Was great. I just got back from my first concert alone and it was in France. Anyway she was really cute and really fun and of course she sang beautifully. I always like artists even better after seeing them live. She sang “T’es beau” with the audience.

1. Near family (SA is one hour away)
2. (tangent from #1) could easily get furniture from family
3. Easy to find apartment given ready network of ex-Austinites
4. Easy to move into apartment given #1
5. Lots and lots of live music
6. Great night life (yeah I know it’s related to #5)
7. 700,000 other people to bother
8. Texas Hill Country (possibly my favorite place in the world)
9. No visa required
10. could take in couchsurfers and travel during breaks and summers
11. could harrass friends into visiting me and possibly finally do a trip to west Texas
12. (boring but important) financial aid would be simple, have gotten resident status (it pays to keep old cartes de sejour, drivers licenses, etc.)
13. v. good school of education at UT, with a social-looking, international group of students

Will add more if they come to me. More from anyone else?

Some of the 3As (I have no idea who) busted into my classroom at some point while I was gone (probably during the disintèg on Friday afternoon) and wrote “Eillen We love you. 3A” on my board. (The misspelling of my name is theirs.)

Also they had a whole list of gossip from Friday night that I got to peer at.

is pretty funny.

And by today I mean a few weeks ago… heh…

So I’m back. I’ve uploaded all my photos to here:
http://www.offexploring.com/eyelean/

which I think I’ll continue doing. There are almost 300 of them so feel free to skim.

Am going to a party my students are throwing tonight. Hmm hmm.

The weather here is lovely. I hope it stays that way so I don’t get post-vacation blues. The vacation was really great. ?áa m’a fait du bien. Soon (when my laundry is done) I am going to take a long shower, then put on lots of lotion and clean clothes. My brown boots might be done for. I was worried the zipper was going to bust back in Poland but fortunately it held out. So the only real casualties of the trip were my handbag and the cheap, cheap gloves I bought in Krakow which got covered in Scottish energy drink in Dublin.

but I might get bored tomorrow and stop into an internet cafe. It’s a habit I’m prone to. I’m leaving tomorrow back to Reims, but not till evening so I’m thinking of training my way up to a castle north of here. Not a lot is coming to mind to report right this instant… I’ll be staying with the Y’s in Paris tomorrow night because apparently the Thursday night commute to Reims is not incredibly popular. Am looking forward to doing laundry and having more than six shirts to choose from. But otherwise this trip has been pretty far up there in the ratings (you didn’t know there was a standardized ratings system did you?) and in general I think I won’t hesitate to travel alone again.

Not sure how I feel about Dublin though. There are lots of people. I thought I’d been in cities with lots of people (you know, places like Paris) but this place feels much more crowded. I think I’m getting overstimulated. If I ever moved to Ireland I think it would be somewhere smallish. Hooookay. Signing off now.

Am spending some time in an internet cafe waiting for my bus so perhaps I will retitle all these posts today.

I’m in Cork, have been for two days, and have had a fab time, though have not seen that much of the city. My host met me Friday night and fed me and then we went out to a pub where I had Beamish for the first time. It wasn’t bad. Then yesterday we walked around town a bit and saw some very tempting clothing that I did not buy, and drank some excellent hot chocolate. The place had these huge, huge bars of chocolate and I thought about buying one for my brother but they were seriously heavy (an inch and a half thick and bigger across than a sheet of paper) and I see him so rarely that it wouldn’t really have made sense. My host has been terrific though and I’ve had a lot of fun putzing around.

Later I’m leaving for Dublin where I’ll have three and a half days before flying out Thursday night. I’m considering a day trip to the Wicklow mountaints but I think I’ll hold out on that decision till I get some advice from people who live in Dublin.

Maybe these aren’t the best post titles ever.

Anyway I’m still in Killarney. I’m leaving at 3:30 for Cork where my host will come meet me at the bus station.

Another American girl arrived in my hostel room last night and we went out. It was pretty fun. First we went to a bar where they had lots of different beers. Okay that’s not true. First we went to a bar/restaurant that had live music but seemed to be full of geriatrics. We left after a bit and went to the second bar, where I had a Newcastle, which reminded me of college. I don’t remember why we drank Newcastle in college. Anyway the bar closed at midnight (lame) but they sent us to a club around the corner with these pathetic free passes to get in. They were outdated, but the bartender turned the 11 into a 17 and the woman taking the passes at the entrance didn’t care at all. There was a pretty good band playing when we went in, covering lots of indie songs and then some heavy metal. But someone drenched my bag in beer when I wasn’t watching so I had to chuck it this morning. It’s okay, it was pretty old anyway and really starting to show its age. So I bought a cheap one. Oh, and apparently when drunk I pick up the accents of people around me. It was completely unintentional but ridiculous. I’m surprised no one made fun of me.

I’m kind of amazed by how much I like Ireland. I always thought I would like it but honestly kind of figured my expectations were a little high. They weren’t. And so many tourists are French here that I’m wondering if I could get a seasonal (summer) job in tourism somewhere. I think it would be the most fun ever.

Speaking of fun I walked up to some gardens this morning and twice passed a woman walking a 3-month-old Westie. I know he was 3 months because I asked her. He was the cutest thing ever (I’m very prone to hyperbole in this post). I’m dying to get one. I think I also want a kitten and I want to name him Patton because it would be funny and because of this song Mala sent me on a mix CD.

So, here’s my current dream life:
1) live somewhere in North America teaching French during the year
2) have Westieand cat
3) go to Ireland for summers to speak French at people (Westie should be small enough to take on planes with me, but not sure if I could manage to take both animals, hrm)

Can it be done? Will do research when I get back from this trip.

Also, want to pester les filles into going to Costa Rica at some point next year. American girl from last night (whom I gave my e-mail address, so maybe we can meet up again in Dublin) says it’s supposed to be really cheap. And our ex-Spanish assistant friend who came with us to Spain lives there.

So I’m in Ireland! It’s great. It’s everything I hoped it would be, which is a bit surreal. You know how you have preconceived notions of some place and then once you’re actually going there you expect it won’t really be like that? Maybe other people don’t do that. Anyway, Ireland is exactly as I hoped. They really do have lots of shop signs in that calligraphy font. And those dry walls really do divide up all the fields. It reminds me of that Andy Goldsworthy (correct name?) video.

I got on a bus to Galway at the Dublin airport (after successfully manipulating my last public transport in Poland–which did involve a conversation with me saying things like “airport” and “yes” and the other person saying lots of things I didn’t understand at all) and the bus driver had an excellent Irish accent, and spent the entire trip talking to the older woman seated behind him. It was fun to listen to. When I got off he said “Welcome home” and I’m not really sure what that was about, but then he asked me where I was from. I’m pretty sure the American accent gives me away immediately.

I got to Killarney tonight after two fab nights in Galway. I loved the city and my hosts. There were lots of Americans walking around town. Yesterday I went on a tour to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren and took too many pictures so rest assured, will post too many of those later. The weather was perfect, which the guide kept reminding us, because apparently it can get really windy and rainy up there.

I went out with the hosts last night to a pub in Galway which was lots of fun, and talked to lots of foreigners, and got to speak a little French.

My bus stopped over for an hour in Limerick. I toyed with the idea of stopping for longer and waiting for the next one but in the end I decided there wasn’t enough to do there. Apparently someone now does an Angela’s Ashes tour which I might have been interested in but I arrived after it normally starts. Limerick from the bus station looked a bit run down. But it’s supposed to be on the rise so maybe I just saw the wrong bit of it. The accent (well the accent at the bus station anyway) was almost incomprehensible. And an annoying girl begged two euros off of me. I was pretty irritated and mostly gave it to her so she would leave me alone. I’m not exactly piling up money right now. (There is a real expression that I could use here to say that but I can’t seem to think of it.) So, that is the end of my disproportionately long paragraph on Limerick. I was perhaps disproportionately interested (but not enough to stay more than an hour) because part of my family is from there.

I obviously just arrived in Killarney but so far 90% of the tourists seem to be French.

Trying to think if I have anything to add right now. I love Ireland so far. I’ve never felt so comfortable traveling. The Irish are so friendly. It’s good for me to be reminded that there are great places that aren’t France.

Sorry for the boring titles. But my internet time is so confused that the posts can’t really be focused enough for a title.

Am in Gdansk, and am leaving tomorrow. The hostel here is interesting. It’s a nice enough place, but it seems to be filled with mostly Polish friends of the owners. I’ve been hanging out with the only other apparent backpacker, an Aussie. Gdansk seems cool, but it rained lots today. So we walked around (I bought some amber rings) in the morning but then raced back when it started pouring and, sadly, I did not go to Sopot. It probably wouldn’t have been that great in the downpour. We went to the Gdansk History Museum but almost everything was in Polish. They had some really good photos though of the exact same shots of Gdansk’s old town in 1945 and after rebuilding finished in 1996. It was pretty striking.

The only other girl in our room is this Polish girl who speaks the greatest English ever. She speaks in adorable fragments and helps us with our horrible Polish pronunciation. She let me eat some of her petits beurres.

I’m heading out via the airport tomorrow. I went to one of the autobus ticket windows and said “please, bus to airport” in Polish and the woman smiled and started speaking to me in English. It was serendipitous because really not that many people (especially transport agents) seem to speak English here. Anyway she sold me a ticket and told me where it was so I think I am all set. Tomorrow I will leave here at 9:15ish, catch the bus at 9:40, take the plan at 12:05, arrive in Dublin at 14:05, bus myself into the city, and then bus myself to Galway, where I hope to arrive around 8 pm. It will be so nice to be able to ask real questions of strangers again. Also I will be couchsurfing at an American girl’s so I don’t know what the internet situation will be. Am v. excited though!