Advertisement
Published: January 22nd 2006
In the course of having to cook for myself here, I've experimented a little, and to put it modestly, had great success. Alex and I decided it would probably be easier and more economical if we shared food and meals, because it's really easier to cook for two people instead of one. The first few nights (after we actually finally bought groceries) we ate a lot of pasta. A LOT of pasta. And toast and cereal. Then I finally got eggs and bacon. Recently, on Tuesday we went for fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn-Alex made the corn and mashed potatoes, which were very good, and i did the chicken, which was a lot of fun and it turned out really well! I just coated the pieces in egg, then flour, then stuck it in the frying pan in oil. I don't know what i remembered that from, but it was sooo good. The next morning i was craving something salty and greasy and decided to try for some hash-brown type things. So i chopped up a couple of potatoes and stuck em in grease and salt in the pan and they turned out more like homemade french fries and were fabulous. My mouth is watering right now. The next night Alex made her signature sweet and sour chicken and rice, and i'm sitting here like, what was i eating in Beloit??? It is a lot of effort, though. And you all probably know how much i HATE doing dishes. We haven't yet invested in paper plates but i try my hardest to stick everything i can on paper towels. Ahh and then our latest cooking venture was Alex baking chocolate chip cookies while Lee chopped up the chocolate (they don't sell freaking chocolate chips here) and i provided some mood music. So now we have like 50 of those.
If you're a guy, don't bother reading this next section, it's all about shopping....
I try to refrain from looking in store windows every time we go into the city centre (heaven forbid they call it "in town" or "downtown"), but we go SO OFTEN and the sales are INSANE. Everything is at least half off right now! Apparently after-Christmas sales go well into February around here. hehehehehe. The first day I succombed, I spent 37 euro on three shirts which originally would have totalled 140 euro. Yes, i did take the time to do math for that one, it was too damn good. And then yesterday we were really innocently looking for a power converter for me and happened upon more fantastic clothes. I spent 40 euro on two shirts and a pair of pant-things. All the clothing labels from these were in Spanish, and apparently the pants say "Do Not Wash" Fine by me!! Laundry costs 4.20 freaking euro per load here, anyway!! And I've already had to do one load cuz my pants get butchered walking around so much in the wetness. But back to the clothes....
Styles here are noticeably different from at home, and sometimes they're kinda strange, err unique i guess you could say, but they're mostly really cute. However, apparently the trendy thing to do here is to wear short skirts ALL THE TIME-they're just everywhere! I mean girls wear these things to CLASS all the time, with crazy goofy tights on! How the hell do they stand tights?? they're so restricting! I've not seen one girl in sweat pants and only a few going to class in hoodies or t-shirts. It's really tragic for me, ya know-I love my sweat pants. And these Irish girls-I really think they're half crazy-dress up like mad EVERY time they go out. Like with high heels and skirts and everything! Like we do maybe 4 or 5 times a semester in Beloit, if that! And you know I can't walk half an hour to a club in high heels, let alone dance all night in them and walk half an hour back home. I wonder if they have feeling in their feet at all??
In other news....Yesterday (Saturday) Ivan took Alex and I home with him to Tuam (said something like Tchoom) so we could see the Irish countryside and what he called the smallest city in Ireland. Apparently to be a real city, there has to be both a Catholic and Protestant church, but these were more like cathedrals! Beautiful, huge cathedrals in this tiny, spread-out town. We didn't get to get a close look because Ivan had to take care of some business with his carpenter uncle, so we had to go meet up with the uncle at this house he was building. The road to this house was a lot like a Wisconsin country road, i think, except flaming green, and the speed limit signs i saw for it were 80 and 100kph....and there's definitely only room for one car. At the realization of this, i said, "So Ivan, what do you do when there's a car in front of you comin the other way?"
"Oh ya just play chicken"
"Oh, that's lovely, good to know."
Once there, we climbed up on a pile of dirt at the site and had a great view of the fields and the sheep (Ivan called them sheepie sheeps-dont even ask), and I baaa'd at some of them but they were really coolly oblivious. After that we made our way to Ivan's house (more windy, hilly roads) which was beautiful and quaint and very well kept. Their fridge, freezer, and dishwasher were all completely hidden-they were just cabinets you opened like the rest of the cabinets! Yeah, that kept me pretty entertained. His family was very kind-his mother made us dinner and his little brother (11) played guitar and sang for us! He was adorable and really good-quite a character for an 11 year-old. The dinner was good, but a little odd-it was french fries (they call them chips), sausages, a slice of bacon, a fried egg, and beans. and NO I DID NOT EAT THE BEANS. But i ate everything else and it was lovely. so there. It was funny because when we first got there, Ivan was like, "Sorry, my house isn't a mansion like you twos!" and we were like what??? mansions?? Then at his house his little brother flat out asked us about our mansions! And when we laughed and said we didn't live in mansions, he was like, "well, you look rich", and his mother was like, "Dillon, they're college students!" Like that explained it to him?! Goofy. But it really was a wonderful first trip out of Galway, especially since we had an Irish lad our age telling us all about things as we went along....in his red work van.....both of us in the one front seat because there's no back seats....it was ok though, i just had to keep my legs crossed so he could shift gears....it was really all perfectly safe, I assure you. Cheers!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.301s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0924s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mo
non-member comment
Stop holding out