Moinin na gCiseah

This morning I was excited for two things- first in place of our staff devotions time in the morning, Deidre was going to give a talk on the Stations of the Cross which promised to be both enlightening and meditative. However, because of the second thing I was looking forward to (going with Mike and Paul into a school for evangelism) we had to be ready to go earlier and I had to miss out on Deirdre’s presentation. We gathered together a notebook and some DVDs in a Catholic Evangelism packet that Mike has called “Youth caFE” but I never did find out what the awkwardly lettered “caFE” stood for. On the way there, we previewed a song we plane don discussing with the kids: a rap about the Trinity and Jesus as our God. I found it not quite as embarrassing and awkward as most Christian rap I’ve heard, but it was still Christian rap. I wondered why Mike and Paul chose it, running though my head the theories that kids these days identify with rap but also taking note that kids often find that when they are presented with something that doesn’t come natural to the presenter, it can come off as contrived. Seeing how Paul and Mike are not accomplished rappers nor do they listen to the genre, I wondered if there weren’t some genre that both we and the kids could identify easily with. Anyway we got to the school called Moinin na gCiseah which was a secondary school attached to the community college. After being ushered in and setting up in the library, we began playing the song to three boys hoping that more would give up the basketball match that had robbed us of most of our usual crowd. By the time the song was over, we had two more and when were finished discussing the Trinity, two others had joined us. Irish kids are much like American kids- you have the one who is solid in his faith, but nervous about answering all the questions so he doesn’t look like a prude; there’s the kid who plays like he doesn’t care, but you can tell is actually searching because he’s confused; there are the ones interested only in goofing off and the quiet ones who conceal there thoughts and are a total mystery. We discussed confession and why we are encouraged to do it. They had some decent answers with a little bit of prompting. We began to play a second song but as it was about to finish up, the bell rang the boys were out of there… just like all my friends and me when we were in the eighth grade. We wrapped it up and headed back to the café, discussing most of what I have mentioned above. It was a really interesting time and I'm glad I was able to go.

Some things you might like to know

It’s always nice to start the week off right with a good day. This is the first time since I have been with An Tobar Nua that we have had a school retreat come into the café for a day of testimonies, drug/alcohol talks, and ministering by Mike. We spent a good bit of the morning in prayer for the group of kids in their last year of school (like high school seniors in America). We prayed over a passage about rescuing children back from the tyrant (Isaiah 49:25) and Megan mentioned the David Crowder song “Rescue is Coming” which just happened to come up on my iTunes on full random. Basically, God was in this day in a big way. We served the kids cookies and hot chocolate in the late morning, cleaned up as they had another talk, then served them lunch, finishing just in time for the lunch rush. We had lots to do in the kitchen and on dishes and I tried to use my extra few minutes of “stand around time” before the actual rush to help put away the mountain of dishes. As it turns out, the retreat was very effective and Mike told us that 13 of the 25 kids made a public commitment to Christ at the end of the day- very exciting stuff! Solid

Also, on a more personal level, some of our prayers for ourselves were answered. Dr. Harbin came to visit and see how the practicum was going and to help iron out the troubles with our new class. If you don't know, we had been originally registered with a prof who was on sabbatical and we got a new prof a month into the semester. Being a industrious young professor he wants us to work and I've heard from friends back on cmapus that the very class (Contemporary Christian Belief) is quite rough over there too. Unfortunately he wanted us to do all the same work even though we're starting a month late, have twice as long a spring break, end weeks earlier, and work 20 hours a week, plus 7 other credits of class to complete. It was not going to happen and I sent him a nice long email describing so. And so, today his boss, the dept chair (who was in Ireland anyway, mind you) came to visit us to work it out. Such a weight has been lifted! Our papers can be shorter, our due dates are flexible, and we have until May 23 to finish. Granted it's still gonna be rough, but it's at least feasible.
Dr. Harbin is also such a sweet guy that he invited us out to dinner (on TU of course) and so the three of us, Leanna and Cat headed up the road a bit to an Italian restaurant none of us had been to. It was great! the canal flowed underneath it and we sat next to a window that displayed a huge waterwheel at work as we dined on fine Italian foods and homemade ice cream. Such goodness!

In other news...
I was invited to come along with Tommy, Paul, and Mike as they go to one of the schools in the area for something shorter and more informal but similar to what the retreat was today. I asked what the school was, but I couldn’t pronounce it let alone spell it. But tomorrow promises to be another good day and I look forward to observing this new aspect of the ministry.

Weekend

I had Saturday off which was really nice. Except I did homework most of the time. But! Maren took me to the Saturday market which is my new favorite thing. Piles and piles of goodness: I got some chili con carne for lunch with a huge roll stuffed with cheddar and onions, then I bought some fresh strawberries and clementines to eat during the week. Here it is Monday and they're almost gone. Gosh.
Saturday night we went out to Oranmore for a worship service which was pretty cool and we met a lot of interesting and friendly people. Megan and Paul got mistaken for Americans and I got mistaken for an Irishman. Hilarious. We came back and got chips and Paul messed with Ben and we got amusing pictures: you know the classic late night jokes.

I went to bed and got up again and then what happened was worth putting in my practicum journal, so I'll copy and pastes it here for you:


I didn’t work today, but something happened that I felt was worth journaling. First it needs a bit of the back story to explain it: Last week, I was walking down Shop Street and I encountered a man who was clearly mentally unstable, but he was begging for change and despite the feeling that I should help him in some way, I ignored him and walked by. Later in the week, I was having my quiet time in a church and praying and I felt God telling me that I should go out and look for him or someone to help and the feeling was so strong that I actually got up and left the church, headed toward Shop Street to see if that guy was still there. On my way over, however I failed again: a drunk man stumbled toward me and I felt a twinge of guilt as I thought to myself, “He’s not the guy I came looking for; I can’t stop.” Within minutes I knew I had ignored the opportunity God had dumped in my lap and I futilely turned around to look for the guy I had passed. Frustrated, embarrassed and upset with myself, I confided in my roommate back home that I needed prayed because I was struggling to follow the things God was leading me to do. But tonight He gave me another chance and I almost blew it again. Coming back from a Christian conference/gathering of some sort in Oranmore, we drew close to our café and as we passes the bridge, Ben threw some change at a guy huddled up against the railing while I tried to ignore the thought that this was another chance. A couple hours later after hanging out with friends, getting ready for bed and even almost falling asleep, I remembered the man on the bridge. Determined to not fail again, I got over the fact that Ben would think it was really strange of me to get out of bed in the middle of the night, get dressed and go out. I grabbed some of the left over bread we had gotten from the café at the end of the week and went down to the bridge to give it to the guy. He was there and I handed him the bread and asked how he was doing while he looked startled and mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I stood up and said, “Well, I’ll be praying for you!” and left feeling like a fool. I made it back to the café and realized that what God wanted me to do was not just be that rich kid trying to be generous and thinking I had done my good deed by being cliché and promising prayer, but he wanted me to befriend the guy. Again, faced with the awkward prospect of going back for no apparent reason, I grabbed some lunchmeat I had, flashed Ben a confused grin and headed back to the bridge. This time I sat down next to the man instead of crouching next do him like a father would to a little child and I immediately felt more on his level. I told him that I remembered that I had lunch meat and wanted him to have it too. The next hour turned out to be one of the best of my week. His name is Alan and he’s from Montenegro and doesn’t speak very good English (whereas I have no idea if Montenegrese is even a language or how it sounds). I remembered Ben and Kelsie talking with the Brazilian sisters in French and Spanish, so I asked him if he knew any other languages hoping he might know French, but his specialty is Spanish. The last time I took a Spanish class was in fourth grade so through my broken Spanglish we got to know one another. He has two small children, Alan Jr. and Laury and a wife who I think are all staying with an Irish friend nearby. So he’s not homeless, he just doesn’t have a job and is pretty poor. He’s Greek Orthodox and told me he had to get to bed so he could go to church tomorrow and he wanted to make sure that I knew that he doesn’t drink and thinks alcohol ruins families. Every now and then locals roaming from pubs or parties would come by the bridge and almost everyone had a spare coin for his little paper cup. Alan is a very grateful man, always said thank you and kept telling me how nice and generous the Irish are (though he said he had to watch out for the Gardai because they would take away all the change he had collected). Eventually he looked at my watch and announced he needed his sleep so he could be in church tomorrow and I agreed, so we got ready to go. I had tried to invite him to come to our café, but he never really seemed to understand my Spanglish invitations. I asked him if I could find him there tomorrow night because I wanted to bring back Ben to translate for us. After a good bit of confused words, I got out “Viernes noches, aqui” and so I talked with Ben and we are going to meet Alan on the bridge on Friday night. Hopefully with clearer communication we’ll be able to learn more about him and possibly find this Orthodox Church and go with him and his family. It was very fulfilling to know that I had finally stopped refusing what God was asking me do and it was great to make a new friend. Sometimes we can be very serious about our own prayer life and the little things we go through to ensure our own growth, but at times I find myself being such a hypocrite and not following some of those terrifying words of the New Testament that remind me that Jesus is the least of our brothers who we clothe, feed, or visit. I pray that God can take this breakthrough he’s made in me and make it concrete so that I can stop messing it up so often.

What else is new?

Guys, it's been hard to find time to post. I don't even want to do it now... we got the hoopla with the class back on campus figured out: we have a new prof who apparently wants us dead. We have five books to read and questions to answer and mini-tests and all sorts of intensity. So I'm trying to work ahead in Arden's classes so I can have time to get out of this building in future months.

Work has gotten back to normal, lunch rush is on and I finally feel like I know what I'm doing just about everywhere. Though sometimes we work all day and then we just have dinner and work on homework that I almost don't get out of the bulding, so I try to take a point to take a walk at some point in the day and I usually visit the Dominican church down on the Claddagh, or another Catholic church up on Canal Rd or the Cathedral. They're great places to sit and just think (or just sit), pray and read. A couple days ago I went to the the Cathedral, and even though I had been there and knew what to expect, I still gawked in awe and nearly gasped at the beautiful architecture. I shuffled to a seat in the middle and sat just looking around while listening to a man and woman trade off Hail Marys. After they had finished, I read Colossians and felt comforted by verse 29 of the first chapter which says “To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which works so powerfully in me.” Lately, I’ve been trying to struggle in my own power in this ministry and in preparation for camp this summer. My co-director and I chatted online the other night about some of this and we realized we were trying to do too much in our own power. It’s so good to know that even though we labor, we can struggle with the energy that created the Sun, hurricanes, the ocean, and swans, seagulls, and little Irish school kids. There are so many things that I do that I could not do without the help of God.
For example, tonight we started up group Scripture memorization and I know that’s one thing I do not have the discipline to do on my own. We’re working on the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18 as a part of the camp curriculum on justice for this summer. Ben and Kelsie have graciously allowed me to choose the material to memorize so I can prepare myself for later ministry. Sneaky huh?

We had our lunch with Adrian today and he gave us some good advice about where to go on our next adventure- we looked into caves nearby (that are only open in the summer, it seems) and he even offered to drive us to Croagh Patrick because he loves hiking there himself. I know we would enjoy having him along. He’s such a joker! So hopefully we will go there one of these days and you can get some more pictures.

This weekend I have Saturday off and there's some sort of conference our cell group is going to in Oranmore, so I think I'm going to that. Dr. Harbin comes next week with our books (ah!) and advice on where to go spelunking hopefully!

Midterms week

This week is midterms in the Irish schools, which means the tests are next week, so the students have all of this week off to study, but in reality they’re traveling and hanging out with friends, but not at our café and therefore our business is cut in half and the lunch rush is slowed to a trickle. Mostly I get assigned odd cleaning jobs by Tommy like washing the windows or sweeping the alley- things that need to be done that we usually don't have to time to do. But the bulk of my time is spent chilling at the counter or with customers I've gotten to know. The business got so slow that Susan let us Taylor students off early to “study” as she put it, but I think we put out time to better use. As we ate our meal in the café, we were approached by a young man who is one of our regulars and seems well acquainted with most of the staff. His name was Adrian and we invited him to sit with us. He’s a student at NUI Galway studying History and Philosophy while working a night job at a pharmaceutical plant. We discussed everything from good hikes in remote places of Ireland, to Gaelic sports and American sports, to why he drinks coffee even though he hates it. He was a very talkative guy and pretty amusing seeing how he tricked Kelsie into thinking his name was Tiny Timothy or something ridiculous.
This evening at cell group, we had two new people join us: Swilly and Rose, sisters from Brazil. They spoke little English, but thanks to Ben’s Spanish and Kelsie’s French we were able to communicate and joined in our praise and Bible study. They were in Galway because their brother was in the hospital with some condition we couldn’t translate (“very ill” was all we got). We prayed for their brother and as we were praying, listening to Rose pray in French I realized what diverse nationalities were represented in our small group: Americans, Irish, Malaysians, Brazilians, and Kenyan all together studying God’s word and praying to Him in a variety of languages. In our class with Arden, we’ve talked about people group-targeted churches that are made up of ethnically and socio-economically similar people and the true church should be diverse like a little slice of heaven as Arden puts it. It was good to see this diversity in our little room.
Afterwards we started prank calling and Paul with too much sugar in his system is a sight to see. He called pretty much everyone who is usually in cell group, but couldn't make it that night and pretended to be Stephen Hawkings. It was pretty over the top. I'm looking forward to tomorrow even though we'll be working all day, maybe we'll get slap happy and things will get crazy and fun.

A Sunny Day in Foggy Galway-town

Yes, it was sunny here. So I took some pictures of things like my fine walk to Tesco for groceries and the Claddagh. Then I assumed that since it was clear for the sunset that it might be clear for the sunrise. Having no internet to check, I went on faith... but I was wrong. Mired in a soup of fog, I actually saw our lazy swans flying, but they disappeared to quick to get a snap. I do have some eerie pictures of the Claddagh in the morning though.



In the meantime, I'd like to share with you a bit of what I've been reading. Well actually, I'm reading numerous books at the moment (six, I think... it's a terrible habit, I know) but this comes from Brennan Manning's Ruthless Trust.
"Send in the artists, mystics, and clowns. Their fertile imagination pours the new wine of the gospel into fresh wineskines (Luke 5:38). With fresh language, poetic vision, and striking symbols, the express God's inexpressible Word in artistic forms that are charged with the power of God, engaging minds and stirring our hearts as they flare and flame."

This is why I enjoy Lord of the Rings so much; because it is the best "wineskin" that I have found from which to taste the goodness of the Gospel. Peter Kreeft's The Philosophy of Tolkien describes this much better (and it takes the whole book, which I highly recommend) but I think this captures it well:
"The Lord of the Rings is like the Eucharist. Under its appearances we find Christ, who under these (pagan, universal) figures (symbols, not allegories), is truly hidden: quae sub his figuris vere latitat."

I've added a list on the sidebar of this blog of books that I recommend and these really are ones that I want you to read. I didn't just put up a list of books that I like (notice The Silmarillion, one of my favorites, is not up there because I feel that many people would not enjoy it as much as I do). But these are books that have profoundly affected me and that I want to affect my friends. They are good books and I wouldn't add them if there were not very good reason to.

Apples for walking- Sky Road in Clifden

Last week, I realized I was getting fed up with this city life thing and wanted to go out into the real Ireland and go for a hike. I remembered that Vance had recommended something called the Sky Road in Clifden, so I looked into it and found that the CityLink buses went to Clifden on Sundays with plenty of time for a solid hike. This is pretty much the first trip I've totally planed and put together all on my own and while it was incredibly simple, it was kind of thrilling to know that I made it happen and got it all together. We had church on our own in the classroom (thank you Rob Bell podcasts and various worship music) because none of the churches let out in time for us to catch the bus at noon. The CityLink buses are so nice! It was an hour and a half drive to Clifden up beyond the Connemara region northwest of Galway. The bus was very empty, so we felt free to be dorky Americans crawling from side to side of the bus taking pictures of the mountains. I have to admit, Ireland in winter is much browner than I expected or could have guessed from what I saw of it even in November, but it was still beautiful. As we got into Clifden, we found our way through this quiet little town to the other side where we could pick up the Sky Road. We stopped by a high cross to picnic with our ham sandwiches and scones left over from the cafe. Scone on? Hahaha! We headed off and things grew very familiar even though last time we had hurriedly driven the road some late evening. It was just classic Ireland with the rock, dry heather, dwarf gorse (aka "yellow pokeys") and the springy grass. I loved it. It was a fun little road and cars slowed down lots for us; we thought they were making fun of us tourists, but soon enough one of them pulled off ahead and got out cameras of their own, so we knew that we were in good company albeit ones who ride rather than hike. The pictures tell the best story because really we just walked around, deviating wherever there was a handy gap in that pesky barbed wire fence. We found some old famine houses, looked down onto a hauntingly familiar castle, met a nice Belgian man with a map who advised us to turn back in time to make the bus (turned out to be good advice), and we saw lots of horses and donkeys. At one point we climbed high off the road onto the highest point near the sea and I stood alone and just pretty much loved life. It was great. The pictures and video just can't capture it. If you ever make it to Ireland, the Sky Road is a solid place to go because it can be driven or hiked and it's real near a nice little town. We got back to Clifden in time to find dinner and dessert with plenty of time to make ti to the bus. We were never hurried and we we're never standing around kicking our heels: it was timed so perfectly. I was very pleased with how my little day hike turned out and it makes me a little less wary of how things might go in France next month. Granted that one's a much longer excursion, involves planes, international borders, overnights, and foreign languages, but I think it will work out.
Anyway, we walked about 10 miles, but with all of our running off the path and hanging out in old ruins it still took us a little over 3 hours.

Enjoy the pictures

Greystones revisited

No, I did not go back to Greystones as the title may suggest, but a little bit of it did come here to us: The TU ISP group and the Moeschbergers led by Brian King are in Galway and they came to An Tobar Nua yesterday morning! It was fun to see faces I recognized from back home and Kelsie enjoyed seeing her roommate. We sort of helped out with a tour Susan gave them of the place, but it was really just keeping them from going into our room where Ben was still waking up. The rest of the work day went pretty routinely but seeing people from Taylor and Kelsie’s reunion with her roommate reminded me how lonely it can get here. I was talking online with Rachel Aigner back home and I related to her that while this place is fascinating, new, and fun it’s also very hard because everyone is a new friend. I don’t have all of my old close friends from back home to rely on and to confide in. With the exception of Ben and Kelsie, almost all of the people I spend all of my hours with are people that I’ve known for a little over a week. I remember months back when we were still planning this endeavor, my good friend Jon Schelander was planning on coming with us and that fact comforted me very much. But when he backed out, my first reaction was that I would be horribly lonely with no one close to talk to, but it quickly dawned on me that it was God’s way of forcing me to rely on Him alone. Friends are great, but they are not infallible and I find myself putting more trust in them than they can humanly shoulder. By tearing me from the crutch of human friends, God has put me in a position where I can look for all that I need in Him. It’s hard but I know that it is for the better.
These are the things we chatted about with Leanna on the way back home after the greatest dinner ever.
That's right, Scotty too Hotty took us to Da Roberta's and it was beyond glorious! I got veal with ham and some sort of cheese I couldn't pronounce on a bed mushrooms and spinach. Every bite was stunning. Then I got some sort of chocolate ice cream with a shell dessert and it made my day. SO GOOD! Ah! After the silly microwave dinners we've been relegated to, this was a welcome treat!

In other news, travel plans are being ramped up. This Sunday, Ben, Kelsie and I are planning on catching a bus to Clifden and going hiking on the Sky Road. And I recently bought my tickets to Paris for spring break! Ah! I have to work on my Frencg... oh golly. Hopefully I'll have Devon around to translate for me though. :-) It'll be so good to see her and to see all the sights, like Normandy, Paris, and hopefully the Alps. But that's a ways off.

Today is Freudday again and I learned some Irish phrases from Megan and Paul: "Ta gra ag Iosa duit" which means "Jesus love you"! Very handy.

Back in the rush

We finally found the place to hae our laundry done, so I got up and went out at 8:30 before staff devotions time to put mine in. The lady just took my stuff and when we were finished with devos, I came back and lo and behold! the laundry was in a bag all nicely folded. It was 25 euro though which is like $36 so it's pretty steep, but we have 100 euro a week with which to buy food and laundry. Ug, it kinda kills me inside anyway. I wish I could do it myself and save money, but oh well. I suppose I'll enjoy having it all done while I can.
I started working at noon today and got put to work on the floor, delivering food and cleaning up tables, which was exciting because I got to be out among the crowds. I met four boys by finishing a joke one of them was telling and thereby amazing them with my “psychic powers”. They then wanted to test out their own skills and tried to guess where I was from: I was impressed with how many US state names they did know, but they never could come up with Indiana, so I left them to guess where Kelsie was from. In the meantime, I met up with Cillian, the little rascal who gave me trouble last week. Today he was confused as to why all of us had ashes on our foreheads because he thought it was only a Catholic thing to do. He asked if we were all Catholic or all Protestant or a mix and when I told him it was a little of both, he then wondered how the Protestants put up with the “evil crucifix” being displayed around the café. Apparently he imagined that Protestants considered the cross with Jesus hanging on it to be evil but I told him that just because it was something more common with Catholics, it didn’t have to be wrong for Protestants. I was glad I was able to dispel at least a little bit of his confusion.
However, it is still frustrating to not have the time or space to have a decent conversation with people. The lunch rush is so hectic and other customers usually want to be left alone with their newspaper or their friends. But today during my quiet time, I heard something that made me smile. I was sitting in one of the nearby cathedrals reading when a young mother with two small children came in. The kids were restless and she seemed fed up from trying to control them while praying. Throughout her prayer I heard the kids whispering things like, “Mommy, when are we having supper?” and “Who’s that man over there” and other classic kid stuff, but as the mother finished her prayer and said Amen, the little girl shouted at the top of her lungs, “THANK YOU!” It wasn’t an exasperated “thank goodness mom is done” but an innocent child shouting to her Creator who she still hasn’t even learned much about. So while I found myself frustrated at lost or difficult opportunities, I was reminded to be thankful in all things. Today was a very good day and I felt like I met some new people and had some good times with them.
Later this evening after dinner, Ben, Kelsie, and I went over to Salthill to see the group from Greystones. It was good to see Scotty 2 Hotty again and Brian taunted us by telling us he was headed to Monroe's (a great pub right across the street from us that we can't go into). Kelsie got to hang out with her roommate from TU and Ben and I chatted with Peter, the guy who owns the B&B they were staying in. We got to chat a little with some of the other students on the trip, but most of them I just know a little bit or through someone else, but it was still a good time comparing stories. They'll be coming into the cafe tomorrow morning around 10:30 and it's probably Kelsie's turn to be on dishes which Ben and I are not gonna let happen seeing how she's the only one of the three of us with a roommate/close friend visiting.

The weekend

Well as you can tell, I'm starting to get into the swing of things and with the routine, not everything is quiteas new and exciting as last week- hence, there might be less posts out of me unless you really want to hear about that particularly greasy dish I had to scrub.
But as for this weekend, we had a guys night at Tommy's apartment- Tommy, Ben, Scott, Paul, some guys from our church Julian and Bernard, and I all crowded into Tommy's living room and watched the Patriot. It was Tommy's first time seeing it and he's hilarious to watch movies with. He got so into it and even prayed for the characters in the movie. Mel Gibson's character was aiming and said, "Lord make me quick and accurate" and Tommy nervous mutters, "Yes, Lord Jesus please help him". Then- my favorite, in the scene where Heath Ledger's character dies, he's getting ready to shoot the bad guy and he's loading the gun in slow motion and it's killing Tommy- you can here him getting louder and louder "C'mon, hurry up! Faster... c'mon, c'mon... Quick, just shoot him! Do it now, shoot! Hurry up you son of a- (he shoots the bad guy) PRAISE GOD!!!" Then we watched Fight Club and you know how that goes.

Anyway, church the nest morning was not what I expected. We went to a hotel and gathered into one of those fancy conference rooms they have while the band tuned and the projector warmed up. We started with this kiddie classis "Father Abraham" and I knew I was gonna like this place. It was like any other small church with 40 or 50 people, but the audience was very responsive, praying and letting out an Amen now and then. The pastor was soft spoken but had lots of good things to say. I really liked it. Plus our cell group makes up like a quarter of the congregation so I feel like I know people already. We went over to someone's house for pizza and we played with a woman's kids and watched British cartoons, then went to see No Country for Old Men. Not what I expected, but whatever.

Today was the other free day we have and I woke up, went looking for the laundrette, but it was still closed, so we'll have to see. I walked to Tesco (which is a beautiful walk for a while between the river and canal, right by the cathedral, then bought a few more things. I wandered down to the sea and walked the prom til I got to the lighthouse thing that Paul tells me is actually a wastewater treatment plant. There I saw a rainbow (classic) and watched a storm move across the south side of Galway Bay which kicked up some decent waves that splashed me a bit. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon wandering, then hit up a smaller cathedral for my quiet time. Had dinner with Ben and Kelsie, then Skyped with a number of people back home (and Devon in France!) Which reminds me, I bought me tickets to Paris last night! Ah! So exciting... that's not for a month and a half though.
Back to work tomorrow... we'll see if I have something other than the floor or dishes.

Day off

I slept in til 11, rolled downstairs and bought the "Mega Breakfast" two eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, and a hash brown with hot chocolate. Showered, and went out. Bought a memory card for my camera (only about $37) and went around trying to get lost but it didn't really work out. Took some pictures and here they are!



Guys night tonight in Tommy's apartment: should include some action flicks and such.

(Sigmund) Freud Day?

The Irish say Friday like "Froyday" so the American interns make fun of Megan, Tommy, and Paul by saying that every Friday must be a celebration of Freud... Freuday, get it? Haha
It snowed this morning during praise and worship time! It was amazing! It never snows in Ireland... maybe like twice a year. Then it snowed again this afternoon. I guess that means it's done for the year.
I work all shifts today because I have tomorrow off, so I worked the floor all through the morning and the lunch rush. On Fridays we have a draw in which the kids can enter their names and get it drawn for free food items... it's a pretty big deal. We have to watch out for double entries so today while Paul and I were reading off the names, Paul found two from the same kid and called him out as a winner, then when he came up triumphantly, Paul announces that he cheated and he has to leave! Ha! That'll teach them!
I had this one little runt of a kid named Cillian try to mess with me today. I knew he was gonna be trouble from the get-go when I saw him come in pushing and shoving his friends. When I brought him his food, he goes, "What's this!? You call this a large curry chip?" And I say, "Oh yeah, it's an enormous portion! I bet you can't eat it all in three minutes!"
Ten minutes later her calls me over to tell me that he just finished them in 30 seconds. Riiight. Then he tried to get someone else's food I was carrying out when his friends told on him. Then when it was time to put names in for the draw he told me he had dropped his slip and needed another but I told him that he had tried to trick me once and I didn't trust him, so he laughs and runs off. What a joker.

Tonight, we went back over to the interns' house for what the call "cell group" which is kinda like a small group or a house church of people who all go to Discovery Church. It was fun meeting all the other people and getting to know more Irish guys and even the Malaysian medical students in the group. We had some worship time and some really good prayer time and Paul gave his testimony which was really powerful. Afterwards we hung out and got sugared up and watch Paul do ridiculous things while we swapped ISP stories with Cat and told jokes about pranks and such. A late night, but I have tomorrow off, so hooray! :-)