July 23

"They've been airbrushed within an inch of their lives." -Irma

Same sort of thing at work today. Worked on the database most of the time. Some other little chores. The staff was at an important meeting for about two hours so while I worked on the database alone, I put on K95. Those are always my favorite times. You'd be amazed how much more work I get done when I'm swaying as I type and singing as I email people hahah. After they got back from the meeting, Siobhan and I went down the street. They were having some sort of "Get to know your neighbor" event where they displayed the photographs of a local photography contest. It was a cool venue and nice place where it really did look like people were casually getting to know their neighbors.

(THIS is how some Irish websites show email addresses. Annoying.)

(2:07.)

(One of the photography winners was our coworker's son.)

(Exhibition.)

(Getting to know our neighbors.)

(Kids drawing pictures of their neighbors.)

(Yay streamers!)

Siobhan let me off work a little early today. It was wonderful not having to deal with the Spaniards. Don't get me wrong, I took Spanish for six years and love the language, but hearing it at 110% volume every day gets old.

Dinner tonight was made by Kim and a sick Julie. It was amazing, they made SO much food. Kim said it was to put us into a food coma because we need to sleep early, early tonight. We meet the cab outside tomorrow morning at 4:30 am to go to the airport for London! :) Excitement. That's why I tried so hard to get the blog up to date before then haha.


(Ok, I'm a creeper.)

(Amazing dinner. PS There is double this amount of food not pictured.)

(Wow.)

(Yummmm.)

July 22

"Even in the world of poo, there's a hierarchy. So then the cow pat says to the dog poo-"
"--- Wait!? This is an actual conversation between poo?" (Irma and Siobhan, talking about an Irish cartoon.)

Today was an easy day at work. I mainly just worked on the website for a little bit and the database some more. I finished the database last week, but the staff went through and highlighted the people they knew had left their companies/moved/etc. Now I'm contacting those people to try and update the database with current information.

During lunch break I read more of my book while Irma and Siobhan had a lunch meeting.

(Meeting time.)

After work, it was me and Jenny's turn to cook. We made chicken pizza. It was basically chicken pieces marinated in a soy sauce marinate and then cooked with spring onions and garlic then put in a pizza form. When I say we made dinner, I mean I did dishes and chopped things while Jenny cooked haha. But it still counts.

(Kim.)

(Dinnertime.)

July 21

"How come mythological creatures never fight over me? Damn it my life is so boring." - Mandy Christensen

We spent the morning getting some work done around the office and getting ready for the launch. We had the launch event of the "Connect Mentoring Programme" today which is a collaborative program between Common Ground and another company. We left around 1 to set up and the event began at 2. I worked on handing stuff out and registering people with the EUSA intern from the other company. Funny we had never met and we live in the same complex. The event showed a two videos and had panel discussions and Q&A. After the event ended, my head was pounding so I went home. It took sooo long to get home today and all these Spanish kids just moved into Shanowen and they are SOOO loud on the bus. It's like all spanish all the time on the bus and very very loud. So when I got home I crashed for like an hour before dinner. Felt much better.

(Megan laughing after I woke her up on the bus. She had a rough night.)

(Entering the Irish Museum of Modern Art.)

(During the launch.)

(Nasty weather, today.)

Dinner tonight was provided by Megan. Hawiian pizza is my favorite and this pizza was surprisingly good considering it's Irish. After dinner we continued with movie nights by watching New Moon. :)

(Pizza night.)

(Megan's neck was... err... cold..)

July 20

"I will be sweetness and light tomorrow, you know?"
- Siobhan

Work today was mainly spent working on the website again, working on the corrections for the database update, and getting things together for a launch we are co-hosting tomorrow. The launch is with another company similar to ours, called "Create"- turns out they also have an American intern with EUSA and we ended up needing to arrange a lot of things together throughout the day. We live in the same complex and have never even seen each other, weird. Small world.

(Scottish candy given to me by Siobhan. She said she grew up on them.)

(Reading during lunch break.)

(2:07)

(Only realized today that I forgot to do my "cost of living" comparision I began in Richmond... oops.)


After work had a lovely group dinner, as always. Dinner tonight was cooked by Mandy and Maggie; meatloaf, broccoli, and potatoes.

(Yummy.)

(Another movie night after dinner. Everyone's excited to watch Twilight. It's a must after they all got my hooked on the books.)

July 19

"Well you can go now, since you've got your ammunition for slagging."
- Siobhan.

Back at Common Ground today. Started with just some basic catching up and reorganization. Mainly spent today working on one of our websites that needs a revamp. We've been having meetings about the site and deciding how to handle it, so now it's time to make that happen. Got some lunch around 12:30, and headed to St. Michael's Estate around 1:30 to set up for the class with the little kids today.

Today with the kids was supposed to be landscape day. We were gonna take all the kids down the canal walk and photograph in pairs during class. They were very excited. We started class and I gave them copies of the images they took last week, with borders around them, and gave them crayons for a little while to decorate them to bring them home. Then... the rain came. In heavy sheets, from no where. Thank you, Ireland, for ruining my canal walk plan. So we stretched the coloring out as long as the kids would allow it, and then we collected all the umbrellas we could find in all of the building, and we just went out to the playground and took umbrella portraits of each other. It actually went really well. They love posing and they fight over who gets cameras, so I consider that a good sign. Remember, though, that I can't post pictures of them. :( Sorry.

After work went home and caught up on some uploading and editing until dinner. Dinner tonight was served by Hannah and Emily; curry chicken with onions and apples. Delicious.

(Nice Maggie.)

(Group dinners.)

(Mmmm.)

(We needed to walk to Spar, and Maggie wanted to come, but was being so slow. Mulch hitting her window would tell her to hurry up, right?)

(Or get the wrong persons attention haha.)

After dinner we took an hour to shower and got back together for movie time. PS I love you, tonight. Everyone now recognizes the inaccuracies with Irish accents and stuff, but we screamed when we saw the bridge we took pictures on in Wicklow. Then everyone cried.

(Kim took the cover off her duvet, and washed it, and there was no other way to get it back on...)

(Reading party before the movie party.)

(Movie time.)

July 18

This whole trip has been full of working, cooking, and busily touring. Every so often we need a break for a day. So today we had a relaxation day. We slept in, met late, and hopped a train to the beach. We spent the day casually laying, sleeping, reading, and jumping on the beach. This whole post is gonna be full of failed jumping pictures and awkward posed pictures on the beach. Most won't need captions. So just enjoy glancing through our relaxing, jumpy day at Howth Beach, Ireland.

(Pausing at a church.)

(Looked around a booksale.)

(Arrived on the beach!)

(Love it.)

(Haha, here we go.)

(Awkward.)

(Better.)

(Awkward throw-up bag.)

(Matching AGAIN.)

(Mandy.)

(Dublin 2010: Rachel, Maggs, Jules, Jen, Kimmie, Favenport. Names we never use.)

(Awww.)

(Benny.)

(The ONE group photo we took before people started running towards my camera and made me nervous to leave it alone. So I arranged some other photos where I stood behind the camera for a while.)

(This is why they were running towards us, we found out. Notice the guy in red who tried to dunk Julie in the water. Notice the way we aren't helping.)


(I think these pictures are just fun. We always tried to do something weird in the background.)





(Ha, fail.)

(I need to dye my hair again.)

(I let other people have the camera haha.)


(The jumping pictures begin. Are you surprised?)

mmmm...?

(Perfect timing Mandy!)

Great day with the girls.