Home away from home away from home

This past weekend was an exciting adventure to the Irish countryside, county Monaghan, for what many like to call "homestay experience." However, based on stories heard the day prior to leaving for the homestay, this experience seemed like it would be less of a homestay and more of a stay the night lost in the dark countryside. The story goes something like this: A week before my homestay, other Arcadia students stayed with the same family. One night they went down the road to hang out with people (down the road is like a few miles down a curvy, narrow road mind you). These boys didn't know how to get back later that night and ended up sleeping on a bench in front of someone's house until about 6 in the morning. Then the next day they were put to work digging holes. So I was a bit worried to stay with this family, being sick and all, I wasn't quite cut out for manual labor.

It turned out to be a really nice weekend though. I stayed with two other girls, Hayley (my rommate) and Berit, who I didn't know so well. The family we stayed with was a mom, dad and their 8 year old son Kieron, who like to play soccer, a lot. The first night we got in late so there wasn't much to do except awkwardly sit around the living room playing games with Kieron and watching risque television with the mom, Teresa. The next morning when I woke up this was my view:

The little boy's name is Anton, and he liked to kick the soccer ball, but not play soccer.

This is the house we stayed in. Brand new, there wasn't even floor in the bathroom. There are lots of newly built houses in Monaghan, it is apperantly cheaper to buy some land and build a new house than buy a house.

The Irish countryside is absolutely beautiful. It is hilly all over, unlike the country of the mid-west. The grass is really green and they use hedges to divide property. So it always looks really cool. There are tons of cows all around, more so than sheep unfortunately. We even got stopped by cows on the road into town:

There are cows aplenty in Monaghan. Some were fuzzy and cute.

On Saturday we started the day off with a little soccer, then went into Monaghan Town for some shopping. I got some recommended cough syrup because I made a bit of a ruckus coughing that night. Then we drove back home. Played more soccer:

This is one of my favorite soccer pictures. Kieron is totally into it and Hayley is afraid of the ball. Kieron told me that I was "the worst football player in the world." After I played goalie for awhile he admited that I was a pretty good goalie, but I still was bad at soccer. There is nothing quite like the truth.

We did take a short break from soccer to climb up the hill behind the house and look around. Berit (who Kieron called Parrot) was conned into carrying Kieron up and down the hill.

And then went for a walk to see the beautiful countryside. Some of us took bikes and biked around, but I got tired and ended up walking most of the time.

You can see the divisions of land here, up the hill and to the left. There are many hills like this all around Monaghan, it's quite pretty and different from what I'm used to.

On our walk, you can see Hayley, Teresa (the Mom) and Berit and Kiron on bikes. This is a typically sized country road for cars going either way. Passing gets to be pretty scary.

Kieron was really excited to take this picture with me. I have a way with kids.

That night we went over to a house where some more Arcadia students were staying and then took a bus taxi into town again for a good old fashioned night on the town. My host father recommended a hot whiskey for me to clear my sinuses. And it worked really well! I felt fabulous for the rest of the night. Until we had to wait in the rain for the taxi to come pick us up agian.

Overall it was a good, quite weekend in the country. I really enjoyed being able to live quitely, and in a normal house with cooked food. After eating pasta constantly, decent food was sooo delicious, I event ate peas! Sunday was a quite day, we played more soccer, and then some tag and went home for a quite evening at the apartment.