exploring north down

Today was a wonderful reminder of how much I love Ireland. I was busy this morning doing laundry and a bit of school work (thought I was finished with work for the year but no...) then, around lunch time my friend Rachel came and picked me up. We drove around for a while, generally heading out to the Ard's peninsula. We had a picnic lunch on the shores of Strangford Lough. Not too far away from the site where this picture was taken.

source

And our view was very similar. The day had started out sunny and warm, but by the time we stopped for lunch was overcast and cool There were dozens of sailboats and windsurfers out on the Lough and we saw a seal swimming by as well. It was lovely.

From the Lough we headed over to Crawfordsburn Country Park (seriously, visit the link they have virtual tours of the park and it's beautiful) where we went for a lovely walk along the coast, past a wildflower meadow, and through the woods.

We rounded out the afternoon with tea at The Bay Tree in Holywood. For months I've been hearing stories about the cinnamon scones at The Bay Tree, they are legendary. Let me tell you, they did not disappoint! Something of a cross between scones and cinnamon rolls... a-mazing!

It was a wonderful, lovely day full of the beautiful Irish landscape, good chats, and amazing food. Just what my heart needed. I think it would be a good idea to have at least a monthly excursion of some kind and make that a feature of the blog as well... giving that some thought!

a long awaited update (perhaps I flatter myself too much!)

So, I guess the last significant update into my day to day life was written way back in the beginning of July. (Was that only a month and a half ago???) So, I figured it was about time for another!

I was in Florida for just under six weeks. I went down to be a summer nanny for the wonderful girls I used to care for before I left to do Transit and their wonderful baby sister who was born while I was gone and their wonderful cousins who live in Jacksonville. I think I can safely say that everyone involved had a great summer.

We were right on the beach, as you can see from this picture. This is the spot where I did quite a lot of reading when I was "off duty," not bad, huh? The summer was full of sand and water and sun and origami and reading time and ice cream and the dynamics of little girl relationships and naps and trips to the park and trips to the girls' Papa's tree farm and good food and all kinds of other fun things like getting caught in the rain almost every time I went out for a walk in the evenings. And big, beautiful rainbows.

No summer would be complete without a trip to the zoo and this one included petting and feeding sting rays. (Their "stinger" had been trimmed, apparently much like you would trim your fingernails.)

We drove back to Charlotte on the 29th of July, I think. It was definitely a Wednesday. And that evening I booked my flight to Ireland. I fly into Dublin on the 12th of September and will make my way north to Belfast where I will be living until I find a job or run out of money which I project will be sometime in December! No, seriously, I'm heading to Belfast to job hunt and make connections and do some volunteering and have committed to stay through December, which hopefully will give me enough time to find a job so I can stay forever, or at least two years which is how long my visa will be issued for.

So, naturally, I'm excited and nervous and thinking about packing way more than I'm actually doing the packing. And I'm sure to run out of time to do several of the many things I have projected to finish before I leave. So it's all rather exhilarating and tiring.

On a sort of side note I saw movies 24 and 25 of the summer this week. Time Traveler's Wife with my sisters, Laura and Emily, and Nights in Rodanthe with my mom.

I feel a bit like Clare in the Time Traveler's Wife. (If you haven't seen the movie or read the book I'm going to be giving away plot here...) In the scene where Henry travels to and from the bathroom. She's very pregnant, but has tried to keep herself from hoping about this baby because she has lost so many before. Henry comes back from travelling to the future where he meets their daughter, Alba. He tells Clare all about her and she says, "You mean it's all going to be all right?" It was such a moving scene and I feel like her. There's this thing that I've been dreaming about and hoping for and working towards for so long, but because it's been so long it's so very hard to understand that it's really happening. That the dream is becoming reality. I think it can't be true.

But in three weeks from today I'll be sitting (well, sleeping actually) in Belfast. And I'll never again have to cry when I leave Ireland because I don't know when I'll be coming back. It's all rather overwhelming.

So anyway, that's my update.

so happy to be here for this prettiest of Charlotte springs

Spring in Charlotte this year (which seems to have ended when summer temperatures suddenly appeared yesterday) has been the prettiest I think I've ever seen. And after living here for over 10 years that's saying a lot.

Spring in Charlotte is full of color. Soft but vibrant color. The white of the flowering trees. The pinks of the azalea bushes. The purple wisteria growing wherever it can. The rainbow of greens in the grass and brand new leaves and the evergreens and magnolias. And don't forget those Carolina blue skies. At the horizon the blue is so pale it's almost white and as you follow the curve of the domed sky higher it becomes more saturated, but never darker. It's beautiful.

There is something very different about the sky here and the sky in Britain and Ireland. I haven't been able to fully put my finger on what it is. Sometimes I think the sky here is bigger. Sometimes I think maybe it's closer in Britain. I just can't pin point it, but there is a difference. I love the sky in both places, but this Carolina blue has captured my heart this spring.

So, not much measurable progress has been made on my job search. But I have received some helpful emails and links to websites and lots of encouragement. If I could get a job and move to Ireland purely on the good wishes of my friends I would be there tomorrow!

I've been doing other things to prepare for the move. Going through all my boxes of stuff and down sizing. This is always a hard thing for me as I tend to be very sentimental. For about 4 hours this morning and afternoon I was pulling boxes out of the storage room, opening them up, and sorting through what was to keep and what was to get rid of. I am very happy to say that the get rid of pile was several times larger than the keep pile. I've let go of over ten boxes of stuff. And I think the keep pile would maybe fit in 3 boxes, it has yet to be repacked. I only cried a little bit, when I opened my Christmas box. I think that was mostly about not having seen it for several years because I didn't make myself get rid of much from that box. Just the twinkle lights (it's just silly to keep electric stuff when you're moving internationally) and candles. Oh, and a box of plain red balls and some gift books. Nothing I was really attached to.

I kept reading the labels on boxes and thinking, "Oh great, this is where it gets dicey" and then having no problem what so ever. That is huge for me!!! (I guess that's not news to you after I memorialized a pair of shoes!) Speaking of which here is a picture of my other pair of new shoes. I like the pair they replaced, but not nearly to the extent of the brown pair. So no need to include a picture of them. The only thing memorable about them is that, more than any other pair of shoes, they taught me the valuable lesson that it is worth paying to have good shoes when you live in Europe and have to walk everywhere. (They were the "get one free" part of a Payless Shoes purchase.)

oh, um, something about the deer we need for the venison... tacos

This has been a week of new experiences... On Sunday night I experienced my first snow-thunder storm. (I didn't even know that was a possibility!) Tonight I made tacos for dinner where I was babysitting not with ground beef or ground turkey... no, with ground venison. I didn't have any. I'm undecided on whether I would eat venison or not and I didn't want my first experience to be mixed with Old El Paso taco seasoning.

winter... finally

So we've finally gotten some winter weather down here in the south. We had a day this week when the high was around 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Today it's 40 but feels like 34, and we might even get some snow tomorrow or Tuesday, although it won't stick because we are, after all, in the south.

In other news I spent a good part of the day yesterday painting the youth room in my church's new venue, think I'll be back again tomorrow.

I've also been spending some time in the pottery studio, which I'm excited about. I'm thinking of having a pottery sale to help raise money for moving to Ireland, maybe in May, if I can get enough pieces together.

This is something strange (and gross) I've been expelling copious amounts of mucus. This is strange because I've not been sick. I have no sinus pain or pressure, I'm just really snotty... ew!

That's all.

Oh, LOST is back on Wednesday, YEAH!