Blue Sky!

It was sunny today! I woke up and there were no clouds for the first time since I have arrived. Clouds did show up later on, but it didn't rain at all today!

This week was very busy with work. Not much was actually done, it was one of those weeks where you are overwhelmed with planning to do things but you never quite get there. Hopefully this next week though will produce some sort of results.

On top of work, this week I also joined a couple of societies, had my birthday and managed to get lost. Which isn't so bad, I have now been here two weeks and only gotten lost once. And it wasn't really my fault, the streets here just don't go where you expect them to go, they are all twisty. Not to mention that some dick drove through a puddle and splashed me. Despite getting lost I am finding my way around just fine. It is almost always raining, but luckily today I found an umbrella. Somebody must have put it down and forgotten to pick it up. There are a lot of rainbows at least. And I just finished a good book, it was called The Unicorn Road by Martin Davies.


I quite like the city centre here in Galway. It is small and winding, the shops are small and close together, and it just seems so lively and interesting. There seems to be a large proportion of boutique fashion shops (it will be very hard not to go spending all my money when I begin to make some) and a lot of places to eat. I have found only one fabric shop, but at least there are plenty of book stores. The city centre is full of paving stone roads and old stone buildings and walls. There is a wall called the Spanish arch, but it really is not as impressive as it sounds.

I have now been on one trip outside of Galway. It does look so different here to New Zealand. The trees are different, their woods are very different to our forests, what they call lakes I would not have called a lake, they are just not that big. And the same goes for the mountain, plus the mountains do not have snow or trees on them, instead they are covered in bog. There is a lot of bog-land here. There was no time to stop and take photos unfortunately but next time I will make sure to.

Now I am not complaining here, simply observing. And I observe that the food here is more expensive and the junk food just isn't as good. There is not as much chocolate, nowhere near the variety of cadbury's that there is in NZ. Sure there are a couple of different types of bar but that doesn't beat our many different flavours in nice big blocks. Also it doesn't taste the same, but that is okay. It is not as creamy as NZ cadbury's but there are other brands here that are really good if that is what you are looking for. But the selection of ice-cream is appalling! Where are the big 2 litre tubs and all the different flavours? Perhaps I am looking in the wrong supermarkets? I will keep searching. But it seems that here if you want interesting flavours you either have to be content with small (less than a litre) tubs that are too expensive or ice-creams in a cone. And there are not as many biscuits here either, although at least you get tim-tams still. But no squiggles, no mallowpuffs, no thins. Not even really anything like that. Why do they not eat biscuits here like we do in NZ?