1 Day

Yes indeed. This time tomorrow I'll be sitting on a plane about to take off from Heathrow. Hurrah! It's going to be a great trip. I'll be meeting up with friends, going to a Cornell alumni event, attending what is certainly going to be a FABULOUS wedding, and, of course, seeing my family. I have to say I'm really excited for the wedding and am sure I'll have a story or two to share.

Last post I mentioned I was in Cork and that I kissed the Blarney Stone. Here's proof:


If you look at the zoomed in pic below, you can see that you have to lie down, lean over about 50 feet up in this castle, and kiss the last stone at the bottom of this wall. A bit bizarre, but pretty fun actually. They have these two polls you are supposed to hold but I, of course, was only holding one and got so excited about kissin the stone that the guy was yelling at me to hold the other. You can see him trying to push my arm towards the other poll. Hehe


Susie and I had heard stories about the locals going up there at night and pissing on the stone, but I thought it would still be ok for two reasons:

1. It was raining and it rains a LOT in Ireland (more than London, haha), so hopefully that washed everything away
2. The stone is at the top of a CASTLE. And they are built to make it sorta hard to get into. I've been a rock climber for a while, but even I would have trouble getting up there in the middle of the night after a few pints of Guinness.

Anyway, the other excitement for the weekend was that I got to see my first proper Irish Rugby match! We went down to the local Cork rugby pitch and crammed in with a load of Irish blokes screaming at the ref for 90 minutes. In the end, Munster (the province that contains Cork) beat Leinster (Dublin) 33-9. Take that!


Cheers,
Dan

1 Week

Dear Faithful Reader,

Hi. How are you? Thanks for checking my blog today. I apologize for not updating it lately. There are a few reasons:

1. Things have been sorta slow for me lately.
2. I decided my idea of introducing you to the lady who cuts my hair is really stupid.
3. I've been learning less London slang (I'm sure you know by know what a lorry is).
4. I'll be home in 1 week.

The last one is obviously the important one (or I wouldn't have used it for the title). I've had a funny reaction to finally coming home. You may think "oh it's only been 5 months," but a lot has happened in those 5 months. When I moved here I had no place to live and my only "friends" were the two coworkers who interviewed me 4 months before. Since then I've been in 12 countries, seen 10 people from home, had countless pints of beer, and still only have two friends.
Plus now that it's almost here, I'm feeling like posting is a bit pointless because I'm going to see a lot of the people who will be reading this. Clearly I don't think this is entirely true, but I need to save some stories for when I'm actually there! Otherwise, I'll just be repeating everything. I do love posting things here and will definitely continue it as long as I think someone is reading.

All of this doesn't mean I've just been sitting around watching reruns of Fawlty Towers. No no no...instead I've been watching reruns of The Office. I bought the box set and couldn't put it down. Well, I guess I had to put it in the DVD player...so I could put it down...but I couldn't stop watching it. Till it ended, of course. Anyway, what an amazing show. The Brits use the term "cringey" to describe it, which I think is excellently self-explanatory. I hope everyone gets the chance to check out the original version because the characters are ones you can pick out in your life and you love to hate. Oh the joy.

I went to Cork again too. It rained, of course, but I had a really nice time and did some cool stuff. I'll post a bit more on that later on. You may even be lucky enough to see a picture of me kissing the Blarney Stone. You are supposed to be granted the 'Gift of the Gab', but based on this post I think I must have kissed the wrong stone.

Thanks for hanging in there. No more posts about people who look like me, I promise.

Cheers,
Dan