Another Tiny Milestone

So, today is officially our 3 month-a-versary! I know, I know, sounds silly, but my philosophy is that you should celebrate anything possible. Today we were lucky enough to get a couple of hours of glorious sunshine, so we took a really long walk down to the beach and then along the Salthill Promenade. Although the sun was amazing, the winds were really strong, but I guess that just added a little bit of resistance to our exercise. :)


Last night a couple of friends had a "latin" party. They invited people over for "fajitas" (as prepared by a Swedish guy and a Spanish girl!), mojitos and games. There were also a few other German friends and the two of us. We had great intentions of doing a little salsa dancing, but ended up being a bit too tired to muster the energy. Next time. A couple of us were asked to bring dessert as our contribution to the meal. I prepared Crema Volteada from Marco's mom's delicious recipe. It's a flan type of dessert which is very easy to make, but looks great and tastes even better. A German couple that we are friends with didn't know what to do, so they went online for ideas. They ended up making chocolate dipped jalapeños! You can see them in the picture here. They were a bit hot after a couple of bites, but a really creative and surprisingly tasty little treat!


Now we are getting ready to watch the final match of the Euro 2008 tournament. It's a huge soccer championship over here with all of the top European teams. It's Germany vs. Spain and should be a pretty exciting match. This will be a "short" week for us since we leave for Paris on Thursday morning. Yippeeeee!!

Just Checking In

Well, there's nothing huge to report right now, so I thought I would just check in and give a general update. Everything is continuing to go well here.

We had a thunder/electrical storm on Saturday that you can definitely classify as a torrential downpour. Marco and I had been out walking earlier in the day, but luckily we got home before the storm hit. There was thunder and lightning and rain like nothing I have ever seen before. The parking lot in front of our apartment literally started to flood as the water rose up above the level of the curb. I read in the paper this morning that there were actually flash floods in other parts of town, so I think what we saw was mild by comparison. Ugghh!!!

We are getting really excited because we have started to plan some of our "European adventures"! We will be travelling to Paris the first weekend in July for about 5 days. Marco has been there, but it will be my first time. Everyone tells me it's beautiful, so I can't wait to go. I just hope the weather is a tiny bit better in France than it is in Galway. :) Next, we will be going to Zurich, Switzerland the first week of August. Marco's sister, Carol, lives there with her husband and 2 kids. Marco's brother and his girlfriend (Carlo and Katie) are coming from Illinois for a visit, so we decided to meet them in Zurich since we wanted to see the whole family. We'll be there for about 9 days, but we are possibly planning a little side trip to Prague in the Czech Republic while we're there. If you don't know, citizens of some countries (including Peru) are required to have travel visas for most of Europe. Many of the EU member countries have joined together and have a common visa called Schengen. Basically, there are no more borders between these countries, so if you get the visa you can visit lots of different countries. France was nice enough to give Marco a 90-day multiple entry visa for our Paris trip, so we feel like we should take advantage of it! We don't know where we'll travel after that, but we have a pretty good list of places that we'd like to see.

Is Summer Already Gone??

Ok, here we are, middle of June and I am starting to worry that summer has come and gone. We had a couple of "nice" weeks here recently that now seem to have been an evil trick from the weather gods. We did enjoy it while it lasted, but the rain has returned and it's cold!! Yesterday afternoon we had one of the craziest and hardest rain storms I've ever witnessed. Today it's more of a misty rain, but it just keeps going and going. The other day I went walking into town with my umbrella as it's not so pleasant to ride in the rain without a raincoat. (I know, I know....you're all thinking I'm mad for moving to Ireland without a raincoat, but I just haven't gotten around to buying one yet.) Anyway, it seemed as if the rain was coming from every direction. By the time I got home my shoulders and head were dry, but everything below was wet. There's just no avoiding it.

Enough about the rain! But there is one more gripe. :o) As it turns out, living close to the university also means living near college students. What a surprise, huh? Well, we live on the 1st floor, and just above us there are a few youngsters that really enjoy throwing a good party on a regular basis. With loud music and wood floors, it doesn't make for a restful night for the old folks downstairs when it happens. It has happened at least 4 or 5 times in the 2 months we've been here and it happened again last night!!!! A Tuesday night for goodness sakes! About 3:30am I decided to call the property management security company. They sent someone out, who issued a warning, but 5 minutes after he left the music was turned back up. So, about 4am we called the Garda (police). Luckily, the party animals decided to respond to their request. I'm sure they are not too fond of us at this point, but how about a little consideration for your neighbors on a work night! Luckily we only have a 6 month lease here, so if this continues we will likely be looking to move later in the year. Maybe we can find a senior community nearby...hahahah!

Well, I have to run off to my Wednesday afternoon at the refugee volunteer club. It's raining, so I'll have to walk to town. The last couple of Wednesdays there have been lots of volunteers but no kids. :( Maybe it's the rain or maybe it's that the end of school is near. Who knows, but I'll keep going!

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.

Pot of Gold??

So, after a couple of days of spectacular weather, we did get a small rain shower the other day. But this picture proves that it was worth it! I took this from the front window in our apartment and could actually see the whole rainbow, end to end. It was beautiful and I'm not sure the picture captures that. I couldn't help but wonder if there was truly a pot of gold at the end. :) Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to howling wind and lots of rain. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Marco's on his way back from Germany this morning. He has to fly to Dublin, then take a bus back to Galway, so he won't get here until this evening. I'm just glad he's coming home!

Glorious Sunshine

It's Saturday and this morning we awoke to sparkling blue skies and sunshine like you wouldn't believe! It's really amazing what that can do for your attitude. We have learned from our two months here that when the weather is like that you really have to take advantage of it because it's not likely to last long. So we decided to take the bikes out and enjoy the day. We rode down to Salthill, which is this lovely little community right on the water and there is a boardwalk. Lots of people had the same idea and were enjoying the beach. We ended up exploring an area that we hadn't seen yet and found this small, secluded beach about 15 minutes ride from town. It was absolutely gorgeous and I'm really sad that we didn't take the camera. We stopped for a bit to sit on some rocks in the sunshine and take it all in. Marco actually went down to the water, put his hand in and decided it wasn't too cold. So, he took off his shoes and proceeded to wade in. He got about up to his knees when he turned back. Apparently, the deeper it gets, the colder it gets. :) So, we headed back towards home and about 30 minutes after we arrived, the clouds rolled in. Whew!

One funny thing about living here is that the summer days are really long. Right now it stays light until about 10pm. Even after that the sky doesn't really get totally black. Interesting. The flip side of that is that during winter the days are extremely short. We hear that it will get dark around 4pm. Ugggh! Not looking forward to winter. We'll try to enjoy this season as long as we can.

Woo Hoooo!!!! We Got Bikes! :o)

So, we are truly assimilating to living in Ireland because we got bikes today! It's something so simple, but I can't tell you how excited I am. We found a couple of used bikes at a local bike rental shop and they are in pretty good condition. You can see mine in this picture. Ok, so it's purple, but it works. :) Marco got a much cooler red bike, but he rode it to work so it's not pictured here. Maybe you can see in the picture that I also got a nifty little basket that's attached to the front so now I can do a little shopping and carry things home. (Up until now I have been walking everywhere and taking a taxi home when I have a lot of things to carry.) I went to the store this afternoon and quickly discovered that it's not good to have too much weight in the basket as it throws your balance off. Haha. I didn't fall, but I'm sure I looked like I was riding drunk. So now we get to practice safe riding and learn the rules of the road. It's quite different from being a pedestrian! Lots of people ride here, but some of the streets are narrow and people drive on the left side of the road so it can be confusing. I'm sure we'll get used to it.

Ok, so enough about bikes. Last weekend we had a good bit of social activity. Friday night we went out with some of Marco's friends from work. One of the guys is moving to Switzerland, so it was sort of a going away party. It started as a BBQ at his house and then we ended up going out to a bar at midnight! When that one closed at 1:30am, we migrated to another place that had decent dance music and we stayed there until 3am!!!! I know, we are getting way too old for this. :o) Needless to say, we were a bit tired the rest of the weekend. The fun thing was that we met some new people so our network of friends is growing. I lost count of how many different countries were represented by the people there, but I was the only American and Marco was the only Peruvian. Saturday night, we went to Damon & Lisa's house for Mexican food and margaritas. They are Americans from the Bay Area that are here for a year for Damon's job. We had yummy nachos, quesadillas and margaritas that reminded us a bit of home. I really miss El Cholo (my favorite Mexican restaurant). By the way, Lisa has introduced me to a group of American women who are here because of their husband's jobs as well, and we had coffee the other day. They were all really nice and it was fun to share stories about our experiences here.

Marco leaves Sunday for a trip to Germany. He has to attend a meeting there with another Post-Doc from his research group. That means I'll be on my own until Wednesday night. Watch out, mama's going shopping!!!! hehehe. By the way, I interviewed for two different part-time jobs this week. I'm hoping to know something in the next week or two, so keep your fingers crossed.