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."

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 have 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.