It is a universally known that dog fouling is dangerous to children and country.  "What is dog fouling?" you might ask.  Well, this picture does a pretty good job of describing it.

Basically we saw this and started laughing, really for no reason.  But it is things like this that make my time in Ireland wonderful!  I have started catching onto their lingo like "rubbish" for garbage and "motorway" for freeway.  And it doesn't just stop there; I now no longer have to think about going to the left side of the car to sit in the front passenger seat.  Weird.  Everything I have practiced my entire life is now going down the drain in a matter of days.  Although I still haven't mastered looking right, left, right when walking across the street.


We have ventured out a little to a couple of towns that are near but my favorite is Adare, which is where we are living.  Downtown Adare has the hustle and bustle of a big city but is actually a little town full of quaint boutiques and houses.  We live in a gated community on an estate called Adare Manor.  The Manor House is a cross between a castle and a house out of a Jane Austen novel.  There is also a golf course on the property, which makes looking out the window fun.  It amazes me how many people are constantly out golfing, rain or shine.  We have made it a habit to walk to the house almost everyday and the grandeur of it still amazes me.  Yesterday we were walking around the grounds and it started pouring, which wouldn't be a big deal except that it takes about 15 min. to get to our little town-house from the Manor.  Needless to say we looked like drowned rats by the time we got home.  But we luckily had bought some hot chocolate mix the morning before and were able to utilize our electric kettle.  Have you ever used one of those before?  It is amazing!  It takes like, less than a min. to get water to boil.  I am so getting one.

This is at Adare Town Park, right in the middle of down-town Adare.

Adare Manor--Ooh la la

A couple days ago we traveled into Dooradoyle to go grocery shopping.  Well, that was an adventure!

First off, Tesco, the grocery store, is located in a mall and is split in two sections, located on both sides of the mall.  That's not something you see in Utah.  We get over that fact but we couldn't find a place to park "the BEAST" (everything is made small here, including the parking stalls; big car+small stall=bad situation) so we parked on the opposite side of the mall, which was fine until we realized the cart situation.  Carts are placed outside the mall in a regular cart return but they are all linked together by chains.  You can unchain them by sliding a euro into it and then when you return the cart your euro slides back out.  Simple.  Well, we get out of the grocery store, and by the way it is not a good idea to go on a Saturday afternoon around four o'clock when you are an ignorant American, and realize that we can't take the cart over to the car and leave it there because then we won't get our euro back but we don't want to have to split up and have Julie get the car while I wait with the cart and Afton so we opted to carry the four Tesco, reusable bags (that is also a new concept, if you want a plastic bag you have to pay for it so why not buy a reusable one?) and baby out to the edge of the universe where our Beast is awaiting us.  You should see the guns we have now.  

"The Beast" has also been an adventure.  There are mostly tiny cars in Ireland so to have a Land Rover is like being a giant amongst hobbits.  Luckily I don't have to drive it and probably never will except for fun but it is exciting to be the passenger.  We dropped Dennis off at the airport for a trip for work and on the way out, we clipped the mirror of an Irish man's van and our mirror popped out.  It wasn't a big deal for us because that had previously happened when we were just driving down the road.  He was really nice about the whole thing and just told us to be careful in his little Irish accent.  We could hear Afton saying "sorry" from the back seat for about five mins. after that.  And then when we got on the motorway (freeway) it popped out and in my attempt to roll down my window and fix it, it flew away.  Bye, bye mirror!