Ireland

Things have been so busy,  I realised that I hadn't posted for a while!  The last week of term was the usual blur.  I managed to get a stomach bug on the Wednesday night, so was actually off sick for the last two days of term, having been forbidden to come into work by my head of department and the deputy head of Junior School, just in case i made everyone else sick too!  So, unfortunately I missed all of the fun of the last two days,including Ann and Sylvia's last days in the office.  Sylvia is at least still living just around the corner, but Ann will be moving to Thailand, and I will miss her very much!  We will definitely keep in touch though.

Our flight to Dublin, via Heathrow was at 1am on Saturday, so we just stayed up really late.  Once the food had been around it was about 3am, and we were ready to sleep.  I woke up when they turned the lights on for breakfast a couple of hours before we landed.  A nice easy journey.  We were at Heathrow (in a Wetherspoons with a sausage sandwich) for an hour, and then it was another hour on to Dublin, and a 4 ish hour drive to Castletreasure, which is just outside Cork, to see our wonderful friends who left China at the end of our first year.

It was so wonderful to see them!  We really have missed them so much this year.  Shanghai just isn't quite the same without them.  They live in Saudi now, but spend the summer holidays in Cork in their tiny cottage, known as the 'Moldovan farm house'.  It's falling down and will be demolished in 4 years when they return to Ireland for good.  But for now, it is what it is; cold and full of spiders.  But with friends like these and a warm fire, what else do you need.  Well, one of them is Australian, so a BBQ, obviously!

The weather in Ireland is so odd.  We had one day of blazing sunshine, and then the only full day we had here, it was so cold I was wearing the thermal i'd brought with me for Africa.  Seriously cold!  We spend the day driving along the scenic routes and visiting the super cute town of Kinsale,with it's brightly coloured houses.

We stopped at this point for lunch in the hotel that our friends got married in.  It was beautiful there!  But so cold!

We played board games and chatted in the evenings with our favourite kids.

After two nights, we moved on to Athy, which is about an hour south of Dublin.  This is where our friends who we worked with in Germany live. It was wonderful to see them too.  We went to a castle for drinks on the first afternoon, followed by an amazing pub lunch of fish and chips.

They live in a lovely house right next door to Maev's sisters and parents.  We spent our first evening at her sisters playing pool and darts.  They are building a house just down the road, and in 3 weeks since they broke ground, so much has gone up. The foundations are completely finished already.  It's very exciting for them.

On our full day, we did a 4 hour hike at this beautiful place an hours drive from their house. It's called Glendalough, and was an old mining town before it was abandoned.  The views were just stunning.  And we had perfect weather for it.  It was so nice to get out into the fresh air.  You can really taste the difference from Shanghai!

Matt brought this lensball in Shanghai and insisted on taking it with us.  I thought it was very silly, but now I love it and want to take it everywhere!

This is Pete's dog, Sam. She's such a poser...

We flew back to London city on Wednesday morning, and have just had a relaxing couple of days pottering around.  I went to Richmond to see the venue for the wedding I am photographing tomorrow.  We spent today in London, seeing an MS specialist, getting our VISAs for Mozambique and our anti Malaria tablets, and having lunch with Matt's uncle. We even saw Matt's granny yesterday. It's been nice.