normal.

i've officially been here a week and am settling in and getting comfortable with my new surroundings.

for the first time in over six months, my week revolves around a monday through friday work schedule with free weekends, which is such a contrast to my months of waitressing. i get up at 7:30 (before dawn this time of year) and am out of the house with morag by 8:30. we drive 15 minutes to her mother's house in ballina (pronounced BAL-een-NA) and have breakfast and put on the kettle. i get cozy in the parlor while she goes out to her "shed of refuge"- a little house in the back yard with no internet or distractions where she can type the 2,000+ words a day she needs to finish her novel by the end of march. meanwhile, i do research projects for the book, edit the copy from the day before, or work on the project of organizing the hundreds of articles she's written for various periodicals over the past few years. there's also blogs to post to and tweets to tweet. i poke my head into the shed every couple of hours to make sure morag's still alive/hasn't had a complete mental breakdown/needs another cup of tea.

oh the glamorous life i lead.

yesterday i spent a few hours walking around the village. i made a point of visiting all the historical sites and wandering down as many strange roads as i could. still, within two hours i felt confident that i'd gotten the lay of the land... there really wasn't that much land to lay. oh well. it's beautiful. i'll take some weekend trips to keep me occupied. 

by the way, if anyone has traveled through ireland and knows some must-see sites i should experience while i'm here, either leave a comment or shoot me an email at lilystoicheff@gmail.com. much appreciated!!

PS my camera battery is in america for some stupid reason so i'll post some photos up as soon as i can figure out how to get them from my instagram to my blog without having them look like crap. if you know anything about that, too, that would be really really appreciated.