Just wait 'til I talk about Erdnuß flips!
Ok…so, to elaborate a bit more on my previous week…

I flew from Germany to Ireland with a plane full of rowdy people who thought it was a BYOB flight. Well, they made it a BYOB flight. We got to the hostel in Dublin and ended up meeting a girl who was also from MN (graduated from CDH). We walked around the Temple Bar area a bit and then crashed for the night. The next morning we got up and went to the Kilmainham Gaol. (sp!) Our tour guide was easy on the eyes, difficult on the ears. I felt like I had to pay more attention to him speak than I do when I’m having a conversation in German, and English is my native tongue. After our little jail tour Andrea and I hit up the IMMA which was…interesting…and rather empty. Not too much going on at that museum so we cut out and headed to Guinness. That is where the fun was, folks. We walked around and learned about Guinness and finished off our first pint before 1pm. Not too shabby. Actually, I have to admit I had a rather difficult time getting the whole pint down. The first half went down like butter but the second half I had to work at. You see, the breakfast offered at the hostel consisted of foods that I have not eaten since I left the US. That meant white sliced bread, rice crispies and so on…As you can imagine, it looked rather unappetizing and thus…didn’t eat a ton of it. I am used to eating yogurt and grainy breads from the bakery. So, I was naturally unprepared by the time it hit noon and all we had was this strange breakfast behind us. Well, lucky us… Andrea had some German bread in her bag so we split that and got through the second half of the pint.

After all of that I had the best bowl of soup in the world at this place called Soup Dragon somewhere in Dublin on our way back to the O’Connell St. Monument. It was a green curry thai chicken soup. Lecker…OMG. Then, we got on the bus and arrived (45 minutes late…) in Galway.

Since the bus was late, we missed our next bus out to Clifden. Well, we actually missed the last bus to Clifden which was the last possible way to get out west where Rhea lives. Ha. Almost. Andrea and I hitched a ride from Galway to Clifden (don’t tell my mom!) with an accountant who was returning home from a funeral. I think that was the most challenging conversation to have. I was digging for conversation, to put it lightly. For most of the trip, I just let it go and didn’t say anything but, I was so excited to be in a country where they spoke English. Ha, again. (They only kinda speak English in Ireland.) Once we got to Clifden we caught another ride with two guys who were just driving around for amusement. They were pretty funny and were able to joke at the lack of…well, everything out there.

So, we arrived in Letterfrack and got a ride from Johnnie (Rhea’s husband) out to their house. We sat around that evening just talking and went to bed rather late...mostly because it only gets really dark there for about 4 hours at night. So, it looked like 5pm in the afternoon at 10pm at night!

More to come later...