Blogs from Galway, County Galway, Ireland, Europe - page 27

Today Emily and I set out on a pretty last minute adventure to the lovely city of Galway, Ireland. Originally we had not planned to travel to Ireland becasue we just didn't feel that we had the time or the money to make the trek. After hearing over and over how amazing Ireland is and how we have to go check it out while we are in the area we decided to check out flights and found a pretty sweet deal through Ryan Air. Beause niether Emily nor I had much particular interest in any specific city and because we don't really care for the large metropolitan areas we decided to go to Galway instead of Dublin. After living in Oxford I didn't think towns existed that could be much smaller but after traveling to Galway ... read more

On most days, there are huge swans on the river Corrib-ya know, the river that runs right next to my housing, beside which is the path that I walk every day to get to class or elsewhere. Yes, it is badass. My Corrib Village ID card is a seriously ghetto-laminated piece of paper with my Beloit application picture stuck in, and my name scrawled across in someone else's handwriting. The lamination is already coming apart. Classic. If you pet a stray dog, it WILL follow you home in the cutest way possible. Wagging and smiling and nuzzling your hand occasionally. I am trying desperately to NOT want to pet dogs. Also on the river-kayakers, especially on the sunny days. Occasionally with a motorboat alongside coaching through a megaphone. The people are coaching, not the motorboat. And ... read more

I can't keep starting entries with "well", it could so easily get out of control! I've continued to hang out with the same Irish boys, and more of their friends, and we are continually learning about each others' cultures. They are very concerned with their masculinity and fairly homophobic, but that's all in line with Ireland's conservativism (hope that's a word). We've had endless entertainment finding words that we say differently, or things that we have different names for. I have two favorites so far-instead of saying fillet properly, they say it like "fill it"-utterly ridiculous-and with vitamins, ya know how we say it like vite amins, they say vittamins-short i instead of long, i think? They laugh uproariously every time I say ya'll. They'll learn. Instead of "shit" they pronounce it i guess like ... read more

Well, getting here was maybe the most tiring experience of my life, but after 12 hours on 3 different airplanes with 6 and a half total hours of layover, losing 6 hours in the process, three hours of sleep, four hours on a bus sitting next to a wasted Polish guy, dragging 70lbs of luggage two blocks to get a taxi and then up a staircase, i FINALLY made it, fairly unharmed from the process. When I touched down in Dublin airport, it was beautifully sunny. It was really incredible and really green. Like neon, practically. The grass here is very bright and it partially makes up for the cloudy skies. I am rooming with a girl from Beloit who I met up with at the airport, (we didn't know we were rooming together) and ... read more

I spent the last two days in Galway and Limerick visiting my Irish friends Eoin and John who are two of my best friends from San Francisco and were home for the holidays. We decided to meet in Galway because all of their friends from Nortel in Galway were meeting up for a night out. We met up with a bunch of their friends who I had met one way or another when they had visited San Francisco. It was fun to see all of them again. The night ended up being really great. We visited a few different bars and ended up at a cool dance place. It poured rain on the way home and we got completely soaked because of course none of us brought raincoats. The next day Eoin´s brother picked us up ... read more