Aran Islands!

After Alisa got out of work last Friday we took a bus over to Galway. We got there about 10 pm, which was about perfect for a Friday night. Galway is a small city, about 70,000 people. It doesn't have a lot of sights to see in the city per se, but it is close to a lot of great things. The other thing about Galway is that it is a university town, so the pub/music scene is very good on weekends.

We walked around the town, checking out the various pubs. Since we were both tired and we had a lot of plans for the next day we decided to just get some ice cream and call it a night. For a weekend trip where you want to "enjoy the pub scene"....or see some cool things (Aran Islands, Cliffs of Moher, Connemara)...Galway is a great place.

Alisa with St. Benen's church in the background

Saturday morning we caught a ferry to the Inishmore. We landed on the island about 11 am and immediately rented bikes. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel and grabbing some picnic foods from the "grocery store", we set off to ride around the island. Actually, up and down the island is probably the right way to say it. Inishmore is the biggest of the three Aran Islands, it is 9 miles long by 2 miles wide. About 800 people make their residence here, while almost 2000 tourists come everyday. So there aren't a whole lot of roads.

Since most people go north toward Dun Aonghasa, we rode south toward St. Benen's Church. It is considered the smallest church in the world and measures just 3.2m x 2.1 m. It was originally part of a monastic settlement by St. Benen, a disciple of St. Patrick himself. Apparently it is considered to be a tomb-shrine to St. Benen and has stood unaltered for a thousand years. That's probably why they blocked the entrance. Oops!

I would have needed a sun roof to attend this church.

It was awesome, situated on top of a ridge that allows you to see the Atlantic on one side and the sea toward the Irish mainland on the other. We had the place to ourselves, which was great.

After St. Benen's church we continued south toward St. Enda's church and graveyard. The graveyard was alright but the 1500-year-old church was rather meh. Enda's story is much more captivating than his actual church.

 After the churches we headed over toward the Black Fort to eat our picnic lunch. It was a pretty impressive structure, the stone walls were 18 feet high and 13 feet thick!

Alisa peering over the edge.

The Black Fort was built along the cliff walls. It was probably about a 150 foot drop into the Atlantic.

After eating our picnic lunch at the Black Fort we headed toward the main attraction on Inishmore, Dun Aonghasa. This ring fort was built sometime in the Iron Age, and it's within reason to believe this fort was built a thousand years BEFORE Christ. The coolest feature of the fort though has to be the fact that it's not a complete ring. It's more like a capitol 'C' in that it is built next to a 300 foot cliff that falls off into the frigid Atlantic. 

The tour guide tried reassuring us by telling us that nobody has fallen off the cliff in the 10 years that the fort has been open to the public. I was less than enthused about the cliff and didn't go near it. The ground, being limestone with smatterings of grass, was very uneven. Plus....you know....heights and all.

After Dun Aonghasa we casually rode around the island, marveling at the stone walls that were everywhere. It's unbelievable really. A small island that has a current population of about 800 people is completely gridded by stone walls. The puzzling part of all this is that inside most of the sections was just grass. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that they use a section for crops maybe once every 20 years or so. I guess to let the nutrients in the soil regenerate.

A view from St. Benen's. You can see the stone walls in the distance.

All in all the Aran Islands are definitely my favorite place I've been in Ireland thus far. It was a great time, a little expensive, but the natural beauty we saw there was quite different than anything I've seen before. If you are thinking of visiting Ireland, the Aran Islands are a must-see.

Here is Alisa feeding a horse. What is not pictured is what happened after this horse rejected the grass Alisa offered it. After sniffing the grass, the horse promptly turned around and pooped in Alisa's direction. It was possibly my favorite 10 seconds of the trip!

Alisa and horse. Sans poop.

1st week of work...

So I made it through my 1^st week at my new job and all is going good so far... with a few minor exceptions which I’ll get to. Basically Habitat Dublin is fairly new and started up maybe less than 10 years ago. Because they too have been experiencing a financial crisis they haven’t been able to get mortgages for new home owners, nor been able to get land, thus haven’t been do any new homes recently. They did a few homes and some renovation work in the past but for the last few years their office (5 woman + myself now) has been focused on their Global Village Program, which organizes groups of Irish volunteers to do projects abroad. Anyways, so I’m the ‘Local Programme Manager’ and basically that means re-establishing our presence in Dublin and getting some local projects going! This will be a big challenge, and the plan is to start w/ some small refurbishment projects (lots of landscape work, cosmetic improvements like painting etc) and eventually do some legit renovations! I’m excited.

So the pics are of one of my 1^st projects which is for the St Vincent DePaul Charity. They have this old house on 30 acres that they use as a holiday/vacation home for elderly people. Basically groups come in and stay for a week, sometimes like boy scouts etc, but mostly elderly. Anyways the grounds are really cool, there are ruins of an old chapel and cemetery (actually a heritage site!), a river, farm, etc and we’re going to do some clearing, make some walking paths, gardens etc. and do some cosmetic work inside too.

In other news last Thursday my boss and I went up to Belfast to meet with the Habit Northern Ireland group and get some info/advice from them since they have a much bigger, more established program/programme lol. Anyways that was cool. Doesn’t look like there is a ton to do in Belfast but I did see the crane that built the Titanic! Lastly regarding Belfast I saw something else that shocked me.... ‘peace walls.’ I had no idea what peace walls were, how prevalent they are, and that they actually gate off different areas at night, weekends, or whenever there is tension I guess. I visited the Habitat jobsite and it was right next to a giant wall that almost resembled the external wall of a prison.... I don’t even know which side we were on! In other areas the walls have crazy graffiti murals. It was very, very interesting. Something cool about the Habitat branch up there though is that they focus heavily on diminishing the conflict in terms of group diversity, location of homes & families selected , public awareness etc. So that’s good.

Now to the aforementioned minor exception to my job going well... because I’ll be spending a lot of my time at job sites they want to get me a car. But by car I mean a mini-van (European standards- they look even goofier!) with a Habitat magnet logo! Yeah! So the other day my boss takes me into the park to practice driving... stick.... and on the left side of the road?!?! Anyone who has ever driven with me knows that this is a bad idea. A horrible idea. Needless to say I need a lot of practice. And my boss is going to look for an automatic, fingers crossed... I’ll keep you posted on my new ride!

Kinsale & Blarney Pics

Weekend in Kinsale... & my 1st week in Ireland!

So I finally got to Dublin last Tuesday and spent a few days settling in, trying to learn the city, etc. It's really cool so far, definitely a little different than the States even though everyone looks like me and and everyone has the same names as they do in Boston hehe. We got super lucky with the location of our apartment too. It's definitely not glamorous but it's right in downtown Dublin and 5mins from this amazing beautiful park (Phoenix park....pics don't do it justice) but we're really lucky so far!

Anyways I had a meeting with my new boss on Thursday and Brayden had bball that night so on Friday morning we left for our first weekend trip. We had planed to go to Dingle on the West coast but since one of us doesn't fit well on buses... we decided to forgo the 9hr ride to Dingle for a 4.5hr ride South to Cork. We got to Cork Friday early evening, walked around the downtown (not too too much to see but it's nice), dinner, and stayed the night there. The rest of the weekend we spent in this adorable, brilliant little town on the coast called Kinsale.

Saturday we took an early short bus to Kinsale and it was maybe the cutest little town I've ever seen! We had a good breakfast (it's also the 'gourmet food capital of Ireland') which we didn't know but the food was great! Then we spent the whole day bike riding along the coast (it was unexpectedly really hilly!) Brayden took like 20 pictures of cows, I tried to climb over an old castle wall. Overall it was great! Unfortunately this ghost tour I wanted to do wasn't being held that night, but we had a really really awesome din and desert. Oh, also I found a lot of evidence of my name-sake in this little fishing town... among a few things there was a "Cotter Real Estate"!

Sunday we got up early and went to Blarney Castle. Although Rick Steves seriously disses Blarney in his newest Ireland book we both really liked it. The grounds were really pretty and despite me going in with no intention to kiss the Blarney Stone we both ended up doing it... uggg. But hopefully we'll have a lucky year!

If you can't say something nice.....

Today I went down to the mall looking for a wireless router for the apartment. I went to a store called Argos, which is the go-to place for home items. It's an interesting store, you can't pick out your item. You have to find the call number in a catalogue, bring that number to the desk and then buy your item. It gets delivered to you minutes later. Anyway, I digress.

In the course of ordering the wireless router I wanted, the cashier woman told me that the wireless router was not exchangeable. I've exchanged them before in the States, so I was a bit puzzled. I asked if I could change it for a different one, or receive store credit or anything. She told me flatly, "No. Nothing." This was rather odd, so I decided to press further.

Upon asking her why a wireless router could not be exchanged, she told me, "For the same reason earrings or a toothbrush can't be exchanged." Now I was totally stumped. What could these three things have in common? I'm not going to clean myself with this wireless router, on the contrary that seems like it would be quite unpleasant. I surely wouldn't wear it as a fashion accessory. What was I missing??

Thoroughly confused, I asked again for more clarification. The tone of her response told me she was growing quite tired of my stupidity. She responded, like it was the most obvious thing in the world:

"Because we can't know if you didn't put a virus on it."

I couldn't help but laugh. This is a piece of hardware, not software. The only virus that could be put onto a wireless router would not be a computer virus.

After I laughed I promised her that I wouldn't swab the router with Swine Flu, but the joke was (obviously) lost on her. She could see I was making fun of her and there was a long line behind me, so she asked me to leave the store. I wanted to buy an adapter for the DVD player, but she repeated that I had to leave the store. It's impossible to argue with someone that dense.

So I left the store smiling to myself. It's not often that you get confronted with something that ridiculous. I headed to a computer store a few floors up and found a similar router. That's when the smile quickly faded. Their cheapest router was 20 Euros more expensive. Since I couldn't go back, I had to bite the bullet.

When I was four years old, my mom tried to teach me a valuable lesson. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Clearly that lesson didn't take. Sorry mom!

Address in Ireland

So some people have been asking me for my address in Dublin. While I hope they're asking so they can send me American candy, they're probably just asking so they can check out the location on google maps so as to better plan their vacation. In any case:

9-13 Blackhall Place
Block B - Apartment 3
Harbour Hill
Dublin 7
Ireland

A few pictures from the Pitt games

Playing Pitt

So the past two nights I got to suit up for a couple different teams and play University of Pittsburgh (better known as Pitt). It was fun to play against them, and to get to meet Jamie Dixon. It was difficult playing with guys I've never met, especially when they wanted to run plays that they all knew. I was playing both wing and post, and not knowing the plays I found myself in the way quite often.

The first game I played really well, hit a 3 and abused the Pitt players with my pump fakes. I ended up with 18 and 10, but would have had more if I was getting the ball more. We got abused by 50 pts or something. It was like 104-57. I was the high scorer for the game though, so that's nice.

The next night we had a better team, ended up losing by 25. It was a close game until the fourth quarter started. I didn't play so well in this one. I hit a three, but then early in the second half I went up for a dunk and got fouled hard. Not dirty, just hard. Anyway, I ended up landing on my upper back and whiplashing my head onto the floor.

Being the idiot I am I hopped right up to shoot my free throws. I got to the line and was really dizzy, ended up missing both badly. I subbed out and after being checked out by the trainer was told I had a mild concussion. Not too bad, I remember everything that happened and all that. I felt something like this. Hope everyone knows what that is from!

All in all it was a fun experience, and now basketball people in Ireland know who I am. Not much else is going on, just counting down the days until Alisa gets here....It's now 6!!!

This photo is of me in the Ireland National Team jersey, along with two girls I've been coaching while over here.

Joe and Kate visit

Not too much going on here recently. Been playing a few days a week, working out more often than that. Just getting ready for the season and waiting for some camps to come up so I can coach and make some money.

The most exciting thing to happen since....well since I got here basically....was Joe and Kate Poles coming to visit. Kate is Alisa's cousin. They were only here for two nights and one day, but we had a great day of sightseeing. We walked all over Dublin, went to Trinity and took the tour there. Got to see the Book of Kells at Trinity. And the best part was the tour of the Guinness Storehouse. It was pretty impressive.

Not too much else going on at the moment. Working a camp this weekend...Alisa is coming August 11th...Just waiting for that and for basketball/school to really get rolling.