a portion of an email i sent patrick

disclaimer: because i'm a little too tired to recount this all again in new and witty language, here's a brief description of what i did today as told to a mr. patrick revere (minus all the dirty bits).

today, we took a train to cobh (pronounced cove) which was kind of a sad little seaside village. very beautiful, but a lot of misfortune and sad history there. it was the port from which 2.5 million irish emigrants left for america and elsewhere during the potato famine. it was also the town from where the titanic left for its fated voyage, and is also the town closest to where the lucitania was torpedoed. whew! it was really pretty, but there was this massive, ominus byzantine-style catholic church that was built DURING the potato famine, which makes you wonder.. why spend the money on a big gothic church, when people are starving at your doorstep? there also seemed to be a lot of vacant storefronts, like there were more shops than people. it was a pretty little town because of its location right on the ocean, but there was really something overwhelmingly sad about it. (plus, the museum had a diorama of what it was like for irish emigrants to be on the ships to america during the storms at sea, and one of the mannequin irish gentlemen had rubber vomit coming out of his mouth).

i'm roaming cork on my own this afternoon. i'm about to go get some coffee, and i just walked through this huge really cool market with every kind of food you can imagine. there were these massive wooden bins with tons of olives - mountains of olives (i like olives).

____ stop email

i'm having a great time, we're all getting along really well, and i'm not spending nearly as much as i was afraid i'd have to spend. tomorrow, it's back to dublin for the weekend (scotland v ireland rugby match of saturday is apparently quite an event as you might imagine) and then home on monday.

i hope all is well back there, have someone you love give you a hug for me, please.

p.s. irish stray dogs love me and i mostly love them