| How I spent my first ever Christmas away from home, as well as New Years eve in Galway, and a bit of news since then. | |
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I was lucky enough before Christmas to have a conference in London to attend, which meant I was able to claim travel costs back from University, and just incidentally take a week off and catch up with a lot of friends over there. I stayed with Daphna and Brian once again, and once the conference activities were over spent the days travelling around London to visit people (Katrina Evans in East Sheen, Trish Graham in central London, Sharyn Doherty in the Barbican, Tini at Shepherd's Bush). I also spent a bit of time looking around London by myself, and went xmas shopping with Daphna for presents for Brian. London seems to be growing on me the more I see of it, but I still prefer Belfast. There were xmas light up in many places, the first photo is Regent Street (I think) and the others are in Belfast (the Town Hall, and the Belfast Telegraph Building) after I'd gotten back. |
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It was a bit of an unusual Christmas for me - cold weather just didn't seem right. I had a crack at a xmas cake anyway (Mum's recipe of course), which turned out well. We demolished a good portion of it on Christmas day, which I spent with Hamish (a fellow Kiwi chemistry student) and his girlfriend Daniella. Had a nice day there, watched films on TV, talked, ate and drank too much (of course). |
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The
next event on the social calendar was New Year's, which I spent in Galway
with my flatmate Marc. I had barely stepped off the bus when he was introducing
me to about 10 people and taking me to the pub. It seemed like during the
whole three days I was there, I spent more time inside pubs than I did
anywhere else. Consequently I didn't see all that much of the town, and
didn't take many photos. I did have a fantastic time though - the best
New Year's ever, and met a lot of great people there.
Marc took me out to his parent's place one evening, we had a fantastic meal there - like xmas dinner all over again - and played cards, chatted, for a while. a really lovely family, it was nice to be in that sort of environment again, and made me a bit homesick. Not for long though, cause we were back into town for another night's partying. It was the closest I ever came to being thrown out of a bar - apparently my dancing style was endangering other patrons (I was amazed, I'm sure everyone knows what a restrained person I am on the dance floor...). At closing time it seems like everyone in Galway heads to 'Supermacs' - a variation on MacDonalds. The major difference being that Supermacs employs half a dozen huge bouncers to keep the crowd in order. Joe had a bit of a run-in with a couple of them (photos at left), they didn't think he was in the right age bracket for a wagon driver... |
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That trip soon came to an end however, and it was back to Belfast, and back to the university/training routine. For a little while anyway... |
