19/4/06
Hey there and Beannachtaí na Cásca to all you fluffy easter bunnies and buffy easter funnies… which by the way is Irish for Happy easter… I think…
Well, we are currently in Paris again and it’s been a couple of months since we last wrote, but thanks to all those people who emailed us wondering where our travel blogs have gone…
I really can’t believe that some of you actually read some of the immature drivel that I write, let alone miss us, but it definitely makes us feel warm and fuzzy to know that you guys actually miss our wacky adventures.
Anyhows, we really don’t have an excuse for not writing, except that the last couple of months have actually been quite uneventful… not to mention, that I have been working my butt off to fund our next bigarsed adventure…
So anyway, for the last 7 weeks, we have been living in Caherciveen which is a rural town on the famous Ring Of Kerry Peninsula near Killarney in Southwest Ireland.
We had been really looking forward to working and living here as it meant that we would have a permanent place to live for the first time since arriving in Ireland last October, instead of bumming between different B&Bs.
In fact, it should have been a dream place to live and work since the whole area down here is actually a big trekking mecca and is considered one of the most beautiful parts of Ireland…
So when we first arrived, we were blown away by the snow capped mountains, the amazing coastal drives and the spooky little Skellig Islands which are really COOL as they look like the misty and scary angry black islands that they found King Kong on.
And on top of that, the whole peninsula is literally littered with tranquil black lakes and evil looking barren yellow and brown mountains that drop precariously into the turquoise coves of the Atlantic Ocean.
…So it should have been great living here…
However… we weren’t able to enjoy it at ALL, since we were living in a depressing cold, dark and damp stone house and it literally PISSED down rain the WHOLE time we were here… Not to mention that I was also working my arse off so much that I spent the whole 7 weeks absolutely SHAGGED!!!
I basically spent the last entire 7 weeks doing the after hours doctor job in 2 towns and it ended up with me working 87 hours per week on call, where I would work all night for a couple of nights and then drive an hour home to sleep for 4 hours before I had to get up and work again in the daytime… only to then to get a couple of hours sleep and then work the whole weekend from Friday afternoon to Monday morning!!!
Now initially, I thought that the on call work would be a breeze and I could live the life of a doctor whore and get paid huge amounts of money for lying around in bed all night with my stethoscope around my ears until I got called…
…but the jobs were actually really busy and sick Irish people are generally impatient and too lazy or isolated to drive into the clinic, so most of my nights were spent with a driver driving me around rural towns doing housecalls which actually did suck quite a bit.
The only saving grace with the whole job though, was that it really was nice being a recognised member of the community and it didn’t hurt that I established my reputation on the first day after I did one of my finest plastic jobs on a man who had his head split open by a tractor that rolled on him… which I later found out was good because reputation spreads like wild fire in a small community.
In fact, since the nearest hospital was 2 and a half hours away, I got to use my emergency medicine superpowers for the first time in ages, which I really enjoyed since I don’t really get the chance to do that at home.
Avril on the otherhand has been absolutely BORED SHITLESS since the nearest internet is an hours drive away, and you really can’t do anything with such crappy weather.
Anyhow, it was all worth it because despite spending a fortune on physio bills to repair our 6 million dollar bodies after our snowboarding in Quebec, I made a shitload of euros so we are about to start our next 4 month bigarsed adventure… YAY!
We’ve just met up with our friend John Greco from Australia and after we bum around Paris, we are off to Palermo in Sicily and from there we’ve got 3 weeks in Italy, followed by Iceland, Greece, Turkey, Amsterdam, Germany for the World Cup…
…And then we’ll head down through Budapest, Prague, Slovenia and eventually to Croatia to go sailing off the Dalmatian coast with some superhero friends from Oz by which time we’ll be back in Ireland to work in August as we expect to be broke by then!
Anyways, here’s a link to some of our Ireland photos.
But as you know, we normally start the new year or a new adventure off with a cedavril cartoon, but I’ve been too stressed with work to find my funny bone… so instead, to celebrate our newest European adventure, I’ve attached my first ever digital painting that I have just finished.
For all you graphic fartist types out there, I scanned in a pencil sketch and then painted directly on top of it in photoshop with a 6 inch Wacom graphics tablet… and it took a bloody long time too!
Anyhows, gotta go and sleep…
Here’s a link to our County Kerry pics
Lots of Love and easter stuff
Bored Housewife Avril
The Fartist Formerly Known As Ced
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