Irish Jigs

GOIN' BOWLING

2010-05-13T22:50:00.000+01:00

Since my Irish Jigs blog is finished because we have left Ireland, you may be interested in reading my other blog: "Goin' Bowling". Just go to http://goinbowling.blogspot.com/

GOODBYE IRELAND

2010-04-24T11:17:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to tell all my Irish friends thanks for being my friend and for putting up with me while I've been here, for allowing me to be a part of your lives, and helping me "learn" the Irish ways. One day I was driving with one of my friends and decided to take a side street that was a short cut to where we were going. She said, "Wow, Nene! Now you're really driving Irish!" :0) It's been fun to be here and see all the sights and make friends with so many people. Thanks also to my 4 US friends that I had lunch with every Thursday - not to mention the shopping side-trips and "movie days". I would never have made it without you guys!

Thanks also to all of you who read my blog! It's been nice to know there were others "sharing" this experience with me.

Goodbye Ireland! It's been a great experience that I will always remember. Maybe I can come back someday....

READY TO FLY

2010-04-21T10:28:00.000+01:00

Irish Air Space is now open again! Woo-Hoo! When my husband called up the stairs to tell me this, I was sitting on my bed putting my makeup on. I looked out the window and saw a big X in the sky from Air Force jets flying. A sign. :0) Cross your fingers, say a prayer, and hope that it stays open. We're ready to go home.

JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO - SACRIFICE SCENE

2010-04-20T12:38:00.000+01:00

A SACRIFICE TO THE VOLCANO

2010-04-18T21:45:00.002+01:00

NENE VERSUS THE VOLCANO

2010-04-17T11:46:00.000+01:00

Our stuff has been shipped. We're packed. We're ready to go. But there's this volcano spewing ash. I got up at 5 this morning to check and make sure our flight was still a "go". I guess things got worse during the night, because when I logged onto Delta, the flight was cancelled. Come to find out, they have rescheduled us for TUESDAY! Yikes.
Okay, here's what we need. We need someone for a sacrifice to the volcano. Come on, I know there's someone out there who would love all the drama and attention of sacrificing themselves for this worthy cause. Hey, we might even serve Orange Soda to all the onlookers.
Any takers?

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

2010-04-16T15:51:00.000+01:00

Queen Victoria was the first royal monarch to live in Buckingham Palace when it was finished in 1837.
The guards do this walking thing every few minutes, but this is not the "changing of the guards". That was taking place later that morning, but we didn't have time to wait for it. Buckingham Palace is open to the public during August and September of every year, but that is all.

BIG BEN, WESTMINISTER ABBEY, AND PALACE OF WESTMINISTER

2010-04-16T15:16:00.000+01:00

Big Ben is the largest, chiming, four-faced clock in the world and will be 151 years old in May.

Westminister Abbey is the traditional place for coronations and burials of English monarchs.

The Palace of Westminister (bottom picture) is the Houses of Parlament.

RECIPE FOR AN IRISH EXPERIENCE

2010-04-15T18:11:00.001+01:00

Recipe for an Irish Experience:

2 dumb Americans

Lots of warm, friendly Irish People

Several sight-seeing tours, sprinkled with a few dozen Castles

The narrowest roads you can find

More rain than you need

A dose of homesickness

Skype

Instant Messenger

Several thousand Frequent Flyer miles

A tenative, 2 year assignment

Green for garnish

Take 2 dumb Americans and put them right into the heart of the Republic of Ireland. Mix them well with lots of warm, friendly Irish people, even though they can’t understand a word they are saying. Drive them on the “wrong side” down narrow roads with one-way “humpy bridges” on several sight-seeing tours. Be sure to sprinkle in the few dozen Castles, until seeing castles on the side of the road becomes routine. Do all of this in the wind, rain and freezing cold. Toss in a dose of homesickness and cure it with Skype, Instant Messaging and lots of frequent flyer miles. Be sure to take out of the oven before the 2 year assignment is up. Garnish with so much green you’ll have to wear sunglasses. Smile as you ingest, because it will be one of the greatest experiences of your life!

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE?

2010-04-15T13:42:00.000+01:00

I have 2 US friends here in Ireland that are leaving tomorrow (Friday) to fly home. She just called me to say she heard that the airports in Ireland and England were shut down because of a volcano in Iceland that is spewing ash into the air. It may clear, but then again...
I told my friend that maybe Ireland just doesn't want to let us go yet. :0)

GOTTA LOVE THE IRISH!

2010-04-15T10:35:00.000+01:00

My sister, Delirious, sent these to me in an email:

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I'll go to mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!"
Miraculously, a parking place appeared.
Paddy looked up again and said, "Never mind, I found one."

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man says, "I do Father."
The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."
Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father," was the man's reply.
"Then stand over there against the wall," was the priest's reply.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."
The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Paddy was in New York. He was waiting patiently and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, "Okay pedestrians." Then he'd allow the traffic to pass.
He'd done this several times and Paddy was still on the sidewalk.
After the cop had shouted, "Pedestrians!" for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, "Is it not about time ye let the Catholics cross?"

Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney.
"Did you see the paper?" asked Gallagher. They say I died!!"
"Yes, I saw it," replied Finney. "Where are ye callin' from?"

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Conneticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.
He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"
"Just water," says the priest.
The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"
The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

Walking into the bar, Mike says to Charlie the bartender, "Pour me a stiff one - just had another fight with the little woman."
"Oh yeah?" said Charlie, "And how did this one end?"
"When it was over," Mike replied, "She came to me on her hands and knees."
"Really," said Charles, "Now that's a switch! What did she say?"
She said, "Come out from under the bed, you little chicken."

Flynn staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took his shoes off to avoid waking his wife, Mary.
He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.
Managing not to yell, Flynn sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best as he could on each place he saw blood.
He then hid the almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.
In the morning, Flynn woke up with a searing pain in both his head and his butt and Mary staring at him from across the room.
She said, "You were drunk again last night weren't you?"
Flynn said, "Why would you say such a mean thing?"
"Well," said Mary, "It could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drips of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly...it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror."

OUR TRIP TO LONDON - RIDING THE HOP-ON, HOP-OFF BUS

2010-04-14T15:58:00.000+01:00

This first picture is the headquarters for Google. Can you see the sign in the middle side window?

Just in case you're looking for a new car:

The rest of these are Trafalgar Square which is a famous square where they hold different events.

The name comes from the Battle of Trafalgar which was during Napoleon times.

It is also at a one of the busiest intersections in London.

If you want to see a live video of Trafalgar Square, click on this link: http://www.camvista.com/england/london/trafalgarsquare_streaming.php

OUR TRIP TO LONDON - MARBLE ARCH

2010-04-13T11:59:00.001+01:00

Since what we mostly did was ride the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus, you will see that most of these pictures are taken from the bus. It was such fun! I told my husband he has to use his own camera from now on, since he didn't check that the camera was still on indoor from taking pictures in Paris at the Musee D'Orsay, thus the blueish color. :0+

The top picture is Marble Arch. It was originally built as a gateway for the new Buckingham Palace, but in 1851 it was moved to its present location. A popular story says that the arch was removed because the queen couldn't get her stagecoach to pass through it. They are considering moving the arch again, possible across the street to Hyde Park, because now it sits on a large traffic island which does not promote the flow of traffic.
Next to Marble Arch is the Hyde Park Speaker's Corner. This is a place where anyone can go and stand up and make a speech as long as the police think your speeches are lawful and your language is clean. It seems to me that I remember reading in a book about early Mormon missionaries in London, that they used to go there and preach the gospel. Who knows, maybe they still do. I wanted my husband to take a picture of it but he wasn't able to get it.
The next picture is the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus. London is one of the cities with the most buses. Look at the top picture and see all the buses. There are 2 different Hop-On, Hop-Off bus companies, plus the city buses, plus ALL the charter sight-seeing buses. I loved seeing the red double-decker city buses. It reminded me of the Knight Bus in Harry Potter. :0)

The next picture is a typical souvenir shop.

Hard Rock Cafe - London

The rest of these are some weird buildings we saw. The first one, my husband calls the Faberge Egg building.

OUR TRIP TO LONDON

2010-04-12T19:17:00.000+01:00

We went to London this last weekend. We flew over on Friday morning and flew back Saturday night. Friday afternoon we rode the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus over to the theater district and went to the Queen's Theatre box office and asked if they had any seats left. They had 4. Two on the floor and two on the 1st upper level. We took the 2 on the floor (yes, they were together) and sat almost in the middle on the 5th row! We rode the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus back to our hotel and put our feet up and ordered room service for dinner. Then we had the bellman get us a taxi and we went to the theater. (We couldn't ride the bus back because it doesn't go that late.) Most London taxi's look like the picture below. The taxi drive was cool, but Les Miz was even better! What an incredible experience! Les Miserables is my very, most favorite musical and I have wanted to see it for years and years. It was fantastic!

LOOKING FOR THE LYRICS TO "THE FLOWERS OF RED HILL"

2010-04-08T16:25:00.000+01:00

Someone contacted me through this blog because they are trying to find the words of a song. In my search here, I have found out that the name of the song is: The Flowers of Red Hill and that it is an Irish Reel. The guy at the music store also told me that it has an alternate title called "The Claddaugh". If anyone has ever heard of this song, and knows the lyrics to it, I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment, or better yet the lyrics, on this blog.

Thanks!
- Nene

I'M GOIN' HOME

2010-04-03T18:54:00.001+01:00

TO THE TUNE OF "TIE A YELLOW RIBBON 'ROUND THE OLD OAK TREE" - with apologies to
Tony Orlando

I'm goin' home, I've done my time
Now I've got to find what is and isn't mine
I'm filling out the papers, it'll take me several days
I'm not sure if this is mine
Or if it has to stay.
Or if it has to stay.

So tie a yellow ribbon 'round my finger dear,
It's now time to go, it's been over a year
If I don't fill this form out that they sent to me
They'll damage our stuff,lose all our stuff,
Put the blame on me
I'll fill it out and you can fax it back for me.

A LITTLE TOO SWEET

2010-03-30T15:38:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday my husband went fishing with an Irish friend from work. I packed him a lunch and also put in a Nutra Grain bar and a chocolate Rice Krispy treat. My husband loves any kind of sweet. I mean, he ought to wear a button around that says: Little Debbie is my friend. Since we moved to Ireland however, I have stopped buying anything like Little Debbie snacks and the only thing he gets here is Nutra Grain bars and occasionally a chocolate or chocolate & carmel Rice Krispy treat. Every once in awhile I'll let him have a chocolate muffin (besides birthdays and special occasions - see he's really not mistreated). When he and his Irish friend ate lunch, he offered his chocolate Rice Krispy treat to his friend. Never fear - after he left our house that morning, he had stopped at a store and bought another box, he said "to share". :0) He asked his friend if he'd ever had one, and he said no so took it. Later on when they were finished fishing, he knew his friend had to drive an hour back home so offered him another chocolate Rice Krispy treat. His friend declined saying "Oh no, I sure don't want another one of those, they're too sweet!" One thing I've found out all over Europe is that their sweets are not as sweet as ours in the USA. One time I went to a church meeting and the ladies served cupcakes - or what they called "fairy cakes". They WERE cupcakes, but none of them had any icing on them. Just plain cupcakes. But the funny thing is, whenever I take any sweets that I have made to church all the ladies just scarf them up and then want me to bring them the recipe. So they might SAY they don't like that much sugar, but I wonder if secretly they do?

A GAME OF BOULES IN THE PARK

2010-03-27T11:49:00.000Z

On our last day in Paris, we were walking back to our hotel to pick up our bags before going to the airport (they were kind enough to store them for us for the day even though we had checked out), and we were walking through a park and saw a game of "bowling". We were excited to see this, because our tour guide book had mentioned it, but he just said you had to be "lucky" to catch one, so we sat down on a bench to watch. I looked this up online and found out that in France they call it "petanque" and it is similiar to British lawn bowling, or Italian bocce. It is played with metallic balls on dirt and a cochonnet. A cochonnet is a small object usually made of beech wood and is 1 - 1 3/8" in diameter. A cochonnet may be stained but not painted. Each player has 3 balls The object is to throw your balls - usually with somewhat of an arched back-spin - so that they land closer to the cochonnet than those of your opponent, or strike and drive the object ball toward your other balls and away from your opponents balls. The group we saw playing were mostly older men, but we saw another group of younger men (30's) a little ways away. The older men also had strong magnets attached to ropes or cords that they could hang over their metallic balls and thus pick them up without having to bend over to get them. :0) These pictures turned out bluish for some reason. It was either because the camera was on the wrong setting, or because our battery was about dead by then.

OUR TRIP TO PARIS - THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE & THE CHAMPS-ELYSEES

2010-03-23T11:18:00.001Z

We went to the Arc de Triomphe (ark-duh-tree-umpf) one day when we were riding the Hop-On, Hop-Off Tour Bus. We got off about a block from the Arc so we could walk up the Champs-Elysees (shawn-zey-la-zey). This is a very famous boulevard, not only for history, but for SHOPPING! If you want designer stuff, this is where you get it. We opted not to shop, but wanted to walk up it anyway. The Champs-Elysees is also known as the "triumphal way" since the homecoming of Napoleon's body from St. Helena in 1840. After his greatest victory, the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, Napoleon promised his men they would "go home beneath triumphal arches." The construction on the Arc de Triomphe was started the next year, but because of disruptions and the demise of Napoleon's power, the structure wasn't finished until 1836 - not many years before Napoleon's body was to come home. In 1921, on Armistice Day, the body of the Unknown Soldier was placed beneath the arch to commemorate the dead of World War I. The flame of remembrance which burns above the tomb is relit by various veterans organizations each evening. There is a viewing platform on top of the Arc which overlooks the length of the Champs-Elysees. You can pay to go up to the top of the Arc but it is all stairs, so we opted not to go up there. The last picture is looking back down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe.

OUR TRIP TO PARIS - CRUISING THE RIVER SEINE

2010-03-19T10:50:00.000Z

This is another thing that we did on our first day in Paris. After we went to the Eiffel Tower, we went across the street and down to the Seine River and took a tour boat cruise. They have lots of different kinds of cruises. You can even take a lunch cruise or a dinner cruise, where they have the boat set up like a restaurant and you sit at tables and eat. We didn't take a lot of pictures while we were on the boat, mainly because we knew we would be getting closer to the things we would be seeing later on when we took the bus tours. Our tour guide on the boat spoke in French first, then in English, then in Spanish, for everything he said. Too bad he didn't speak Chinese, as there was a whole tour bus of Chinese people on this boat ride. It was fun and we even bought their Paris dvd, which is really good, although if any of my kids borrow it to watch it, they'll have to remember to turn it off at the end when they start showing the Moulin Rouge. Yikes. Talk about R-rated! Sure don't want the grandkids to be seeing that!

OUR TRIP TO PARIS - MUSEE DU LOUVRE

2010-03-18T16:38:00.000Z

The 2nd day of our Paris trip we decided to get up early and go to the Musee Du Louvre (say: mew-see duh loov-ruh), although the Parisians have shortened the name to just the "loov"). We didn't get off as early as we planned but we did leave our hotel at 9:30. Our tour guide book (RICK STEVE'S PARIS) suggested taking the city bus #69. He said #69 bus takes the same route that the tour buses take. It only cost us 1.70 euro and we got to see a lot of the city streets of Paris. We didn't care that it took a bit longer. A lot of people either take a taxi, or the Paris Metro (train system). This was a lot more fun.

The Louvre was first built in 1190 by King Phillippe-Auguste as a fortress. Four centuries of kings and emperors improved and enlarged the palace and in 1793 it was opened as a museum. Major renovations were completed in 1998. One thing that was added then was a glass pyramid, which serves as the entrance to the Louvre. As visitors go into the Louvre, they enter through the glass pyramid and take escalators down underground to the visitors center and entrance to the museum. The glass pyramid allows light down to the underground area. The glass pyramid was designed by architect I.M. Pei.
It is impossible to see everything in the Louvre in one day. Or two days. Or even three. The objets d'art include paintings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry, scientific instruments, armor, ancient burial coffins and sarcophoguses, et. We were surprised that they allowed you to take pictures in the Louvre, as other museums did not allow cameras. I don't know the names of all the things we saw, but you may recognize the Mona Lisa, The Coronation of Napoleon, and Venus de Milo. At one point my husband turned to me and said, "Isn't it incredible to believe that we are standing right in front of these things that we've heard about all our lives?" It was.

OUR TRIP TO PARIS - THE EIFFEL TOWER

2010-03-17T14:46:00.002Z

We went to Paris last weekend. We left Thursday night - getting to our hotel a little after midnight - and came home Monday night, getting home about 12:30am. Our feet and legs are so tired from walking, I think it's going to take a few days to recover! But we had a blast! We LOVED Paris! Just in case anyone is wondering, we DID fly the dreaded Ryan Air. I think flying Ryan Air is kind of like labor pains. You absolutely hate it while you're doing it, but then when it's all over you sort of forget how bad it was - until you have to do it again. While we were standing in line waiting to check in my husband asked me if I would fly Ryan Air again. I told him, "Now is not the time to ask me, wait until we get home - then ask." Each time this question is asked of me I think, "Never again." Then the next time comes and we do it again because, darn it, their prices are so much lower than everyone elses, you think "Well, surely these low fares over-rule any discomfort." Maybe I can do it just one more time to go to London. Oh, and Batman was on our flight. He had a black jacket with his "Batman" logo on the back (yellow and black) and a BRIGHT yellow scarf around his neck. :0) I think he was trying to tell us something with his "scarf statement".

There is a section of Paris known as the "American" section, called "Rue Cler". We didn't stay exactly in this area, but we were only a block or two away from there. We stayed about 2 or 3 blocks from the Eiffel Tower in Hotel de la Bourdonnais. This was a quaint old hotel that has been remodeled. I kept telling my husband that we needed to get a picture of the spiral staircase but we never did. This hotel only had twin beds or double beds (no queen or king-size beds - over here in Europe you'd say "king" or "super-king" - there is no "queen"). Since we are used to sleeping in a king-size bed (super-king) we opted for the twin beds pushed together. I called them the "Twinkie Beds" because first, they were 2 twin beds side-by-side (like Twinkies), but the main reason was because it felt like you were trying to sleep on top of a Twinkie. They were nice soft beds (I hate the concrete-hard beds most hotels have), but it almost felt like there was a hump in the middle of the bed. I was trying to explain this to my husband and he said that must be what they meant by saying there was "no side support on these beds". They weren't bad, just took a little getting used to.
Out hotel room had French provincial style furniture and 2 windows with "french doors". Even the shower had french doors which was not a good thing, because then it leaked water onto the floor. :0+ The hotel offered a breakfast every morning - eggs, bacon, toast, cereal, crossants, a raisin type roll and another flaky roll with bits of chocolate in it, as well as yogurt, cheeses, fruit, juices, etc. Their breakfast was quite expensive - 15 euro apiece! We ate there the first morning. The next day we bought milk, juice, bananas and donuts and took to our room. We put the juice, milk and some water and cokes outside on our patio to keep them cold during the night. :0)
The first day, we went straight to the Eiffel Tower. All we had to do was walk up the street our hotel was on (about 1/4 of a block) then over about a block to the Champs de Mars (say "shawn du mar") which is the park behind the Eiffel Tower. I can't tell you how excited I was to walk through that park seeing the Eiffel Tower in front of me! I was very surprised to find armed military guards with machine guns patroling the Eiffel Tower. There were about 5 or 6 of them. This was in addition to the regular Paris police officers on bicycles riding through the park. Later it dawned on me that the armed guards were there because of terrorists. I know it was thought that famous landmarks could be attacked by terrorists after 9/11. Since we had slept in a little because of our late arrival, it was about 10:30am when we got there. There was already tons of people there, but I didn't think we had to wait in line really that long. We bought tickets to the second level and took the elevator up. It is like a tram and holds lots of people. It goes kind of side-ways and up. It is a double-decker tram and lets people off on 2 different levels at once. You have to pay to get into the Eiffel Tower. I think it was 11 Euro apiece for us to go to the 2nd level. If you want to go to the very top, you have to pay 18 euro more at the second level to go on up to the top. We opted not to go up there, since the 2nd level was high enough. It is an incredible view, as you will see from these pictures. You can see most of Paris.
They had gift shops on all the levels, and down on the ground there were lots and lots of guys selling every size of Eiffel tower you could want. There was also Cleopatra and King Kong there. :0) These people dress up and come and stand and I guess you can take your picture with them if you give them money. Cleopatra was not Cleopatra in her customary dress. She was more like Cleopatra in a sarcophogus. She was wrapped in a gold lame type fabric. My husband said (because it was so cold) that he hoped for her sake that her gold lame was made out of space-blanket fabric. Also under the Tower there are concesssion stands where you can buy lots of stuff to eat, but the best is the crepes they make right there. You ask for a crepe with sugar, or a crepe with Nutella. If you don't know what Nutella is, it's like chocolate in a peanut butter type jar. You spread it on like peanut butter. In fact, your grocery store might sell it right next to the peanut butter.
After we looked around on the second level, we walked down the stairs to the first level. We ate lunch there and had literally the best hot chocolate I have ever had. It had a big swirl of real whipped cream on the top. Even though we got hot chocolate a few more times in Paris, that was the best! After we ate lunch at a little sandwich shop there, we saw a bigger restaurant as we were leaving.
One thing I kept thinking at every tourist stop we went to in Paris was, "If this is how many tourists they have now - in this freezing cold weather - I can't even imagine what summertime is like!" I think the Eiffel Tower was my very favorite thing to see while we were in Paris!
In the pictures below, you'll see a glass monument with pilars. It's the Monument to Peace and has "peace" written in 32 languages - one language on each pillar. You can go in there and record your own personal message of peace. Also, just know that in the Champs du Mars since it is winter there is no grass, no flowers, and the fountains are turned off. The faraway shots are from the 1st and 2nd levels of the Eiffel Tower. In one of the pictures of the city, look for the building with the gold dome roof. That is Napoleon's Tomb. Also notice the "vendor" selling his ring of Eiffel Towers - there were many of these guys, all selling the same thing. The river you see is the Seine. Sorry these pictures aren't in better order. Just when I figure out how to do Bloggers pictures, they go and change it. :0+

HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY!

2010-03-16T19:56:00.000Z

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

THE IRISH LANGUAGE TODAY

2010-03-10T14:59:00.001Z

I have an Irish friend who recently finished her degree to be a teacher of Irish (Gaelic). Unfortunately, she finished her degree just when the recession was hitting and many teachers were laid off, and therefore she was not able to get a teaching position. She lives in my town, about a block away from me, and has been my friend and "guardian angel" while I've been here in Ireland.

Last night she came to our house and my husband and I were talking to her about the Irish language. Irish is my friend's first language and she said she even has times where she struggles to think of the English word. She said there are many places in Ireland that the Irish language is spoken as a "first language". These places are called "Gaeltacht Regions" and places with the most Gaeltacht concentration are:
1) County Galway, including Connemara, the Aran Islands, Carraroe, and Spiddal
2) County Donnegal, in the part which is known as Tyrconnell
3) Dingal Penninsula in County Kerry
My friend said that if anyone in her family speaks English in their home, it is considered an insult to the family. All of them speak English, but she said she grew up speaking Irish. She had to take 30 minutes of English every day at school, but the rest of the time she spoke Irish. It wasn't' until she left home at 17 that she began speaking English every day.
Today, all Irish children learn Irish in school. I spoke to a lady at my church who is in her 60's. She said she took Irish in school when she was little but could hardly remember how to speak it today. But the younger generations are keeping the language alive. I hear lots of high school and college age kids walking down the streets of my town speaking Irish today. I also hear lots of young mothers speaking Irish to their little children. There are some controversies of whether Ireland should try to keep the Irish language alive. My Irish friend tells me that the school kids hate to learn Irish. But are there a lot of subjects that kids hate to take in school? I hope Ireland keeps the Irish classes in their school system so this language will not die out like the Latin language did. If you look on the sign in the picture above, you'll see that Ireland prints all their traffic, tourist, city and street signs in English and Irish. For the town and street signs, the Irish is usually on the top and the English below, so you have to learn to look below the Irish, or you'll be past the sign before you can read what it says (if you're driving in a car). Irish is a very unique language. Click on my Irish widget to hear what Irish sounds like. If you click "More about this word" it will take you to another widget on their website that you can click and hear the word of the day used in a sentence.

NUNS

2010-03-06T14:40:00.000Z

When I went to the grocery store today, there were some nuns sitting by the escalators with donation buckets. I gave her a 2 euro coin. Being in a mostly Catholic country, I see lots of nuns here. I just love nuns. I think partly because my 2 best friend growing up were Catholic. I used to memorize their Hail Mary's with them. :0) One of the twins wanted to be a nun growing up. When you're a nun, you get to choose a new name. She wanted her name to be Bernadette. I also loved the movie, "Song of Bernadette". It's black and white but is a great movie. I know the Catholic church has had lots of trouble with their priests, so I get a little leary of them, but I sure hope that a lot of the good nuns end up in heaven. To totally devote your life to service surely deserves something of a reward. If you've never read the biography of Mother Teresa's life, you should. She was a wonderful, insightful, caring, and totally unselfish woman.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CAR WASH

2010-03-03T14:31:00.000Z

Today I went to the grocery store. Our grocery store is built on top of the parking lot, so after you pull into the parking lot, you go into the store and take the "travelator" (escaltor) up to the grocery area. The only thing downstairs is the ATM, some coined kiddie rides, and a sort of kiosk where you can get your picture (or kids pictures, etc) taken. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed several young men wearing bright yellow safety vests and they had rolling carts of what looked like cleaning supplies. After I got out of my car, one of these young men approached me and asked me if I wanted my car washed. He probably saw me pull up in my Passat (which I have found out over here is considered a luxury car - ???) and thought to himself, "An here comes zee reech American!" He said for 15 euro he would wash it, but for 35 euro he would do a "valet" job and wash, wax and clean the wheels and also vacumn the inside seats and floors and clean the inside windows and dash. And actually he told me 38 euro but then he said, "For you today, eet will be only tirty-five euro. Eet eez special price." (prounciation added). He was French by the way. So I thought, "Why not? I haven't had this car washed or vacumned in the year and a half that we've been here. (I know, gross.) The scary thing was, I had to hand him the keys to my car and then he would drive it over somewhere and wash and valet it and bring it back. It was supposed to take 45 minutes. That was a little scary, and if he had been the only one there doing that, I probably would have said no. He said to me, "I am very good driver, I have license and drive very careful." So I handed over my keys and went in to shop. Forty-five minutes later I came back down and could not see my car anywhere. I was watching another guy washing a car that looked like mine, but when I started to walk closer, saw that it wasn't. As I was watching the other car being washed, I marveled at how little water he used. He hardly even had any water on the pavement under the car. I finally decided that they must be using some kind of car cleaner that you don't need to rinse off. I watched him wash the car thoroughly and then he just sort of used a squeegee to get the water off, then dried it with a rag. As I walked over there (this had been after about 15 minutes) another guy approached me and said, "Miss? Eet will be one minute." So I went back over to where I had been standing, and sure enough, about a minute later here came my nice and shiny clean car. There is another shopping center I go to quite often. When you first enter the parking lot (not covered) you see a guy who washes cars there in a section that is far from the stores and quite vacant. I've felt sorry for this guy all winter, because he is there everyday washing cars in the freezing weather. I've never seen a full-service car wash here, like the Octopus Car Wash in my town in the States. There is an automated one at a gas station in our town here, but that is all I've seen, besides these guys working in parking lots. Maybe I'll trade cars with my husband tomorrow and bring his Golf back. :0)

IRISH TV'S NAKED COMMERCIALS

2010-02-20T18:51:00.000Z

Irish TV has been obsessed lately with "naked commercials". One day my husband and I were watching tv and one came on. I complained to him that I'd been seeing a lot of "naked commercials" lately. Right after that commercial - 3 more in a row (all different) came on. Here's one, just to give you an idea:

IRISH SODA BREAD

2010-02-18T18:47:00.000Z

I went to a Stake Relief Society Meeting last night and they not only served Irish Soda Bread, but gave us the recipe. This recipe is from a lady in my ward.

BRENDA'S IRISH SODA BREAD

3 cups plain flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
4 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cups hot water.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl. This should look like sloppy porridge. Pour into a loaf tin lined with parchment paper. Put on middle rack in oven. On the shelf below put a pyrex dish filled with hot water. This will help the bread to rise. Bake for one hour.

I had to look up several of her "Irish terms" to translate them. For the baking soda and sugar, she had "1 dessert spoon of bread soda, and 2 dessert spoons of sugar." I found on the internet that a dessert spoon is equal to 2 teaspoons. I also had to look up and make sure that bread soda was the same as baking soda. It was. This is great bread and is what you get here if you go into a restaurant and order a bowl of soup - you get a plate with 1 or 2 slices of this bread and butter. Ireland doesn't know the meaning of the word "margarine". I'm not sure you can even buy it in the store. They only sell real butter here. Yum. (Ok, you might find margarine if you look really hard. Also, they don't have Pam here. I really think you could use Pam and spray the loaf pan instead of using the parchment paper. They have a spray called, "Fry Light". It is made of sunflower oil and there's another one made of olive oil. I've used these to fry and they are fine, but they don't work real well for greasing a baking pan, which might be why she uses parchment. Also, I think you can bake this in a deep round pan also. A lot of soda bread that you buy at a bakery here is round.

IT'S OFFICIAL

2010-02-15T14:15:00.000Z

It's official - we're moving back to the States sometime around the middle of April!

WARM HEART, COLD HANDS

2010-02-14T16:02:00.000Z

We went to church today and the heat was off - AGAIN. This happened several weeks ago and it was so cold we held Relief Society in the foyer. There was heat in the foyer, but not in the classrooms that day. Today however, there was no heat in the chapel, no heat in the foyer, and no heat in the classrooms. Our bishop got up at the end of Sacrament meeting and said that because the heat was off in the whole building, that he was going to cancel the rest of the meetings for the day. At first I wondered why he had done it, because by then I was a little warmer. Of course, I played the organ that day and that always warms up at least my hands. But when I walked out of the chapel into the foyer it was like at least a 10 degree drop in temperature! I decided then that he had made the right decision. My hands and upper body were not freezing, but my legs and feet were like ice. Plus, the longer you sat there the more chilled you got.

The problem with our church heating system, our bishop tells my husband, is that they only have one button to turn it on. That's a good thing, I guess, because they sure can't be doing anything wrong when they turn it on if all they have to do is push a button. So sometimes they push the button and the heat comes on and it works, and sometimes they push the button and it doesn't come on. When that happens, they don't know what to do. Every time it happens, they have a heater guy come out and look at it, and it runs fine for awhile, then one day it doesn't come on again. I guess while we were in the States for Christmas it happened then also. You just don't realize how cold it can get in a building with no heat.

AHHH, BOOKS

2010-02-11T18:03:00.000Z

When I first moved to Ireland, I tried to get a library card at the library in my town. I couldn't get one because you needed a utility bill and we don't pay our own utilities. They are paid by our company. :0) I complained to my husband and he said he would talk to Relo and see what they could do. He finally got me a utility bill, but it has his name on it. :0+ So I just gave up the idea of a library card. I go into Dublin every so often - mostly on a Saturday. On the street where the Hard Rock Cafe is, they have a sort of little square and there are 3 used book dealers who put tables up there. I have been going there and buying several of their books.

The other day I was walking down the street in my town and noticed that the Library was having a used book sale. My friend and I went in and found that they were selling used hardbacks and paperbacks 3 for 2 euro. She bought 9 books and I bought 6. That was last week. Today I went by there again and saw that the sale was still on. I went in and bought 3 more books. :0) So now with the 3 books I brought back with me from the States at Christmas, I have 12 books. Well, I've read one already, so now I have 11 left. That should do me for awhile. Plus we're going into Dublin again this weekend! :0)

TALKING IRISH?

2010-01-29T12:11:00.000Z

Telephone Conversation:

Me (calling my Irish friend): "Hi, can I speak to Fiona?"

Friend's husband: "May I ask who's calling?"

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry, this is Nene."

Friend's husband: "You've definitely been in Ireland too long. You didn't sound like an American."

:0)

WHAT IS LOX AND BAGELS?

2010-01-26T17:26:00.002Z

On my last post about bagels, Sticks said he used to eat lox and bagels when he lived in New York. I have alway wondered what lox was, so here is the definition from Wickopedia:
"Lox is salmon fillet that has been cured. In its most popular form, it is thinly sliced—less than 5 millimetres (0.20 in) in thickness—and, typically, served on a bagel, often with cream cheese and capers. Noted for its importance in Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine, the food and its name were introduced to the United States through Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The term lox derives from Lachs in German and לאַקס laks in Yiddish, meaning "salmon". It is a cognate of Icelandic and Swedish lax, Danish and Norwegian laks, Czech losos, and Old English læx.

"Sometimes called regular or belly lox, lox is traditionally made by brining in a solution of water or oil, salt, sugars and spices (the brine). Although the term lox is sometimes applied to smoked salmon, they are different products."

In the pictures of the bagels with lox, the one on the top also has capers. Here is the Wikopedia definition of capers:
"A caper (Capparis spinosa L.) is a perennial spiny bush that bears rounded, fleshy leaves and big white to pinkish-white flowers. A caper is also the pickled bud of this plant. The bush is native to the Mediterranean region, growing wild on walls or in rocky coastal areas throughout. The plant is best known for the edible bud and fruit (caper berry) which are usually consumed pickled. Other species of Capparis are also picked along with C. spinosa for their buds or fruits."

OK, so now we know! Now whether we want to eat lox or not is another matter! :0)

IRISH WORD WIDGET

2010-01-25T14:23:00.000Z

If you haven't tried clicking on my Irish Word Widget on my sidebar, try it. Gaelic/Irish is quite a different sounding language. If you click on "more about this word" it will take you to a website where another widget will appear. It will show that word in a sentence and if you click on the "speaker icon" you will hear that sentence. Irish does not sound like it looks. :0)

BAGEL SNOB

2010-01-24T17:51:00.000Z

Since I've been living in Ireland, I have discovered bagels. Oh sure, I've eaten bagels in the States before - at least the ones I bought in the grocery store. I used to think that all bagels were the same. I don't think that anymore. I recently went home for the Christmas holidays. While I was there, I bought the some bagels from the grocery store. I used to buy these bagels all the time when I lived there. The next day I ate one and was astonished to find that it didn't taste like the bagels I am used to eating here. In fact, it tasted so different that I wished I hadn't even bought them.

We have lots of bagel shops here and if my husband and I are out somewhere and need to stop for a bite of lunch, we quite often go to the Bagel Shop. One day when we were in Dublin, we went to a bagel shop that actually had a cheese and jalepeno bagel. I was in heaven! It definitely has to go into my "Most Favorite Sandwiches of All Time" list. I eat a bagel every day for lunch with lunch meat and cheese. I don't use mayo or mustard, but "do it the Irish way" and use butter for my spread. I buy my bagels at the grocery store, and right now all I've found there are either plain, whole wheat or ones with whole grain seeds on top. The brand says they are "New York Bagels". Who knew you could buy them over here? :0)

I have a friend who used to live in New York. She ate a lot of bagels there and since moving out of that state and into mine, has declared herself a "bagel snob". She says she doesn't like the bagels from the store and she goes to a bagel shop in town to buy hers. I've decided that I will probably have to do that when I leave Ireland. The grocery store bagels here may pass my test, but the bagels in the grocery stores in the States sure don't. My husband says that at the cafeteria at work they have a bagel slicer. He loves it and wants to buy one. In the states, the ones at the grocery store come already split, but here they don't and you have to cut them. My husband hates to cut them because he can't get each side even. Must be the carpenter in him. :0) I guess I'll have to look for a bagel slicer to buy for him. Hey, maybe I'll get him one for Valentine's Day!

FLIERS TAKE HEED!

2010-01-20T16:19:00.000Z

If you will be traveling by airplane in the near future, here's a warning: Don't talk back to, or be rude to the flight attendants. I'm not kidding about this either.

My husband recently flew to the US for the Christmas holidays. I had flown over a couple of weeks before him. He was privileged to get an upgrade to first class. There was a woman in first class who was arguing with the flight attendant about something. He didn't hear what they were arguing about (international first class is quite a bit larger area than normal flights). He could tell that the flight attendant was getting pretty fed up with this particular woman. Finally he saw the flight attendant make the woman get up and she took her back into the coach section. Pretty soon the flight attendant came back with a young man, who flew the rest of the way first class.

I have another friend who flew to the US for the Christmas holidays. Her husband works for the same company as my husband. A few seats back from her was another man who also works for this company and he was also going home for the Christmas holidays. During the flight a French flight attendant told this man to put his seat up, as it was reclined. He told her that he had tried to put it up but couldn't do it. She told him again to put his seat up. He tried to explain to her that he had been trying to put it up but he couldn't do it and thought the seat might be broken. The flight attendant got very angry with this man and told him to get up and follow her. She told him to sit in the seat beside my friend. My friend started to tell her that the seat was taken, that a young man had been sitting in that seat, but he had gone back to talk to his friend at the back of the plane for a minute. The flight attendant got angry with her and told her not to argue with her or she would throw her off of the flight. Both the man (from the broken seat) and my friend sat in near silence the rest of the trip. They didn't dare say, nor even look sideways at any of the flight attendants.

Fliers beware! :0+

WELCOME BACK

2010-01-17T16:49:00.000Z

It's extremely nice to be welcomed back at church here in Ireland, as warmly as we were welcomed back to church in the US. :0)

SNOWY IRELAND

2010-01-12T14:35:00.000Z

When we got back to Ireland we discovered that they had a couple inches of snow. In fact, it has been pretty cold here for the past couple of weeks. Since we got home, it has snowed a couple more times. We still don't have a whole lot of snow, but the snow we do have is causing problems. It wouldn't be a problem in the US or in an area that is used to snow. Even though Ireland is on about the same lattitude as Alaska, it doesn't really get that cold here. Most of the time in the winter it doesn't get much colder than about in the 30s. Even right now - about 2 pm in the afternoon - it is 34 degrees. One problem is that they don't have road graders here. So the snow stays on the road and just gets packed down. Another problem is that the sun doesn't shine that much. Even though it is cold, if the sun would come out it would help melt the snow a bit. The other problem they have here is they don't have much sand - or "grit" as they call it. So it just snows a bit more each day and now the streets and sidewalks are very snowy and icy. No one even has a flat shovel to clear their walks. Now they are spreading "grit" sparingly because they are running out of it.

I saw on the news that England and Europe are getting it worse than we are. I know that school has been out a couple of days this week. I went to the grocery store today. I had heard that we may have water shortages due to pipes freezing and breaking. I was going to get some bottled water. I guess everyone else saw that on the news too, because they were almost sold out of the 2 liter bottles of water. With the water I already had, I have about 7 two-liter bottles. :0)

I talked to our RS president last night. She lives about an hour from our church. She said she hasn't been to church for 2 weeks because of the snow. There's another lady from our church that lives up the street from us. She told me she hasn't been to church in 3 weeks. I'm glad that my husband only has to drive 1 mile (one road) to work. Poor Ireland, they went from flooding to freezing. :0+

PS. I realized I never posted this, so I'll add a post script. Sunday night it started raining - not snowing. We realized that the winds must have changed and it actually warmed up a bit. It literally rained away most of the snow! Monday night the wind started blowing, and we got a bit more rain, but no snow. Today - Tuesday - it is 37 degrees and cloudy, but no rain or snow yet. The forecast said we were supposed to get more rain/or snow through Wednesday, so maybe this is a good sign that we won't get any at all. :0)

AT HOME IN IRELAND

2010-01-06T19:03:00.000Z

We had a great trip to the States for the Christmas holidays. I was able to go the first couple of days in December and spend a little over a month there. I went to the dentist 3 times, had my eyes examined and got new glasses, and got my driver's license renewed. My husband had his physical, got his year's worth of medicine to take back, and also got into his dentist. We had a great time visting with our children, their spouses, our grandchildren and our friends. My husband's mother was also able to come spend a week with us. I achieved "Silver" status with my frequent flyer miles so was able to bring a 2nd suitcase back to help get all the stuff we got for Christmas back over here without having to pay extra for it.
Our flight to Atlanta was at 6:15am, so we had to get up at 2:30am so we could shower and leave the house at 3:45 for the airport because we had to return our rent car. There weren't a whole lot of people at the airport, but we still had to wait in lines in security. I had the opportunity to go through one of those new "body scanners". The security guy was telling anyone with knee or hip implants to let him know so they could go through that. They were also just making other people go through at random. I wasn't able to see the scan image, but I thought it was a lot better than having to be wanded and patted down. I hoped the scan image was at least in a private place. I wasn't quite sure where it was. After I went through the body scanner, I stepped into this other glassed-off area and the security guy had me stand there and wait until he said I could go. I figured he must be waiting for some kind of "all clear" from the guy reading the body scans.

Our flight was delayed leaving home because they had a malfunctioning part. It was a navigational part and we heard them testing it. It was a part that would tell the captains to pull up if they got too close to like a mountain or the ground or something. They finally took the part out of another plane and put it in ours. That plane was the 1pm flight to Atlanta, which an Intel friend of our was on. He got transferred to another flight that went to Salt Lake first and then to Atlanta. When he got to Dublin, he didn't have his luggage either and wondered if it was still in Salt Lake.

My husband and I got upgraded to First Class on the Atlanta flight, so that was really nice. I'm sorry, but I couldn't help thinking of Madagascar 2, where King Julian is in First Class on the plane. I had to chuckle to myself sitting there when the other passengers starting coming in. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch it. :0)
We got to Atlanta about noon Eastern Time. We had a 6 hour layover. We were at our gate and we saw a bunch of missionariee coming for a flight to Zurich that was taking off about an hour or so before ours. We went over and introduced ourselves and they seemed very excited to talk to some members. There were about 8 - 10 of them. Most were from Utah, but 2 were from California and 2 were from Virginia. They spent lots of that 2 hour waiting period taking turns talking on the phones to their families.

Our flight to Dublin was really packed, and to tell you the truth I've never seen that flight not packed. The Irish people all like to fly standby. I bet at least 50 people or more were flying standby. Lots and lots of kids, and some of them not too happy of kids either. :0+

We came home and went to sleep for a couple of hours and then got up and showered and my husband went to work for the rest of the day. We were glad to find our house safe and sound, and to also find a layer of snow all over the Dublin area, with more expected to come.

IRISH SANTAS

2009-12-09T16:12:00.007Z

AN IRISH THANKSGIVING

2009-11-30T15:42:00.005Z

We had 11 people over for an "Irish Thanksgiving" Saturday. We had a very "cultural" dinner. Here's what we had in abundance: Turkey, Ham, Cornbread Dressing, Turkey Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, Cranberry Salad, Corn Casserole, Sweet Potato Casserole, Whole Wheat Rolls, Cornbread, Mixed Irish Veggies (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrots, Zuchinni, Mushrooms, Mini Potatoes- the traditional Irish vegetables) with Hollandaise Sauce, Spring Rolls, Teriyaki Chicken Wings, Teriyaki Shrimp, Wontons, Seafood Salad on Rice, Black and Green Olives, Pumpkin Pie with real whipped cream, Caramel Cheesecake, Pecan Pie, Dutch Apple Pie. We had a great time with our US friends and even the teenagers were't too terribly bored since they played Wii after dinner and then watched the Rugby game. We moved our kitchen table into the living room to put with the dining room table and borrowed a 6' table from one of the families, so we were all able to sit together for dinner. I was the last to sit down and was delighted to see that the only seat left was at the "teenager table". Unfortunately 2 of the 5 teenagers were at another table, so I didn't ask them this question: What do you like the best about living in Ireland?
Answers: The Scenery, The People, and Rugby.

EYE-WITNESS FLOODING

2009-11-30T11:23:00.004Z

We had to go to Sligo yesterday (Sunday) to visit a branch of our church there. We were a little apprehensive because we knew we would be going through some of the flooded places. Not even very far out of our town we started seeing big puddles (like small ponds) in the fields. The further west we went the bigger they got. The worst flooding we saw was in Carrick-on-Shannon. (Just FYI - "Carrick-on-Shannon" means "Bridge on the Shannon River", which flows around and through the town.) As we came into the main part of town, they had only one way traffic into town. Even then, the road was flooded. They had a Garda (police officer) there directing traffic (and probably watching the flood to see if it rose any higher). We drove through water almost up to our floorboards. The other side of the road was flooded worse, so they had diverted the traffic through the downtown area for them to go east out of town. All through that town we saw flooding - stores and gas stations sand-bagged with flooded parking lots. Some stores only had one row of sand-bags, but we saw a grocery store where the water looked deeper and they had literally a small wall of sandbags around it. Even when we left town, we still saw water on both sides of the road. Granted there is a river there that goes on both sides, but it was quite over its banks in many, many places. We didn't see any flooding it any of the other towns, including Sligo, just mainly out of town.

FLOODING IN IRELAND

2009-11-26T16:09:00.006Z

Yes, we've had lots of rain. Northern Ireland has been the worst hit. I heard that Galway and Cork had some bad flooding also. I had a friend go to Galway 2 weeks ago. She was supposed to be home last weekend but didn't come back. I wonder if she was not able to get home.
Today the sun actually shone for a good part of the day, although it did rain during the lunch hour. It hasn't been as bad here as it has in other parts of Ireland. I heard one report say this is the worst flooding in 30 years and then I heard another report say that this is the worst flooding in 800 years. 40 roads in Galway are still closed. I think in all of Ireland, 600 homes have been evacuated so far. I've also heard that the flooding is expected to get worse. It is still raining everyday and the flood waters are still rising. I know they have had to open the dams to let water out, which also makes it worse.
We don't have near the flooding other parts of Ireland has had. I saw one road closed over by Dublin, but it was a backroad and not a major one. We've had large puddles in roads,but that's about all.

IRISH TV

2009-11-18T14:07:00.006Z

I'm sorry, but Irish tv is just not that great and we even have cable. My husband even added some channels - Sci-Fi and a sports channel so we can get the US football and games. The funny thing is, my husband recently went back to the States. He told me that he didn't see that many other tv shows in the States either. I guess we just need to keep looking to find some new shows. One show we watch is "Warehouse 13". It's okay, I don't love it. It sort of insults my intelligence, but it's entertaining somewhat. My husband loves "The Seeker". I'm sorry, but that show really does insult my intelligence.
One thing we found out here though is that every house has to have a TV License. It's not cheap either and costs about 160 Euro for a year. They even go around house to house knocking on doors to see if anyone doesn't have a license, and fine you if you don't have one. Our Relo people just sent us a copy of our TV License because they said that they heard this was happening in our area. I looked up "TV License Ireland" online and found out that the money is supposed to support public broadcasting. I guess other places public broadcasting is funded by government grants and fund-raising. If you are a senior citizen or can't afford to pay your license I think you can get assistance. I just wonder how this would fly in the States though???

IRISH POST OFFICE

2009-11-17T16:42:00.006Z

Not long ago I went to the Post Office to get some Irish stamps so I could mail the visiting teaching message to two ladies on my route. After I asked the postmaster for some Irish stamps he said, "Do you need some international stamps?" I felt like saying, "Yes, I'm American, but I do know people here in Ireland." I thought it was funny. Maybe he either thought I had asked for the wrong stamps and meant international stamps, or just couldn't figure out what an American would be doing mailing stuff to people in Ireland. :0)

RADIATORS

2009-11-12T11:16:00.007Z

Since I talked about towel warmers in my last post, I decided to tell you about radiators. This is the time of year where I appreciate the radiators in my home here in Ireland. I just love to sit on the couch and put my hand over by the radiator to warm it. There are all kinds of radiators. Here is the kind that I have in my house:

This is what they look like in all the bedrooms and bathrooms. Depending on the size of the room, it is either smaller or larger. In the living room, dining room and den, they have wooden cabinets over them. The warm air only comes out the opening near the top, so we can put our leather couch right up next to it. This is what my radiator cabinets look like:

At our church in the foyer they have great big ones. They are like 8-10 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. They look similar to these:

When it is a really cold Sunday, you will see people congregating around these to keep warm. :0)

TOWEL WARMERS

2009-11-10T16:04:00.005Z

This is a towel warmer, and is what the well-equipped Irish bathroom has. It is attached to the wall and heats up when turned on. I honestly don't know how the towels would dry if they didn't have them here because it is so damp. I have a half bath downstairs that doesn't have one of these, and the hand towel seems to never be dry. I love these things! My house has an automatic system that turns these on twice a day - in the morning and at night. (This system turns other things on also.) It is so nice, especially when it's cold, to get out of the shower and get a towel that is all nice and warm. Even if you didn't have a system that turned it on automatically, they also have a dial at the bottom that will turn it on and off, and which you can also regulate how hot you want it to get. (The hotter the better as far as I'm concerned.) When I go back to the States, we are going to redo our master bath. My husband and I both agreed this might be a luxury we might want to add!

WRC - LAST OF THE RALLY PICTURES

2009-11-04T11:13:00.018Z

Friday night Press Conference:

Cars coming into the Millenium Center Racegrounds:

Saturday night Press Conference:

Last Day of Racing:

Mikko Hirvonen - Ford Abu Dhabi

Henning Solberg and Cato Menkerud - Ford Stobart

I think these next 2 are the Citroen Junior team - Petter Solberg and Phil Mills

Mikko Hirvonen (Ford-Abu Dhabi)

The winners! - Sebastien Loeb and Daniel Elena (Citroen)

WRC - THE CITROEN TEAM

2009-11-04T10:34:00.005Z

This is the Citroen Race Team. They stayed at the same hotel that we did. Every night I would hear someone running down the hall. Then I'd hear someone again running. This kept happening every night. Finally, the last night, I got up and went to the door and looked out the peephole. It was one (or more, who knows?) of the team member jogging through the halls. We ate breakfast 2 mornings with them. I can look at the team picture and remember most of them. You had to pay for the breakfast when you booked your room, so to make sure no one ate without paying, they didn't have any silverware there. You had to go to the front desk and ask for silverware. If you look at the team members in red and find the tallest guy, he is the one who asked me (in halting English with a French accent) where the silverware was. I pointed to the front desk and told him he had to go ask for it. One morning, we were eating breakfast and one of the team members came in. He walked over to a table where 2 older men sat and went up to each one and kissed them on each cheek. At first I was like, "Hey that guy just kissed that guy!" But then I saw him do it to the other guy and I remembered that that is how the French greet each other. A kiss on each cheek. If they really like someone, they will do it a
3rd time back on the first cheek.

WRC - THE FORD EXHIBIT

2009-11-02T15:42:00.003Z

My husband was taking so long to take this first picture that I finally told him to "forget it" and started to walk away...then he took the picture. :0+

Guess who loves the color orange?

WRC - SWEET LAMB 2

2009-11-02T15:30:00.006Z

My husband took these pictures at high-speed - you know where it takes like 50 shots almost at once. To me, I'd rather just take them the other way. This way, you just have a lot of pictures of sort of the same thing. Anyway, this is the first day of racing, the afternoon leg at Sweet Lamb 2.

WRC - BUILTH WELLS SERVICE CENTER

2009-11-02T13:45:00.021Z

The actual first day of racing (Friday) we decided to sleep in (since we had to get up at 3:45 the day before to catch our plane) and go out to the first service stop at Builth Wells. We had calculated to arrive there early, but even as we were walking in (and we were among the first to arrive) the cars were already coming in. We got excellent spots right up next to the barrier. My husband saw the cars coming in so I told him to go on ahead (since I couldn't walk fast) and he was at one spot and I at another. Which worked out quite well, since the first few cars in parked by him. Then when the other cars coming in started parking in front of me, he just came over and stood by me. I've tried to identify those I know. Those not noted, I'm not sure who they are. Here are the pictures:

Mikko Hirvonen - Ford Abu Dhabi Team

Dani Sordo - Citroen Team

Sebastien Loeb's car - Citroen Team

Stobart Ford Team

Notice the dirt (dried mud) that is all over this car. Most cars looked like this since it rained so much. You couldn't even tell what color the cars were nor who they were since they were so dirty. This is Matthew Wilson's Stobart Ford Team Car.

These guys were exactly in front of me. This is a Stobart Ford Team. They had something wrong with their engine and as soon as their car stopped, they jumped out and opened the hood and started fixing whatever was wrong with it. This is Henning Solberg and Cato Menkerud, another Stobart Ford Team Car.

WRC - FORD FOCUS SHOW

2009-10-30T14:37:00.007Z

The first day we went to the Rally, we went to the Ford Focus Show. We found out later that they did this show every day. It was a stunt driver for Ford and he was absolutely amazing! I couldn't believe some of the stuff he did. The most amazing thing he did was to parallel park at high speed. That doesn't mean backwards either. I mean he came forward towards the space at a high speed, slammed on the brakes, did a 180 turn and slid the car into the space! I'm not kidding! Of course he started out with a big space, but then he kept making the other guy move the car up more and more. Finally I thought, "Hey, I'll bet that while we're watching him slide that car in, the other guy is moving the car backwards so it will fit." He had one parked car in front, the the back car had a guy in it that would move it closer every time. Well finally the 2nd guy moved it so close I thought there was no way he would be able to get it in. Then the 2nd guy got out of the 2nd car and said he was too scared and wasn't going to stay in the car. (I later found out by watching a 2nd show that it was all part of the show, but still....) I almost didn't even want to watch, but sure enough, he got it in with just mico-inches to spare! He was quite the driver! If you registered at the Ford booth, you got to put your name in a box to be drawn out, and if so you got to ride in the black car at the next show when it drove it on 2 wheels on one side! There were so many people watching we really couldn't get a great picture of him parallel parking the cars, so sorry.

WRC FUN

2009-10-29T20:58:00.005Z

I thought this particular race car driver looked like quite a hunk so I decided to take a picture of him. :0)
(PS: He's driving to a simulator)

WORLD RALLY CHAMIPIONSHIP - CARDIFF, WALES

2009-10-29T14:55:00.012Z

This is the site of the World Rally Championship in Cardiff, Wales. Cardiff is the capital of Wales. Be sure to click on the pictures so you can see them bigger.

The Rally took place at the Millennium Center in Cardiff. The Millennium Center is a place where you can go watch opera, or musicals. They also have community performances in the atrium of the center. (Look for the stage with the grand piano.) We saw 2 or 3 different groups performing there while we were there at the Rally. It was really great to be right in front of the Millennium Center, because then you could go inside for "real bathrooms" instead of Port-O-Potties, and they also had a couple of refreshment places to buy food. On the other side of the complex was a lot of restaurants and some shops. Our favorite places to eat there were: The Gourmet Burger, and Pizza Express, and the Welsh Cake shop. The Rally took place in the paved open area between the Millennium Center and the restaurants and shops, and went all the way down to the bay. This area was called "Roald Dahl Pass". There was a visitor's center that we went to and also a little Norwegian church where Roald Dahl was baptized, and a Lightship in the bay that you could tour.

WRC MINI COOPER EXHIBIT

2009-10-28T16:19:00.005Z

These are some pictures from the Mini Cooper exhibit at the WRC grounds. The guy said that they used to race Minis a lot in the past. These are Mini Coopers from the 60's, through the 90's:

RACE PICTURES COMING

2009-10-28T14:59:00.001Z

My camera-mad husband took over 600 pictures of the race. So have patience while I sort through them. I'll probably post them in lots of different post subjects. :0)

THE FASHION MODE OF THE DAY

2009-10-28T13:42:00.003Z

I found out that the best hair-do for slogging through the mud and standing for an hour in the rain is to pull your hair back in a pony-tail, put on a ball cap and go. Although when the wind started blowing really hard and the rain was pouring down, I had to put a scarf over my cap. Knit gloves and rain do not mix. :0+ I wore this fleece jacket with another raincoat over it and Gore-Tex tennis shoes (waterproof). I had to change shoes to get back into the car because they were covered in mud, as were the back of the legs of my pants. After we went back to our motel and changed our pants and got dry shoes and socks, we went back to the Race park. (The muddy part was out in the country where they were running the different stages of the race.) This is a picture of yours truly standing by our rent car, which I swear my husband thought was his own personal race car. :0) It's a Vauxhall, for those who are wondering.

WELSH CAKES

2009-10-28T13:26:00.004Z

One of the best things we found out about Wales is Welsh Cakes! Yum! We found a little shop that made them right there on big griddle in their store. You could buy 12 of them for 4.50 pounds. They are a cross between a sort of biscuity sugar cookie and a pancake. Sounds like an odd combination, but they are so good - especially warm right off of the griddle! They had a lemon white chocolate, one with currants, and a apple cinnamon flavor. I asked my husband which flavor he liked best. He said, "Flavor? They were different flavors?" He ate them so fast he didn't even pause to notice. I liked the lemon white chocolate best. Some people put jam on them. Maybe that is for plain ones. I liked these and wished I could have bought a package to take home, but I knew they probably wouldn't even have lasted the trip to the airport. :0) Here's a recipe I found online for Welsh Cakes.
Welsh Cakes Recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated white sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground mace
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
1/3 cup currants or raisins
1/4 cup chopped mixed peel
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 - 4 tablespoons milk
--In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, and mace. Cut the butter into small pieces and blend into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs. Stir in the currants and mixed peel. Add the beaten egg and enough milk to form a light dough.
--Knead the dough gently on a lightly floured surface and roll to a thickness of 1/4 inch (5 mm). Cut into rounds using a 2 1/2 inch (6 cm) cookie cutter.
Lightly butter a griddle, heavy frying pan, or electric frying pan and heat to medium hot. Cook the welsh cakes for about 5 minutes per side, or until they are golden brown, but still soft in the middle. Immediately after baking, sprinkle with granulated white sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Welsh cakes can also be eaten buttered or split in half and spread with jam.
--Makes about 20 - 2 1/2 inch cakes.
Note: Welsh Cakes can also be baked in a 350 degree F (177 degree C) oven. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for about 7 - 9 minutes on each side or until set and very lightly browned yet still soft inside (they won't get as brown as when you cook them on a griddle).

FLYING RYAN AIR

2009-10-28T12:47:00.007Z

Ryan Air is Ireland's airline. They have cheap flights. Lots of people fly Ryan Air to other countries around Europe because the flights are so cheap. You have to watch their website (or have them email you) to get their cheap flight deals. One time we got a deal to fly to Liverpool for only 1 Euro per seat. Now you think, "Wow! 1 Euro for a flight to England!" But see, what they don't tell you until you check further is that yes, the seat is only 1 Euro, but then you have to pay taxes, which bring it up to $51 per seat. Still a good deal. But then if you want Priority boarding (Be one of the first 50 people on the plane) you have to pay
5 Euro extra for that. There is no reserved seating. There is also no free drink or refreshment service on the plane either. They serve nothing free - not even water. I also heard a rumor but haven't checked it out that if you have to go to the bathroom on the plane it cost 1 Euro. Getting the picture?
We flew Ryan Air to Wales last weekend to go to the World Rally Championship Races in Cardiff. Since we were going for 4 days and 4 nights, we needed more than just a small carry on. Ryan Air has strict carry-on restrictions and you have to have a carry-on bag smaller than most airline carry-ons. Since we didn't have a bag that small other than a backpack, we decided we would have to check a bag. To check a bag, you have to get on their website and let them know you are going to check a bag either when you buy your ticket, or sometime before you check-in online. (And yes, they have required online check-in.) My husband didn't put down that we would be checking a bag because he naively thought we could maybe buy some carry-on bags. So when we decided to just check one big bag, he got online to let them know we would be checking it, but the website wouldn't let him. He tried several times. I don't know, maybe he wasn't doing it right, but regardless he finally gave up and just checked in thinking he could call them and check the bag over the phone. You see, to check the bag it costs you $50 a bag. See, now you see why their flights are so cheap. Well, when I called them to check the bag the said it would be $70 to check it because my husband had already checked in online and if you check in online first, then it costs $70. I told them that the website wouldn't work right, but too bad. So $70 to check our bag going over.
Coming home we knew we were going to be overweight with our bag. Sure enough when they weighed it, it was 2 kilos overweight. I knew it was because my husband had bought a Ford jacket and had put his other coat inside the suitcase. How much could it cost to be overweight just a little? We found out - 40 Euro more. I told my husband we should have just opened up the suitcase and taken out the coat (which was actually a coat with a jacket liner) and he could have worn one and I could have worn the other over the coats we had. All you have to do is wear it onto the plane and then you can take it off.
I forgot to mention that Ryan Air planes are usually the last ones at the far end of the airport. In Dublin you walk FOREVER to the Ryan Air terminal, then walk outside on the tarmac and up the steps into the plane. In Bristol, we had to wait for a bus - where you just get on and stand up and they cram as many bodies as they can (all standing up) into the bus and drive WAY OUT to the last plane on the tarmac, then walk across the tarmac and up the steps to the plane.
I know lots of peopole who fly Ryan Air. I guess they don't mind the many restrictions and cheapness of the airline. I have several friends here who will not fly Ryan Air anymore. I guess it's time to check out Air France and some of the other airlines.

THE BEATLES EXPERIENCE

2009-10-17T16:36:00.012+01:00

Last weekend we went to Liverpool and went to Albert Docks to The Beatles Story Experience. Unfortunately we forgot our camera, so all we had to take pictures with was my cell phone. These are pretty bad pictures, but you can at least get an idea of what the place was like. It was 12.50 pounds to get in and they are supposed to give you headphones and a little radio thing. Then you go around and push the number on the sign to listen to the story about the display you are looking at. There were so many people there we had to wait 20 minutes to get in and then when we went to get our headphones they were out of them. He handed me one of the radio things and told me to "hold it up to my ear". I said, "Are you kidding me?" He wasn't. Well, that lasted for about 15 minutes and then it got to be a real pain to do that because not only was your arm getting tired, it was noisy in there and you coulndn't hear real well. So finally I just turned mine off and looked at the displays. They had some cool stuff. The first place you see is the actual Cavern Club where the Beatles first started to play. Then they just had mock-ups of other places like their recording studio, and then album cover places. They had maniquins dressed to look like the Beatles and their guitars, etc. Then at the end was The Fab Four Store where they sold t-shirts and lots of Beatles memorabilla. I always wish I had bought more stuff the day after. We didn't take a lot of pictures, because we weren't sure how many my phone would hold. Anyway, here are the pics:

At the Cavern Club.

This is a really bad picture, but it's Abbey Road.

We all live in a Yellow Submarine..

The real captain of the Yellow Submarine.

Just resting my head on Paul's shoulder...He didn't mind. :0)

John's glasses:

John Lennon's white baby grand piano and guitar.

Yours truly outside the exhibit. :0)

These big things were just outside the building. I'm not sure what they were but it reminded me of submarine periscopes, so we took the pictures. I thought they should have painted them yellow, for the Yellow Submarine, but they really didn't have anything to do with the Beatles Story.

This is a tour you can take around the Docks and I'm not sure where else. After they do a land tour, this thing goes down in the water and does a water tour around the docks. Pretty fun to watch! They have one in Dublin also.

Back at John Lennon airport in Liverpool:

USEDN'T

2009-10-14T15:20:00.002+01:00

I thought I'd been here long enough to hear at least most of the different way the Irish use the English language, but I came across a word this week that I have not really heard here yet. I just finished a book called, The New Policeman this week. It's by an Irish author and is set in Ireland. It is actually a children's book and has a lot of Irish culture in it. It has won a couple of awards. In this book, the characters use the word "usedn't". How would you even pronounce that? In the context, I took it to mean that someone had done something once, but now they didn't. I'll have to listen harder to see if anyone uses it.

IRISH JIGGING

2009-10-09T13:41:00.002+01:00

This is the commercial I was looking for orginally when I found the one on the Irish Dancing Chimps yesterday. They play this commercial all the time here on tv and it cracks me up. Just know that I am not encouraging bingo by displaying this. :0)

IRISH DANCING CHIMPS

2009-10-08T14:17:00.004+01:00

LOOKING FOR INFERI

2009-10-05T16:59:00.005+01:00

I took this picture of the pond at Powerscourt. It reminded me of when Harry and Dumbledore were going across the lake (in HP6) to get the necklace (horcrux). After they got the necklace, the Inferi came out of the lake. It also reminded me of Lord of the Rings when Frodo, Sam and Gollum were going across the swampy area and they saw the dead people (Inferi?) in the water and Sam fell in and Gollum had to get him out. I wondered if that's where JK got her idea? It will be interesting to see what the Inferi in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince look like.

POWERSCOURT WATERFALL

2009-10-03T11:24:00.006+01:00

After we toured around Powerscourt, we went to their little grocery deli and bought Irish Cheese Soda Bread, a tray of different cheeses, a few small sticks of salami, and some chocolate Rocky Road bars, and a couple of Diet Cokes and drove down to the Powerscourt Waterfall. The waterfall is not in the same area as the gardens. You have to pay more admission charges to go to the waterfall, although there is no one taking tickets, so I don't know how they stop people from just going down there without paying. They had picnic tables and a WONDERFUL playground for the kids. I wanted to go play with some of the stuff: Like a big, HUGE, screw - that when you wound the crank, would actually bring water up from one place and dump it back in at the top. This was very popular and lots of kids were crowding around it to get their turn. We decided to just eat in the car. As we started to unwrap our food we kept smelling something not very appetising. Finally we realized that it was the Brie cheese. Not ever having had brie, I didn't realize it smelled so bad. I've always seen people eating brie and they looked like they enjoyed it. We didn't :0+ But we did enjoy the rest of the cheese, and the Irish Cheese Soda bread was the best thing we ever put in our mouth! When we bought it, it was just sitting on this big display - no plastic wrapper -just all these different breads pliled up together. We just tore off big hunks and ate them. Ireland has the best breads! Oh. My. Gosh. We have to find someplace to get some more of that. We also bought a jar of huge green olives that looked like they had big pimentos in them. They weren't pimentos. Guess what they were, Mr. Giggles? Yes, your favorite - red chili peppers! Who'd of thought we'd find something like that here in Ireland? They were as good as the bread and quite addictive. You wanted to eat more, but were afraid to eat that many chili peppers. And yes, they were quite spicy. One of the most enjoyable lunches we've had here.
We walked down to the waterfall and took pictures. I took a picture of my husband taking pictures of the waterfall. He was trying to get a close-up picture of the splash the water made coming over the rocks, but didn't have the right camera for it. I told him I bet Dr. Psycho could have done it.

POWERSCOURT ESTATE AND GARDENS

2009-09-29T20:28:00.005+01:00

Saturday we went to Powerscourt. Powerscourt is an estate and gardens near Enniskerry, Co. Wicklowe. It was built in the 13th century and used for military purposes. In the 18th century the castle underwent extensive renovations, which took 10 years. In the 19th century the house and gardens were renovated again. The garden development took 20 years.
The Powerscourt gardens consist of the Italian gardens, the Japanese gardens, the Tower Valley (which consists of many North American towering trees and a Round Tower), the Winged Horses, Triton Lake, a Pets Cemetery (where family pets and even some horses and cows were buried), Dolphin Pond, and the Walled Gardens. They have nice Avoca tourist shops and restaurant and a Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Avoca is the name for the hand-weavers of Co. Wicklowe.

BUTTER FUDGE

2009-09-29T11:27:00.011+01:00

One of the great things about Ireland is their butter, but an even greater thing is their Butter Fudge. Some people might also call this Vanilla Fudge. In the states, I have made this before. Whatever you call it, I love it! I bought a bar of it at Giant's Causeway and immediately loved it! I bought some more that were pieces individually wrapped at Powerscourt this weekend. It wasn't as good as the bar I bought at Causeway. Maybe because this was a little hard, even though they were individually wrapped.
My recipe tastes just like it so I'm giving you my recipe for Butter Fudge. In Ireland, they don't put the nuts in it, but you can decide. I got this recipe from a friend in Texas.
BUTTER FUDGE
3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup white Karo syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup chopped pecans
- Cook all ingredients except vanilla and nuts in saucepan over medium heat, STIRRING CONSTANTLY (to keep from sticking and scorching), until mixture boils. Continue cooking to soft ball stage (234-240 degrees). Remove from heat and add vanilla. Cool* until it looses it's gloss or to lukewarm. Beat until it starts to thicken. Add nuts. Pour into buttered 8X8 pan. *It is important to cool or it will be sugary.

TEASING MOIRA

2009-09-26T18:08:00.000+01:00

On our way going sight-seeing this morning, my husband and I had to take a side-trip to a store to pick up a cooler for our water and soft drinks. We had the GPS hooked up for our trip but since we didn't figure it would take very long, we just left it on. The minute you veer off of the road you are supposed to be on, the GPS voice (who we've named Moira) starts telling you to either "turn around" or she tells you to turn so she can get you to to get turned around to get you back on the right road. Every time we'd pass the street she would tell us to turn on, you could see the GPS immediately trying to plan a different place for us to turn around or turn on. She would tell us again to turn left, or right, and we'd again just drive on pass that. This kept going on for about 10 minutes and we were laughing because we thought it was so funny. We kept talking about how "frustrating" Moira was getting. Finally my husband said, "It's pretty bad when your only kicks are trying to trick the GPS!"

MY IRISH GNIB CARD

2009-09-24T16:33:00.003+01:00

Remember when I had to get my Irish GNIB (Garda National Immigration Bureau) Card? (Garda is the Irish Police Force here.) Well I got it in March of this year - a short 6 months ago. These cards are supposed to last a year. Mine expires at the end of this month. Yes, this month - September 2009. This. Month. But yet, I paid 150 euro for it - same as my husband. His lasted a year. Mine lasted 6 months. In fact, I've heard they are supposed to last even longer than a year. My friend's card is good for 2 years. ??????????? Oh, and did I mention that trying to get an appointment with the Garda is somewhat of a joke? My husband has been trying to get an appointment for 2 weeks. First, they never answered the phone. Finally he got the guy, but the guy said he wouldn't make an appointment, but for my husband to call back this week. He called back this week. The guy isn't there this week. He won't be back uhtil Monday. I went down there in person to sign us up today. I went at 2pm. The sign said they were closed for lunch from 1pm to 2pm. No one was there. The door was closed and locked. The guy finally showed up at 2:45pm. By that time, there were 3 of us in line outside the door, and 3 more people had come and left. :0+ I have another US friend that has been trying for 2 weeks to get an appointment. They are leaving Ireland to go to the States next week. She said they may have to go into Dublin to get their card since they can't get anyone on the phone. To do that, you have to show up at 8am and wait in line. Sometimes you can wait HOURS. Well, we're signed up so hopefully we'll get a phone call Monday.

TALK LIKE AN AMERICAN

2009-09-22T15:10:00.006+01:00

Today I went with my Irish friend to a town about an hour away to visit another friend. My friend and I talked all the way there, stayed over an hour at our other friend's house and then drove an hour back home, stopping for lunch for 30 minutes on the way. When we were almost home she said, "My goodness, by the time you go back home to the states, I'll probably be talking just like you!"

I have another Irish friend that told me her 2 little boys were watching a lot of "American shows" on tv. They started picking up "American lingo" and started saying things like "the backyard" instead of "the garden", and "trash" instead of "rubbish", etc. She told them they needed to "Stop talking like that or what would people think of them talking like Americans!"

Oh no, not the dreaded American Lingo! I really had to laugh at both instances. Problem is, I hear myself talking more and more like an Irishwoman. :0)

CARRICK-A-REDE ROPE BRIDGE

2009-09-21T11:13:00.011+01:00

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge is a rope suspension bridge near Ballintoy, Ireland. It is suspended between the mainland and the tiny island of Carrick. The rope bridge is 20 meters (about 65 1/2 feet) long and is suspended 30 meters (about 98 1/2 feet) above the rocks below. The bridge is largely a tourist attraction today, and in fact they even take it down from October to March.
"Carrck-a-Rede" means "rock in the road." Salmon fishermen orginally built the bridge to connect the mainland with a salmon cannery located on the island. Although no one has ever fallen off of the bridge, many tourists, unable to face walking back across to the mainland, have had to be taken off the island by boat.
We stopped by here on our way home from the Giant's Causeway. It is a beautiful drive along the coast. Because I knew there was no way I would cross the bridge, after already having experienced vertigo just walking on the rocks at Giant's Causeway, I sat in the car while my husband went down to the bridge. He enjoyed it immensely. He did warn that there was a very long and extremely steep stairway that led to the bridge and that one would have to climb back up to get back out. Look for it in the pictures below. The first picture is of the old salmon cannery on the island:

MORE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY

2009-09-20T17:30:00.006+01:00

In my Giant's Causeway post, I mentioned that my husband couldn't get his pictures off of his camera because he forgot his camera cable (in the States). Well, he ordered one, so here are some more pictures:

HEADS UP

2009-09-16T12:05:00.004+01:00

I went to an Irish wedding reception last Friday night. It was a very nice reception and one of the fanciest wedding receptions I've ever been to. The Irish people did theirselves proud - they were very well dressed. In the States, too many people have gotten into the bad habit of thinking you don't need to dress up for a wedding reception. I've seen people in jeans, bermuda shorts and t-shirts and some of the wedding receptions I've been to. Everyone here was very well dressed. Some of the American women I was sitting with were very interested in seeing all the hats and headpieces the Irish women were wearing. I guess it is quite the "in" thing to wear. Here are some examples of kinds of hats we saw. Some weren't quite hats, but were on a sort of headband.

TRIM

2009-09-14T14:04:00.008+01:00

This is the last place we took our US friends. You can read my post of Trim Castle back in January and see more pictures of it. In January, we were able to go inside the keep. This trip, we arrived 15 minutes too late to get in on the tour of the keep. For the next tour, we would have had to wait 45 minutes, and we just didn't have that much time since we had a deadline of when we had to be back home. Since we had watched the exhibitions at Battle of the Boyne, it took us longer than we thought to go through that. The tours of the Trim Keep are on the hour and last about 45 minutes. So these are pictures of the outside of Trim. The first picture is of our friends down in The Dungeon! :0)

BATTLE OF THE BOYNE

2009-09-14T13:40:00.008+01:00

I posted about The Battle of the Boyne back in April of this year, but after we took our US friends to Newgrange we went to the Battle of the Boyne, which is close by. We were surprised and happy to find out that they were having several live exhibitions while we were there. We were able to see two of them. The first one is an exhibition of how the old muskets worked back then. The second exhibitions was showing the kind of horses they had and how the officers fought while riding a horse. The person you see on the horse is actually a woman. :0) This was not a large horse - only about 14 hands. She said this horse was the kind of horses they had back then, but I can't remember what kind of horse it was. We really enjoyed watching the exhibitions!

NEWGRANGE

2009-09-14T13:00:00.008+01:00

Last week we had friends visiting from the States, so we took them to Newgrange. We had been there when we visited Ireland in 2002, so that's why I haven't blogged about it yet. I was glad to get to go again though, so I could get pictures to post.
Newgrange is a passage tomb that is about 5000 years old. That's older than the Great Pyramids. Newgrange is the most famous of all the Irish prehistoric sites, and one of the most famous in all the world. According to Celtic lore, the legendary kings of Tara were buried here, but Newgrange predatest them.
In the 1960's, archeologists discovered that on the winter solstice (Dec. 21), the rays of the sun enter the tomb and light up the burial chamber - making it the oldest solar observatory in all the world. When you visit Newgrange, they use electric lights to simulate the sun's rays on the winter solstice.
Just a tip for tourists: You can only get into Newgrange on a tour. We saw several cars pull up at front, only to be turned away and directed to the visitor's center about a little ways away. So be sure to find the visitor's center first, where you buy your ticket, then get on a bus that takes you to Newgrange.
Also, the passageway into the tomb is quite tight. I am not a skinny person, but anyone much bigger than me might have a problem getting through the passageway. You have to duck down until you get back into the burial tomb. The passageway is VERY narrow in spots and if you are very large, you will scrape the rock. They ask you to take your bags and cameras off of your shoulders and carry them in front of you so as to not scrape the rocks with them. I would also suggest that if you have a very bulky jacket to also take that off. There is nowhere to put your bags and jackets, you have to carry them. Might even be better to leave all purses and bags in your trunk. You can take pictures outside of the tomb, but you cannot take pictures inside. They have a nice tourist shop in the visitor's center where you can buy postcards or pictures of the inside. They also have a very nice cafe with good food. This is an OPW site, so we were able to use our cards. We bought them last winter for 20 euro at our first tourist site and have used them many times since. We have saved a lot of money buying those cards. They are good for a year. Most places charge between 3-8 euro apiece for admission.

AN IRISH JOKE

2009-09-10T16:49:00.003+01:00

One sunny day in Ireland, two men were sitting in a pub drinking when one man turns to the other and says, "You see that man over there? He looks just like me! I think I'm gonna go over there and talk to him."

So, he goes over to the man and taps him on the shoulder. "Excuse me sir" he starts, "but I noticed you look just like me!"

The second man turns around and says, "Yeah, I noticed the same thing. Where you from?"

"I'm from Dublin" came the reply.

"Me too! What street do you live on?"

"McCarthy street."

The second man replies, "Me too! What number is it?"

"162" the first man replies.

"Me too! What are your parents names?"

"Connor and Shannon"

The second man, almost dumbfounded says, "Mine too! This is unbelievable!"

So, they buy some more drinks and they're talking some more when the bartenders change shifts. The new bartender comes in and goes up to the other bartender and asks, "What's new today?"

"Oh nothing much, the Murphy twins are drunk again though."

**I thought this was a funny joke and thought you could even change it from them being drunks, to twins with Alzheimers. I know, I'm terrible. :0+

POTTER PHREAK

2009-09-08T13:09:00.006+01:00

Just thought I'd dash down to visit Mr. Weasley...What was the telephone number for the Ministry of Magic? Oh wait, I remember - 62442. :0)

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY

2009-09-06T21:01:00.030+01:00

We went to Giant's Causeway Saturday. It is on the north coast of Northern Ireland. We drove to Belfast and then decided to take the "Causeway Coastal Route". It takes longer, but the scenery is well worth it. Here are some pictures of our drive up:

It took us 4 1/2 hours to drive up to the Causeway going the Coastal Route. Coming home only took us 3 hours by freeway. They have a little restaurant just down the hill from the parking lot, so we parked first and walked back down. After lunch we went back up but because we felt like we were running out of time, we decided to not go to the film first. That was kind of a bad idea, because if we had gone to the film, (or even looked at the brochure the parking guard had given us when we paid for parking) we would have been better prepared.

We were happy to find out that the heather is in bloom!

We walked down to the causeway from the visitor's center. The first leg is quite steep, and it is quite a ways down there, but it is downhill, so not hard. If we had taken or even looked at our brochure, we would have known some things to look for, like The Wishing Chair, or The Camel, or The Organ, or the Old Lady. These are all rock formations. Another thing we forgot to do was get some Sterling. In Northern Ireland, you are in the UK, so you can't use Euros, but need Sterling. They had a bureau of change at the visitor's center, but all of the gift shops were taking either Euros or Sterling, and some even US dollars, so we didn't think we would need it. We had paid 6 Euro for parking, and he didn't mind taking Euros. The bus ride is 1 pound both ways. One pound to ride down and one pound to ride back. We decided we would walk down and ride back, but we thought we could pay in Euro. Wrong. He would NOT take Euro. I decided to go back before my husband so I could shop at the gift shops. When I got on, he would not take my Euro, but silently pointed back to the bus (telling me I could ride for free). I was very appreciative. He wasn't as nice to my husband, so he had to walk all the way back. :0+
I found out that I had some problems navigating the hexagonal rock formations. Just walking around on them made my vertigo kick in, so I found a nice chair sized hexagon rock and sat down while my husband took pictures with his camera. He took lots more pictures than me, but I just felt like I should take my camera, and it was a good thing I did, because we forgot to bring my husband's camera cable to download his pictures to his computer. So unfortunately these are all the pictures I have. If you google Giant's Causeway, you can see pictures of the hexagonal rocks better.
The rock formations were caused by a volcanic eruptions a really long time ago. The Legend however, states that the Irish warrior Finn MacCool built the Causeway so he could walk to Scotland to fight the Scottish. He fell asleep before he got to Scotland, and a Scottish warrior that was bigger than him came across looking for him. Finn's wife saw him coming so laid a blanket over him and pretended that he was their baby son. When the Scottish warrior saw Finn (as the baby) it scared him to think that a baby was that big, so he ran back to Scotland, tearing up the "bridge" and forming the hexagonal rocks.

MY DAILY WALKS

2009-09-02T11:53:00.008+01:00

I like to walk down a pathway near my home. I'm not sure how long it is, but if you're standing at one end, you can't quite see the other end. I usually walk downtown about 2 blocks and cross the street at the light, walk all the way back up the street and cross over to this place I walk. Then I walk down and back, then back down main street to the light and cross over and walk back home. It takes me about 45 minutes, but then I'm really not walking super fast.
This morning when I was walking it was raining very lightly. As I walked, I saw lots of birds swooping down and flying around. As I continued to walk, they would swoop around and around me. It was weird. I don't think they were trying to swoop at me, I was just in their way. I think they were probably swooping and diving in the air for bugs that were flying in the air. It was kind of a weird feeling to have all these birds swooping and flying around me. I thought one might actually fly into me, and a few did get pretty close, but none hit me.

It made me think of fairies. :0)

TRAVEL TIPS FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

2009-08-26T17:25:00.006+01:00

1) Things to keep handy for check-in at the ticket counter: Passport, itinerary, frequent flyer card, credit card. Everyone does self check-in now - one more way Delta is cheaping out on us. You'll need your ticket confirmation number. If you have your itinerary, it is usually on the last page.
2) Take a jacket or sweatshirt. These long flights get really cold and the airports are also cold. Even if it's summertime and you're sweating while you're packing for your trip, and you think you can't possibly need a jacket or sweatshirt on the plane, trust me - you will. This last trip I thought I would take a light rain jacket for the trip but really didn't think I would actually need it on the plane. Not only did I need it, I wished I had brought my zip-up sweatshirt hoodie instead! Also, even if you wear sandals, you might stick a pair of socks in your bag or purse to put on after you get on the plane. Then you can take off your shoes and just wear your socks on the plane. :0)
3) Take 2 quart-sized zip-lock bags. In one put your lotion, chapstick and any other liquids or gels for security. In the other put other items you might want near you in the plane, so you don't have to keep getting up and getting back in the overhead to get something out of your bag. Things like: candy, gum, breath mints, a pen (to fill out the disembarkation card for customs or to do a crossword puzzle), nail clippers, etc. Then you can stick both bags in the back pocket of the seat in front of you. You'll need the security bag for the lotion and chapstick.
4) Buy at least one bottle of water to take on the airplane. Even though the stewardesses come around with water every so often, for me it is not enough.
5) Be sure to check and double-check your gate. I have sat at several gates before I finally double checked my bording pass and found out I was at the wrong gate. If you have a long lay-over, it is very likely that your gate could be changed, so make sure you listen for announcements. Also look around if you see a lot of people leaving the gate area. Your gate may have changed and you didn't hear the announcement. If you have a question at all, don't hesitate to go question the airline employee at the gate desk.
6) Pay attention to signs telling you where to go in the airport. If you are catching a connecting flight and when you're walking to the next gate or terminal you find yourself starting to go through security to baggage claim, DON'T EXIT! (Unless you're entering the US for the first time. Then you do have to recheck your luggage before catching your next flight). If you exit to baggage claim by mistake, you'll have to go through security ALL OVER AGAIN! (No, I haven't done this, but I almost did.)
6) Take some kind of munchie in your bag. M&Ms, granola bar, Pringles in the can, etc, in case you get hungry after or before dinner. I would advise against taking fruit. Some countries (the US is one) will not let you bring produce into their country and have dogs sniffing your bags to see if you have any.
6) If you're flying a red-eye overnight, don't drink any caffeinated drinks late in the afternoon or evenings. If you can go to sleep, it will help you adjust to the new time zone better. The earlier you can try to go to sleep - if you can indeed sleep - the better. The flight to Ireland from the US arrives between 9 & 10 in the morning, which is about 2 or 3 in the morning US time. If you can't sleep, turn the personal movie screen back on and just have fun watching movies, tv shows, or playing games all night.
7) If you're not able to sleep all night, when you get to your destination, set an alarm and take about a 2 hour nap. Don't sleep any longer or you won't sleep that night. The sooner you can adjust to getting up at a decent time in the morning and going to bed at a decent time at night, the better. If you sleep late and stay up late, you will be tired your whole trip.
8) Don't mix your US money and your foreign money in your wallet. Take another zip-lock bag to stow away whatever money you're not using at the moment.
8) Airline food is not geared to kids. The standard dinner on the Delta flight from Atlanta to Ireland is a choice of pasta or a breaded chicken fillet. The pasta varies from lasanga to tortellini, but I wonder if a kid would really eat it. The torttelini has spinach.
9) Instead of taking a small (security-size) bottle of antiseptic gel, I found some antiseptic wipes in individual packets. I think the box had about 30 in it. I hate squirting get on my hands and thinking "my hands are disinfected, but are they clean?" With the wipes, it feels more like I am cleaning my hands.
10) I am amazed at how much simple politeness can mean in everyday life. Just saying "thank-you" to the stewardess, security officer, or airport store clerk, can make a difference. And if you really want to see what a difference politeness can do, make a simple comment to them. People are just doing their job, but if you take the time to make a comment, they are immediately your friend. :0)

THUMBS DOWN, DELTA AIRLINES

2009-08-26T17:13:00.003+01:00

Delta Airlines is charging $50.00 for the 2nd bag in international travel now since June. Before you could take 2 bags for free. Have these people ever traveled internationally? Do they not know how much stuff you need to take back and forth? Albeit, I did forget to bring the case of canned green chile this time - alas, I didn't have the room! I've actually purposefully left stuff like shampoo, conditioner, lotion, mousse and other personal items in the US so I don't have to bring them back and forth. Another thing I have taken back to the US and left is a couple of jackets, nightgowns, robe, and t-shirts for the same reason. I am seriously considering dividing my clothes to have some in Ireland and some in the US, so I don't have to bring as many.

I can't believe I left my favorite pair of capris hanging in Bab's closet! AAAUUUGGGHHHH!!! (No, don't send them Babs.)

AIRPORT SECURITY

2009-08-26T16:19:00.005+01:00

As I came back to Ireland from another States trip, I went through security in the US and of course tripped off the metal detector because I have 2 artificial knees. After the security lady checked and wanded me, I thanked her for doing such a thorough job. I told her that in Ireland, the security women don't do that careful of a job wanding women who set off the metal detector. It makes me feel safer in the US that every woman security officer does the same careful, thorough job of checking and wanding me every single time I go through security, no matter what state I am in in the US. Be afraid Ireland, be very afraid.

BABY ON BOARD

2009-08-11T03:17:00.002+01:00

Remember those "Baby on Board" signs everyone had in the back window of their car back in the 80's? Well, I guess when they went out of style in the US, the manufacturer found a new place to sell them - Ireland. I can't believe how many cars have those here. I'm sure everyone here drives more careful whenever they see one. :0)

IRISH NATIONAL HISTORIC MUSEUM

2009-08-08T22:42:00.026+01:00

This is the another part of our trip to Wexford. We stopped at The Irish National Historic Museum, which is an outdoor museum. We got to see a film first then wandered through the villages. We could have joined a tour, but the lady at the desk said it was a French tour so we didn't go with them. Later we caught up with them and found the guide speaking English, but they took about 4 times longer than we did, so we were glad we just went on our own. They had umbrellas you could pick up at the door and then return when you finished. It was sprinkiling when we left so I got one, then only used it about a minute and it didn't rain anymore. These are not actual villages, but replicas. I thought they were very interesting. It was quite a hike to go see all 3 villages, the Viking Shipyard and the Norman Castle and Round Tower. They also had a very nice tourist shop and a restaurant.

This is the first village. This second picture shows how the huts were built.

This is a Dolman. They would take three stones and stand them up and put another one on top. Then inside was a grave.

A Standing Stone

This ring of stones usually was a site for some kind of ceremonial rite. I thought this was very interesting, and if you look at the top of the picture, you will see two stones that looked to me like the entrance to the circle of stones. The two stones are sort of under the trees in the shade so are not as visible as the others.

This is an Ogham Stone. I am pointing to the markings on it. The next picture shows the alphabet they used. The way they made the markings determined what letter it was.

This is the second village

This is a plow

Inside one of the huts

This is a church.

This is a horizontal water mill. It also shows the hopper and grinding stone inside the mill.

Last Village

This is a Viking shipyard.

These pictures are a replica of a Norman Castle and Round Tower.

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS - BRAY, IRELAND

2009-08-04T19:18:00.004+01:00

Across the street from the MacDonalds is the entrance to THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS in Bray, Ireland. I say entrance, because if you look close, it is just a gate that you go through and go back along the path to the church, which is in an old store. I've never been here, but my husband used to be a high councilman to this branch, but got reassigned to Sligo, Ireland Branch. There is a bank next door to this entrance. Once the bank decided they wanted the property that the church was on, so they told the church officials that if they would sell them their property, they would build them a church building. Unfortunately something happened and the bank wasn't able to go through with their plans, so the church is still located here. Maybe it was Divine Providence? SOMEBODY ELSE might have a better plan. :0)

MACDONALDS - BRAY, IRELAND

2009-08-04T19:12:00.002+01:00

This is the McDonalds in Bray, Ireland. We stopped here on our way home to get something to eat. This is one of the coolest McDonalds I've seen. It is in the old Bray Town Hall. The town committee built it but then didn't need the whole building for some reason, so decided to rent it out. The town offices are in the left side of the building. Inside it has wood walls and ceilings, and a couple of lofts. The guy cleaning off tables had a MacDonalds t-shirt on that had Gaelic written on it. I'm not sure what it said, but I wondered if it said, "I'm lovin' it" in Gaelic.

TINKERBELL FLORIST

2009-08-04T19:07:00.004+01:00

Don't worry, Tinkerbelle is alive and well and running a florist shop in Ferns, Ireland. :0) We passed by it on our way home from Wexford, but couldn't stop to get a photo.

Tinkerbell
9 Aldercourt, Ferns Enniscorthy Co. Wexford
Telephone
Category: Florists

AT THE BEACH

2009-08-04T18:57:00.005+01:00

Monday was a bank holiday, which means everyone's holiday, so we went to Wexford which is in southeast Ireland. We stopped at the beach. It was so much fun to wade in the ocean! One little 2 or 3 year old girl had stripped completely down and was running naked in and out of the ocean. It was pretty cold, but she loved it!

TEMPLE TRIP TO PRESTON

2009-07-27T18:18:00.008+01:00

As I posted below, we went on a temple trip to the Preston, England Temple. We had to leave the house at 5:30 in order to get to the airport on time. Of course, I woke up at 3:30, and couldn't go back to sleep, but I had to get up at 4 anyway. We picked up our neighbor on the way since she lives just down the street from us. The airport lines were SO long since this is the time when all of Europe likes to take their "holiday". We realized about half-way through our line that we needed to have our boarding passes stamped since we were "foreign". Luckily, about that time we were near the last baggage check-in, so just walked up to them, they looked at our passports, stamped our boarding passes and we got back in line (whew!). It amazed me that leaving Ireland, and landing in England, we didn't go through any customs other than them stamping our boarding pass.

We flew Ryan Air, the Irish airline, and the plane ride was only about 30 minutes. They take off, then when they reach altitude, they're only there about 10-15 minutes and they announce that they are starting the decent into Liverpool. When we first saw the Ryan Air prices we were really excited because they were so cheap. What we didn't know was that all those cheap prices we saw were only the base price. So for instance: The tickets we bought were 35 Euro. Well, after fees and taxes (and they have a fee for every single thing they can think of) our tickets were really 100 Euro a piece. Yikes. They charge you more to put it on your credit card, they charge if you have a bag, they charge if you don't have a bag, they charge you if you want to be one of the first 90 people on the plane (we declined this). We found out that if you book early, that is where you save. They were having a special so we went ahead and booked our tickets for the temple trip in October. We got the base price for 1 Euro. I'm not kidding. So then our tickets ended up costing us 50 Euro apiece for that trip.

Since we were with a group, our "leader" booked a bus to take us out to Preston. Not everyone who flew over rode on our bus with us. We had almost 30 people fly over, but there were only about 17 on the bus. The rest rented their own cars. We may do that next time, because it was quite tiring to take the first flight out - at 8:10 am and take the last flight back - at 9:45 pm. We didn't get home until 11:30pm.

The Preston Temple has quite a complex around it. The temple sits up a little higher on a small hill, and down from the temple there is a church building (I think a Stake Center), a Distribution Center which has books and church materials as well as temple clothing, a Family History Center, and apartments for missionaries and temple workers.

We got to the temple (it takes an hour from the airport) in time to go to the 11am session. We ate lunch and then went to the 2pm session. We had gone to the Distribution Center before we went to the temple, but we decided we wanted to go back for something, so we left the temple a little after 4pm, but the Distribution Center was already closed. We ran into some more people for our group so decided to walk on down to the restaurant where we were all going to eat dinner. On the way there, we passed a house that had spread manure for fertilizer. I seriously thought I was going to be ill before we got away from that. I swear it smelled like the whole block had all gone in together to get manure. I kept telling my husband I wasn't sure I was going to make it without losing it, but thankfully I did.

We had to leave at 6:30 in order to get back to the airport. I think next time I'll just wait to go back to the airport for dinner. Irish food just isn't that great, and I'd just as soon eat at the Burger King at the Airport. :0)

It was a nice trip. It was nice to associate more with the ward members. It was interesting to see the Preston temple and the complex. It is a beautiful temple. It was reassuring to know that the Gospel is the same all over the world, that the ordinances are done in exactly the same way. The church is true. It really is. This is not a revelation, just an affirmation.

LIVERPOOL, JOHN LENNON AIRPORT

2009-07-27T13:55:00.006+01:00

Saturday we went on a ward temple trip to the Preston, England Temple. We flew into Liverpool, to the John Lennon Airport. I loved the fact that they named this airport after John. It was so cool seeing everything, I wished I could have spent more time just wandering around the airport, but since we were with a group I couldn't. Of course, I forgot to take my camera, so I'll have to get real pictures the next time we go in October, but for now I'll borrow some from flicker. :0)

In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life in the land of submarines.

So we sailed on to the sun till we found a sea of green
Ane we lived beneath the waves in our yellow submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine....

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one....

I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one...

CHIP CARDS

2009-07-24T16:38:00.004+01:00

Thursday I went to lunch with some of the other wives whose husbands are also here working. The subject of bank cards came up. All of our husbands have bank cards with the Bank of Ireland. They were all required to get one when they got here, and luckily there is a branch out at work. However NONE of us wives have a bank card. Why? Because to get one, the bank requires us to have a photo ID (which we have), and a utility bill (which we don't have). We don't have utility bills because our company pays all of our living expenses. We all have Irish Registration cards, which we were required to get so as to be able to get in and out of the country without visa's. (Our husband's all have work visas.) We do have other credit cards, but here in Ireland, they require "chip" cards. Credit cards with tiny micor-chips in them. I have pulled out every credit card I have and they tell me none of them have a chip in them. So they HATE taking my credit cards, because they have to swipe them and ask me for an ID and have me sign the receipt. I have managed to make do with my American Express, Visa, and Master Card, using them all in various places. Unfortunately it screams "American" when I use them. So after talking with all the other frustrated wives, I've decided that we need to do something about this. So I have nominated my husband to be the one to go get this through someone's head that this is just not working. Tune in to a later post on the outcome.

RANDOM THOUGHTS...

2009-07-22T15:45:00.006+01:00

Monday night we decided to go to the mall after dinner. We got there at 7:10. The stores were all closed.???

I was reading a book the other day by an Irish author. The story was also about an Irish woman. In the book the character wonders if she'll ever figure out how to drive through a "roundabout". She says it seems like she is always in the wrong lane. My thoughts exactly.

The other day my husband and I went to Eddie Rockets (just like Johnny Rockets in the US). We ordered a combo of fries and onion rings (they don't come with your hamburger automatically, you have to order some). When they brought them, they had a little cup of something white that I thought was Ranch dressing until I remembered that they don't have Ranch dressing here. I tasted it. It was sour cream. :0+

When my husband and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we bought "reserved" seats. They were only 3 Euro more a seat. When we told the guy we wanted reserved seats, he turned his computer screen around and let us pick them. When you go into the movie theater, a woman comes up to you and asks for your ticket and takes you to your reserved seat. We didn't see anyone when we went in, so after we had gotten in there and were looking for our seat, she came in and asked for our tickets then showed us our seats (which we had already found). Next time we'll know to get a seat on the first row of reserved seats and not the last We had an entire row of kids behind us. Actually they were pretty well behaved. At one of the most intense parts of the movie, after it was over one of the little kids let out a big sigh. It was so funny because it was kind of what we all wanted to do. It cracked all the other kids up though. :0)

The other day I went to lunch and asked what their soup of the day was. They said vegetable minnestrone, so I ordered it. Now my idea of vegetable minnestrone would be soup with vegetables, maybe some kind of bean like a navy bean, or pinto bean, kidney bean, etc., and maybe some kind of pasta. Being as they said vegetable minnestrone I thought maybe it wouldn't have meat in it. What they brought me was vegetable soup in a tomato-y/chicken broth. It had pieces of carrot, onion, broccoli, cauliflower and either parsnips or turnips. These are all very Irish vegetables. But to me that wasn't minnestrone soup. That was vegetable soup. But here, vegetable soup is purreed vegetables - like a cream soup.

The Soccer team from Spain has been staying at the Carton House Hotel. They are here for their spring training. The Carton House Hotel sits on the old Carton House Estate, and the hotel is actually the old estate house. On those grounds are also a golf course, and they even have a section of private homes. We almost rented one of those, but my husband didn't like it. I did. :0+ Anyway, the whole thing is surrounded by a stone wall and has various gated entrances. They have closed all of these entrances except the main one, and now have a security guard at that entrance checking every car and every person (on foot) that come in, to make sure they are not crazed fans. It is quite funny, because the teenagers are dying to get in. They stand out on the road hitchhiking, hoping someone in a car will pick them up and drive them through the security gate so they can get in to see their favorite team. One day we were driving by and saw a bunch of teenage boys climbing the wall to get in. :0) Here's a picture of the hotel:

MAYNOOTH CASTLE

2009-07-20T14:55:00.010+01:00

Saturday we visited Maynooth Castle, in Maynooth. It is open only from June - October and has free tours. They also have an exhibit inside the Keep on the history of the castle and the family. We didn't take the tour, but wandered about on our own, and went in to read and see the exhibit. The exhibit includes a small model-size mock-up of the original castle and town.

Maynooth Castle was founded in the early 13th century and became the principal residence of the Kildare branch of the Geraldines. The Kildare FizGeralds became one of the most powerful families in Ireland with Maynooth Castle being one of the largest and richest Earl houses. Garret Mor, known as the Great Earl of Kildare, governed Ireland in the name of the King of England from 1487-1513 and under his son, Garret Og the 9th Earl, the Castle became the centre of political power and culture. The original Keep, constructed c.1203, was one of the largest of its kind in Ireland.

These next 3 pictures are up on top of the castle:

Maynooth Castle sits at the entrance of The National University of Ireland, Maynooth. This university used to be called St. Patrick's College. This is a really cool building on the University campus. Sorry the pictures looks a little tipsy...I promise you the photographer wasn't. :0)

CELTIC WOMAN

2009-07-19T19:36:00.004+01:00

At our Sacrament Meeting today, we had the sister of our bishop - who is one of the Celtic Women - sing 3 songs. The bishop spoke on the Holy Ghost and had asked his sister to sing these three songs to help with the spirit of the meeting. She has a beautiful voice - the voice of an angel. She sang 2 songs I wasn't familiar with. The bishop said one of them was an old Seminary song and one was a Young Woman song. Then I think they skipped at least one or more songs because of time, and her last song was "I Need Thee Every Hour". Fantastic. I'm not kidding. Absolutely beautiful. I could have skipped the rest of the meetings and just had her sing straight from the Hymnbook acapella. I ran into her in the hall after church and thanked her for sharing her talent and told her I thought she sounded like an angel. Not only does she have a beautiful voice, but she is a very nice person also. Acts like she has all the time in the world to just stand there and talk to you and find out who you are. A rare combination. She is one of the newer ones, and her name is Alex Sharpe. She said they just finished a US tour.

PLUG YOUR NOSE AND DRINK

2009-07-16T10:38:00.004+01:00

I forgot to mention something in my last post. Before I went to the dentist, I had to get a prescription (or scrip) filled for a "cover antibiotic". Since I've had both my knees replaced, every time I go to the dentist I have to take 4 antibiotic pills an hour before I go in. Anyway, I was amused and interested to see that the antibiotic they gave me was a packet of powder that I had to pour into a glass, fill the packet half-full with water, stir and drink. Thank goodness when she prescribed the new antibiotics that I have to take for a week, I was relieved to see they are in pill form. Drinking that antibiotic liquid wasn't bad, but it wasn't pleasant either. :0)

MY VISIT TO THE DENTAL SURGEON

2009-07-15T15:58:00.006+01:00

Okay, you can relax. Or at least I can. I went to the dentist today. She is a French lady and I loved to listen to her accent. She told me that I needed either a root canal :0+ or my tooth pulled :0%. She said if I did it here she would have to send me to another kind of dental surgeon. Can't remember the name of them, started with an "endo-something". Anyway, she thought I could wait until I got back to the States in 3 weeks, and gave me a "scrip" (their word for prescription) of antibiotics. Hopefully that will do the trick long enough for me to get back. Whew! Breathe a sigh of relief! I will say that it was a very nice dental office, everything looked very modern and clean and efficient. The whole thing only cost me 50 Euro for the office visit which also included an x-ray. Then the "scrip" was only 15 Euro. I wanted to ask her if I could just stay and listen to her talk some more. :0)

DOES THE TOOTH FAIRY LIVE IN IRELAND?

2009-07-14T14:25:00.005+01:00

Last Friday I started having a toothache. At first I couldn't narrow down which tooth it was, or even whether it was an upper or lower tooth, because my whole left jaw hurt. Finally as the pain began to centralize, I figured out that it was my upper tooth that has a crown. Yikes. At first I thought maybe I could just coax it along with salt water rinses and maybe be able to last until I go back to the States next month. But finally I decided that since I have to take antibiotics just to have my teeth cleaned (because I had both of my knees replaced) that maybe I shouldn't walk around for very long with an infection in my tooth. That is the only reason I caved. Otherwise, I'd hold out until next month. So now I have an appointment with a "Dental Surgeon" tomorrow afternoon. That's what they call dentists here. You look up dentists in the phone book and it doesn't say "dentists" it says "dental surgeons". Luckily, this dental surgeon's office is just around the corner from my house and is in an old manor type town house. I've walked past it many times, and as I walked I observed many people going in and out of there. Finally I noticed the plaque on the wall saying it was a dental surgeons' office. The phonebook listed 2 dental surgeons, but the receptionist mentioned one more name, so maybe there are three. Anyway, tune in tomorrow (or the day after) for a post about my experience of going to the dentist in Ireland.

FISHING IN IRELAND

2009-07-12T16:05:00.006+01:00

My husband is an avid fly fisherman. Ever since we arrived in Ireland he has been wanting to go fly fishing, so this summer he finally has been able to go. He found out that you can fish in the canals for free. Not a great selection of fish in there, but there are fish. If you want to go fishing at a private pond, it is 20 Euro for a half a day or 30 Euro for a whole day everytime you go. He finally figured out that for 50 Euro he can fish all year down on the Liffy River not far from us. He lost his net that I had brought him from the States, but he found a fishing store here and bought another one. He's still trying to figure out what flies work the best, but he's having a great time.

Even the Leprecauns go fishing! :0)