Ireland stuff

This is a bit of a cut and paste from my group email...BUT, there will be photos coming shorty with this one!!

Anyway, I’ll stick to a summary of recent events…

Activities in the last weeks have solidly revolved around job searching..and maybe some soccer, and maybe
lots of beach volleyball trips as well. Essentially since arriving back in
the Emerald Isle we spent our weekends travelling to Dublin, and Wexford for
a spot of Beach Volleyball on the fine North Atlantic, Irish Sea beaches of
Ireland. These unique beaches do have great revues though. I Quote:

“The Irish Beaches are nothing like our beaches in the Mediterranean”
-Italian Times
And also
“The best I ever visited, I was even able to take my ski jacket off”
-Alaska Today

As you can probably foretell, the beach volleyball had a certain atmosphere
to it. The volleyball was only properly played after a heavy night of
substance abuse which left players with more troubling there mind and
nervous system than the weather. Martin and I were lucky enough to win the
last of the prestigious events we played. One out of three isn’t bad, but
it’s a bit of a laugh when you put it in context with even the semi lowly
New Zealand beach volleyball tour in which Martin and I could hardly break
into the top 14 teams.. On the flip side, it was our first money that we
earned in Ireland, and it officially makes us semi pro!! Oh yeah!!!!!

Subsequently the Irish Beach Volleyball takes a bit of break for us. We’ve
decided to go onto bigger and better things. Yes we may find a job. Well
that’s after the world cup finishes anyway. That’s our running excuse “ no
no no girls (referring to flatmates), we’ve turned down another 6 jobs today
because the soccer is of much greater importance than money at this stage)..
In actual fact, its getting quite tricky to get a proper job around here
during this time of year. Galway has seemed to stop hiring until September,
during this period people take holidays and the town takes a week off to
squander there money at the week long Galway Races.

To wake us out of our impending depression from our fruitless job searching,
the girls (Natalie and Sarah) plus two friends of there’s, invited us to
climb what is known as Croagh Patrick. It’s a steep hilly Mountain thingy,
which takes about a 1hour and a bit up and potentially 2 mins down. Its also
scattered with sharp rocks and shingle from top to bottom. As you might
imagine then, during our heavy lunged assent, we were a little bemused to
find people climbing it in bear foot!!! It so happens that this is also a
popular place to undertake a pilgrimage to pray at the church of St Patrick
at the top. Sounds a bit sadistic to me, but I’ll try not to get all
political on ya. Luckily for us it was a busy day, with 50 polish pilgrims
making the voyage (with shoes, these polish have taken a giant leap in my
list of smart nationalities…honest I actually have a list..) plus a Mountain
running race was also in progress. All this traffic provided much needed
tread and levers to accelerate our climb.

After thiat it leaves this Week. Yes its almost over, you can almost go back
to your enjoyable kiwi lives of a harsh winter, rain and a touch of mid
winter merriment.


Finally, this week we have signed up for a Safe Pass course. This will make
us safe to work on construction sites!!!! Yes !!! CONSTRUCTION!! Well it’s a
change and change is as good as a holiday, even though I’m on holiday, which
would actually mean I’m on holiday from holiday which is a change from a
change which is getting confusing for all of us..

Love to all.

Rick and Marty