More photos! OMG so many photos.

Now that my internet is up and running, I've been very busy trying to get all my photos organized for uploading and posting. It's hard to have time for anything else.

I've just returned from my first day of teaching practice at a..."Montessori" school here in Dalkey. How they get away with calling it a Montessori school I've no idea. It's not. And none of the children are older than 3. One boy will be 4 in January, but that's as close as it gets. And there are a couple who have just barely turned 2. Can you say "chaos"? I sure can. But I guess it gives me a pretty good idea of how I don't want my own school to be run. Just sayin' is all.

Anyways, back to the photos.

I've been going to the Sunday Farmer's Market at People's Park in Dun Laoghaire/Sandycove every week, and it's probably my favourite place in Ireland so far. It's pretty freaking sweet. There are tons and tons of stalls set up with people selling everything from books to clothing to jewellery to pottery and everything in between. There are a ton of food stalls with everything you can think of, some more like restaurants, where you buy food to eat right away, and others more like shops, where you buy food to take home. Seriously, you can go for a meal there and choose between Indian, Thai, Japanese, Crepes, Smoothies, Sausages, and lots more. There's a big big organic produce market over on one side, where I've been buying all my vegetables. Yum!

Here's some pictures of the market. You can see the leaves starting to change colour on the trees now.













The produce market:



The Raw Foods stall. You've never had chocolate like this before.



So that's where you can find me every Sunday.

A couple weeks ago, Kalen and I went wandering around and exploring in Sandycove after the market. It was cold out, but very pretty.

We walked down the pier...





That funny round building is James Joyce Tower. We wanted to go in, but apparently it's only open from May to September or something silly like that. The sign didn't say why.



I love this random sculpture on the pier.



That's Sutton and Howth on the other side of the bay.



There's Kalen!



The sun setting over Dun Laoghaire



We found a little beach where there was actually some crazy people swimming. In the Atlantic Ocean. In Ireland. In October. Not for me, thanks.







We left the beach and found this bizarre pay toilet/space pod on the side of the road. I can't even express to you how strange and out of place it looked there. So weird.



Further along we came across 40 Foot, which is an area along the coastline where people swim. Again, there was some crazies in the water. It was pretty rough out there, it didn't seem like the kind of day when swimming in the ocean is a good idea.





Splash!



And that was our adventure for the day. We walked back to the DART station after that.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a big party held as the Grand Opening for the new location of This is Knit. Their original location is in Blackrock, and that's where we meet on Thursdays for our weekly knitting night which is fantastic. They recently opened a new location in Powerscourt Mall, in Dublin. Knitters came from all over to congratulate Jaqui and Lisa on the new shop, drink some wine (lots of wine) and sit down to work on The Big Knit. For those of you who are umfamiliar, the Big Knit is a fundraising campaign put on by Innocent Smoothies and Topaz Petrol. Basically, they're calling on all the knitters in Ireland to knit up as many tiny little hats as they can before October 22nd. They're aiming to get 20,000 of them. Once they have all the hats, they're going to sort through them and start placing them on the lids of all their smoothie bottles and then ship the smoothies off the the shops as usual. For every smoothie with a hat that's sold, Innocent and Topaz will donate €1 to Age Action to help elderly people stay fed, clothed, active, and healthy over the winter months. The knitting group has been hard at work knitting lots and lots of little hats.



There's lots of room to get creative, as you can see. I knit 8 all together, and they're in the process of being sent off to Innocent now. Forgot to take pictures, sorry. They were awfully cute, though.

So there's this restaurant in Dalkey, that's supposed to be very good, but I'm a little confused by the name...



What exactly to guinea pigs have to do with fish?

Alright, this is already a very long post, so I think I'll have to save the Dalkey Hill pictures for a separate post. This is what happens when I have no internet for so long. I promise I won't usually make you read this much in one day.