First Couple of Days

We arrived in Ireland at 6:00 in the morning in Shannon.  We then boarded a bus to Louisberg.  We got to our Cottages at about 11:00.  We then tried our hardest to stay awake as late as we could to try and get our sleep schedules sorted out.

Our cottages have heating but it is nice to start a fire in the fire place to help keep the place warm.  It is a different type of cold over here.  The rain and the wind make it cold sometimes but I'm not complaining it's warmer than Minnesota.  Our Cottages are about a ten minute walk to the ocean.

Ireland has been having some Gale force winds and some storms making for some flooding and very high tides.

This road leading up to the beach was not covered in rocks a couple days ago.  They were left here by a big storm on Friday.

Also all this sea weed was left by the same storm.  The locals say that the next really high tide will take all this gross sea weed away and they will get back their nice beach.

Funny story here: the first night we got here we were invited to the pub for some welcome drinks and food.  It was an opportunity to get to know so locals.  Somebody had paid for our drinks all night so I tried a Guinness and I wasn't to fond of it.  So I then went up to the bartender and asked him if I could get a screwdriver.  He kind of looked at me funny and then went into the back room and actually came out with a Phillips screwdriver.  I then told him that a screwdriver was vodka and orange juice.  The next time we went into the pub that bartender had told almost everyone our little incident and everybody was giving both him and I a hard time for it.

Also everybody here is unbelievably friendly.  They make "Minnesota Nice" seem like nothing.  Everybody says "hi" to each other.  They will also just stop you on the street and start talking to you and the next thing you 10-15 minutes has passed and you're still talking to this person you were just passing on the street.