Galway (still)

I'm writing this post having just missed the bus back to Clare. Woop. Since the next one is tomorrow morning, I've got another night here... somewhat stressful, since both Jeanne and Jimmy (the parents of the kids I'm looking after--no, none of the kids' names begin with J) have to work early in the morning. They're trying to get somebody to be there for the two hours that I can't.

I went out the door at almost 11 this morning hoping to get to Quaker meeting less than 20 minutes late, and arrived back here at 5:30 wearing a completely different outfit, carrying a hula hoop and 2 more bags than I previously had, and found that nobody was answering the door, no matter how much I shouted and rang. My phone was out of batteries and had been for most of the day, so I couldn't contact my host. What was I to do?

--flashback to earlier--

So after getting distracted by the internet, I went out the door hoping not to be too late for meeting. I'd looked at the map and it seemed pretty straightforward. That road, that road, then after the river you turn to the left. However, having reached the university campus and not finding the bridge I was expecting to find (and none of the streets have signs, of course), I asked a university student where "University Road" was. I was working on the assumption that the road going through the university would be University Road.

However, I was wrong. And she pointed, not to the real University Road, but to a motorway that crossed the river. This put me wildly off course (I suspected something when it started to look a bit like countryside), and I ended up at the Galway Shopping Centre. Which was lucky because I'd had a mission to get a swimsuit and an Irish SIM card for my phone, but unlucky because I completely missed Quaker meeting. I had lunch sitting in an abandoned lot.

After using wifi to find out where I was --M*D*n*ld's has free wifi over here -- I headed back to the city centre and walked down the aptly named Shop Street, in search of the sea. I found the sea, and also a free market next to the Spanish Arch! There were many hippies there, sitting on the steps, playing the djembe (of course), hula-hooping (of course), and tending to the clothes, books and DVDs spread out over the ground. I got me some nice new/old clothes more suited to the warm weather (it was cold and rainy yesterday), and then bought a hula hoop (probably against my better judgment). They also had a big potluck feast on the grass.

After that, it was definitely time to go... but as I said, when I got to the house, it was locked and nobody was in. My laptop, however, WAS in there. Thankfully, a neighbor was willing to let me into the house to use his phone charger. I called Arianne, my host, and it turned out that she had been less than 50 feet away from me, sitting on the grass near the Spanish Arch, but neither of us had seen the other. She was waiting for me to call or text for her to come home, but my phone had lost its charge at the shopping centre. "I'll be there in 15 minutes," she said. It was 5:40 and my bus was at 6:05. Long story short, I missed my bus.

--

Last night was pretty good. Jeanne had told me that her brother worked in Galway, at the King's Head. I caught up with him and though he couldn't host me, he pointed out some events in the Galway Sessions that he thought we should go to. I was going to follow his advice, but Arianne wanted to go to a salsa night. So off we went.

There were a lot of good dancers there! I taught Arianne and her friend basic salsa steps, which is really all I know myself, whereupon some grey-haired dude in a tipped-down fedora grabbed my hands and tried to do all these fancy moves with me. I can usually follow a bit where someone leads, but he was mostly showing off and it was disastrous.

I noticed a guy dressed in a very strange outfit standing next to the bar -- bowler hat, leather waistcoat, linen shirt, and leather bellbottoms (!) so I struck up a conversation with him, asking him if he was a performer.

He told me that his friend and he were carpenters from Germany, and had decided to go on a traditional journey, called a "Waltz." Look!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years One of them was very tall and had pretty good sideburns, the other one was short. They gave us mentholated snuff, on the back of the hand, and recited something in German. Apparently it translates (roughly) to "On all the ships that sail on the sea, one man is lonely. No matter how big or small the ship, one man on it is lonely." Haunting.

Once again, I was feeling rough and my voice was giving up, so I decided to go early. It felt good to walk by the river, by myself, through the quiet hospital grounds, past the mortuary (!). You don't get much time to yourself, dealing with three kids.