Updates!

Since we’ve been a bit delayed on the blogging I figured I’d just summarize a few things we’ve been up to in the past month or so.

Newgrange
In early November we spent a lovely (rainy) Saturday at Newgrange, an ancient burial site dating back to 3000BC (making it older than the Pyramids, Stonehenge, and probably the oldest thing I’ve ever seen!).

Appearing to be a giant dome-shaped mound of earth Newgrange isn’t overwhelmingly visually stimulating, but it does have some interesting tid-bits. The stone wall surrounding the site is quite unique in that the rocks used were sourced from 70 miles away, and this was well before the invention of the wheel, meaning that they were all somehow transported uphill from 70 miles away. Also, as you can see, there are certain stones which have the ‘swirly’ art on them, which no one really knows the meaning of, but it is interesting none-the-less.

The coolest part about Newgrange is the inner tomb, which is the purpose of its existence. The tour lead us inside the tiny opening, slightly uphill, into the inner chamber where the ashes of the dead were laid to rest. The construction was so precise that light only hits the tomb area once a year on the sunrise of the winter solstice for 17 minutes. Apparently there is a lottery and thousands of people apply to visit for that day.

Overall it was worth a visit, though if you do, hopefully you get a different tour guide than us - Brayden was not fancying him at all! He kept using the exact same really obnoxious phrases like ‘while we can not know the exact meaning of blah blah blah, we speculate that blah, because of blah, though this is just speculation and we can not truly know.’ And he literally used that set up for every element of the site. Otherwise, it was pretty cool!

Glenn’s Parents Visit
Next up, Glenn’s parent came to visit the week before Thanksgiving. Not too much to say here, though we spent a nice Friday night with them, taking the Jameson Distillery tour (interesting but not quite as nice as Bushmills) and an amazing pub dinner (which confirmed my love for home-made pot-pies).

As you can see we were all very focussed at the Jameson tour (G’s parents to our right).

The highlight of the tour was when Brayden and Glenn’s mom were selected to do the Whiskey tasting test of a bunch of different Whiskeys. I’m sure they enjoyed!

Me Racing
There’s me racing again. Brayden came to cheer me on at the Dublin Intermediate (4K) Championship race. It was exciting because I won my 1st individual medal! A bronze, but still good! We got team gold for the overall once again so everyone was really happy (and cold!). I’m also setting the stage for Brayden to be Michael Phelps for Halloween sometime, as I’ve got 7 on the season so far, so just a few more to go for his costume!

Thanksgiving
This year was a very weird Thanksgiving as of course the Irish don’t celebrate our great holiday. It started out with the girls at work surprising me at lunchtime with an assortment of American snacks. Then, since the guys had bball practice we decided to cook breakfast for dinner and had bacon, eggs, and toast – weirdest. Thanksgiving. Din. ever. Luckily we were invited by their coach Dave, and his wife, Sue, to have a big Thanksgiving feast the next night, Friday. They actually out-did themselves and represented the Irish quite well (having 3 different kinds of potatoes). It was a great feast!

Me, Brayden, Glenn, and our friend Franzie. As you can see they, unlike us, get more than 4 tv channels, which means we could even watch football on our Thanksgiving!

The Bachelor Party!
A week or so ago we were graciously asked to host a bachelor party for one of Brayden and Glenn’s classmates, Jehan (French). Although it was my 1st bachelor party, I’m thinking it was quite atypical, as it was mostly girls! The group is so diverse because most of their class is international, so that always makes for an interesting mix. Glenn and I prepared the decorations, making cut out letters spelling ‘Congrats Jehan’ on our wall. Brayden and Glenn have taken a vow to leave it up all year... just a heads up for any visitors! Everyone had a great time at the party, and it culminated in an intense snowball fight!

Weather & Politics Update!
I wanted to touch briefly on the 2 topics that Irish people discuss the most, weather and politics (with potatoes a close 3rd). While I have been cold since the day I set foot here in August, the real icy weather really set in about a month ago. Apparently it was the coldest November in quite some time and they got maybe the most/earliest snow ever! It started snowing around Thanksgiving and lasted on and off for a week and a half. Overall they only got a few inches each time, but they are so unprepared for it- I have never seen roads so bad! There were literally miles of ice-skating rink roads! One positive side effect was getting a few days off from work (though we really couldn’t go anywhere). The negative side was that we have broken into a water shortage emergency. Apparently Irish people like to leave their water running to try and prevent their pipes from freezing (an interesting technique, especially since no one pays for water...). This led to the water ban that has been in effect from 7pm – 7am for the past few days... not cool. On to politics. I actually don’t have much to say here, but I’m sure you’ve all heard about whats going on here... the multi-billlion dollar bail out. It’s sort of sad because there is a real gloomy feeling because it’s literally everywhere in the news and radio etc. People are freaking out about it and there was a huge rally downtown the other weekend. Luckily in the midst of such a touch economical time we are able to find supporters for Habitat, and brought a nice little article to the Irish Times today, about yesterday’s launch of our new (my new!) renovation project. It went great, now down to work!