Real men say lovely and play tin whistles

well hello there...bueller? bueller? Is anyone reading this, but us?! We think our trip is awesome, don't you?! Guess not...crickets, crickets...

Dear mom (since you are the only ones),

...GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF...FINALLY!
We have decided that upon our return to the states we are both going to chase our suddenly burning desire to become the next Rose of Tralee. This is an accomplished women's pagent, aka beauty pagent...and we have decided that since we are both so accomplished and so beautiful (especially feeling it now...mmm...nutella and starches) we are going to track down the rose head quarters in the states and start our campaign to become the next rose of oregon and rose of ??? You fill in the blank...amy is taking all ideas. We will win the sought after tiara! More to come...

We thought we would begin with a little teaser to tantilize your tastebuds, but we must start from the begining and that is sleepzone, Galway!

GALWAY:
Kelly was super excited to find out that we would be rooming with 2 spainards, that greeted her with besos and she spoke better spanish than their english, so she got to practice! YES! This excitement faded about nightfall when the roof literally began to peel back, when our large spanish friends (oh did we mention they were men, oh and slept only in their tiny undies revealing their hairy bodies) began to snore! Oh and was it ever a snore! Amy awoke and quietly whispered "kelly..." and soon got the response of "yes..." revealing that she too was enjoying the midnight harmonious symphony. We thought about tossing something at them, but Kelly quickly realized that a light shaking of their bed silenced the beasts and gave us just enough time to fall back into our much needed beauty sleep. All in all the hostel experience was positive and the spaniards were otherwise quite nice. It really made it hard to hate them...except for each night around 2-4am!

Galway quickly became our favorite city and our weakest link. We loved the quaintness of the city, the shopping strip and resturaunts, the pubs (music, dancing, etc...) but soon discovered once again that we are not city girls. We quickly become more aware of our traveller's appearance and become more self concious and hate it. We also became shop-a-holics and realized we must leave the city before we went more broke than we already started out :)!

Our highlights included...

--a fabulous band @ the Spanish Arch Bar, called Alale (a group from Galicia that plays irish music) where we discovered that real men play tin whistles. Also we would like to add that we had plans to meet our italian friend Davide that we had met at the hostel in Killarney at the Spanish Arch...and while he sat in the cold rain for 1.5 hours at the architectual historical Spanish Arch, we sat at the "spanish arch" bar listening to this good music. We eventually met up and exchanged the misunderstanding and somehow he felt bad and felt the need to buy our drinks!
-- A random day with Davide, our Italian Irish dancing friend and getting the chance to see his steps at Monroe's where we got to dance traditional Irish music. He was the belle of the ball and we felt priviledged to have come with him.

KINVARA:
We left Galway and headed to Kinvara, a small village just south of Galway, right outside the Burren, to stay with our friend Fionnuala (Fen-new-la). Again, we always look forward to our connections. Clean queit rooms, good food and clean laundry are a part of every stay, and really we get a true feel for the Irish culture. We love it!

We spent our first evening with a home cooked meal and being introduced to Ireland's prized annual event...the Rose of Tralee pagent. We were entertained but lets be honest...the first paragraph was a joke SUPRISE. Oh...are you shocked...sorry. However, we were very pleased to see that the winner was a 25 year old woman who had quit her stable career job to pursue...she wasn't sure. Join the club sister, but hey your year is filled with nothing but opportunity. Cool...us too.

Our next night was a little more eventful. We crave nothing but Mexican food. Although the grocery store lacks most necessities for every mexican dish, we prepared a delicious fiesta for dinner. After dinner we rewarded ourselves by heading to the local pub for live music. JIM MCKEE!!!! We're his new US ambassadors, look him up. Although the music was great, an Irishman by the name of Eddie was obnoxious...we continually were told we were gorgeous (not a compliment from this man), asked our ages, and had his drink spilt on us. He did not know the phrase 'personal bubble'...but Fionnuala soon came to our rescue as our elder cousin, protecting us revealing our true ages of 15 and 16...but the highlight of the night was when Amy got to wipe bird poop out of Kelly's hair and wow was it a good amount. Kelly was minding her own business and a heavy droplet of what she thought was water landed on her head...not water...POO! Supposed to be lucky right?...only brought stench and 2 showers in one day! Amy's question was 'do birds even poop at night?...I feel like people only get pooped on during the day'...yea what is that bird doing up this time of night/morning anyways, dangit...oh fabulous kinvara.

GALWAY #2:
We headed back to the Galway area to our next connection and spent the day in Connemara national park. We also went to the Kylemore Abbey, which was breath-taking and the views in this area were incredible. Wanted to climb everything in sight! Definitely spectacular and if someone offered us a house...we'd take it!

We are excited for whats to come...cliffs of mohr and then GREECE and our BIKINIS after 5 weeks of bread, potatos, digestive cookies, corn, guinness, chocolate, nutella, etc...hey we hike alot and bike alot...it evens out right??? Stay tuned...