Family Visit and Ireland

Random view from our daily hike from our hotel to town.

My cousin and his wife came to visit me in June and I am just now posting about it. They stayed in my painfully tiny apartment but we made do. Unfortunately being the low person on the totem pole at my job, I didn't get my requested days off and wasn't able to accompany them a lot. They went to Rome and spent a lot of time wandering around Paris by themselves.

View of the Cliffs of Moher

However, we did get to spend a few days in Ireland. Being the savvy traveller (insert laughter), I booked a flight to Dublin. We then took a bus to Galway which is on the other side of Ireland.

Castle on the Cliffs of Moher

Public transportation in Ireland isn't as advanced as other places and the trip took much longer than I had anticipated. We shared the ride with some very annoying people, but after reaching Galway, all misery was mostly forgotten.

View from the Aran Islands and proof of how green Ireland really is.

While in Galway, we took a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and then a ferry to the Aran Islands. I was pretty happy with both outings as they were both on my "must see" list. The Aran Island we visited was incredibly fantastic. We rented bikes and road all over the largest of the three islands. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great but the outing was fabulous none the less.

Another view from the Aran Islands.

Overall, the weather was mostly gorgeous and highly unseasonable to the point of when I asked our very knowledgeable bus tour guide if there was any extreme weather in Ireland, he replied, "Yup, this." We had four days of mostly sunny, hot weather.

Picture of Galway city center.

Because the weather was so nice, people were sunning themselves at all times. The above picture shows the place where the locals seemed to enjoy the sun the most. There was a constant "Thank God it is sunny and beautiful" celebration feel to this area with picnics and beer drinking.

Random church at sunset in Galway.

Speaking of beer....Yum! I could really get used to the Irish way of life. They are such fun-loving party goers. Makes me wish I had done a year abroad there!

Old burial grounds and view of the sandstone ground.

This might sound like a really quaint observation, but Ireland is very green. I am pretty happy with my camera but the desire for a better quality camera never hit me harder than when I was in Ireland. I just could not capture all of the beauty with mine!

A real thatched roof house.

Ireland was one of my favorite trips. I hope to go back someday. While I generally like traveling by myself, it was really great sharing the trip with my cousins. It was a first for all three of us!

Picture from a cliff on the Aran Islands. There were no bars around this ledge and people could literally jump off if so inclined. However, throwing rocks off the edge is a strict no-no as some obnoxious boys found out.

I am really glad some of my family came over to visit. I wish everyone had a chance to come. I think my cousins had as good of a time as I did!

Two Posts in Two Weeks!

Recently I went to Lille, France for a weekend with a friend. This city has a really strange history because it has belonged to different countries throughout the years. Because of this, it has some really cool architecture. Although it is the fourth largest city in France, it still has a small-village feel to it and most of the people we encountered were relatively friendly and nice. We stayed for three days but I think we could have seen everything in two days.

This photo is from the Swimming pool museum. It houses a lot of textiles and statues as well as some great paintings. It was really nice and I discovered some artists I had never seen.

Overall, it was a nice weekend away from Paris; the weather was terrible for the majority of the trip but the food and beer we enjoyed made up for the constant drizzle.

I still have to post about my cousins' trip and our visit to Ireland, but I am super busy trying to finish the book I am editing and getting ready for Romania. By the way, if anyone wants a postcard from Romania, send me your address.

Chantilly

Busy, busy, busy, busy. I am not complaining because I like being busy, but I haven't had time to do anything I need to do-like apply for jobs-for a long time. However, I have gone to a few cool places recently. Located outside of Paris, The Chateau at Chantilly is beautiful and is one of the places a friend (Betsy) and I visited since my last post. Unfortunately, it is not the place where whipped cream was invented like I thought. However, it is a beautiful castle where a lot of famous people choose to get married.

As a matter of fact, we saw an awful lot of brides the day we went. Overall, it is a pretty cool place, although after seeing it once there is no need to see it again. After all, it is no Chateau of Versailles

How Do You Spell D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R

I have been waiting to write about the Habitat for Humanity fund raising dinner for a while because I thought with time the horror of the night would wear off. I think I am finally ready to write about it, although I still haven’t recovered completely.

First of all, we organized this dinner to raise money for our trip to Romania in July. We need quite a bit of money and we counted on this dinner providing about 10,000 euros. We rented a private room at a Chinese Karaoke restaurant and planned on selling 120 tickets at 50 euros a seat, providing entertainment from around the world (with yours truly as the m.c.) and having a silent auction. We had to pay 30 euros a seat, so that was a 20 euro profit on each ticket. We also planned on making about 7000 on the auction and donantions.

First thing that went wrong: we only sold about 40 tickets (remember this part as it will be important later). So right off the bat, we came up 1600 short of our initial projection.

Despite the negative beginning, everyone soldiered on and put more effort into getting really cool stuff to auction (thanks to everyone who sent stuff!). We had all sorts of neat items, including a week sailing trip off the coast of Nice. We figured we could easily make about 6000 on the auction stuff because we had such great items donated.

For the entertainment we had African dancing, a French band, a saxophonist, and a guitar soloist. The saxophonist and the French band were my contacts; the saxophonist is a friend and the band members were my students. I felt really strange about asking my students to perform, but in the end, we were too desperate not ask them, because my saxophonist ended up not being able to come because of confusion over the dates.

The day of the dinner, I arrived at the restaurant about 30 minutes late. When I walked in, everyone was oddly quiet and I thought they were upset because I was so late. We really didn’t have time to chat because we had to start setting things up.

The guitarist showed up drunk (no, I am not kidding). He could barely walk straight. I thought, “Great, a nice kink in our plans.” I finagled the program around and placed him last so he would have time to sober up.

About 30 minutes later, my students showed up carrying their amps and instruments. As soon as they walked in, the wait staff started freaking out and yelling. Apparently, since we didn’t sell all the tickets for the seats, the room was no longer private and we couldn’t have live entertainment because it would disturb the other patrons!

Nobody thought to double check with the restaurant about the entertainment. I almost started crying because, in the first place, I felt strange about asking my students to perform and secondly, because they drove so far for no reason. What’s worse, everyone had found out that night before I arrived, but nobody bothered to tell me. Nobody!

I wish this was the end of the sad tale, but it gets worse. Since the room was no longer private, the karaoke machine was brought out in all its glory. I don’t know if you have ever had to listen to Chinese karaoke for any length of time, but let me tell you, it isn’t nice. Not only did it continue non-stop for 4 hours, it was also at a volume that made my ears bleed. Conversation was impossible. My speech that I stressed and worked on for days was quickly scrapped.

Next disaster: for some reason, some of the people who sold tickets failed to tell the people they sold the tickets to what the menu would include. It was seven courses, five of which consisted of some type of seafood. Three of the 10 people at my table were allergic to seafood so that means we had at least three, probably more, really unhappy people.

Final disaster of the evening: the auction only made us about 3000 euros. The nail in the coffin.

After it was all said and done, I tried to look on the bright side of things, but being delusional or optimistic or delusionally optimistic or optimistically delusional is not really my style.