O'Greaty. Heh.

I finally met Seamus O'Grady today! For those who don't know, Seamus is my relative (thats all I call him because we don't know exactly how we are related, I think my Grandpa's cousin..) I found his office easily enough with the help of the receptionist and hung out with him for about an hour gabbin our our family tree (I brought the little one mam and poppy made up during dinner a few weeks ago which he was grateful for) and school and work and traveling and everything else. He was so nice and he wants me to meet other O'Gradys sprinkled throughout Ireland which would be so exciting. He also gave me his copy John McGahern's memoir (one of his old friends and an incredibly revered writer who I just found out is considered to be right up there next to James Joyce) and I'm so excited to read it and more of his work. He's actually being taught in one of my English classes I think. I'll definitely be seeing more of Seamus, we'll get coffee or lunch together and hopefully I can meet his family soon and he can meet mine. He has two kids around my age who I am exited to meet, Aoife (pronounced Effa) and Nile. It just feels good knowing I have family so close here when everyone else is so far away. But I was finally able to skype mam and pap after a week or so without seeing them, I'm slowly getting used to the slowness of the internet here and have begun to use it less (and by use it less I mean not check facebook 4843 times a day). I just exclaimed to Liza how the internet rules when I googled "rice and cheese recipes" from the comfort of my own bed. However, we don't have any other ingreidents to use with the rice and cheese so we'll have to save it until we do a Dunnes or Tesco stop this week (I might have found a piece of mold on the grilled cheese I was eating this afternoon. And I might have picked it off and continued eating).

Time to make dinner and then I think I'm meeting my "friend" James for a drink tonight. He's not really much more than a facebook friend yet- Sarah met him in France last year where he was bartending and she was studying for a couple weeks. When she came back she told me about him and how fun he was, and before I left she mentioned how he's from Ireland but she wasn't sure where. Later I looked at her facebook and realized that he is in the NUIG network, which is the same school I go to here. A click and some inboxes later we became fast fb friends but I'll finally meet him tonight.