Everyone Else is Doing It!

Since my year with Americorps I took a well deserved year long break from children and low wage. I spent my year working at The South End Buttery as a barista, and living with my best friend in Brighton. Took a three week vacation to Europe to visit friends and family in England and reflecting on what to do next. As I'm sure many of you all can relate, the new thing to do in this day an age as a struggling college graduate is teach English in a foreign country. I was strongly encouraged to do this by my cousin, although tempting I had no desire to go near teaching. But did like the idea of doing something abroad. Which led me to remember a program a friend did in Ireland called the Camphill Communities. I did some research and thought it looked like an amazing program. Like City Year it is not a walk in the park. The program works and aids people with developmental disabilities. They live in a self sustainable community, centering around farming, gardening and various forms of the arts (for more info go to http://www.camphill.ie/dingle). Having been to Ireland's country side when I was thirteen it didn't take any convincing to decide to go back to live there. The hard part was to decide where however, I chose two to apply to as they have communities all over Ireland and Scotland and even in the states. I had decided between Ballytobin which is in the center of Ireland and the Dingle Peninsula which is in the southwest corner of Ireland on the coast. I spent a week in the Dingle and it is easy to say that is by far one of the most beautiful places in the world. Then upon speaking to my interviewer she helped me make that decision a definite. It will be extremely different from living in the fast pace lifestyle that I live now in Boston! Especially since people in Ireland live in a very different way then we do. To give you a visual of where I will be. This is an arial view:

This is experience as I said will not be easy. I have never lived in a live-in community or worked at length with adults with such disabilities. But I know they will teach me more then I know. Please visit the above link as it explains better my day to day life. I couldn't not be more excited for this new adventure. Otherwise I am staying in Boston until the end of August then I head home until I leave. Where I will get a good dose of family and then head across the atlantic for a year! I will also be start my time in Ireland with the photo project called 365, which means I will take a photo a day! Please stay tuned as this is where I will talk about my work over there and of course tons of pictures! Until September!!

Pictures

Last Week in Manchy Manch!

Its been a while since I've written and I apologize for that. As many of you know my current chapter of traveling world is coming to a close. I leave in an exact week. Last weekend I went on my last weekend out of town and went back to London to visit my friend Tori once more and also go visit Oxford. Which reminded me a lot of Middlebury, which was a surprisingly nice change from the many cities. It made me really excited to go home.
Before I left so many people said that three months wouldn't be long enough over here, saying that I'd feel like I just got settled in with friends and all and then I'd have to leave. This statement has come back to me quite a lot recently. Because that's exactly how I feel. As excited as I am to go home and see all my animals and family and friends, I'm really sad to leave the people that have become part of my life. What's most terrifying is that I have no idea when I'll see them again. Yeah you say you'll keep in touch and you will for maybe a month and then your old life kicks in. About a month ago I couldn't wait to go home. Now I have very mixed feelings, I think its because I've traveled with these people for the past three months, or a couple people I just met and I want to keep getting to know them, but alas all good things must come to end.
To make things even worse, something seemed to have happened to my ENTIRE photography portfolio that I worked so hard to put together. So my second to last weekend before going home has been a scurry of searching and thinking positive thoughts, which is hard when I'm also getting yelled by one of my two roommates for things I did not do. But I have decided to not give up on my portfolio and just make the best of my last week. I plan on doing this by doing as many fun things as I can, and seeing as many people as possible especially the ones I will miss greatly. One thing I can't to do is go skating with my small group of close friends as a last adventure. It will be interesting saying that I think only three of us know how to skate. But I don't care it will be amazing to get on the ice after a year and half of not being able to skate.
I do hope everyone who is reading this well and I can't wait to see you all next week. love.

Ready for more....

I was lucky enough to get to stay with a friend in Paris. Woooo. It was really interesting and fun to be in a French house. The first day we decided to go to this museum that Mom wanted me to go to, and suprisingly Nathan said he'd go with me. So we went to the Musee d' Orsay where we saw famous paintings from both Monat and Picasso. Everything was amazing. Of course I didn't get as much out of it because I couldn't read any of the captions of the paintings because they were in French. We then got lunch and proceeded to walk to a huge park which supposedly during the summer is a big hit with children because they can play with there boats in the center where there is a huge fountain. From there we went to study in the golden arches..so Nathan could work on a project. So I sat and finished my book in about five minutes and promptly went on a store run for food for dinner. After eating a simple dinner of noodles and sauce. We went to this bridge after with a bottle of wine where Nathan said that people always go to drink. But of course not when it's cold so we ended up being the only people there drinking....we got many funny looks. From there we walked to the Notre Dame. Which was incredible. From there we walked the long way home and just went to sleep. The following day I got up and went off alone to see the Eiffel Tower and again to the Notre Dame to see the inside. The only way I found the right apartment when I got back into the building four hours later was because Nathan had decided to take a break from studying and play the piano. After we had a quick lunch we went back into town and saw an eight story mall, however, supposedly it was the equivalent to black Friday because it was PACKED. However, the view from the top was amazing. Once we left that mob scene, we went back and made food and then went out for traditional French dessert. Which was really delicious. We ended the night with watching French T.V. shows. He translating only the interesting parts. haha. I fell asleep early and woke up early to catch my early train back to London. Once back in London we went on a mini shopping spree with Tori and Monica. My first bus home back to Manchester left without me because England has a communicative problem. So I had to wait another hour and go on the next bus home. All in all it was an amazing weekend. It was incredible to see people who knew me before I came to England, I didn't have to try and impress anyone which was so nice. Paris was amazing. London was busy but great. Reminded me a lot of N.Y.C. Over all it was a great trip and I can't wait to go back and stay longer.

Lone Traveler....

Hello All,
I got back today from a five day trip to London and Paris to see friends from dear old Vermont of all places. However, first off, I successfully cooked a Thanksgiving feast for my friends who don't live in the states!!! this was amazing saying that it is rare that I cook. Mom sent me verrry specific email on how to prepare the turkey. Instead of turkey i did Chicken because my oven is super small. But I did what the instructions said, including homemade stuffing. It turned out amazing. My friends showed up at 7ish, bringing salad, scalloped potatoes, homemade ice cream sandwiches and apple pie, and of course tons of wine (that seems to be a pattern of ours). We were all happily full of homemade food. It was a great send off to my travels alone to London and then Paris.
I got up early the next day to get an early bus to London where It took me and my friend Tori and hour to find each other because there are apparently two Victoria's Stations. Ugh. However, it all worked out and we then went back to her house to drop off all my luggage. We then went and got Indian food and found really cheap Pashmina's wooooo. Where we both bought more scarves then we needed :) From there we went to Leister Square where we sat in line at a comedy show to get cheap tickets where we then met up with Harry and watched the most amazing comedy show i've ever seen. I laughed myself silly with good friends. it was one of my favorite nights while traveling so far. What was also really exciting was that one of the actors of the show was a starter of the whole comedy store and we got to see him act and his name is Neil Mullarkey. We got the amazing opprotunity to meet him after thanks to harry. He was really nice and we talked and took pictures with him for a good five minutes. it was really cool.
The next day I took the train to Paris!!!! However, I will tell you that epic tale tomorrow! For now I must sleep!!! goodnight all. xoxox

Dublin Ireland

I got the lovely opportunity to go back to where my relatives lived and go to Ireland. However, I was unable to connect with my family. I had never been to Dublin before, but after finding a five pound ticket, said why not. So myself, Jenn, Pip and Anna all made the half an hour flight to Dublin on Thursday evening. We found our hostel and just hung out the rest of the night, had some tea, and talked over what the next couple of days would bring. We got up bright and early on Friday and got our surroundings and walked the city. Looking at cute little places, passing by the famous Temple Bar and the famous Trinity College. Trinity was amazing. There was some sort of graduation going on and so there were a lot of people milling around the breathtaking campus. We also went and saw the Book of Kells, which was really interesting. It was good, just the lighting was a bit dim, so I of course had to work extra hard to read it, but the history the book and how it was put together along with the alphabet it self was incredible. We then got to go into the Library which is the size of a ballroom with two story high books filling its shelves. Mom I thought of you the whole time, the books were not organized like they are in the states. The biggest books went on the bottom and the smallest on the top, and there were letters on the shelves starting with AA and going on the Bb. It like you look for the author , it correlating to something else that slips my mind at the moment, but basically the book you are looking for could be in three different places. The books that fill this library are still in use today, however, you have to have a very good reason for using them. They have thousands of first editions of books from famous British authors that every two weeks they change what are in the disply cases the run up the middle of the ailes. Seeing Trinity was one of my favorite things about the trip.
Saturday we had planned on going on a tour to Wicklow where Brave Heart was filmed, unfortuantly we didn't get intouch with the tour service early enough and had to go on Sunday. So instead, we went to a ruby game in an Australian bar because Anna and Pip are both Aussies' and this was unbelievable. I've never seen a bar so full. That following night we met up with a guy we met in Rome and did a bar crawl with him and his friends. Which was really good but very tiring.
Sunday we got up and went to see Wicklow, which was a lot of country side and really a lot of sitting, i think it would have meant more to me if I hadn't already been to Ireland but it was still really beautiful to see the many secret Ponds and waterfalls that are hidden just outside the capital of Ireland.
Pictures will follow this, but I'm about to go meet a friend for lunch. So i must go a little quicker then planned. I am finding myself missing home when i found out my family is having thirteen amazing people over for thanksgiving :( but alas there is always christmas!
Always Love.

VT in England

This past weekend I went to the Lake District with five friends and what I found made me so happy. it was Vermont...except not. We went to Lake Windermere. It is a common tourist attraction with many cute market towns to see. My friends and I rented a little cottage for the weekend and greatly enjoyed ourselves with lovely Halloween party spent in front of a fireplace and laughter. The next couple days consisted of viewing the lake towns near by, we went to Keswick where we viewed all the markets that were displayed on the street. One thing I really enjoyed was that there were dogs everywhere. However, they aren't very friendly. Alas, it was fun to be around them anyway. Our first day ended with a gorgeous view of one of the lakes over looking the mountains. Our second day there was my friend Anna's birthday so we had a morning party with presents and scones. it was delightful. We then drove in the car and went to Coniston which is another near by town, and we proceeded to go on a hike up a small mountain walk, which ended in the most amazing sight of the mountains. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to finish this post when I figure out my computer its broken. hope everyone had a fun weekend and GO OBAMA!!!! woooooooooo.
Love