Galway, Paul's Way....…All Settled In!!

G’day all,

It’s been a while since my last blog update but I’ve been in Ireland for almost 2 months now and I’m finally all settled in with a full time job and it’s all going to plan so far. It’s been an extremely busy past couple of months with lots of job searching, footy kicking, partying and visitors coming in and out of our bachelor pad house we call “club 43”. My cousin Dan moved into our place about a month ago and since then our house has been the centre of partying and our social life in Galway with a weekly and sometimes nightly gathering of pre-drinks and laughs before nights out on the town. I first got a job here doing bar work for one of the big hotels. It was pretty nerve raking because I know sweet bugger all about working behind the bar and was thrown into the deep end because I’m Aussie and they assume every Aussie lives in a pub. The hard part was I couldn’t understand half of what the Irish people were ordering nor how to make it so I had to wing it the best I could. I had to walk 45 minutes each way to work in the rain and it was getting really tough but was so glad that just before my 4^th shift I got another job working only 5 minutes away from my house. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been working as a salesman in a fancy home store selling all sorts of cooking gear and loving it. I don’t know much about cooking at all or selling stuff but I find that I can get away with anything with my accent and my customers just love asking me about Australia. Everyday I get the same thing over and over and over and over again: Where are you from Australia or New Zealand? What brings you here to this weather? How long are you here for? What do you think of Galway? Why Galway? When did you get here? All my work mates just laugh every time I get asked because I just switch to auto pilot and say the same old lines back each time. I was given a real fancy pancy suit for work too and had to get my hair cut to look the part so now I’m clean cut Paul instead of backpacker Paul. Everyone I work with is super nice and we are always having a good laugh or “good craic” as the Irish say. If Galway had good weather it would be the best place on earth but I’ve never seen such depressing weather in my whole life. It is supposed to be summer here but it seems to rain and drizzle every single day and night. We did have one good week where the weather was around 25 and sunny for about 7 days straight but now it’s back to winter weather again. The town itself though is amazing and it is a buzz every day and the night life is unreal. You can literally go out any night of the week here and find a packed bar or go on a pub crawl. A few weeks back we went and saw the famous Australian stand up comedian Carl Barron do a gig at the local pub and had a great night and all got to meet him and get photos with him. At the moment I’m a bit partied out though if that’s possible as for the past few weeks I had two of my best mates in the world Rob and Dan come over from Toronto in Canada to visit for two weeks. They left last Friday but WOW was it a big few weeks while they were here. We pretty much went out every single night of the week for two weeks while I worked full time during the day each day. We had such a great time and we did a couple of trips with them. Tate got his work car one day and we all drove down to the “Cliffs of Moher” which were awesome and the weather was great that day. In the second week I had two days off and we all got a rental car and drove down to Cork where we stayed the night and partied. The following day we went to the Blarney Castle and then drove to Cove to see where the Titanic left the wharf for the last time before sinking. It was so good to see the boys again and we had quite a few kicks of the footy while they were here too. At the moment it’s just me and Sean alone in Club 43 as the Canadians have gone, Dan and Shane have gone to Egypt for the week, Kate has gone to New York and Tate has a new sales job roaming around the country side. We also still have our Kiwi mates here and these two legend Melbourne guys I met in India Scotty and Pud to party with. Towards the end of July Galway is going to be going crazy as the arts festival is on and then the much talked about Race Week. Race Week is supposed to be absolutely mental as a million people come to this town of 70,000 for a big horse racing festival. All the locals tell me I won’t believe how crazy it is until I see it so I’m looking forward to that. We had an interesting bit of publicity in our street over the past month. About a month ago a dead mans body was found chopped up in pieces in a freezer in our street only about 10 doors away from our place. Apparently he was killed about 4 years ago and he was a drug dealer.

Thanks about all for now,

Woodsy…..having a ball in Galway