Ireland Pictures...Part III

Picture 1: First off, what a cool picture!

Next, its even cooler because when we took it we were completely in the middle of NOWHERE and had been driving in the middle of nowhere for a long time.

Can it really be considered the oldest village if it is abandoned? Doesn't that negate its village-ness?




Picture 2: Gaelic road-signs...very confusing. In some parts of Ireland everything is written in Gaelic, which makes it so hard to navigate on a map written in English. So what do we do? Seek out these foreign language speaking destinations of course!

Ireland pictures...part II

Picture 1: Remember me talking about the pub in Doolin on the last post? This was taken in McGann's Pub, the less-touristy pub in Doolin, which by the way is the celtic music capital of the world. The pubs had awesome food for real cheap, awesome music, and awesome Guinness. I'm not normally a beer person, but when in Rome, right?
p.s. grandma bought the rounds that night...can't quite remember how many that entailed however...


Picture 2: This is a typical sea-side fishing village. Charming, quaint, brightly painted, and so small that you could literally spit from one end to another.

There will always be 2 pubs though....two rival pubs competing for the best craic (a gaelic word that pretty much means "good time")
Picture 3: When I took this picture all I saw was a little lamb, and since it was near the beginning of the trip I was taking pictures of anything that seemed to be different from Florida. It wasn't until I got home that I looked at the picture I took and thought of the symbolism of the lamb and the thorns...thought that was cool.






Picture 4: This picture isn't of anything really special, I just thought it was a beautiful photograph. It had just gotten done raining and the air was thick with mist, which provided great lighting for the vibrant colors of the boats and the grass to emerge.

Could this be a postcard or what??

Ireland Pictures...part I

After only being able to sleep about 4 hours in a 32 hour time-span, we arrived in Shannon greeted by lilting accents, cold rain, and driving on the other side of the road in a rental car. Within 10 miles of the airport, we clipped a couple of car mirrors and managed to blow-out our tire on their very narrow roads. However, within 3 minutes we were rescued by the nicest man who called his friend in town to come change our tire and we were invited in this family's house to enjoy tea and biscuits next to a peat fire while we waited for the tire guy to come. Talk about hospitality!


This picture was taken in Doolin, the pokiest fun little town with the most awesome pub in County Clare. This watchtower is about 900 years old and is now a private residence. The owners get a nice view of the Atlantic and the Aran Islands in the distance.

Do you see something? Oh yeah, its a piece of my heart that was left there.

I will have this awesome watchtower home someday...


This picture was taken at the Cliffs of Moher. In case you can't quite tell, they were awesome! I hiked up these bad boys listening to Sigur Ros and hearing the roar of the ocean get louder the closer I got to the top. I eventually hopped a fence that had huge warnings on it not to go beyond this point, but I was determined to crawl on my stomach and hang my head over the edge. What a rush!

To gain a better prospective on their height, just to the right of the watchtower in the distance there are three people walking around.

The Summer of In-Between

There is something slightly magical about summer...summer romances, summer adventures--it seems as if you can take a temporary break from your life during these three months, do things not normally in your character or even things you'd like to admit to, and simply dismiss it all due to the heat, the night, or even the bugs. There is the famous "Summer of Love" in 1969 and the self-proclaimed "Summer of George" from Seinfeld, but it seems like my summer thus far has yet to live up to its potential. Don't get me wrong... I was able to take an amazing trip to Ireland, (which you can view pictures from my trip on the link) and I lived it up over there! I will never forget the cliffs, the sheep, the pubs, or the people; but I think returning home from such an amazing trip to face three months of working a summer retail job is starting to set in for me.
I feel so ready, yet slightly terrified, to start the task that lies before me: moving to a third-world country to be one in a city of 3 million people where I will be responsible for teaching 25 kindergarteners all that they will need to know to enter into 1st grade. While I used to see the "Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned in Kindergarten" posters as inspiring, I now see them as something to make me feel inadequate and terrified. I mean, I must truly be crazy to take on such an endeavor, but perhaps it is more terrifying to think of living out my 20's by just living from paycheck to paycheck in a rental house in yuppie-ville u.s.a. Maybe I'm crazy, but maybe---just maybe---I may be brilliant in blowing these years of my life, which are prime for saving and building a financial foundation for both a future home and family, and tossing them to the wind with reckless abandon as I sell my things and board a plane with a backpack, a one-way ticket, and big dreams to change the world.
While it is just barely into June, I know that I am here for a reason. God is definitely prepping me...I am finally able to catch up on my "Divine Deficit" i.e. "churchy life" from college. God moved in awesome and miraculous ways in my life during college, most of which got me to the point where I am at today, but I missed out on some of the basics, like actually going to church during my 4 years there. So not everything about this summer so far is really as bad as I may have led you to believe a couple of paragraphs ago...I'm just ready to go. It would be like hearing from a psychic that the man of your dreams will be everything that you're looking for and so much more, but it will be 10 more years until you meet him--hard to enjoy and fully live life up until that point. But these are the times to savor, and like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (Did I mention I've been subjecting myself to soap operas for the past few weeks??)