It is raining cats and dogs!

Trying to write this post is proving to be quite difficult as I can barely hear my self think; the rain is so loud right now it sounds like a thousand marbles being dropped on the glass roof above me. One of the most ironic aspects of our cottage is the dining area.  The eating nook is essentially a glass box- all the walls are windows and the entire ceiling lightly tinted glass.  This design is great in intermittent periods of sun that are scattered during the day as the room heats up rather quickly!  Yet, any bit of rain and wind sounds like the cottage is caving in and that we will all find our selves spinning to the Land of Oz from the gale force winds that wind around the coast and up to our cottage.

The last week in Spiddal has been quite rainy and windy!  We have certainly been spoiled with the nice weather for most of September. The rain didn't bother us much since we had a long weekend off to just hang out in Spiddal.  This was wonderful for everyone as we were starting to feel the affects of traveling 3 or 4 days out of each week. I especially welcomed this time off to try to kick my cold! Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were spent drinking gallons of tea, watching movies and sleeping.

On Saturday, a group of us got a hostel in Galway for the night.  All 11 of us crammed into a single hostel room with only 8 beds.  Oops!  We spent the afternoon roaming around through the City Centre taking time to shop of course!  We found a wonderful  farmers market and I would have bought everything there! Luckily, I didn't have my grocery shopping bags along so I was restricted to only the produce that I could carry and eat at the time.  We finally found a good Mexican burrito place in Galway for dinner and spent the night wandering the streets and doing our own little pub crawl. Most notably, we spent much of our night at the King's Head Pub. The most famous pub in Galway as it has been around for the past 800 years.  The name of the pub comes from a tenant who lived in the building in the 1600s, Col. Peter Stubbers, who is accused of executing King Charles I. Of course, the rain and wind began that night again and we spent most of our time feeling like drowned cats.

We were lucky again on Sunday to have a day in Galway filled with sun.  Some of us went to mass at the Cathedral in morning.  The Cathedral sits on the River Corrib-the only place I've seen leaves change colors yet! Sunday afternoon was the championship match for the National Hurling Title in which Co. Galway was playing Co. Kilkenny.  Unfortunately, Galway was pulverized by Kilkenny. But, it was still fun to watch the game with the die hard hurling fans in Galway!  The entire city was filled with maroon and white banners and everyone was wearing jersey's, face paint, scarves and hats in support of our Galway team!

River Corrib

Changing leaves! 

After a relaxing week, it is time to get a lot of work done before mid-term break!  This weekend we leave for Dublin on Thursday for another excursion with the group. After that I have three days of classes before I am off to Paris, Vienna and Salzburg, Austria to visit friends!  Stay tuned.