The Irish Mailman and Buckets of Beer.

I can't believe in the middle of winter all you southerners are getting snow, and up here in the north all the Irish are running around in shorts and t-shirts saying "fiddle de de potatoes, what a beautiful sunny day" Global warming eat your heart out people.

To be honest the weather is getting cold, but apparently this is a very mild November!

So for over a month now I've been working in the Admissions office in St Patrick's college, and after a month of work and thousands of letters going through my hot little hands I have discovered the backbone to the country. The complete success of Ireland is down souly to one occupation. The Mail Man. Not the postal service, no their job is quite basic, but the poor bloody country mail man. There are no post codes in Ireland, not one, just areas. The only place there are house numbers are in big cities like Dublin, Galway and Cork. And to top it all off every single house has an address in English as well as Irish (Gaelic). The country postie must be a gem. (But Beaufortarians I'm sure they've got nothing on Pete!)

The typical Dublin address would be:
Mr Patrick Kavanagh
45 Smithton street
Drumcondra
Dublin 9

In Irish:
Mr Póidrag Ní Kalvná
45 Snítn sté
Drúmcondá
Ún Airé 9

The Typical Country address:
Mr Patrick Kavanagh
Coolcholly
Ballangatha
Co. Donegal

In Irish
Mr Póidrag Ní Kalvná
Cólcholly
Béal átha seanaidh
Co. Dhún na ngall

You might not find that impressive, but I sure do, thats why I added it to the blog. And I must say it is a highly successful system. With all these thousands of letters going through my hot little hands the has only been one problem (we think that's down to the reciever, not the mail man or woman).

CHANGE OF SUBJECT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So every Tuesday night my mates & I meet at a local pub called The porterhouse for Quiz night. You don't need to know anything because it's based on Family Fued, you know "we've surveyed 100 people and the top answers are". It's a great laugh! We stumbled across it in my second week here and have not missed a quiz yet. It's €2 to enter for the whole group, and the prize what else €50 and a bucket of beer. I warn the ladies at work the night that if we win the bucket of beer there will be no Carmen in the office on Wednesday. As we have not even got close to the bucket there's a fair chance this will never happen. Slowly we've gone from 3 southern girls unsure of what we were getting ouselves into to 8 people from all over the globe, so at this rate the bucket is not gonna go far. Our team name is Team Antipadees, because thats what they call anyone from the southern hemisphere (it means opposite ends or something). So trust me you'll all know when that bucket of beer comes my way!!!