I’m on an adventure!  I am currently in Ireland for the weekend visiting with some Martial Arts friends for a Filipino Martial Arts Seminar.  Why Ireland?  Well the owner of the school I teach out of in Weymouth is actually IN Ireland and a bunch of us from around the world are meeting up in the Home School in Waterford (Yes..  where they make the Crystal).

So here I am on a bus from Dublin to Waterford (a 3 hour ride) after flying in from Boston (a 6 hour flight) soaking in the beauty of this wonderful place and desperately hoping to find good coffee soon!  This is my first visit to the Isle and really, it is breathtakingly beautiful!  I would have been unprepared for this amazing vista if I had not spent some time in Devon staying with my sister who lives there now with her husband and two lovely sons.  Devon and Cornwall are incredibly beautiful places perhaps on par with Ireland but all breathtaking int heir glory and history!

And yes…  It is FUCKING Green here!   *grin*

This place is an interesting mix of very old and very new.  There are cliches everywhere you look but you realize that they are not Cliche here… they are the original!  Whether it’s a faded glowing “Shamrock Bar”, or the perpetual “Guinness for Strength” posters, it all seems part of the place here.  Ancient buildings older than the country I come from are nestled beside now construction and ultramodern, IKEA-esque facilities.  And Roundabouts…lots of roundabouts.

The other thing I notice about spending time in other countries is that there is a set of dominant smells for things.  Some smells are universal mind you.   You know when you pass by a farm because the smell of manure and top soil is the same all over.  But the smells of people and things change.  The women on the bus wear a collection of perfumes I don’t recognize.  A very helpful stewardess on the flight in who resat me in a row that was largely empty because she saw I was crammed in next to another gentlemen on a two seat row had a very distinct cologne on that accentuated the fact that she was portugese working on an Aer Lingus flight.

I had noticed this same effect in Shanghai where people were wearing deodorants and perfumes I did not recognize and it because very noticeable that I was not in Kansas anymore.