Our newest and best plan yet

So, here is a little life update:

1. Theory: we are supposed to be coming home in a month and this should be our last week of work.
Reality:we got kicked out of our sweet apartment and are now living in our bosses guest room, we are spending next week in Germany at Oktoberfest, somehow our bosses have agreed to let us continue working through October (they are the best), we have decided to move our plane tickets home to December (so that we can eventually hit up Scotland and England), and for the month of November we will be working on an organic farm in a small town on the west coast of Ireland (dont ask how this came about).

2. Its a good thing we are leaving town for a week because we have made friends with just about every bouncer within a one mile radius of our old apartment. They see us walk by their pub, smile and yell 'hello' to their favorite california customers and then insist we come into their pub by waving us past the waiting line of people.

3. It has all of a sudden gotten really COLD here so we have been looking slightly homeless as we wear almost all of our clothes at once (no pun intended by the fact that we currently are actually homeless). This just adds to our weekly experience of rolling into the nice irish bank in our ghetto clothes, throwing down two fat paychecks and asking for an envelope of cash. We are pretty sure they think we are running some sort of illegal business.

4. We spent this last weekend up north. It was gorgeous, like Ireland in a postcard (rolling green hills into the really blue sea). It was another world up there...the conflict between protestants and catholics still runs the towns. We couldn't fully understand the politics of it all as it seems to run deep in one's family blood; making it impossible for outsiders to grasp.
While up north, we spent a day in awe by the beauty of the Giants Causeway. It is a natural phenomenon where the stones leading into the ocean have formed into hexagonal columns. However, the Irish say it was obviously not a natural phenomonon and instead, the workings of none other then the giant Finn MacCool. Finn wanted to build a bridge across to Scottland so he could fight the giant over there (duh). He laid down the hexagonal rocks as stepping stones so that he could get across...good ol Finn MacCool.


**I'm taking over for Meg to write about the North a tiny bit. We took a train from Dublin to Portadown, a town about half hour past the border between Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland. Our friend Peter, who comes from the North, picked us up and played tour guide for the weekend. As well as Giant's Causeway, we toured the northernmost coast and drove through endless green fields filled with sheep (for some reason that made it feel really Irish) until we made our way to Belfast. The drive really was idyllic and we were extremely content just being in the car staring out the window. It was also somewhat mind boggling for us because, as Meghan said, there is such an emphasis on the division between the Catholics and Protestants. We would be on a country road that would reach a little town and all of a sudden the British flag would be hung from every lampost and the curbs would be painted in red, white and blue; then 10 minutes of continuing down the road a flag of the Republic of Ireland would be hung, signifying the Catholics who lived in the area. Even as we drove through parts of the country that didn't have any sort of marking, Peter would tell us whether the area was a Protestant or Catholic part of the country. Meghan and I were fascinated because it was such a foreign concept for us and there is really no way that we can fully understand the tension and intensity of the feelings within the two groups. Driving around Belfast was also a unique experience; again, sections of the city seem to be designated as Protestant and Catholic, and as we drove around we saw a number of the murals that have been painted on the sides of buildings that refer to the IRA, hunger strikers, Easter Rising, and other individuals and events relating to the conflict. It felt like such a different world compared to anything Meghan and I are used to seeing at home (especially in the Bay Area), and while we can't relate, it was definitely an experience that we appreciated.


So thats a quick update. Tomorrow we are flying to London for a few days, then to Berlin, and finally to Munich for Oktoberfest. We will write again when we get back. Hope this finds everyone well. Cheers!