bye bye becc

The first person I met in Ireland was a girl called Becc. She trained me for my first job, and made me feel just that little bit more comfortable in a foreign Country. She listened to me bawl my eyes out 1 week after I met her, and has continued to listen to all of my "nanny disaster" stories.

We have gone out on a good few drinking nights, and its always a pleasure to see her constant happy face, and to listen to her familiar Aussie accent.

She and her boyfriend, Jay, are moving to France to work in a Chalet, and I will miss them. Thanks becc for showing me a little bit of Dublin, and for being a good friend!

norway

We took a short weekend trip to Norway, and thought it was a quaint little city filled with awesome brownies and upgrades to 5 star rooms. Though for anyone who has not been to norway......they LOVE to take your money in every way they can. Now, I am not a scrooge, but having to pay 15 euro for your sheets in a 5 star hotel, and then another 20 euro to have cutlery in your FULLY SELF CATERED APARTMENT is just a little to steep for my liking. We solved the cutlery problem by going next door to the 7 11 and getting free cutlery.

The city of oslo is a very interesting little city full of art gallerys, little cars, snow, and moose. We went along to The munch art Gallery, and saw the painting "The scream". I have fond memories of this painting, my dear, hippie, art teacher, Miss rackham gave us so many essays on this painting.

We went to some markets on Sunday, a very ary crafty market that was in an interesting part of town, and we also had the best brownie in europe....it was amazing. Better than the cheesecake that Kierans sister, siobhan makes, and Better than the chocolate slice that my mum makes, and even better than the muffins Kierans Next door neighbours , Karen Makes. Thats right, it beat you all hands down.

The people are nice, the city is clean, it was bloody freezing, but it was a good weekend trip. Here are some photos.

The sculpture park in Oslo

real snowflakes!

a product called "Bog"

do we look cold?

The Scream painting

Wicklow way for a birthday party

Kierans Birthday suddenly crept up on us, and we managed to book a little cottage down in county Wicklow..... somewhere down there, we had no idea. We jumped in the car on the Friday night before his bday, ( powerkite and board in tow, the new toy) and set off in the dark to find our cottage. Thankgod for our american talking sat nav, (after 18 months of travelling we still haven't named it), it got us there in one peice, with alot of tiny bumpy roads inbetween.

Wicklow is a beautiful county, we did a tiny bit of sightseeing, and Kieran got to have a go on his powerkite at the beach.

Here are some snaps

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Halloween

It was Halloween night, and we went out and bought ourselves a pumpkin and decided to join in the celebrations, as its quite big over here.

This is our pumpkin, and some kids out on the street

International rules

Last year we organised all of our flights over to Ireland to land here in time for the international rules series (Australia vs Ireland). We found out just before we got here that they cancelled it due to the 'recession'. Alas, Ireland is in the thick of the recession at the very moment, and this year they decided to go ahead with it, so Kieran had a smile from Ear to Ear.

We got dressed into our aussie gear, and headed into the city to meet a friend at the Aussie pie shop, Bonza Pies, and had a meat pie before the big game. We were decked out in an australian flag, a Wallabies jersey, and Adelaide crows beanies and scarves, so we were impossible to miss. We had people yelling at us from every which way, " Ireland are gunna win"......yeah yeah we thought, to scared to yell back as we were clearly the minority.

We got to the game, found our seat, watched the opening ceremony, and the game began. It started to get extremely cold, but we cheared as loud as we could the entire time, and sung the national anthem at the top of our lungs.

here are some photos

We are happy to add that we walked out of the stadium pretty proud of ourselves......the Aussies spanked them, winning by a mile, and not one irish fan talked to us, let alone looked at us. But thankyou Ireland for such a good game!

While he sleeps....I do alot of stuff

While Kieran sleeps during the day (he is on night shift), I get up to alot of things. This week I have been lino printing alot of robots, but drawings and finding little tags and cards while out shopping is also a little activity I have done alot lately.

Here you can see my wall is getting abit full...I may just have to start filling some more walls.....

Together at Last

I am sure many peopes lives are exactly like Mine and Kierans.....you work work work, have different scheduales, don't spend alot of time together, and some days, you feel like you don't even have a partner.

Moving over to Ireland has given Kieran and I a better chance to get to know each other, and travel and see new things.

Kieran has been working nights, so at 7:30 in the morning, we play tag team, he walks in, I walk out, and at 7:30 to 8 at night, I walk in, and he walks out at 9:30. I didn't know how much it meant to actaully wake up to someone you loved beside you every morning, or be able to debrief at the end of the day to someone. Us not having the same scheduale, made me wake up and realise how much he does actaully mean to me, and how the little things in your relationship mean alot more that what you thought!! Why and I telling you all this? Its a year of adventure, I never thought it would also be a year of self discovery! Alas, it has been both. Soppy soppy, I know, so last weekend, we finally got a night together, and went out to

dinner. We started out at this cool bar called market bar, that was once an old market in the city of Dublin. My friend becc introduced me to this bar, so I thought I would take kieran there.

We also saw this cool cool thing in the mall. A guy was walking around with a tv screen on his head. It was built into a mask, and had a tiny camera at the side of it, so you were on the tv screen.

We ended up at this italian restaurant that served some of the most delicious italian I have had.

Here are a couple of photos

Sorry, the photo jut wont turn up the right way. But this was the cool guy with the tv screen

Market bar.