Joys of Summer

I have to share Niamh's contention that our garden is 'COOL'. There are so many different flowers in bloom around our shady little mini-forrest that I feel like I've landed in a nursery / hide and seek stadium.

We had a relatively impromptu barbecue yesterday evening, with the Baileys from across the road, and a newly discovered couple {David and Simone} from the other side of the creek. The craic was good, and the children had a great time.

I had one of those moments of distilled joy as we stood in the late afternoon sun around the smoking BBQ, sharing a drink and a laugh, and looked up to see a small mono-prop plane fly low over us, and dip its wings in greeting. Our landlords here are not just farmers, but also have their pilots' licences, and like to joy-ride on sunny days. It gave a great sense of rural village-style belonging to have your picnic recognised by passing aircraft!

We have woken to miserable rain and cold this morning, and have bailed out of a planned road trip to Cork. We'll save it for a sunny day.

Niamh***!!!

Hi, i am having a good time here in Ireland. I have good friends like Laurie, Sophie, Jill, Alison, Leila and Aimee!!!!Laurie is my next door neighbour but is still in my class at school, i always go to her house and play!!!! Laurie and i sometimes go down to the beach and play in the sand sometimes we even SWIM!!!! We have a really cool and exiting garden!!!!! School is boring as usual!!!!!! i can't wait until the 2 month holiday we get!!! This is my last week at school. After that we are going to Amsterdam. i will be in grade six when school goes back in september! I have just recently gone to an all Ireland athletics championship!!!!!It was a partners event,i was put in the 600m and high jump!!!! Me and my partner (Aisling) in the 600m got third over-all see photo below. Aisling's dad went to the Olympics for long distance for Ireland. his name is brendan Quinn. And in the high jump (with my partner Naesa) we also got third over-all!!!!! mum likes Naesa'a mum Sally because she reminds her of Jenny.



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SEAMUS!!!

There is so much to say that I don't know where to start.......

OK how about school. School in Ireland is even more boring than in Australia (if that is possible)but it does have one big upside which is the three month summer holidays!!!! Also the people in school teachers,kids etc. are really nice if a bit disorganised but my school, Waterpark, has a really positive atmosphere and all the boys are nice.

I can't give too high a praise to the level of organisation in sport over here not to mention the level of skill either. It didn't take us too long to find a good athletics club but we haven't had much luck with anything else sport wise.

The weather in Ireland is the craziest weather I have ever seen e.g. one day it was sunny then it started raining then hailing etc.etc. The people are nearly as crazy as the weather if not more crazy and they absolutely love the Australian accent (even though we are driven up the wall by the Irish one).

FROM $e@mU$!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is Mac and I down at Rathmoylan Cove

IMOGEN

Well, I'm not really sure what I'm meant to be writing about, because mum just told me to go and write a blog but.....I guess I'll tell you about school and sport and stuff.
Well, I am going to a school called the Mercy Secondary School. It's nice, and I guess i like it, even though it's a bit small and stuffy because everything is inside and heated. The girls are really nice and they absolutely LOVE my accent, which gives me a friend-making advantage over some of the other new girls, who also happen to not speak any English.........
Something I really like at school over here is the range of nationality within the school, like Estonia, I've never even heard of that place, and suddenly there's a gang of Estonians at my school?? WEIRD! Also, I am the proud owner of the only name under 'Australia' on our schools "Where Do People Come From" map.
Another thing about school here is, Irish people are NOT very sport-orientated. I know a handful of girls from my class are on the basketball team, a couple play camogie and that's about it. There are no school sport carnivals or anything like that. The biggest sport craze here would be Scouts, if you count that as a sport..
I recently did my summer exams, which it seems that either, Irish people really are as stupid as our jokes say they are, or they take exams WAY too seriously, because people were studying about 6 weeks before the exams, when I, who missed out on nearly all the work, and had to learn everything else they did in first and second year, found the exams (almost) a piece of cake.
The soul redeeming feature of Ireland, is the close proximity to OTHER European countries that you would actually WANT to visit, had you the chance, e.g, a one hour flight to England, the one-and-a-half hour flight to France etc. etc.
Pretty much, holidays in Australia seem tame in comparison to the exciting adventures that are available here, whats a trip to the Gold Coast, when you could travel to Paris in the same amount of time?
ummmmmmmmmmm, yeah, i think that's about it really from me.
MO
PS Mum and Dad bought us a piano..which we will have to sell at the end of the year.