Crisis Averted

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I do actually have my backpack back now. Yay. (I guess it wouldn't have been a huge deal if it had been lost forever, because all it has in it are my clothes, which need to be washed anyway. I'm carrying all the important stuff like my passport and toothpaste with me. And I would've gained some backpacker street cred points. The smaller your backpack is, the more street cred you have.)

I forgot to mention that back in county clare I learned how to make wine. It's really great, actually - I spent all day Friday wandering around the countryside collecting elderflowers in huge buckets, and all day Saturday picking off all the blossoms to make wine with. All you need are sterilized containers, yeast, loads of sugar, lemons, and water. It's pretty amazing.

It was sort of sad leaving because I met a lot of really fun people there. Last night we were all sitting around watching Monday night television on RTE2 ("Cora", which I'll explain in a minute, Malcom In The Middle, and Lost. Lost is only on it's 5th episode here..) when we got in a discussion about names. A woman from down the road asked what my parents named me after, and I told her, and she just started laughing and said "They named you after a comet?! They can hardly be surprised when you tear off halfway across the world, then."
She might have a point.

"Cora", or Coronation Street, is a really weird thing. It's a soap opera that absolutely everyone watches. It's on during prime-time, and has been since the late 50s, and everywhere I go people are talking about it. Back in Rosslare at the B&B, the guests would have long discussions about the show, and when I got here watching it is a huge social event. And on the bus on the way to Cork, I thought I was hearing some really gossipy stuff from the old ladies next to me - they were talking about how horrible Charlie was being to Shelly and how Shelly really needed to get help.
Then I remembered last night's episode and realized that, no, they're just talking about Cora.

Thanks for your comments, everyone - it's great to hear about how things are going back home.

Well, I'm going to troll around Cork for a while longer before catching the bus to Youghal and spending 2 weeks at that vegan farm. Should be interesting... I think I'm going to go get an ice-cream cone or something. Sort of a farewell to dairy.
.. figures. I un-vegetarian-ify myself to come to Ireland, only to end up vegan-ifying myself a month later. We'll see how it goes!

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Comments

[anonymous]

Jesus, you could make a book about this trip. This is just fascinating. I'm terribly jealous of you right now :) Wow

[June]

Hehe, good luck with becoming vegan for a bit. I'm so glad you have the time to post these blogs, 'cause they're really interesting.

[Scott]

Sounds like a blast. Yeah, I once met this girl from England and all she could talk about the entire night was how much she missed Coronation Street. I was dissapointed because I was hoping she'd pull out some Cockney slang.