From Liverpool, I flew back into Cork. The traffic was so bad that the bus driver let us off in the middle of the road so that we could walk to wherever we were going, as it was going to take longer to actually drive there. I wandered around a bit, looking for a decent tshirt before my bus left in an hour, but couldn't find the tourist info center that had the one I wanted. So instead, I grabbed dinner – sandwich and crisps from a convenience store (do they call them something else?) – and made my way back to the bus station.
There were so many people that wanted on my bus that they called up two more buses and made them direct trips to different cities. One to Tralee, one to Killarney, and one to somewhere else that was just before Killarney. See, it's always so easy to get out west and then once you're there THERE'S NO GETTING BACK! Seriously, a hundred buses arrive on the west coast every day and maybe three leave. In any case, this meant that I actually got to Killarney while it was still light out. The town seemed much the same as it had before, save the addition of massive decorations for the Gaelic football final that was scheduled a few days from then. I even remembered how to get to the hostel, and the clerk actually remembered me from two years ago! I was too flattered at the time to have been creeped out by that.
It had been one loooong day of traveling (see the train ride through Manchester, etc. that was all on this same day), and the Timbers would be playing at approximately two a.m., and since there was WiFi I planned on watching them. So, it wasn't much of a surprise then that I slept through the meeting time the next day for the tours of the Dingle peninsula which I kinda wanted to go on, since I didn't have a car and that seemed to be the only way to get over there. Instead, I grabbed a German girl that was moping around in my room looking lonely and we walked around the Killarney National Park and I took a zillion pictures.
Once again, though, I booked too many nights in Killarney, because after the park, there really just wasn't anything to do. There are more Americans in Killarney than any other group of people, especially the Irish, so between the tourist attitude and the local attitude towards tourists, the atmosphere of the town isn't all that great in the evening. I hurredly booked a room in Tralee for the following night so that I could get to Doolin, where there was hiking, as early as possible.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to catch up on soccer scores (Sky Sports is fucking evil and stupid. More on that later, I think.), and I called home for the first time to let my parents know that I was alive and well, if a little bored. I left fairly early the next day, hoping to get some breakfast at the wonderful place next to the hostel, but as it was Sunday there wasn't a thing open or a soul about. At the bus station, an elderly couple was fuming mad that the bus to Dingle had been canceled because of 'The Football.' I loved how no one called it just 'football' but always had to add that article 'THE Football,' which to me made it into a proper noun. This applied, I think, to both soccer-football and Gaelic football, although in this case they were talking about the Gaelic version, in which Kerry, the county we were in, was to be playing the final against their rivals and neighbors, Cork. Anyway, The Football was kind of a big deal, I guess, what with bus drivers refusing to run their routes during the match, and the decorations everywhere (houses, businesses, cars, lawns, children).
From the park:
Boy did I love Cork. It had me with the coffee, really, at the hostel. Fresh roasted in Cork! €2! Ummm, mmm, mmm, coffee. It came in your very own (rented, anyway) mini-French press. I always love ordering tea in this part of the world because they give you your very own pot and it makes me feel special. I know that sounds silly, but it's just one of those things about traveling that just tickles me. The hostel's lobby also had free WiFi which also made me very happy after being in the techno-wasteland of Achill. (I love Achill for that, and I hope that relaxed, get-away-from-it-all atmosphere doesn't change too much, but when ya need something done, it's awfully frustrating.) I got directions via public transit to Turner's Cross, the soccer park where I was going to see Cork City FC play that night.
But what really cemented my liking of the city was the market downtown, which I ran across the next day while exploring the city. Much like Pike Place in Seattle (one of the only cool things left in that city), it was semi-underground with wooden ceilings and walls. Full of fresh fish, meat and veggies, it smelled like it, too. I've always loved Pike Place, so I was excited to explore every little corner of the place. This was when I ran across the shark.
Wow, I can't say I've ever seen a dead shark before. I almost felt sorry for the thing. Ok, not almost. I really did feel sorry for it. And that's speaking as someone who both hunts and fishes. But even I have to admit that it was pretty neat to be this close to a real shark. So the camera finally came out and I became a full-fledged tourist, taking pictures of sharks and streets and buildings.
A lot of things about Cork reminded me of Portland, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. First of all, there's a big river that runs through the middle of downtown. This means that there are a lot of bridges, like Portland, and also like Portland, this means there is a ton of traffic. Fortunately, the downtown is small enough that one is able to walk everywhere anyway, so it wasn't too much of a problem for people that don't need to commute long distances everyday. Then, there's the nickname "People's Republic of Cork" which, adjusted for the name of course, is also one of Portland's nicknames (along with beertown, bridgetown, soccer city usa, stumptown). Plus, Cork has several breweries including Beamish, Murphy's and… and one other I can't remember. I never figured out if they had any smaller breweries, though. I figure they will soon enough since even Dublin has gotten into the organic microbrews scene.
The night after the soccer game, I went to the pub that gave discounts for the hostel I was staying in. The rugby World Cup was on, and I was mildly interested in watching it, since having learned some of the rules, I was starting to find kind of exciting. Ireland wasn't even playing, but two teams in there group were, so there was enough interest that more than a handful of people turned out to watch, too. I ended up talking with a couple people until closing which was nice, since when traveling alone I can go for long stretches without saying more than "thank you" and "pint of ___, please."
Next morning, nicely hungover, I checked out, found some food at a diner right in front of the Airlink bus stop, and began the whirlwind trip to England, which I'm sure I've blogged about somewhere. Yep, there it is! More pictures of Cork:
Doolin, 17th
I'm such a bleeding heart. As I was out walking yesterday a man waved me over from his car. An old Irish farmer, he was obviously lonely and wanted to chat a bit. So I did, and he offered to give me a lift over to the cliffs, which sounded alright. I don't normally get in cars with strangers, but he seemed harmless enough, but by the end of the journey, if he'd asked me to marry him, I'm certain he wouldn't have been joking; he just got a little too friendly, and all those creep alarm bells began to go off. He tried to get me to agree to let him drive me to the neighboring town for the festival they're having that evening, but I only agreed that I might run into him at the nearby pub.
Thankfully, I met some Americans at the hostel that were headed to the same pub (there was supposedly a good group of musicians in town, set to play there) and told them about the guy, and we all figured their presence would be a deterrent. Well, it was. He said hello, but wouldn't talk to me with everyone there. Now, I'm pretty sure – and the Americans would agree with this – that he has slightly dubious intentions. What they are, I don't know, which is even more alarming, but if he just wanted company he wouldn't have shied from chatting with my companions. But despite this knowledge, at the end of the night when he approached me and asked forlornly, "so do you still want to go to Lisdoon?" I really felt bad. It was already midnight, so he knew it was probably not going to happen.
"No, not tonight, it's already late, and I'm kind of tired," I answered, apologetically.
"Oh. Ok," he said, clearly disappointed. "Tomorrow, I can pick you up at one o'clock and we'll drive around the coastline, ok?" Why do these people have to be so goddamn nice?
"Well, I'll probably be out hiking then. I kinda wanted to hike all day, that's why I came out here."
"Oh," more disappointment. "Well, you'll be around then?"
"Yeah, I'll be around tomorrow."
"Ok, well perhaps I'll see you then?" his voice cracking.
"Perhaps, Tommy. I'll be around." And then he hugged me and tottered towards the door, leaning heavily on his cane.
I'm a terrible human being. I've made some sweet, lonely old man very sad.
Tralee, and Limerick, enroute to Doolin
The following combinations of sandwich fillings were available in Limerick Monday morning. They are, unfortunately for the hungry American, common.
On a sandwich? How do they even THINK of these things? The selections in England are even more bewildering. I'd have taken a picture of the ones at the York train station, but I was too tired and hungry to be amused by what appeared to be either terribly ill-conceived experiments conducted by aliens on what humans eat, or a joke conspired by sandwich makers and the operators of CCTV cameras in stores. On these sort of occasions, I usually settle on "Chicken BLT on thick, chunky bread." Sometimes it's funny later.
Yesterday, Kerry won the football final. As I was in Tralee, the capital of Kerry, things were expectedly crazy. Every car that came through the main drag laid on the horn, and any passengers waved air horns out the window at passerby who returned fire, so to speak. By 7pm, there wasn't a sober person on the street, save for me, who was trying to take pictures of pretty things, but I then decided that I was more likely to get a can of Bulmers thrown on my camera than a decent shot of anything. Instead, I walked out of town a bit and took roughly a million pictures of a sunset. On the way back to the hostel I was accosted by at least three extremely drunk men, one of whom was probably 80 years old. The pub I'd watched the game at said that they'd have a band in, so I stopped in the doorway to listen but heard a cover song and decided I didn't want to put up with bad covers AND drunk slobs, so I tried to find a shop open on a Sunday night for a sandwich. Besides, I was sick of every male I walked past slurring, "Heyyy-eyyyyy," at me. (And no I don't even know how you can slur a nonword like "hey", but they managed.) The only thing open was a fastfood joint named "Supermacs". The counter was staffed by the only cute - and coincidentally, the only sober – boy in town. It didn't hurt that he kept smiling at me. While that was probably due to my funny accent, I'll take what I can get.
I had to get up at 5:30 in order to catch the 6:15 bus out of town, which was my only chance in getting to Doolin before 8pm. I didn't sleep well either, due to the text messaging from my youngest sis (YstSis, until I find a better acronym) and Tim (who doesn't get an acronym), who wanted to talk about the Timbers game. Any other night, guys. Poor Tim is IN Portland, but can't follow the games due to work. So YstSis texts me the latest halfway 'round the world, then I text Tim. Communication these days is strange, isn't it? (btw, Timbers 3-0! 3-1 on aggregate! Bring on the next round!)
Irish towns are hard to identify. I mean, I know when I'm in one, I just don't know the name of it. This is a problem when riding the bus, as the driver sure as hell doesn't inform anyone of where we are. In small American towns, everything is named for the place. You'll have the Newport Bank, the Newport Insurers, the Newport Police Station. Here, everything is Paddy's Pub, Diarmuid's Shoes, and O'Shea's Groceries. In every town! This meant that on the ride to Doolin from Limerick, I couldn't sleep for fear of missing my stop and ending up in Bogville in front of Murphy's Pub where there's no ATM, no place to stay and noooo bus on Sundays. So when the old lady at the front of the bus who had been shouting into her cellphone for the whole journey began to have technical difficulties, I was the one she approached.
"Do you speak English?"
Sigh. "Yes."
"Of course you do. Now, could you tell me why my phone isn't ringing? It's only vibrating and I CANNOT afford to miss calls today, it's urgent."
So I gave it my best shot, but for the life of me, I don't know why it wasn't ringing. It really should have been ringing. But after fifteen minutes or so she gave up and tried the boy across the aisle who merely looked at the thing, with visible disgust I might add, and it rang. This is why I never got into fixing cars.
BUT the trip got immensely better when we hit a traffic jam in some tiny town called Lisdoonvarna (we got stuck in front of the sign labeling it as such, that's the only reason I know the name). A delivery truck parked on the wrong side of the road couldn't pass us, and after consultation between our driver and the other, it was decided that the bus would back up. Meanwhile, traffic was piling in from both directions. The bus driver (known from now on as Best Bus Driver Ever, or BBDE) was already getting excited. "Making ME back up? He could've. He should've. He's the one going the wrong way! He got scared though. He had room, he just got scared." After the truck was past, it was a matter of dealing with all the cars that were following the truck, all of which had decided to follow the truck's lead by driving on the wrong side of the road. So we hiccuped through town, jamming on the brakes so hard every few seconds that people's faces kept bouncing off the seats in front of them, and BBDE less and less successfully stifling his shouts at the other drivers. Finally, in a tirade I could hear all the way near the back of the bus:
"OCH, fuck.. fff… *mumbles* AGGGHHHHGGGH! DIS IS WHY I DON'T HAVE ANY HAIR ON ME HEAD!" (btw, I think I came to Ireland just to hear someone shout that)
"THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WITH LICENSES! I WOULDN'T LET THEM DRIVE A PRAM!" He was a short man, with a high-pitched voice which made it all the sweeter. Even people in the restaurant next to us were laughing.
About an hour and 8km later he saved me a walk to my hostel by dropping me off right in front of it, but not before I'd nearly gotten off the bus earlier. Told that he'd get me closer to where I was going, I hopped into the front seat, with full view of the road ahead. Big mistake. Sure, we only went like a hundred feet, but it was a hundred feet of terror. There is no way that vehicles that large should be on roads that small, especially when there are other cars and pedestrians. But for entertainment alone this guy won the close race for the highly coveted best bus driver title.
So I was on Achill for awhile. Some people call their hometowns a vortex, but they're just exaggerating. Unless they're from Achill. It's an island off an island and even though I spent six weeks trapped there last year, I came crawling back again. Of course there's no internet, the buses run intermittently, and I wouldn't even be surprised if the newspapers reach there a day late. It's a great place if you want a break from the real world – and I really appreciate it for that – but, man, do you need to plan everything before you end up out there. The dates are from the 6th through the 9th.
***
*Old Friend, New Friends*
Getting a bus out to Achill is easy as pie, especially if you've done it a few times before. The only problem was that the only public toilet in Westport was closed, so I was in a pretty bad way before I even got on the final bus. The weather that morning in Galway was chilly and drizzling and I expected much the same up north, but Westport was like a blue hole. It was hot. It's always raining in Westport! So I buried my jacket in my backpack and wandered around taking pictures and looking for a bathroom before getting on the next bus.
The driver winked at me. I sighed because I already recognized him. He was the one that nearly left without us last year when my friend read the schedule wrong and we were at the pub. The whole town thought that was pretty funny. I recognized people on the bus. I already felt like I was entering a hole.
On the far end of Westport, an elderly lady flagged down the bus. "Sorry! I had to go to confessions!" she explained. "I had to go to confessions and they kept me there for an HOUR!" And then, as she walked through the aisles, possibly to no one in particular, "Them priests don't know what the hell they're talkin about!" I was suddenly glad I'd forgotten my headphones in my luggage. Ahhh, western Ireland.
The weather stayed nice and everything was peachy until we stopped at a schoolhouse and every kid on the island got on the bus. It was three to a seat in the back and standing room only everywhere else. They were nice enough kids, but in the way that all teenagers do, they had to shout at each other to communicate. I'm pretty sure people could hear that bus coming better than they'd hear a brigade of tanks.
I walked down to the fieldschool to meet Kate, my Canadian roommate from the fieldschool last year. She'd spent the summer working there this year and was about to move on to a different job somewhere in the Midlands. I met the rest of the new staff, including Ross the housemate of Kate and the field director at the school who I was staying with, and then we all went out to prepare for a beach barbecue. Yay beach party! Apparently, the weather had been crap all summer and it just cleared up right before I drove up. People were coming out of their houses to admire the view and breathe the air. It's nice that people can appreciate such little things.
The beach party was excellent, of course. We salvaged some washed up wood and turf for the fire and had kebabs and burgers and sausage and of course a lot of Guinness. Oh how I missed the ocean and drinking beer over conversations about archaeology.
*Happy Times*
The next day I hiked the long way around to the Deserted Village, where the dig is, to see what they'd done to my unit. The whole walk was gorgeous, and hot, and I took a bunch of pictures that now kind of all look alike. The house I'd been working on looks completely different, with the exception of a few stones that I'm intimately familiar with, after spending days measuring the corners and sketching. The fire pit I'd been working on is actually one of two fireplaces in the house, and a piece of stone with metal bits had been found toppled over, indicating it may have been a mantelpiece. Isn't that NEAT? I thought so.
Continuing the same direction, I took the back road to Dooagh which provided some gorgeous vistas that if I wasn't nearly about to pass out from hunger, I'd have lingered at the whole afternoon. Gielty's, the pub I practically lived at last year, was my goal for the afternoon, and I got there just in time to grab lunch and some (instant! When did they start that crap?) coffee and chat with Alan before meeting Ross to get a lift back. It turned out though, that we were going to have a few pints with a newish local at The Pub pub (Yeah, it's really just called 'The Pub') first. Did you know that the Irish government will fund film clubs? Ross is trying to get one going there. He'll get sent a few films a month and will show them at the fieldschool and people are going to arrange for a shuttle from other parts of the island. Does the American government do this? The way they were talking about it, it seemed common knowledge that one could get the government to send movies to watch with the town.
That night it was back to Gielty's to meet (for me) and re-meet (for everyone else) a professor from Cork and his archaeologist wife. They of course were friendly and incredibly knowledgeable, as all archaeologists seem to be. Plus, again like all archaeologists, they liked beer and bought everyone pints. That's how archaeology works in Ireland (and to some extent in the US, as well): you make connections and learn about other digs by meeting archaeologists at pubs and drinking many rounds.
That night I decided that since I need to use the internet, I'd combine the trip with the opportunity to meet with Jenn, another Canadian fieldschool survivor that now lives in Castlebar. I needed to book a room in Cork, figure out how to get down there, and maybe even work out a plane ticket to England. Besides, I'd only been through Castlebar on the bus; it'd be neat to see a new town. Kate was leaving the next day and Ross was driving her, but they were letting me stay an extra night so I could sort things out.
*May I Waste your Time, Too?*
What a colossal waste of time. I got out of bed and sneaked out of the house before Kate and Ross got up, so I didn't get to say goodbye to either of them, which was very disappointing. I needed to use the internet and I wanted to see my friend Jenn who lives in Castlebar, so I had to catch the 8:20 or 10:00 bus. I opted for the latter, as I figured Jenn wouldn't be awake either and that we would make an afternoon of it and I wouldn't need to get back to Achill until the evening. Well, I booked my room in Cork and wrote down the bus schedule for Sunday (8:35 from Achill, 10:15 Westport to Athlone, 1430 to Cork) in about twenty minutes. At that point, I could have caught the next bus to Achill and have been back in time to go for a hike, sit on the beach and then wander over to Gielty's to watch the soccer and have a few pints. But I waited for Jenn to get back to me, which she did… at three-thirty. Two hours after that bus had left. And she said she couldn't make it into town. Well, hell. So then I had to waste an afternoon wandering around Castlebar – the highlights include a Dunne's and a Tesco – and didn't get on the bus until 5:30. A small relief though, the bus driver didn't normally do that route and seemingly forgot to do the rest of the island, which was great for those of us heading all the way to Dooagh, since it cut an hour off of the journey time; hope no one was waiting to catch the bus in Dugort, though!
So a twenty-minute errand took over ten hours. That's life in Achill for ya. I got to Gielty's just in time for the Ireland-Slovakia game, but the place was really quiet. I chatted a bit with one of the servers who had worked there last year (the look on her face when I walked in was hilarious – so confused!), but otherwise I sat drinking my Guinness and watching the game. I tried to text Tim back home, but the message wouldn't send and then I somehow managed to lock the phone, rendering it useless until I got the pin # from my room. No one talked to me, which was ok until the soccer turned to shit and Slovakia kept getting shots on goal. Then Slovakia came back and tied it in stoppage time and I was furious. Can't anything go right? I nursed my drink until I decided that it was late enough that the field school students probably weren't going to show up, so I shook Alan's hand and started the three mile trek in the dark. By the time I got back to the empty house I was thoroughly depressed. No one to talk to! My phone wasn't working, I was on an island in the middle of nowhere, there's no internet access, I didn't have enough minutes to call home, blahblahblah. I went to bed early so that I could get up in time to walk back to Keel (two miles or so) to catch the 8:30 bus.
*Why We Call it "Achilltraz"*
There's no Sunday morning bus off Achill. There really is no escape! It seems that everyone except the bus company knows that there's no bus on Sunday mornings. An old man dressed in the standard attire of jacket-over-sweater, with wool cap pulled down informed me of this after I stood around the area in front of the store that serves as a bus stop.
"Good marning!" he says, after I greeted him. "You're not waitin fer de bus, are ye?"
"Yeah, I am, it's supposed to be—"
"No! Dare's nooooo bus on Sunday! Dare's one at four o'clock. It goes ta Galway. Dare'll be people wanderin inta da store here soon - you should enquire wit dem." (Funny, written down, the Mayo accent looks like a Jamaican one.)
Devastation! What do I do now? If the only bus leaves at four, there's no WAY I'll make it to Cork tonight. I'll have to find a place in Westport or Galway, but they seemed to fill up really quickly last week. I guess I could stay another night here, but I feel I've already overstayed my welcome and Ross is coming back tonight anyway and I don't think he wants to find some bum still in his house. Staying here is definitely a last resort option.
It being Sunday, the store was still closed at nine, so I wandered down to the beach to sit and calm down and look up phone numbers from my travel book. No internet access meant that I had to actually call and talk to people. Unfortunately, I then discovered that my phone had only 80 cents on it. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. I shouldn't have been surprised, really, what with how the past two days had been going. I formulated a few plans of attack, and pushed sand around into little smooth piles until ten when I went back to the store. I bought some frozen spaghetti and "Club Orange" fizzy drink, and a phone top-up. What a stupid day so far. It's only 1015!
*Is My Luck Changing?*
I glumly trudged back towards the house, four miles in a useless roundtrip, topping off my phone along the way. As I walked, thinking frantically how I was going to work the next few hours, a car pulled over and the reversed back towards me. The couple from UCC! "Would you like a lift?" she asked. "I would love a lift!" I chirped, and then hopped into the back seat. They said they would have taken me all the way to Cork, but they're stopping in Westport and Galway and wouldn't be arriving for a day or two. This is where I should have asked for a lift to Westport or Galway, so I could catch the train or bus down to Cork and everything would have worked itself out, but I'm an idiot, so I didn't. I was grateful enough for the lift to the house as it was, and they certainly empathized with the bus schedule snafu.
As I cooked my frozen spaghetti meal I called a hostel in Westport, fully expecting to be turned down, or at the very least, offered a four-bed private room which I could never afford. "Och, we have loads of beds!" Well, that took care of that. Then I rang the hostel in Cork to let them know that I wouldn't be coming tonight. "Ok, no problem. See you tomorrow!" What the hell, this is becoming easy! I may even get in a hike today, since that's really all I've wanted to do these past few days as it is.
The day turned out alright, though. The weather cleared up again, so I walked down to the far end of Keel beach that I hadn't been to. I deliberately left my camera behind. I wanted to experience the walk and the beach for myself, not for my digital film. Besides, while my camera could have shown you the gorgeous green-blue of the water, and the bright green terraced hills that rose straight up from the beach with sheep clinging impossibly on them, it wouldn't have been able to capture just how frigid the water was or how nice the breeze smelled. There was hardly anyone there, either, save for an old man in a tweed suit who was riding an old bicycle. There were lots of these kinds of men along the way and they all greeted me with "hawaya" which I've figured out is "how are you" which really means "hello." On the way back I realized a tractor had pulled up to where the road turns into rocks and hits the cliff walls. In front of the tractor a man with a wild, dark beard and hair stood, wearing a sweater that matched his tractor. He was just breathing in the view, himself, a man who lives here presumably full time. Again, it's good to see the local appreciate what they have. Hawaya, he said as I passed.
The four o'clock bus arrived when it was supposed to, just as the weather changed for the worst. There were ominous dark clouds suddenly in every direction and the wind caused me to put both jackets on. The driver had the radio tuned to an inter-county hurling match. Those Irish announcers could make golf exciting! Transcribed, the announcer's words wouldn't have any spaces between them, and everything would be capitalized. I wondered how he was even getting breaths in.
Westport was pretty boring, since I got there so late. I like the town and all, but I was tired and just wanted a burger from Cozy Joe's (is it sad that I have to travel halfway round the world to get a decent burger?) but they were out. Pooh. So I ate the curry and watched the first half of Ireland slaughtering Namibia in rugby.
I'm glad my name isn't Chad Thad, or Dab Bad, or whoever it is with headphones on that airport personnel keep paging over the intercom. Yep, I'm here in happy-dappy Portland Int'l Airport, and so far things are going smoothly. Although I packed expecting to have to take my bag as a carry-on, they allowed me to check it all the way through to Dublin, so I turned over my tiny pack and was nearly completely unburdened until I ran into the Powell's store. Whoever decided to put a branch of the greatest bookstore ever at the airport is criminally brilliant. Powell's isn't the kind of place you typically find in airports that sells cheesy mystery and romance novels for $14 and offers a dizzying display of crappy magazines. Somehow I managed to limit myself to one Bill Bryson book that was on sale. Quite proud of my restraint, I walked across the hall to the Rose City Wine Bar, which isn't as fancy as it sounds. The TV at the bar was showing a college football game between two schools I've never heard of called "DeMath" and "St. Xav." The hometeam is obviously based on the East coast as it was not even 10am out here. I guess an EPL match would have been too much to ask for, even in Soccer City, USA at an international airport.
Security was a breeze, and the experience was enhanced by some sort of incident triggered by a man wearing purple. The TSA man on the near end shouted, "Hey! The Purple Man!" and then the man next to him shouted, "The Purple Man!" and on down the line as they jogged towards the gate area and the suspicious man. "The Purple Man! The Purple Man! The Purple Man!" It was very dramatic, and topped off with a loud "ALL CLEAR!!!!" from the other end of the airport.
I had a dream last night about my trip. Mostly it consisted of missing my flight, losing tickets, lines, confusion surrounding baggage - all the unpleasant bits of travel. I was actually happy to wake up and resume my life of doing nothing. For instance, I stared at the formation of my new Fantasy Premier League team. Very useful. I did get an assignment for my online class done and downloaded the instructions for the essay due next week. I hope tonight to get started on some other assignments due later on, but I shouldn't get ahead of myself, as there are some things I need to do for class in the more immediate term. For example, there is the capstone assignment of printing out abstracts on … something that I can't even remember. I should look into that. Also, I really need to pick out a topic for my 15-pg research paper. Obviously, I'd like it to focus on Ireland, as that's where I'd like to work/study archaeology and I simply don't know enough yet.
