Sickly Paris

During my last night in Dublin I felt a tickle in my throat developing and so I made myself a really healthy dinner and got to bed early to try to turn things around for my long travel day the next day. I got up before the sun, packed my things in the dark to avoid waking everyone else in my room, and in doing so left my watch behind, much to my frustration. I made it to my 6:45 bus and was again on my way. I arrived to Paris Beauvais airport, which is a tiny one-terminal airport in the middle of a huge agricultural area. I got a bus to the city center, got severly confused by the metro map and eventually found someone who spoke a little bit of English and could point me in the right direction. I eventually found my hostel, checked in and just dropped my bag and headed out to get lost. I was promptly decended upon by paritculrly annoying and persistent men who didn't seem to think it would be a problem that I spoke virtually no French. Mere details. oi vey. I eventually elluded the most annoying one by running into the middle of a huge crowd of people outside Sacre Couer Basillica. However, I was not long left alone and a much nicer guy named Amine ended up showing me around for the better part of the day. I saw the Moulin Rouge and Eiffel Tower (really quite a nice moment for the fact that it had stopped raining moments before, the clouds parted to a bright blue sky, and there was a beautiful rainbow soaring over the tower). We sat on a bench and talked as much as was possible considering Amines broken English and my broken vocal chords. By the time I refused Amines invitation to dinner, I could barely speak. I went back to the hostel and met my room-mates, three girls from Slovenia, who were really fun and a bit disappointed when I refused their invitation to go out drinking with them. I instead went to sleep early and tried to concentrate on getting better. Unfortunately I did not wake up feeling any better, but took some Motrin and headed out anyway. I wore my iPod earphones all day with no music playing in an attempt to thwart off the annoying men, which luckily worked quite well. I went to the Louvre, through the huge gardens outside the Louvre to the Champs Elyseé and to the Arch d'Triumph. Everything is beautiful and well kept here and so far I have not met anyone rude, as their reputation in the US always made me think they would be. I only wish that I didn't feel as though I'm about to collapse at any moment, which I'm sure will pass. I know I shouldn't be walking for miles and miles but I find it impossible to think of not exploring such a place. Anyhow, this message is taking forever to write because the letters on the keyboard are all in different places, so I'm going to call this done and get back to the hostel and to bed early again. Hope all is well on the homefront. I keep having dreams of returning but then in all these dreams I realize toward the end that it's just a dream and that I still have a lot more to go. I have a countdown to Italy, and more imortantly to seeing Mom, but in the meantime, know that you're all here with me, if only in dreams. Love to you all.

last days in Ireland

Three more days on this lovely isle and I'm off for the next phase of this journey. I have mixed feelings on leaving because really, it's been amazing. I finished working on the farm yesterday and was a bit sad in leaving today. Although the work was hard (really hard at times), the people were really quite wonderful and made me feel like I wanted to stay longer. Perhaps one day I'll return, who knows... next time I'll bring a car, so I wont have to hitchhike everywhere I go (although this proved to be a great way to meet a fun array of people!). Anyhow, I'm back in Cork right now, staying again with Denises friend Anne, and the family she works for. We'll be here two days and then I'm off on my own again, headed for Dublin for one night and then off to Paris early on Tuesday. I'm sad also to say goodbye to Denise, who has been a grand commerade in the last three weeks. We've shared some unforgettable moments and I'm really just eternally grateful for the gods throwing us together. Tonight we're going out to some pubs to drink a few more Bulmers and hear some music and inevitably be decended upon by charming drunken Irishmen (I dont think I've mentioned yet how incredibly fun the pubs are here... another thing I'll definetly miss!).
Anyhow, onward and upward! I'm psyched to see Paris and I'm sure it will be an adventure unto itself.
Today is my one-month point, and I'm absolutely amazed at how much has happened in the short span of 30 days. I think that a lot of you reading this think I've had bad luck and that things have not gone well, but really, in my eyes, things have gone flawlessly and I'm grateful for all the crazy/fun/weird things that have happened. All money in the bank as far as life experience goes.
I'll let y'all know I'm alive once I've landed on the continent.
till then,
xoxo

improvements

Things are looking up this last week, thank god. It's been a strange trip thusfar, as you all know, but certainly not uneventful. After escaping seven directions Denise and I went back to Cork, stayed in a hostel for a night and I arranged our last farm trial, this time at a place called the Unicorn Eco Foundation, a farm aimed at self sufficiency, who had a lovely website that had pictures giving us hope that it would be semi-liveable. We took the evening bus to Glengarriff and got off at yet another little village stop in Ballylicky, this time very far to the west in a very dramatic landscape not far from the ocean. We were met at the gas station which was also the bus stop by a nice English lad who brought us, along with his brother who come to find out, was on the same bus all the while, out to the farm. It was dark when we arrived so we had little idea as to what the area surrounding us was like. We buzzed down long dirt roads, listening to Fairport Convention, and I had a good feeling that we were going somewhere nice. We arrived to total darkness and were led to our caravan (trailer) that would be our new home. Again, it's not luxury living, but the beds were comfortable and we were happy to at least be in the presence of good people. A bit of discomfort is liveable when you like the people you're working with and for. We were led to one of the larger houses on the property and were introduced to Vickie, our new wwoof host, who is a really lovely, kind, and welcoming woman who made us tea and sat down to talk for a while. The next morning we woke up to an absolutely spectacular view out our camper window. Huge rocky mountains soaring up in every direction and a valley directly in front of us with horses grazing about and birds singing everywhere. Just incredibly beautiful. The work has been decent thus far, and varied, a bit of weeding, some mixing of concrete for the footings of a bridge they're building for their newly constructed pond, some shoveling silt from a river bed (not my favorite job thus far), digging up onions, etc, etc. We eat two meals a day on a rotating schedule among the three main people living out here. They're all really kind and I've had a great time talking with all of them. Each of them has an interesting story as to how they have gotten to where they are today. The farm itself is really impressive. The main house is the most energy efficient dwelling in all of Ireland and runs on less than one euro per day (and it's a massive house!). They're building a pond to raise their own fish, and a greenhouse to grow their own food, they have an elaborate wastewater treatment system using reed beds and different wetland plants to digest their waste, and they do most all the work themselves, along with the help of wwoofers and short term resident specialists. All in all, it's good and I'm grateful to finally have landed somewhere decent for the last of my time in Ireland. At the same time I'm excited to move on from the wwoof life and get back to traveling around a bit more. It's a beautiful place I'm living for now, but I get claustrophobic sometimes and just want to keep the adventure going. So, I've booked a flight to Paris for the 25th and will be staying in the city for five days before attempting to make my way to Rome via buses and trains. Talking with a French man who is on the farm, I've been told that this is quite a long trip, but I feel confident I'll make it in time to meet mom on the 9th of October. I'm a bit nervous to be going somewhere non-English speaking, but I feel a bit more prepared through my time in England and Ireland at least, and I'm sure it will all be fine. Thank you to everyone who has written me words of support after my last posting. Really, it was more funny than horrifying, and it all just adds to the adventure. I'll let you all know I'm alive once I'm in Paris. Till then, a'dieu.

My weirdest day yet

Ok... so things just get more interesting every day. I just sat at a cafe in Cork again and wrote down the events of the last 24 hours so that I would remember them in detail. Instead of recapping it here, I'll just copy my journal verbatum.
Sept 11, 2007:
"Sitting at a cafe in Cork City right now, feeling like I should put down the events of the last 24 hours so that my memory of them will be strengthened when I look back.
Took the early bus to Mogeely and arrived around noon to another sleepy little town with very little going on. I left Denise with the packs and went off to find some place that looked open so that I could ask where the lady in the tipee lived, as this was the directions I was given to find the new farm. There was little life to be seen and as I rounded the corner I saw a punky hippie kind of girl walking down the street. I stopped her to ask where I should go, only to find out that she was, in fact, looking for me, too. We went back to Denise and collected our bags and were on our way to the farm. The walk was about 15 minutes uphill, not too fun, especially for Denise, whose pack is excessively heavy with tons of extraneous bundles tied to the exterior. We came to a point where there was a tiny dirt path branching off the main road which we were led down, walking all the while on wood planks that lined the walk. As we neared the farm strange curiosities began to show up in abundance - a tree with televisions, phones, and doorknobs hanging from ropes beneath its boughs, horses roaming freely through a field with a few chickens and home-made structures mixed in. We were led first to our accomodation- two A-frame simple tents that were lined with plastic on the outside and patchworked carpets on the inside. The "beds" were wood palates with thick layers of cushions and FILTHY blankets strewn about. These tents smelled as if they were occupied by horses and dogs before they were occupied by dirty hippies who never showered and instead bathed in mud and then rolled around in the bedding. We dropped our bags and were brought out again to meet Astrid, the matriarch of the seven directions farmstead. We were led again down wood board covered dirt paths to what basically looked from the outside to be a pile of garbage covered by thick clear plastic. There was a small doorway into the dome. Inside there was intensely thick clutter everywhere - weird random objects, books, clothing, cats and dogs, dishes, drums, boxes filled with who-knows-what, empty tobacco envelopes, half drunk cups of tea, and a little lady named Astrid, who emerged from the clutter but who could have meshed back into it like a ghost into a patch of fog. She stood no more than 5 feet high and spoke with a thick French accent - she was smoking a cigareette with a long wood handle and had a strange half smile on her face as she walked toward us to welcome us to her strange, very distorted reality. Carolina, the hippie chick who had picked us up, excused herself to return to her weeding, and Denise and I stayed to have a chat with Astrid. She offered us tea, which I denied, and Denise politely accepted. She rummaged through a pile of junk until she found a coffee mug, and prepared the drink which had a thick layer of dust floating on its surface. We sat down on half broken piano stools and talked a bit about life, a bit about gardening. Astrid seemed to have had an exceptionally strange life which was really no suprise considering how she was living now. She had been living in this tent for 11 years and was originally living with a number of other characters who had since left the farm to persue other realities. We eventually got up to take the "grand tour" of the property. She showed us the polytunnels where they grow their food (these were the cleanest and most well kept spots on the property), the "bathroom" and "shower" which Denise and I explored more later, and the skeleton of a structure in the midst of being built. There were other plastic dome like homes we did not go inside of but that were surely equally weird to the rest. Scattered throughout the property were strange objects in strange places... mannequin bodies hanging out of trees, strange messages written out of broken peices of street signs and license plates and so on. We were assigned the task of picking green beans and planting some peas in one of the polytunnels. We were quickly devising our plan of escape once we were left alone. We picked beans and tried to adjust to the situation we found ourselves in. I questioned whether I could last a week - just roughing it out- I decided that if I did, I would just wear the same clothes every day, not take any showers, get really disgusting, and then escape to the city again where I could wash the filthy experience away. We heard clanging of pans outside and I found Carolina to ask whether it was a signal of some sort. She told me that it was the dinner bell. We saw Astrid coming toward us with a bag of food. She said she was not going to join us as she was not hungry, and so she gave the bag to Carolina and we were led to the dining area, another plastic covered, carpet lined structure, this time with two walls opened to the elements, again surrounded by crazy objects and messages scribed all over the walls. The table, plates, chairs, and floor were all coated with a thick layer of dirt, as was Carolina herself, once I got a closer look. The lunch was unpacked from the bag - a bowl of lettuce, some bread, and some pasta mixed with eggs, mayonnaise, and cucumber (and, as Denise and I both later found, a good quantity of dog hair). We were served all of this with filty silverware onto filty plates, and we sat down to the filty table on our filthy chairs and ate with our filthy hands, unwashed after our work in the garden due to the fact that a sink did not exist on the entire farm. The food, combined with the experience, was a repulsing mix. We ate anyway, and talked with Carolina, who was a crazy hippie with the dirtiest hands one could ever imagine. She had cut off all her hair so that she would not have to shower often and to fend off her stench she just put on copius amounts of patchouli oil, which wafted off her everyhwere she went. When the meal was over, we walked back to Astrids tent where Carolina put all the dirty dishes into a bucket of murky brown water in order to "wash" them.
Denise and I said we were going to return to our work and once out of earshot, began devising our escape in earnest. On our way back to the polytunnel we stopped to check out the bathroom and shower situation in more detail - what looked like a pile of carpet layered on a wood frame. One side was the "shower" which was a linolium square on the ground with a hose hanging down from above. The other half of the structure was the toilet, which was no more than a hole in a board with a toilet seat fastened above, all of which was covered in a thick layer of what I hoped was dirt and not dried excrement.
This moment was the last straw for both of us. We took a few photos to remember this strange dream and went back to our tents to collect our belongings. I wrote a quick note saying that the situation was not what we had expected and that we were on our way. I tacked it to Carolinas door, we grabbed our packs, waited for the coast to be clear, and made a break for it. We ran up the dirt path and back to the road and put out our thumbs to catch a ride back to reality. A man from the nearby cheese factory stopped for us and brought us to Castlemartyr, the closest semi-larger town, where we got a bus back to Cork City, where we checked into a hostel for the night. We called another farm that I had talked to earlier, one which has a website with pictures making it look semi normal and liveable. They told us that they had room for us and now here we are, waiting for another bus to another farm. I certainly hope this one will be more reasonable than the last two. I seriously doubt that it could get any worse or any weirder. This will be my last attempt at the whole farm thing... if it doesn't work out this time, I'm just going to travel about and stay in hostels for a while longer.. What a crazy trip this has been"

So, family and friends, there you have it: the next installment of my crazy adventure. I seriously fall asleep laughing every night at how crazy it's been... I never could have anticipated this. I'll keep you all posted as to what comes next. Pray for me! :-)

free at last!

Wow... what a crazy 24 hours I've had... After writing that last post I returned with Denise and her friend Anne-Marie to the hotel where Mark was playing his gig and sat down at the tables outside and had a drink and listened to the music. The band took a break for a half hour or so and Mark came out and introduced us to a couple of his friends and they proceeded to go back to a dark back area of the deck, out of sight of any of the people outside. When Mark came back ten minutes later he was sniffling his nose a lot and had a glazed over look in his eye... like he was about to pass out or something. I knew well enough what was going on (aided by the fact that on the ride into town he had told me all about his "drug years" and how he was now clean... He also claimed to be a safe driver, so I knew he was clearly delusional). He went back inside and the band started up again. Denise and I quickly flew into action as to how we were going to avoid getting in the car with him in the state he was in. The ride into town was bad enough and we did not want to find out what the ride back would be like under the influence of a few lines of cocaine and a couple of pints of beer. We went to a taxi stand and found out it would be about 80-euro to get a taxi back to Clonakilty, where we would have to proceed to walk to the farm, about two hours by foot on very dark, very narrow country lanes. The next option, and the one that we went with, was to stay with Anne-Marie at the house where she is an au pair. I told Mark we would catch the first bus in the morning to get back, to which he dared respond "well... I suppose that's alright... it just means you'll have to work late" (such a fucking slave driver!). I said we would be ok with that and that we would see him tomorrow. We caught a bus to the area of Cork where Anne-Marie lives and a little past midnight we arrived and were welcomed in by Marie and Dominique, two of the kindest people I've met in my life. They brought us cold drinks and sat us down to talk about the situation. They were genuinely concerned with the situation and Dominique insisted that he would bring us to Clonakilty in the morning to collect our belongings and clear out of the farm. We slept in comfortable guest beds with clean white linens and real bonafide pillows... bliss... Dominique woke up early and brought us to Clonakilty, over an hour each way, bless his heart. We were delighted to find both Mark and Debbie gone... we packed up as fast as we could and bid farewell to that god-foresaken place. I let out a sigh of relief as we drove away, knowing it was the end of a strange, sometimes scary, sometimes hillarious situation that I will certainly never forget for the rest of my days.
Denise and I have decided to look for a farm together to go to next week, and in the meantime, Dominique and Maria have told us we can stay at their house as long as we need in order to get a new plan worked out. Angels, I tell you!
I sometimes feel like I'm caught up in either a dream or a movie, where I dont know what the next plot turn will be. I'm intreagued to see what happens next, and I'm quite sure it couldn't get any worse. I'm happy despite the craziness though. I'm delighted to be off the farm and on with new things. I'll let you all know what my next move will be once I know. LOVE YOU ALL!!!! mwa! (that's a kiss for each of you!)

oi

well, I'm still alive. That's good. I'm writing from Cork City right now, where Mark (the wwoof host) has a gig tonight playing salsa music at a hotel. The ride in was absolutely HARROWING!!! I've seriously never been in such a fast, unsafe situation in my life and I prey that I get back to the farm alive tonight, and will not leave again unless on my own two feet or on bicycle wheels. Seriously, I wanted to scream at him the whole way in. OI VEY.
Anyhow, farm life is... well... It's hard to think of the right word.... I'm at least getting used to the abuse. For the last week I have done 21 hours of weeding and 14 hours of turning hay out in a field. THANK GOD for my new friend Denise, who makes it entirely liveable for the fact that we can complain to one another and make up ridiculous stories about what we could do for pay back once we leave. Our best idea yet is to save every slug or snail we see in a jar until the end of the month (giving them food to stay alive, of course) and then setting them all free in the greenhouse the day we leave to have their way with the food inside. The other idea is to set the goat free on their flower garden. That would be equally delicious payback. We've renamed Mark "vassa kopf" (water head) because there's not much upstairs besides hot air and a bit of water, and we've named Debbie "the tiger". We have good laughs coming up with stories of the adventures of "Vassa Kopf and The Tiger" while we're working. So.... things are ok I suppose. I know that I'll look back at this experience and laugh a lot. Meanwhile, my face is completely sunburned and I have really pronounced farmer tan lines on my wrists from my work gloves and my arms from my t-shirt. Oh well, I guess. My blisters are also pretty impressive. At the end of the day I pour myself a glass of wine (which I brought from town last weekend... a bit of luxury amidst the pain and isolation) and cross one more day off my countdown calendar. I'm looking forward to being done but at least I have a friend now, and stronger muscles, and the prospect of brighter things in the future. At least it's not raining (famous last words....)

First days on the farm

I arrived late Friday night after a long bus journey from Galway to West Cork. Mark picked me up at the bus stop, which was completely pitch black dark and seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere. After a short drive to the farm, I was introduced to my new living situation, which was pretty much what I had expected: a trailer near the main farmhouse with absolutely nothing luxurious about it. There's a kitchen with a hotplate, sink, fridge, and microwave, a bathroom with a decent bathtub but very little hot water and a leaky toilet, two bedrooms, and a living room with nothing more than a couch and a table. Because it was late, I pretty much went to sleep right away on what is, I'm sure, the most uncomfortable, lumpy bed I'll ever sleep on. I woke up early and got a good look around my surroundings, which made up for the horrible bed and leaky toilet... kindof... In the listing for the farm it had said that it was located in Clonakilty and that it was a fifteen minute walk into town, which I figured ment a fifteen minute walk into Clonakilty, which I had read about and knew to be a cute town with lots of shops and places to see music at night. However, the reality of the situation is that it is a fifteen minute walk into the TINY village of Rathbarry, which is a sortof sub-village of Clonakilty. Clonakilty itself is more than a half hour by bicycle and probably an hour and a half by foot. Rathbarry itself is literally no more than a post office and a pub and nothing else. So much for thinking I'd be able to go out to see music after working for the day. Sooo.... that was a bit of a disapointment. It is a short walk from the beach, however, so at least I'll have that as a destination for the afternoons where I get off work and want to get away for a while.

The farm itself is rather lovely. It's atop a large hill with the ocean in the distance to one side and rolling hills covered in pastures of cows and sheep in every other direction. Ireland as I had imagined it, for sure. The farm house is rather modern in terms of Irish farmhouses. The owners, Mark and Deb, bought the house two years ago and renovated the place to their own liking, which is sortof an artsy, more alternative style than most of the homes surrounding. There's a polytunnel (plastic greenhouse) and they have one enormous goat named Alexandra, who lives right outside my bedroom window, which was a suprise when I woke up and pulled the shades open to see her peering in. There's also ducks, an orchard, a field for straw, and lots of flowers everywhere. Mark and Deb are both quite nice, although I already see that they dont have any reservations about airing their marital disputes in front of anyone who might be there at the moment, which can be a bit awkward. They have two 8 month old twin boys who keep them busy along with all the work they put into their farm, which provides them with probably about 80 percent of the food they eat. It's most certainly not an easy lifestyle that they live and I respect them for the fact that they persue it to the extent they do. I dont think I could live in such isolation myself though. Deb is English and has a sortof vivacious, bubbly personality and Mark is a proud Dutchman who speaks with a Dutch/English/Irish hybrid accent. He's rather intense and opinionated and definetly lets you know if you're doing something in a way that he would not advise. I think I'll get along with them fine though. I'm glad to at least have some space of my own to get away for a while in the evening. I'd feel a little like I was walking on shells if I were to have to share their living space with them.

Yesterday was my first full day of work. I was assigned to weed around all the trees in the orchard and spent a full 7 hours doing so. Oi vey. I tried to enjoy it as much as possible but periodically questioned why I wasn't at home pulling weeds for mom and sleeping in my much much more comfortable bed. I'm over thinking like that, though, and I remind myself that my comfortable bed and Shelburne, and the people I love most will all be there when I return, and this will be an experience that not many people get to have and so I should maximize it. It's not all bad, anyway. We take a "coffee" break around noon (I put coffee in parentheses because their coffee is powdered and not nearly to the standard of American coffee, but I try to enjoy it as much as possible. At least it's warm.) There's also a dinner break around 3:00, which is the main meal of the day. I enjoyed this very much yesterday, considering that I've been eating canned soup and jelly sandwiches almost exclusively during my hostel days, in order to save money. Mark is a good cook and made a delicious veggie dish with all things grown on the farm, and a mushroom soup and some pasta. These breaks make the monotony of weeding a little less severe, and besides, I'm promised that I will not be weeding every day and that there will be more stimulating projects coming in the future.

Today a new girl is coming out from Germany, who will also be living in the trailer. I prey that she's cool and that we get along well. I'm actually excited to meet her and I hope that she'll be a good commerade who will go out to the pub with me once in a while, and who I can play chess with in the evenings, or at least talk to during our work.

Today is Sunday and I rode Marks bike into town. The ride was absolutely beautiful, past farm after farm after farm, with lots of pastures of cows in between. This area is known as a dairy center for Ireland and during the day farmers come yipping down the street after their herds, moving them from pasture to the milking parlors and then back out to pasture. Tomorrow its back to work (it was good planning on my part to start on a Saturday so that I had the next day off!). The work schedule is 7 hours a day, 6 days a week, which I think is a bit severe, but I'm just going to roll with it and make the best of the situation. I'm constantly reminding myself of the future and of the fact that in a litte over a month, I'll be relaxing in Italy with my wonderful Mother, and then I'll be going to see Simon and Susie, and that I only have to be a "farmer" for one month and then I'll go back to my much more comfortable existance. I'm starting to miss things about home, like my mother, my bed, Pippin the dog, my car, etc, etc... but I guess this experience will make me appreciate all those things more when I get back. I'll write again in a week, after I've had a true week of work. Maybe I'll be a bit more pessimistic then. Really, though, especially you, Dom, dont worry about me! Besides the mini hardships, I'm delighted to be living and working in Ireland and all I have to do is take a look around me to remind myself of that. It's lovely here and I'm getting just what I want from this: Experience! Lots of love to you all!!!