The Plane! The Plane!

Bowling last night = lots of fun. A group of about 10 of us walked to the Shopping Center and into this cheesy kiddy place (reminded us of Chuckie Cheese's, except for the bar inside). It was a great time, though, despite the lanes being somehow sloped in the middle. This undoubtedly threw off our game (or, at least, that's our justification for being as bad as we were that night). We played 1 1/2 games and had an excellent time laughing and attempting to get strikes and spares. After that, we played a bunch of arcade games, pool, and air hockey before the place closed. I found a DDR machine and went to town (yes, I know I'm a nerd) but it was grand. After that we decided to go out on the town for a few hours. We hit up the Living Room again and had a blast. After a taxi ride back to the apartments, I crashed and slept in (Yay for Sundays!).

Our plan for the day was to bike to Salthill to go see the airshow. Good thing there was excellent weather. NOT. It rained. Poured, rather. Which made biking the 5km from NUIG to Salthill that much more interesting. We stopped at a gas station and sat under the overhang until the showers held off a bit. They were just starting as we biked into town and strapped our bikes to the nearest light posts we could find. We found an open standing area and watched as a large jet did a few fly-bys. After that was a smaller prop plane followed by a sort of military plane that did tons of neat maneuvers. It was really, really loud as it went by, but it was neat. Lots of memories of going to the shows with my grandparents as a kid.


After that, we were freezing and decided to go into one of the restaurants nearby for soup and tea. It was excellent and, most importantly, warm. Once we'd dried off and defrosted, we headed back outside in time to see some helicopters fly by and then watch a group of RAF stunt jets do formations and that sort of thing. Pretty cool (though not as good as, say, the Blue Angels). The rain clouds in the distance started getting darker and closer, so we packed up and biked back to Corrib Village. I think we still got caught in some of it, but missed the bad stuff. My hands were freezing, though! When we got back, we could hear and see the Air Force jets flying overhead, so that was pretty cool.


The rest of the evening was spent in laziness, watching episodes of Friends and the Simpsons with the roommates. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like I'm in Ireland. Moments like these are included. I'll leave you with another new Irish word - "manky". It's the equivalent of filthy. I was highly amused to hear it for the first time. Well, cheers!