Mike and I returned from the land of green this week, relatively unscathed except a few pounds heavier thanks to fish and chips, Butlers chocolates and stouts! We stayed with my host family, the Devins, in Dublin. It was great to see them in their new house. My host sisters, who are now almost 8 and 10 decorated our room with hand-turkeys and were very excited to eat American foods like deviled eggs and pumpkin pie again. Just like two years ago when I lived there, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner with the Devins and the Martins. The Martins are related to my family, and my friend Courtney lived with them. Courtney was also there this year with her friend Angela. Luckily, they brought all the ingredients for Thanksgiving with them from the states, so we managed a complete feast for the 14 of us. My host mom was joking with us that we were reversing the process of Thanksgiving, seeing as how the pilgrims came from roughly the same region where we were for the holiday. Quite a good point, so we had to call it a reverse Thanksgiving.
The dinner was just a blast. Ann Martin played John Denver and country tunes to make us feel at home. After we stuffed ourselves silly, we played a very competitive round of kids cranium - Michael and my team won both times. Here's a picture of the kid's table: it's Ruth, Eimer Martin, Finnoula, and Caoilinn (I know I misspelled one of those).
That night was also Angela's birthday, so we headed downtown to Temple Bar, the best bar district, where I got to show Mike my favorite bars and introduce him to traditional Irish music, dancing, and unfortunately ridiculous Irish prices.In addition to turkey day, we went all over Dublin and saw the main sights. Mike was especially thrilled with the Guinness factory, which is what most our pictures feature. I would have loved to take him to the countryside, but our trip was just too short. I did get him to the coast of the Irish sea, to a pretty suburb with a castle called Malahide.
Staying with a family was really nice, as was being in an English speaking country. It's been tough for me to get in the habit of Hungarian again. Mike got to sample some of Marie-Therese Devin's awesome cooking when she cooked Guinness stew for us, accompanied by her homemade bread - yum. The Devins and Martins said we now have to make it a tradition to spend every other Thanksgiving in Dublin.
Now I have exactly a week left in Budapest. I've finished teaching for Berlitz and wrapped up all my Hungarian articles. Now I get to hang out and tour the city. Today I went to a book signing for Salman Rushdie. I was hoping he'd talk, but he just signed books. It was still interesting to see him and his security guards though. I would have picked up a copy of his controversial book, The Satanic Verses, but they were only in Hungarian, naturally. This weekend we're switching apartments for the week, and one of Mike's friends is visiting - it should be busy.
Check out our Ireland pics with Mike's captions here:
http://www.facebook.com/album
No comments:
Post a Comment