My new friends (I sound like a little kid) had invited up me for breakfast on Saturday. They said to come between 9:30 and 10:00. I set the alarm and was slow getting going because I hadn't slept well the previous night. I texted to say I was on my way and never heard back. I went upstairs, knocked softly and there was no answer so I went back down to my room. One of the girls texted me back later to say she was the only one awake. I tried to read, blog, nap, but wasn't terribly successful with any of those. She (Jen) texted me a little later and asked me if I wanted to go to the store with her so I did that. I had gone the day before to get groceries so I didn't really need anything, but I went for the walk. When we were done, the rest of the girls in Jen's apartment were awake so I went up for a late breakfast and not too much longer after that we headed in town for our tour of Galway. Half of our group had gone at 11 and the rest of us were on at 2:00. Our tour guide was a hoot. He knew a lot about Ireland and seemed to be on many committees, knew half the city--not really, but he did run into people he knew as we were touring, and apparently wrote a lot of books (we saw one two days later). He filled our brains with information for two hours. There was no sitting on this tour so when it was over we were hungry and a bit tired. After a bit of wandering, we went to a restaurant whose name escapes me where I ordered a delicious fish and chips and my new drink of choices, Orchard Thieves Cider. (Still don't like mushy peas) We also saw several men dressed as priests--bachelor party. I think Galway would be a good place to have a bachelor or bachelorette party because there are SO MANY pubs. We walked around a bit, learned about kayak ball (think playing basketball while in a kayak on the water--I'm not making this up, but I need to remember to google it as that was the first I'd seen it)--some cute guy was playing. Then we wandered down by one of the many places you can wander by the water. We thought we were at the kicking wall so we kicked the wall, but now it appears we were not at the right wall so we may have unnecessarily kicked a wall and instead of good luck, we'll have sore feet. I had to skip out early on the stroll back because I had to go the bathroom so badly--TMI sorry. So I nearly ran back to the pub where we'd had dinner then Susan (another woman from the program) and I wandered the city a bit, ran into two more ladies from our program and went and had dessert and warm drinks (hot chocolate and a strawberry vanilla cupcake for me) with them. Then it was back to the dorm. We didn't get so lost this time. I would have had I been alone, but thankfully, Susan was learning her way around town much quicker than me. And once again it took me ages to fall asleep that night, but not much I can do about that now. Until next time, may the luck of the Irish be with you.
P.S. Two other random funnyish stories, that I forgot to mention above and/or in earlier posts. My brother used to fly all the time for work and I remember he once told me that when he got to the hotels and opened his bag, several times he found a notice saying TSA opened his luggage--sorry about the bad grammar in that sentence--anyway, I never thought much of that again UNTIL the other day when I was unpacking MY bag and found a note inside it. I'm glad I used a TSA approved lock. Of course now I wonder what made them choose my bag? It's not the one I usually fly with because it's a bit old and beat up, but size wise it worked best for this trip. Did it look suspicious? Was it random? Did they know that bag belonged to the girl who brought the chocolate covered almonds?
And my other random story is, how many people does it take to operate a coffee machine? Let's rephrase, how many Americans does it take to operate a coffee machine in Ireland? I'll give you a minute to think about that (insert Jeopardy music) do do do do. Okay, are you ready? The correct answer is 4. My new friends upstairs bought a coffee machine because they all drink coffee so in the long run it saves them money to buy a coffee machine instead of buying a coffee every day at school and this way they can also enjoy it at home any time they want. Well, they bought it, tried to set it up and it didn't work. Two of them tried, I pretended to try and by pretended to try I mean I hit a button. I do NOT drink coffee so I wouldn't know what to do anyway. Then another girl tried and I'm not sure what happened, but someone succeeded. So I took a picture to remember this momentous occasion (below).
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