Today is My Birthday

I am 22.


















We bought most of the rest of the roofing supplies for a quarter of the house and the first half was delivered. We will probably start demolition tomorrow perhaps and might have a new roof up and running by the weekend. What fun. Thank you all for your birthday wishes. My mom called and it was great to hear her voice and know that everyone is doing well back home. We lost our first visitor but I suspect as more pictures of a liveable house go up we'll get others. We are beginning to fit in around here. Brian and I tried the Indian European Cuisine restaurant "Bombay" going in skeptical due to our bad experience with Chinese "Take-Away" (to go) in town. It was great, we were the only people in there, had a delicious (but too expensive for our budget) dinner and made another great contact. Arike (I don't know spelling) is originally from India and moved to Wales. He now lives in Buncrana and runs this restaurant. We have already arranged a party at our place, although we aren't sure he fully understood the condition of "our place" when I described it to him.

I wrote a long bit in my journal about aging and getting older and whatnot but I am not sure I feel like posting it here, firstly because it's nonsense, and secondly I don't have it here with me and thirdly we've had to start paying for internet access which makes my time on here more precious. So perhaps I'll give you a full version later when I bring my notebook to the library. There is so much to tell on these blogs that I have a hard time being an editor (and remembering everything I have to say). It is interesting though, a lot of people here, they react skeptically naturally to our project and our presence. But I have a hard time blaming them. I mean, here we are two scholars trying to do manual labor. I don't know, it just is very apparent between the types of people here none have had experiences like ours. None went to college for the sake of education or blah blah blah, most 'college' here is technical or serves some immediate end, which I have absolutely never had, nor the otherside, held down a menial consistent job whatsoever. So it's been interesting. I don't think they quite understand what it is I have done with my life thus far. Which is fair.

Well ok, more things to do today and I don't have much time left. The computer is quite slow so I'll let it load a lot of photos for the rest of my time. I hope things are well in the States. The weather has been clear here and so I have been happy. We also purchased inflatable mattresses and a camping stove which have DRASTICALLY improved our situation. It's almost home. The mattresses by the way, did not come with a pump and we don't own one. So Brian and I after sharing a bottle of wine attempted to blow up our double mattresses and the combination of wine and extreme lightheadedness lent quite a comical air to the evening.

Excellent. Let me know what you all are doing. I'm curious to know. Zayn, I want to know about the EA retreat in Mammoth. Sounds amazing.