Holla back 2009

I’m trying out the new app with a dog at my feet. It’s delicious. Poor puppy is … How do we say? Le tired. Yes! Le tired, she is le tired. Time to test for success!

holiday food. yes this is totally not related to french.

very first is an all-day extravaganza with laura, my only friend.  i won’t taunt you with all the pictures, because they’ve all been eaten.  all you need is this.  a cookie cake.  decorated by the very best.

let’s continue with a cooking extravaganza at the larsons’.  my camera was not out for the majority but i managed to capture potatoes and candy.  so i think all is not lost.

Potatoes all in a row

Then of course came the chocolate fudge, the peanut butter chocolate pecan fudge, the oreo truffles, the haystacks, the white chocolate m&m deliciousness, and i can’t remember all that we dipped in chocolate.

HAY stacks! woot

pretzels! i'm in the mood for christmas!

oreo truffles. "come! eat me! i'm GOOD for you!"

I know you wish you were there, because we forced a plate of everything on everyone who was there.  INCLUDING me.  (merci à dieu)  soon thereafter, thanksgiving day came and dorsey and i found ourselves responsible for only one dessert instead of 5.  Thankful, we made the best pie that Laura ever made :).  Caramel apple pie!  Because why have apples without caramel?  (This is a question I find myself asking a lot now.)

luscious pie

I think we best leave it at that.  It is not all of the pictures, nor all of the food that was so deliciously prepared.  However, it is a taste of what you would experience if you were ACTUALLY there.  And then you wouldn’t need to check this blog every once in a blue moon.  (A phrase which is apparently under debate, when is a blue moon everyone?  Inquiring minds want to know.)

And okay, I learned épousseter today.  But really it is much too boring of a word to burden you with its meaning.

cala language institute

so here we are, about to embark on a week of new language learning.  hopefully there is coffee available!  i’ll check back in to note a) my exhaustion b) my new words and c) (hopefully) my excitement!

okay, now that it’s more than a month later…

gangster stylings of laura and daniel

first of all, we jumped in the sea.  and only if you don’t know me and have not talked to me in the past month would it be possible that you do not know that.  so to start the day holly, daniel, me and laura all got awesome family passes and set out to [dun liri] to go jump in like awesome irish-peoples.  they say it improves circulation and general health, and basically i was just humoring them because i thought it would be fun, not because 51 degree water sounds like an awesome way to combat my purple fingers and toes.

wait, we're going to do what?

it’s a beautiful day, sunny and not requiring the gagillion layers that we had brought with us in our packs. it’s a gorgeous walk to the sea and find our little place (such lies) to go jump in.  there’s a full out changing area (not enclosed, this is europe) and stairs to access getting in the water!

check this nonsense out!

daniel gets in first, almost carried away by this crazy current at the bottom of the stairs – and then it comes to holly and me.  i decide to…

clearly i decided to ...

go for it!  and i swam some, maybe halfway out the the buoy.  and it got cold fast.  holly jumped in too, all the while laura documenting our adventures!  she has, in my opinion, far too many pictures of me looking ridiculously cold.  i did apparently look pretty pathetic when i got out, but did not require the hypothermic blanket that we brought along!  (and earned the respect of the irishmen).

we did it!

i was wrong to not believe their claims; we totally had amazing circulation from that point forward!  awesome.

we had an amazing rest of the day, including seals, tea, waffles, much train riding, shopping and CHURCH FRY eating.  also you know, we ate in a pub that was a church.  but mainly they served church fries.  almost changed my life.  almost.  

one last image i need to share with the internet world to complete our trip (it could be my new family, i.e. denny, or it could be the box of granola, or even our crazy long curtains in our room!)

sixteen hours?!?

but it is not any of those things.  it is a picture of the door that is most likely still wet with paint.  i barely touched the white paint and i was still finding it on parts of my arms and hands upwards of a week.

we have been back long enough to have had our final meeting about ireland (which i remembered, AND attended, big feat) and so i wanted to include a few more words about our trip.

i left off after we finished paul and daniel’s flat, and we were all so exhausted.  we met up with one of christy’s friends and somehow were able to find food!

disgusting sounding, AMAZING source of iron

we ended up at a burger joint and it was amazing.  i picked a burger almost at random – hawaiian or thai or jamaican or traditional or … .  i ended up with a burger that no nationality should claim; with pineapple, pickled beet and fried egg, all atop a lovely pile of meat.  it revived me for all of ten minutes. (and that was a large accomplishment)

i pulled a dorsey at the table and daniel escorted me to our latest meeting of the trip before we retired to bed and i almost refused toothbrushing. the next morning we were spirited off to greystones after devotional and the time where i eat every carb known to man and sing about it.  greystones was beautiful, yet instructive.

Uh oh.

we went the opposite direction and i was delighted when i could reveal my mental prowess concerning the spread of the french language in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (how did french get to a little protestant town in ireland?).

is this real?

really, i asked myself that.  i am still in awe of the amount of structure that you find seaside in ireland.  if anyone has nuggets of wisdom of how that all came to be, please share! we had a fantastic time walking around greystones and talking with chuck and generally taking lots of pictures so that we could prove that this vista existed and that we were there with it.

yeah, i don't think so.

our day continued to be amazing with soup and bread and salad for lunch at a spot that could easily be in asheville, nc.  called the happy pear (or the moldy peach for those of us with early onset making up of words), it was quite lovely.

tomato basil soup and delicious carbs

we met ellisha at her station of the dart (taking chuck with us) and discovered the anchorage (after walking at breakneck dublin speeds).  we saw flowers that they sell and the evil bunny and the preschool areas…

with appropriately sized doors.

we even had a little time to go shopping! (thank you h&m). i have no idea how i fit four days into the last post, just a few days after coming back, and this post seems to be taking over the world. but i’ve never been a long letter writer, as my thoughts don’t necessarily make too much sense on the page. and for that i apologize.

je ne suis pas en irelande. :(

so… i am back in the states and oddly enough, missing the weather in dublin!  it’s h-o-t hot here and you have to get up super early to go outside.  but enough of present time!  this is to catch up on the rest of the trip – because it is impossible to relate my experiences fully to everyone, even in blog form, but i shall try!

my last post was after a day of work on monday, which while it was not blister-free, was wonderful!  we worked with paul and his flat tuesday and wednesday as well and paul amazed us all with his honesty and his openness about his life.  he has an amazing heart, and i only wish he could have found his faith without going through so much! it breaks my heart.

Here’s Paul working with us – and he was there everyday!  He found us at Christ Church before Chuck was even able to find parking … introducing us to his amazing honesty and wonderful nature.  I am still blown away by him!

And I love that we were able to do something so tangible on this trip.

Here is our ‘orange glo’ product at work. No telling just how much of it we used last week.  I hope it wasn’t toxic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Denny put up the shelves, we all cleaned, sanded, painted, cleaned, and also cleaned everything!  And it looks like a kitchen where you can start your new life.

 

 

 

We got to see friends of Christy’s and Laura’s Tuesday night, that actually know each other!  We had pizza and waited approximately forever for our bill.  I know that I just wanted to go to sleep after this meal. These days were so full and tiring and fulfilling that I think we all had no clue what to do with ourselves.

Wednesday we worked until we felt we could pass it on to Paul and Daniel and then had a wonderful talk (in a circle of course!) at the end of the day.  We shared our work with them, but we also had a chance to try to express to Paul what he means to us, which I hope stays with him as it will stay with us.  Christy’s friend George waited for two hours while we were not leaving Paul’s!  

This time was so precious – you all will just have to wait to hear about the sea and the pickled beet burgers.

je suis en irelande!

salut tout le monde!

(in english for the benefit of any who may actually read this!)

it’s our first real day here!  yesterday was interminable, but amazing.  we went to church, a chinese buffet, walked a bit around dublin (should i say stumbled?).  we visited logos hope – a missionary ship that travels around the WORLD and is super amazing.  they gave us a lot of good info for our work this week.  we had pub fare in the late evening (it never gets dark)!

i

am

obsessed with the bread.

that is all.

(or not) this morning we had AWESOME breakfast after devotional time.  the granola rivaled marlys’ and the tea was better than coffee! (i take it with milk now). then i got blisters, walked to paul’s flat and worked and worked and worked!  got cleaning supplies (amazing orange bottle grease removal product. go to lidl if you can and BUY IT) cleaned cleaned cleaned. got painting/ cabinetry/ shelving/ tiling supplies and cleaned cleaned cleaned (after my hat almost blew off)

dublin should be sister cities with seattle. i just decided that and since it’s up to me, it’s done.  it’s not only the weather, but glass embedded in the sidewalk like down by elliott’s.  i’ll come up with more reasons, just wait.

tonight we were walking back and hit up a bit more pub fare – and our barkeep was french!  totally impressed the group with the ‘transaction’ (thank you holly!) and scored free guinness glasses!  totally fun!  it’s almost time to head back to our b&b (of which there will be pictures, obsessed.) but let me just say that god is working here, and it is A-MAZ-ING!

peace

katie

la vie est dure.

first of all – if anyone can clue me in on how to use the wordpress app – i.e. make it put them online, i would be greatly appreciative.  because time one-on-one with my actual computer (not including actual productive test-writing, paper composing, spanish word learning, REAL productive time) is becoming more and more scarce.  

it started with comps, which i thought were over, but of course, like most terrifying and character-building things, are never over.  because who has time to eff around on the computer when there’s twenty five centuries of history to learn about the french language?  riddle me that joker.

it continued when i was blessed enough to have time to read again…

it continued when i went to chicago and my dependency on the ipod touch deepened and deepened.

and now it’s going to reach a whole new level with available reading time, summer, comps round 2, ipod obsession, finals, etc. etc.  basically life that thankfully does not include my adorable little lappy.  because needing it makes me feel like a nerd.

getting back to why the vie is so dure.  i’m actually tired of talking about it, and don’t want to actually write about it, so i will sum it up as i would with an extremely depressing twitter message.

two funerals, two days, one failure at life.

so take that and chew on it.  if you think your week was worse than that (keeping in mind that mine was condensed handily into the last half of the week) then please, by all means, let me know. email, text, leave a comment, find me on twitter, whatever it takes for me not to win this game.

i know you’re out there and i’m waiting.

Why am i teaching?

So I’m in class and the little ones are taking their test. And all of a sudden, a case of the blasé attacks!

Why am I making them write a conversation between audrey and david the hoff? Why don’t I just copy the test from the book? Or have one test like France?

Oh comps. How I hate how you rule my life… Causing tiny panic attacks and making me re-evaluate my life. One can only hope that all will return to normal next Friday.

Please pray that it does. I know I will.

i learned dirty french words

but i’m not going to post them here.  you’ll just have to coax them out of me… in person.  like a real friend.

i did learn the word for dandelion : un pissenlit.

 

more importantly i think everyone needs to know about the relevance of the vienna boys choir.  they not only sing in uzbek, bulgarian, german (duh), french, italian, english (with adorable accents), etc. etc. etc., they even dance in leiderhosen all while i clap my little heart out.  but does that make them relevant?  i hear you ask.  well, no, it doesn’t.  but singing my fair lady in german sure does.  and singing rent and ABBA really surely does.  in fact, if anybody is out there that disputes this – then go see them, and if you a) don’t cry during the korean love song and b) don’t adore little austrian boys trying to put some soul into seasons of love, then GO HOME and never speak to me again.

thank you.