It's not lonely around the fields of Athenry

The past few days we've been spending time with the parish team in Athenry. And let me tell you with 16 team members in total, it it neither quiet nor lonely in Athenry. Sometimes it gets so loud in their small house that I really feel like I am back at home.

It is a pretty little town and I've enjoyed being here and having time to wander a bit. I still have these really random moments where I remember that I am in Ireland. Like this morning when I woke up walked to catch the bus to Galway City and had to walk past/under this gigantic stone archway which is probably older than America. (The house I am staying in is about 400 years old.) In the end I wasn't able to get to Galway because today is a bank holiday and the buses weren't running, but I was able to spend time with the girls and have tea, so it was a lovely day anyways.

Funny story. Since we are not natives to this lovely country, and also since we just travel travel travel all the time, we are not always up to date on the sort of things you would expect people to be, such as what weekend daylight savings time will go into effect. So this Sunday morning (yesterday) we literally could not figure out what time it actually was because most of our clocks said 9:00. But mine and Diana's ipods said 8:00, and they had been correct the night before. But we were so confused and it took us about an hour to figure out what was going on when finally someone volunteered to go ask at the hotel down the street. Luckily we were able to find out what time it actually was before any of us showed up for the 10am mass at 9am... Rest assured we're all set on winter time now.

So thats my update for now. Athenry is lovely and visiting with the parish team is always good times. We've eaten like 85 packages of biscuits in the past 5 days, but hey you can't have tea without biscuits, it just wouldn't be right.

This week we have time off of retreats since it is midterm break here, but we will be plenty busy preparing for next week when we head off to the big bad Dublin City. We've heard a lot of rumors about how hard it will be in Dublin, so I'm just saying extra prayers and you all should too.
Thanks so much for reading & I love you all!

Oh and one last thing... MY TEAM HAS A FACEBOOK! So if you friend us on facebook you will be able to be introduced to my team members and you'll see pictures and get random updates from us on facebook. Search for us under NetIreland TeamOne. Can't wait to be friends with all y'all.