This weekend, being a long weekend, was good and relaxing. On Friday, Paul and I left straight from work to go to his home in Athlone (in the local dialect, pronounced At-Loan). The train ride out was quite pleasant. The surrounding land looked much like southwest Virginia, so I really enjoyed it. There were also lots of sheep, horses, and cows (as I know there is at least one of you that will be happy to know that 
. Also, it was quite green. The weather was gorgeous all weekend. A little warm for the Irish I think but pleasant for me. Paul’s house is quite large, but it must be to house 5 kids.
When we got in on Friday, practically the first thing we did was go out to Paul’s favorite bar, Sean’s Bar, which has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest bar in Ireland. It served its first beer in 900 A.D., quite impressive. Anyway, we sat around complaining about how it was 10:30 and it was still light out. We turned in early though as Paul still wasn’t feeling well.
Sleeping in felt really nice on Saturday, another day of doing nothing except for some food shopping, so I got to see a little of Athlone in full daylight. Later that night, we ended up back at Sean’s, which was much busier. It was a good time, though, I was quite surprised that last call at as 12:30. That is relatively early in my mind. But we ended up going to a night club, which is definitely not my thing, but it really wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t overly full and the music actually wasn’t too horrendous. Again with the early closing time though, 2:30 is still quite early in my mind.
Sunday was much of the same, except we BBQ’d steaks for lunch/dinnerish. Also, I got up to go to mass with the family. It was an interesting experience. Paul wasn’t lying when he told me the priest liked to get through mass really fast. He totally skipped the second reading and the first was rather funny. He went through the standard “a reading from..” etc and then said “this is about how the apostles learned the languages to spread the word, and.. now here is the reading” then he sped through it. So bizarre. Also, there was no music, which really speeds things up. Everything was understandable, until they went into the Our Father in Irish. Then I had no idea. It was quite an experience though, the American churches are far more, I dont think organized is the right word, but say, full of pomp and circumstance (I hate that tune, btw). The final note was on how they are facing a priest shortage here, just like we are. It was quite interesting though, the priest mentioned how people get together and pray the three weeks out of the month that there is no pastor at the church. He told everyone to ponder that idea, and if they would do it, as it may come down to that in 10-20 years. Anyway, so it was worthwhile.
Monday, however, was something to learn from. Man do they know how to have a day off here (it was a Bank Holiday). We did absolutely nothing all day, it was fantastic. Ate some ice cream, sat around, read the paper, I read half a book. It was very very relaxing. None of this “working on the house” sort of stuff.
As of now, I’m home sick today, some sort of nasty sore throat thing, I dunno what is going on, I didn’t get sick at all in Illinois..
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