nollaig shona duit (happy christmas to you)

it's been a while since i've written a proper blog explaining where exactly i am and how i'm doing and what i do with my time. so here we go.

first i'll explain where i am right now. i'm writing this on christmas day, sitting in my new home on dock road, in galway, ireland. i'm easting mashed potatoes and fried rice courtesy of ruth and grace respectively, listening to the beatles.

i live with four others:
grace, the canasian. half chinese, half korean, all canadian with a texan accent. WHAT???
ruth, another canadian. never cooks at home.
rachel, ANOTHER canadian. where do they all come from?
jenna, the newest flatmate, from sedona, arizona.

------------------------------end of christmas day writing. got distracted by food and alcohol--------------------------------

matt also lived with us for the past 6 weeks, sleeping on the couch, on the spare bed in my room, or in grace's bed. matt's a lovely guy from iowa who's traveling with a friend of his (brian) from home. met matt and brian whilst working for face2face, but brian ended up going up to mayo to work on a salmon farm. they both just left galway for oslo, early in the morning on the 26th. very sad to see them go. check out matt's blog: http://www.kyhnn-year-abroad.blogspot.com.

so they left five women living together in a rather small space. the situation feels... highly flammable.

i work in the childrens department at a store in town. i like the job, but i don't like working as often as i have been. i'm going to try to get a part time contract.

at the moment i pretty much just spend my time working and hanging out at the massage parlour (home).

christmas was great. went to midnight mass on christmas eve, then on christmas ate lots of good food, drank australian beer, and jumped in galway bay. it was really wonderful. exhilarating to say the least. the weather at the time was not the best. i'd say a couple of degrees above zero, very windy, and raining. it hailed earlier in the day. so it was freezing before we even got into the water. we jumped from a platform about 6m from the water, so that in itself was thrilling. add the choppy, freezing water and the weather, and it was an altogether frightening experience! but not too frightening to stop a few of us from jumping a second time. and more people have committed to going in on new years day.

anyway. here's a few photos.


getting ready for mass. 'can you do a double windsor?' confusion ensued.


















family photo: grace, matt, me, brian, jenna.


















heading to mass. never put down that guinness matt. i wouldn't recognise you.


















christmas day























running..


















jumping...


















running again.. this time in the other direction.



































what better way to spend christmas day?

vicious swans!

got chased by a crazy swan today

more notable quotables

"she's fine if you don't take her seriously as a human being.. just treat her as something that was designed to be an irritant. like chili powder in your eye."
- danny on anonymous

"happy hands are like the best thing in the world, next to smiling"
-jarrod, of course

after barging into matt:
"oh sorry, did i hurt you?"
mr tough man matt:
"i'm not worried about me, i'm worried about my cigarette, honey"

"a wood doctor.. what is that called? a carpenter, right?"
-grace

"fate brought you together, chugging made you friends"
-matt, on toast, bec and i.

after matt expressed to danny his great disdain at the idea of walking anywhere further than 5 minutes away:
"but you're a fucking hiker!"
"sliabh hiker actually"
(sliabh, or slieve in english, is irish for mountain)

photographs

1. laundry day (rachel, myself, matt)
2. matt, brian & his hat and myself
3. grace and i
4. myself and matt
5. our home! the massage centre. in front of the door; danny, matt, myself, brian and grace

only in ireland

grace was sick recently, went to the doctor and was prescribed antibiotics

grace: 'so, i'm not supposed to drink or anything while i'm on these, right?'
doctor (supposedly): 'well.... ideally'

was going to post some photos but

this computer won't let me upload photos from my camera

news

got some sad news from australia today. benji passed away a few days ago. very hard to hear bad news when you're so far away.

taking a walk along the coast today, out towards salt hill. may take photographs.

irish consumers

you know what pisses me off???

when people wait in line to buy things in a shop, then wait till they get to the till to think about which of the things they've brought to the counter they're actually going to buy.

then put their purchases on the counter in instalments.. so that the cashier (me) who is halfway through sorting and scanning and detagging and folding the first instalment has to restart the whole process with a larger pile.

and then halfway through the sale, they tell the cashier (me) that they're also wanting to return some things, and pull out more wads of clothing and assorted receipts (most from other stores or purchases).

now the cashier (me) gets confused as to what's being returned and what's being purchased, because said cashier (me) has already detagged some of the purchases, and thus there's no way of telling the difference between them, especially when the customer is just exchanging sizes and can't remember themselves which they're bringing back and which they're taking.

once the cashier (me) has finally sorted the mess out (without any help whatsoever from the stupid (and a lot of them actually are stupid) (not so much intrinsically not as smart as the average bear, as just not clever enough to do things in a logical manner) (in all things, not just in shopping) consumer) and put the sale through, taken payment, given a receipt, bagged the items.... the consumer asks for a gift receipt.

which i can obviously whip out of my ass AFTER a sale has been completed.

more quotes

"anything for free is probably worth it" - john, curtis' housemate.

"emma.. seriously.. i have a UNIVERSITY DEGREE in biology......... I know a thing or two about things getting louder when you put your ear closer to them" - curtis

"it's like an indian head massage... it's like an elephant walking through a clump of trees, crying tears of cheese" - john, random irishman

itchy feet

my feet are itchy... i want to go to the middle east or somewhere in asia. or south america.

i only eat white food

so this is probably not interesting to anyone, but i've noticed recently that i pretty much only eat white or yellow things... chips, potatoes, cheese, sweet potato, bread, peanut butter...

so my diet's not ideal... waiting on a couple of things for our kitchen, and waiting for time to go shopping! i can't wait to buy some green food... and some juice.

umm... obviously my life is very interesting.

a new day, a new blog

so i've started a new job that i like.. working in a little clothes store, in the kidswear section. seems like the people i work with are nice, and it's fun playing with kids clothes all day.

no other news.