"Home" Sweet "Home"

Well, my week in Scotland ended up being a lot of fun. I spent most of my time exploring Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a beautiful city. The thing I loved most about it was the way the beautiful Scottish scenery was intermixed with the big buildings. You had a countryside feel- even in the midst of the skyscrapers. It was beautiful. I will try to upload pictures.



My favorite part of the trip, however, would probably have to be taking the train to St. Andrews to visit Anne from UVA. Anne and I were never great friends in college- mainly because she's two years younger than me- but I can't even begin to tell you how refreshing it was to be around another American. I didn't realize how much I missed being around other Americans! It was just nice to be with someone who knew my friends from college and really just knew where I came from (Anne is from Richmond). Also, St. Andrews is gorgeous. It's actually where Prince William went. Apparently he chose St. Andrews because it was an easy city to protect (should any sort of attack arise)- I consider myself lucky for not having to look into that when looking at colleges... It was amazing how Anne and I met up. I sent her a text message from the train, called her when I got on the bus at the train station, but did not get in touch with her either time. I got off at the first St. Andrews stop and wandered aimlessly through the town. After about twenty minutes of walking, I decided to stop in a coffee shop because it was getting dark and I didn't want to get too far away. Eventually Anne called me back (she had been in class) and I had miraculously ended up at the coffee shop right outside her dorm! (divine intervention? I think so..) We had dinner and just caught up that night. I also met her roommate Abigail (who also goes to UVA but I had never met). That night I slept on the couch in their dorm's common room- bad idea. A group came in and turned on the light in the middle of the night and the next morning, I was woken up by the maid asking "Why are you sleeping here?" Oops.

That day we toured the town. St. Andrews is home to the first golf course in the world. We walked around that and also around the beach. It is so pretty there- I can't even begin to describe it! We also toured the castle and the cathedral. The castle was interesting because they had mines that you could explore below the castle. A battle took place in the mines between the Protestants and the Catholics. Anne and I could not even imagine how they fit armies down there. It would have been VERY uncomfortable fighting quarters.









Anyway, its great to be back in the small town of Killavullen. I really missed the kids and Gillian and Kieran. I know, though, that it was nice for them to spend quality time together as a family this week. I'm happy they were able to do that!

No Loch Ness Monster

Day one and day two in Scotland have been very nice, laid back days. I never knew I could enjoy my own company so much- HA. In all seriousness, Monday was great to be on my own. I was able to go at my own pace and really just relax after an exhausting weekend. The weather was also very nice. Edinburgh is beautiful! I don't think I've ever seen a city that intertwines the citylike buildings with tall, mossy ''crags''. Its pretty incredible. I have really enjoyed going in and out of little cafes and coffee shops. One of the coffee shops I was in has been frequented by authors Eric Hoyht and JK Rowling. Eric Hoyht's name sounds so familiar. I need to look up and see exactly what he's written. And JK Rowling, of course, wrote Harry Potter!

On Monday, I bought a bus tour ticket that lasts 24 hours. I was able to take advantage of that both days and hop on and off at various tourist attractions. I was going to tour Edinburgh Castle yesterday afternoon, but got there too soon before closing.

Yesterday was very crummy weather. Since I carried on a bag, I didn't pack an umbrella, so the first thing I did yesterday morning was go to buy a cheap umbrella. And cheap it was! It broke about twenty minutes later!!! I'm not buying another one though to just throw it away in two days.

The hostel has really been not too bad. It was nice enough for me to stay here both nights. Obviously, its no five-star hotel, but after living in college dorms, this is nothing!

William gets in this morning and so I'm getting ready to go meet up with him now. He's never been to Edinburgh, so I'm sure we'll do a lot of the same things I've been doing over the past two days. Tonight we will probably meet up with the 'lads' that he knows from back home that are also traveling around this area. It'll be nice to have someone to travel with from this point on. Tomorrow afternoon I will catch the train up to St. Andrews to stay with Anne for one night. Then back to Edinburgh Friday night and flying out on Saturday!

Daylight Savings- or not!

My weekend of playing mom has come to an end and it really wasn't all that bad. At the end of each day I was exhausted, but the kids were well behaved (for the most part!). Regardless, I think we were all happy for Gillian and Kieran to come home this afternoon!

Yesterday, Gill's sister Carmel took us to the Little Rascals indoor playground in Mallow. It was great to get out of the house for a little bit and- as you can see- the kids definitely had a good time!



Daylight savings time ended here last night, so we gained an hour of sleep. Unfortunately, kids don't realize its daylight savings time, so I wasn't so lucky this weekend! Its so odd having it get dark at 5 now though.. and I guess I'm 6 hours difference from home for the time being. Makes it even harder to stay in touch with people!

Gill and Kieran brought home pumpkins for the kids. It was so funny to see Kieran carving the pumpkin- neither he nor Gillian had ever carved pumpkins before!! They were not impressed with the inside. Trying to get the kids to take a picture with the pumpkin was a bit of a challenge..



Kieran and I are going for an early morning "spin" tomorrow. He's nice enough to take me to Shannon airport at 3:30 AM (!) tomorrow morning! My flight to Edinburgh goes out at 6:35 AM and Shannon is about 1.5 hours away. If that doesn't prove what a great family I'm living with, I don't know what will.

Playing Mom

Eoghan got sick this week with an ear ache and a "croupy" cough. I've had a huge lesson on the Celcius temperature scale this week. Gill first came up to me and said "Eoghan has a temperature of 39.4" Of course my first instinct was to stick him by the fire! I now know that correlates to about 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Anyway, he had a few "duvet days" of just sitting under the comforter in the sunroom watching TV- just what we all want to do on our sick days. He is 100% better now.

Katie, on the other hand, started to show signs of a cold (runny nose, cough, etc.) two days ago. About a month ago, Gillian and Kieran had planned a trip out of town this weekend. They debated not going to stay home with their sick kids, but both seemed to bounce back and they left this afternoon for Tralee. There was a wedding there today and then they will stay an extra night and come back late Sunday afternoon.

Eoghan knows (and hates) the word "wedding". His parents went to a wedding this summer and, again, stayed overnight. When they got home, he said "please don't go to anymore weddings!", so needless to say, they didn't tell him where they were going this weekend. As far as he's concerned, they are "at work". Good thing kids have no track of time because he went to bed fine tonight without asking why they weren't home yet!

So I'm playing Mom this weekend (as if I don't already during the week). The kids went to bed without much of a problem tonight, but that is definitely beginners luck. Gill already has her sister lined up to come down tomorrow night to help- just in case there's a problem. Its going to be a lot of work this weekend, but I really don't feel like it'll be too much trouble because they have so much family nearby if anything were to go wrong.

Clothes Line Fail.

So I have had my first extremely frustrating experience with the clothes line. When I got home from Dublin, I was in desperate need of doing laundry, so Monday morning I ran two loads in the washing machine. I hang them out to dry around noon. It was overcast, but non-threatening looking. Two hours later I look up to see it absolutely pouring outside! Just my luck, we ended up having the rainiest, windiest day since I've been here. I'd say there was a good inch of rain. All night I was just praying my clothes would still be on the line the next morning. I woke up this morning to see the damage. The picture doesn't quite capture how ridiculous the clothesline looked, but I will also add a picture of the clothes line on a good day. The clothes that stayed on the line (several were on the ground or down the field a bit) were twisted around the line. Anyway, it looked pretty pathetic. I might as well have thrown my clothes in a pool and left them there for an hour- that's how sopping wet they were.

Buttt the story doesn't end there. So I brought them back in this morning to spin them in the washing machine to get out the excess water. I hang them out to dry again. As you can see from the battle scene picture it was a beautiful day today. I leave this afternoon (in the sun) to go on a run, I come home in the pouring rain. My clothes are still out there as I'm typing this. Soaking wet again!

Moral of the story: Americans are, in a way, very smart to be wasting the energy it takes to dry clothes in the dryer!

(click on the pictures to get the full effect)

Clothesline on a normal day:

The clothesline battlescene:

Page Otey as Steven Sielberg

Live music in Temple Bar, Dublin.. notice the back-up dancer/non-band member to the left of the musicians. We got the biggest kick out of her.





Viking Splash bus- teaching us how to "roar" at the Celts




Viking Splash tour- scaring the Celts






View of Dublin from the top of the Guinness Storehouse

Au Pairs take on Dublin

I may have to keep this shorter than I'd like because I am EXHAUSTED and want to go to bed. However, based on several angry emails I received about not updating my blog, I figured I owed you something.

So, I woke up at 5:10 Saturday morning to be picked up and driven to the airport for our 7:40 flight. Things were off to a good start when I couldn't make it through security because I had to get my passport checked at a special checkpoint. The other girls didn't have that problem because they were EU passengers. Natalie (from France) had even more trouble going through security. She didn't seem to understand the liquid policy and had brought full bottles of shampoo, conditioner, hair spray, and hand lotion. Try explaining to someone-with a language barrier-that their things are going to be thrown away! She figured it out soon enough (!)

We got to watch a gorgeous sunrise after taking off and then landed in Dublin. We caught a bus to the city center and then started our adventure in Dublin. I'm going to preface my story by saying that one thing that did frustrate me this weekend was the money issue. Au pairs do not make much money at all, but I didn't want money to be an issue really since I only get to have these experiences so many times. We did not go in several museum type places that I would have liked to have seen because of the admission prices. I'm hoping I will get the chance to see a few of them when my siblings come over in the winter.

Anyway, so we landed near the city center and walked up and down the shopping area. It was still very early in the morning so things were quiet and only a few stores were open. It was a gorgeous day outside though, so we tricked the rainy Irish weather into going elsewhere for the weekend. After shopping around for a little while, we walked towards our hostel to see if we could drop off some of our luggage. We passed St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christchurch and finally made it to "The Four Courts Hostel". Staying in a hostel was an interesting experience. We had the room to ourselves, so I didn't meet any strange, exciting people, but it was entertaining to see such an eclectic group at breakfast this morning. People of all ages were there- some in their pajamas and some very dressed up. Quite a group! We had a self-service breakfast of buttered toast and then we had to clean our own dishes.

After finding our hostel, we walked through the Temple Bar area. Temple Bar is the name of the area where most of the Dublin nightlife happens. There was one band playing outside in the streets. I will try to post the videos tomorrow. We had a nice lunch at Subway (again, the money issue) and then went on the Viking Splash Tour (probably one of the highlights of the trip).

The Viking Splash tour was so entertaining. We rode through Dublin in a bright yellow army tank- with Viking hats on. As the Vikings, it was our job to yell at the "Celts" that were on the street. On the drivers count, we would "roar" at the innocent people walking by. We got one group of girls pretty bad. Again, I'll try to post the videos tomorrow. The cool thing about this tour is that the tank can go on land and in water. Towards the end of the tour, our tank became a boat and rode through a small body of water. While on the water we saw U2's recording studio. We also saw a boat that had rusted greatly. However if you went around to the other side, it looked brand new. Apparently, the people on one side of the boat were complaining about it's appearance, so the owner made an economic choice and only restored the side of the boat that the people could see!

That night we went to a few pubs in the Temple Bar area. We found one pub playing great music and stayed there most of the night. It was amazing to see how busy the street could be at midnight. You would never guess it was late with the number of people out walking around.

This morning we headed down to see the Kilmainham Gaol (Irish for "jail"). En route, I got the biggest kick out of Eliza referring to a garbageman as the "man from the rubbish company". I don't know what they call them here, but I found that so funny. Maybe you had to be there.. Anyway, the jail was interesting but not overly exciting. From the jail, we headed to the Guinness Storehouse where we spent most of the day. It was great walking through and seeing how Guinness is made- especially when I know so many people involved in the Anheuser-Busch brewery. It was an incredibly well-done museum. If you're over 18, you get a free pint of Guinness, but I wasn't up for drinking another one. Still trying to get the taste of the first one out of my mouth (don't tell Mr. Arthur Guinness)

We then took the metro to another shopping center and shopped around until it was time to head to the airport. We arrived early this time, so we sat down in Starbucks for awhile and I gave them English lessons. The two German girls (Maren and Eliza) were so much fun to be with- mainly because their English is so good. The other three were fine too, but our conversations were very limited because we have such a hard time understanding each other.

All in all, it was a great weekend. My feet are blistered and exhausted and probably will not want to wear shoes again for the rest of the week. So slippers it is!

The Guinness Storehouse











Maren and I on the Viking Splash tour











The beautiful side of the boat











The unrestored side of the boat










The Viking Tour bus











Maren, Eliza, and I being true Ireland tourists











The famous "Temple Bar" in the middle of the main Irish nightlife area











Five of us outside St. Patrick's Cathedral












St. Steven's Green shopping center

Gone Milking

The other day I received the greatest compliment a girl can receive from an Irishman- Eoghan, the romantic, called me his 'bag of spuds' (spuds are what they call potatoes). He really knows how to flatter a girl! Still don't really know how to take that comment.

Today was Gill's cousins funeral and burial. Gill and Kieran had Kieran's sister Emma (David Otey's future bride) come pick up Eoghan this morning to be with her for the day, so it was only Katie and I. We had a nice, quiet morning having the same conversation one hundred times "bab bab bab" (!) The poor girl forgets that we've already had that discussion! She was a perfect angel, as always. Around 1:30, Kieran's dad and sister came to take Katie for the rest of the afternoon so I could have most of the day to myself. It was really nice of them to arrange that because I was able to relax some before the week starts.

William took me farming this afternoon and I finally got to milk the cows. Before I milked, I "tagged" a calf (#672 for those of you who are interested). It was pretty sad, but I figured I went through the same thing when I had my ears pierced! I wore the raggediest clothes I brought, but luckily they had a big windbreaker I could wear while I was milking- otherwise I would have been soaked with milk and covered in cowpies! They have 130 cows, so we were there a good three hours (including prep and clean up). He also gave me a stick shift driving lesson. Surprisingly it wasn't that strange driving on the opposite side of the car. We were driving through fields, so I still don't know what the other side of the road feels like. I'm definitely not a pro at stick shift now, but I appreciated the lesson for when my car is ready.

Garda Station

So when I arrived in Ireland, coming through customs they told me I had until Oct. 18th to present myself to the "guards" (police station).. they didn't tell me what would happen if I didn't do that, but I wasn't going to test it out. So I went into the "garda station" about a month ago and was informed that I had to come back when the immigration officer was on duty. His hours have been incredibly difficult to match up with (once a week for two random hours at a time). Anyway, I finally met with him last night to sort out my visa from this end. He was very friendly and even let me cut in line since I had been trying to make an appointment with him for so long! After talking with him for a little while, he asked where in the US I was from. Apparently he just got back from visiting his brother in LYNCHBURG! How random!! Sadly, he wasn't too impressed with it..!

Gillian's cousin Paul died yesterday. He was not in good shape so it is somewhat of a blessing for him and for the family. I am learning a lot about Irish funerals though- the first night is the rosary (prayers), the second day is the removal, and the third day is the funeral and the burial. It seems like a busy time and a very quick turn-around for the funeral. Since they are busy with the funeral, I am now working some extra hours this weekend. It is difficult after a tough week with the kids (Eoghan wasn't on his best behavior!), but its also nice because finding a babysitter is one less thing that they have to go through. They are also considerate of trying to get me at least one full day off this weekend!

In more exciting news, I booked a flight to Dublin with a couple of the other au pairs for next weekend. I was very torn about booking it because it is Gillian's birthday weekend, but she insisted that I go if I was at all interested. I will be back in the late evening of her birthday, so if she and Kieran wanted to go do anything, I'd be here to stay with the kids.

Oh, also, Katie now knows how to clap her hands! She also can respond to "what does the tractor say?" (go figure!)

Bluegrass in Kinsale

Yesterday Gillian's cousin took me to the coastal town of Kinsale. It was gorgeous! It was obvious that it was a real tourist town because everyone (like myself) was walking around with a camera attached to their arm.. oops! Anyway, these pictures really don't do the view justice. The beaches here are so unlike any beach I have ever seen before. The cliffs drop off about one hundred yards to the rocky beaches below- no sunbathing or beach volleyball here for sure. The tip of Kinsale has the nickname 'the Old Head' because on a map it looks like a head- still haven't checked a map to see if thats really true. We were lucky it wasn't a windy day because otherwise it would have been very intimidating to walk out on those cliffs. It was incredibly mild yesterday, so it was perfect.

We then walked around downtown Kinsale for awhile. We went to the "Blue Haven" for dinner and I had my first bite of salmon (!) in what seems like forever. I had been told salmon was a daily food here, but I don't think I've had it since I arrived. We ended up staying at the Blue Haven for about 6 hours because a live band came on. Dad would have LOVED this band- bass, guitar, harmonica, and a mandolin. They played songs from 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' and several other songs I recognized from his CDs (so basically a lot of bluegrass music!). It was a lot of fun to watch and they were pretty incredible musicians.

A Morning Off

Yesterday morning Gillian, her best friend Vivienne, and I went shopping in Cork and Kieran watched the kids. It was so nice to go shopping and not have to worry about Eoghan playing 'hide and go seek' under the clothes racks, Katie needing a bottle, etc. We went to Penny's (seriously my new favorite store) and I bought a few new things. Things at Pennys are so inexpensive that its hard not to leave with way too much stuff! Vivienne also insisted that I pose for a picture outside 'Brown Thomas'. I had never heard of it before coming here, but apparently its a very nice store. She also had me take a picture with the doorman! (obviously its fancy if theres a doorman..)

Meant to write that Eoghan got a new bike the other day. It was intended to be a gift from the "Doe doe Fairy" in exchange for his doe does (pacifiers), but that failed miserably. When his mom asked for his doe does to give to the fairy, he said "You're only joking". Soooo it became an early birthday present (luckily his bday is in November and not next summer!)