1-26-05 Happy Australian Day!

Marie-Josee left early this morning to go back to Germany. I was sad to say good bye because she is such a sweetheart and when you are travelling like this and meet new people that are really cool, you become close so quickly and then must say goodbye again. We will go visit her when we go back to Germany tho. We had gotten several recommendation to check out Galway for a place to find jobs and hole up for awhile. So we hopped on a bus around 11:25a and did just that. When we got to Limerick the guy that had been sitting alone in the back of the bus had to get off at the Limerick stop. So as we were nearing the bus station the guy gets up from his seat, comes over to us where we are seated and says straightfaced, "This town is called HELL!...No, I am serious." And then justs walks away to the front of the bus. Very spooky. Caleb said he could see why when he got off the bus in Limerick to go to the bathroom. He said the station was really dirty and scary. He didn't want to touch the ground with his feet even. He said it look lik a carpet of cigarette butts. He was glad he didn't have to touch anything in thebus station bathroom. They had some "technical difficulties" with our bus so we had to move ourselves and all our gear from under the bus to a new bus. They got back on the road about 45-50 minutes later than expected so we got to Galway later than expected. We found our new Hostel without too much trouble. This hostel is a bit different because 95% of the people staying there and 100% of the staff live there long term. So it is more like communal living. Rachel, a girl from Australia, was having her birthday. Everyone who lived there was making a dish for dinner to share. However we didn't discover this until after we had gone shopping for food and began preparing our pizza. We did get to try all the desserts, including birthday cake. Mmmmm I sort of felt like an outsider since most everyone lives here full time and have established relationships and are very tight knit. We are also the only Americans staying here. We have to explain/defend our political point of view at least once or twice a day. Good thing we are not Bush supporters or we would get even more flack than we already do. Everyone hung out until late partying for Rachel's birthday and Australian day.