Trathnona maith agat!

Here I sit in the Ethan Allen room writing another letter home.  The children are in bed.   Mark is in Seattle.  And I have the Internet on listening to the dulcet tones of Dave Niehaus and Rick Rizzs.  Isn’t technology wonderful!  It is the bottom of the second and the M’s are behind 2 to nothing.   Ouch!  It has not been a good series.  Let’s hope the Mariners can turn it around.

Well, we went on an adventure today.  Before I left Seattle, Mark’s Dad, David, sent me an obituary for Edward Roddy, David’s grandfather.  We really didn’t know much about the Roddy family.  Well, before I left Seattle I sent off for some death certificates for Edward, his wife Josephine, and son John, Mark’s grandfather.  Well, the one for Josephine arrived and said that she was the child of John Corrigan and Mary Sexton Corrigan of Madison  Co., OH.  So I got on the internet and put out a call for anyone who knew anything about Corrigans or Sextons in Madison.  Two people contacted me and they said that Mary Sexton’s father, Cornelius Sexton, came from Powerstown in Co. Tipperary.   So this morning the kids and I drove down.  I found the church in town.  I searched the graveyard by the church but found no Sextons, nor Hickeys, Cornelius’ mother’s family not Lonergans (Cornelius’ wife’s family).  I also found another old cemetery a ways away from the church but it was quite overgrown.  I searched all the gravestones that were visible above the knee high grass, but again saw no relatives.  Still it was fun.

Afterwards the kids and I went to  the Mitchelstown caves.  They are limestone caves and have some stunning stalagmites and stalactites.  There were all sorts of glistening calcium carbonate crystals, which apparently appear in the summer, and last a bit into the fall, but then disappear, so I guess we hit it at a good time.

On the way home, we had a flat tyre (note the Irish spelling).  There is no place to pull over on these roads here.  I got the jack out and the spare (yes, they’re small here too).  I was trying to figure out how to work the jack and a nice young man drove up and offered to help.  He was a Boston native whose mother had married an Irishman.  He got the old one off in the dry but it began to rain hard as he put on the replacement.  It was so nice of him to help.  Nice to find nice people.

Our church here is quite old and there is not much in the way of parking.  So the priest announced last Sunday that by way of an experiment, the Saturday vigil and the 11:15 and 12:45 Masses on Sunday would be held in the school, while the 10 a.m. would be at the church.  As I followed the priest out, I heard multiple groups of people complaining amongst themselves and even to the priest that they did not like it one bit.  We went to the local store for croissants after Mass (no coffee and donuts after church here) and I heard a few people in the market discussing how awful this change of venue was.  I had tea at the G.A.A. (Gaelic athletic association, sort of a community center) with some tennis playing mom’s from school on Friday morning and they were discussing what a bad idea this was.  I wondered how many people we would see if we went to the school tonight and I was surprised to see it was quite well attended, probably more of a congregation than we have seen at the 10 a.m. in the church since we arrived.  We’ll see how it goes.  But I think Ireland holds something in common with the U.S. regarding how people like to complain about what is going on at their church.

Hey, who let the dogs out????

I have been making some observations on packaging here in Ireland.  First of all, there is nutritional labeling, not quite as much as we have back home.  But what appears to be missing from many labels is what the serving size is, also how many servings per package.  This house may have some fancy furniture but it is sorely lacking in kitchen supplies.  There is nothing to measure with!  Too make rice I use 2 teacups of water to one teacup of rice.  I  guess Edgar must have let the dogs out.  He tied it with a record breaking RBI (sorry, Babe.)  You non-baseball fans probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Better bone up before you try to read future e-mails, huh?  Anyway, I don’t even have that little clue on the package of noodles to give me some idea of how many servings per package.

Another labeling quirk.  I bought dental floss.  Ok, here is where you notice things.  When you travel, you bring your own dental floss, and you go out to eat.  But when you live in a place, you’re hitting the grocery store and buying semi-labeled food and dental floss.  It gives you a different perspective on how people live.  Anyway, about the dental floss.  The package said to pull "about 48 cm."  Have you ever in your life used about and 48 in the same sentence?  Somebody just read the inches number on a package and converted it.  Or maybe they just don’t round up here.

I’ll tell you what they do do here.  They bet.  No seedy backroom bookies here.  All over town there are places to bet, and presumably watch the races and games and what have you.  But  it’s not just in the betting parlors.  It’s in the classroom!  Yes my children (well Emm and Garth anyway) came home Thursday asking for 50 pence to place a bet on the All Ireland Gaelic Football championship this weekend.  I guess they didn’t figure 4 year olds could come up with a reasonable score.  So I sent Garth in with a bit extra to place a bet for Melinda!  But how exactly do you come up with a score for a game that has not only points but also goals, which are not the same as points?  Well, Garth is having a go at Gaelic so maybe we’ll get it figured out.

We have been having some Irish weather.  Sort of like Seattle.  Although as I look at the Safeco Field Live Cam, it doesn’t look much like Ireland today.  No, we have had lots of rain.  But it seems, so far, to rain heavily and then clear up a bit.  We have seen rainbows almost every day this week.  And they are beautiful.  Emmeline was ready to skip school one day  to go looking for the pot of gold.

They say Ireland has no snakes because of St. Patrick.  They may not have snakes, but they more than make up for the lack of long slithering creatures with worms.  We walk to school in the morning and you literally cannot take your eyes off the pavement for fear of squishing at least 2 worms with every step.  The place is just crawling with them!

Well, that is about the news for now.  I’m sorry my husband cannot  post script more tales from the Antarctic but he’s off enjoying the sunshine in Seattle and stocking up on measuring cups and ice cube trays, commodoties sorely lacking in these parts.  Do you know what they have in lieu of ice cube trays?  A single-use compartmented sandwich bag sort of thing.  Fill it up with water, stick it in the freezer and  pop ‘em  out.  Then you throw away the bag.  Weird.

On a final note, your penguin cookie joke of the week.  Why do you find some fish at the bottom of the ocean?  They dropped out of school.

Slan,

Mary