Back to the Grind

Well, believe it or not, I finally got a job! I will be doing HR part-time for a local tourist hostel called the Sleepzone. (http://www.sleepzone.ie/) And when I say part-time, I mean one day a week to start! Now that's what I call easing back into the job market. :o) I'm hoping that the hours will increase in time, but for now it's a great opportunity to get my foot in the door and get up to speed on Irish employment/HR issues. It's a totally international environment with staffers and guests from all over the world. And the management teams seems really nice, so at this point I think it will be a good place to work. The nice part about it is the flexibility I still have with my schedule. We will be able to travel pretty much whenever we want, I will have a lot of time when people come to visit us and I can still stay involved in my volunteering activities. We are both pretty happy about it. I start this Thursday so let's see how it goes.

Marco had a good trip to Germany. He met some nice people from lots of different places and the meetings went well. He is definitely still enjoying his job, so that makes life a lot better. He's also playing soccer after work some days and even tried rugby once.

We've been making lots of new friends through work and outside of work. That always helps to improve the social life and make you feel more at home in a place. We went to a party on Saturday night where we ended up doing karaoke with Marco's coworker and his girlfriend. The four of us belted out a Journey song and Bon Jovi......let me just say it was not pretty. But the bottom line is we had a good time and lots of laughter and you can't beat that.

We continue to have nice weather here. Locals keep saying that this has been an unusually nice "summer" so far. We're not sure how long it will last, but we are enjoying it for now. We still get showers here and there, but nothing too bad.