm glad that the BBC, at least, cares enough to show the games, because no Irish station does.

In other news, Erin, Sally, Alex, and I made a little trip to Salthill on Friday. And by that I mean that we walked from the city centre to the part of town where the ocean is (Salthill). There's a promenade that follows the edge, right above the "beach", and then sticks out into the ocean leading to a little island with a lighthouse on it. This last part of the walkway was closed by the time we got there, probably because the tide begins to rise after 4pm, but the gate was no deterrent. Neither was the sign that said, "Danger of being swept away by waves. Be Careful." Hehehe, ok ok Mom, sorry, couldn't help it-it was actually a very calm day. The air was very salty if not windy and cold, and you felt healthier just walking along it. Apparently that's a big thing to do here-walk the promenade for good health-and we saw several old men along it, some joggers, and a fair number of people with their dogs. One woman had a gigantic Lassie dog. I wanted to hug its huge fluffiness, but refrained. Another, an old man, had lined up golf balls on one side of the adjoining field and was hitting them to the other side while his dog, with endless energy, bounded up and down the field fetching them and bringing them back and running round in circles if the man took too long to hit one for him. When I used the word "beach" in quotations, i did so because, well, it wasn't like any kind of beach i bet ya'll have seen. It was all dark rocks and this one kind of shell and lots of washed-up seaweed. There were rocks jutting out everywhere in clusters into the sea, and we climbed as far out as we could on the biggest cluster-exactly when the tide started coming in. That was really interesting, because it came in so quickly. From the time we got down from the rocks, walked out as far as we could to the lighthouse and back, they were halfway submerged in water! Also, you could see a couple of other big islands off in the distance, and one cliff-like island-looking thing just off the coast but far away. Beautiful. It made me wonder why the hell I haven't done more traveling here, so far.

Speaking of traveling, I just got a message from a friend I haven't talked to in about a year, saying that he's in Spain right now and met a girl I know from Beloit (Eva) and that I should definitely come visit in Sevilla. It made me want to go there right now, tomorrow. But I'll definitely be sticking it in with my other travel plans, anyway.

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