Arrived in Ireland

Hi Everyone,

We have made it to Ireland...been here for about two days now. The queen decided to visit at the same time as us, so Dublin was packed and locked down, but otherwise we arrived uneventfully. We are staying at a 14 acre garden about an hour southwest of Dublin...it is the kind of place where you would have weddings or music festivals and it is really incredible. We are being put up in a very nice accommodation, the host is great, and the work looks like it will be varied and interesting....we think we'll have a great time here. I feel sort of like a broken record, but the bad news is that an internet connection has not yet been extended to the garden, and as such we don't have regular access. Right now I am connected through a tether from our host's cell phone, but the phone is usually with him and not here in the kitchen. Even when we can get it, this is a very bandwidth limited connection and so unfortunately uploading photos is pretty much out of the question. We'll still be taking them, but won't be able to post for a while. As for voice calls, the next time I get into town I am going to see about getting an international calling plan for our cellphone...but I am suspecting that this might be expensive. If it is reasonable, then calling will be much easier. Finally, thanks for all the email and for keeping in touch...we'll both be trying to reply as we can...when the phone is in the kitchen :)   Talk to you soon...

On the way to Ireland...

Be out of touch for a while...

Back in Spain !

It's Sunday, the 8th of May. I ate some bad fish for dinner last night, so I have plenty time for writing as the toilet and the wifi are conveniently close together...I won't go into details. We are enjoying our free days on the back end of what has turned out to be a very interesting two weeks back in Spain. We were monitors for a summer English language camp for kids. Of all of our work gigs, I knew the least about this one...due to a small language barrier. It wound up being a really cool and very different experience, but was also the most stressful thing I have done in recent memory. I'll recap some of the more interesting...

We arrived in Barcelona by way of a 20 hour ferry trip from Rome...for the record, I would not recommend this (when I booked, I did not notice that the departure and arrival days were different, in case you were wondering). Once in Barcelona, we made our way to the train station without any problems, now being pretty familiar with the metro system. At the train station, we called our host on our pre-paid cellphone which was kind enough to run out of money (literally, not embellishing) as the voice on the other end said, " when you get off the train, you'll want to ____ ." As the phone was bought in Greece, the instructions on how to reload were, well, Greek to me. We boarded a train headed in the right direction, and got off at the right station at about 10pm, wishing we knew what those next few words would have been. Being out of options, we went to a hotel and called a taxi...hoping the driver would know the place we were staying at, which was pretty big. She did, and so we were of again. Although only less than a mile from the hotel, my heart sank as I watched the glowing red numbers on the fare meter top $15, the amount of money we had left after all the meals on the ferry and the train tickets. I told the driver in broken Spanish that we were out of money for the fare, and would she please stop and point us in the right direction. She said that the fare was three times higher because this weekend was a festival, and that she would take us the rest of the way on what we had. Although we felt pretty bad, we were relieved as well. We checked in with no problems...the following day the real adventure was to begin:

As it turns out, we were to be the only English speaking monitors for the first group of kids in this brand new program. We met the host the first night who told us that he would have the instructions translated into English soon, but for the first two days or so, to just wing it. I though this sounded pretty disastrous, but stopped my brain from running with all the possibilities tomorrow might hold, and went to bed just a bit nervous. The following day, we met the other four monitors, none of whom spoke English...their kids were coming to learn Spanish. It took us about 4 days before we let go and stopped trying to figure out what was going on all the time...it turns out that is sort of how things are looked at here..."don't worry about it, it'll all work out just fine." The ultimate result was that we rarely knew what was happening (the kids usually knew more than we did) but we got to do some pretty cool stuff while "working": zip-lining, kayaking, archery...I should have been a camp counselor at home...

 A few days remain here, free time for the work over the last two weeks. If the rain clears up, we will do some hikes along the cliffs on the coast. Next stop Ireland!

Tuscany, Italy

Hey, Ya'll! (I miss saying Hey, Ya'll...who cares if auto correct thinks it's not a word, right?) Ahh, Tuscany, we can easily see why all of the old stone farmhouses here are being bought up by Europeans and Americans. This place is uniquely beautiful. Everywhere you look there is something to see...there is a saying here that the locals are very proud of: Take a empty picture frame and hold it up in front of you and Toscana will not disapoint. It is true, whereever you look you think you could be looking at a postcard or a painting. I don't really think it is worth trying to describe, but if you ever get the chance to go,  do; I am sure this will be one of my favorite places on this trip.

We stayed with some great people in a 700 year old farm house on top of a hill overlooking their olive tree grove and vineyard, with a line of huge Italian Cyprus on the next hill in one direction, and a post card panorama in the other. We built stone walls, made a greenhouse door, drove huge tractors to find giant boulders, weeded, and experienced some amazing Italian cooking (even made pasta by hand).

The area was dotted with ancient towns and covered with vineyards that produce the world famous Brunello Wine...but I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking. One thing is for sure...I will be visiting this place again...