More American comments on living in Ireland

There is always a cup of tea in the near distance.  So too is a raincloud.  Such is Ireland.

The rain.  The tireless, mailman-like presence of THE RAIN IN IRELAND.  In all weather sunny, windy, but mostly grey, the rain comes.  I've seen more rainbows in the last 4 months than ever before.  Is it sunny out?  Better take an umbrella.

Oddly enough, the only time I've witnessed the presence of lightning in Ireland was about a month ago.  My first in-Europe flight: Dublin to Manchester.  On take-off, I was giddy at the thought of visiting Korea friends in England.  A couple minutes later, I laughed at the realization that it would take longer to get from Chicago to Indianapolis and here I was, about to cross a sea to touch down in another country.  A few minutes more, about 10 minutes into the flight, 30,000 feet up...

The engines turned off.

There's always that moment in flight when it feels as though the engines have stopped- but I remind myself that it's only because the plane has reached altitude and the engines simply aren't working as hard.  But, not this time.This time, they really did turn off.

I stopped breathing.  Everything was quiet. Nothing moved.  I'm fairly sure my heart stopped.  Then I saw a flight attendant race down the aisle toward the cockpit.  The pilot came on, in a tone more suggestive of 'it's time for tea!', letting us know that the plane had been struck by lightning and that, gosh darn, we needed to make a tiny little emergency landing back at Dublin. 

I'm not going to go into the few minutes after the pilot's announcement.   Let's just say that I'm pretty sure I saw my life's version of 'roll credits' trickling down the window I looked out on upon descent.  (the engines eventually came back on)

It was raining back in Dublin.

I remember the rain montage in Forrest Gump: Forrest's trying to explain all the different types of rain in Vietnam. Picture that and trade Vietnam for Ireland.  Then turn the rain down.  It never really pours here, it's a consistently mild rain.  Just enough to annoy.

But it does keep the place green I suppose.

Here's a view of my backyard!

(no, this is in County Sligo somewhere)

I'm off to put the kettle on for some Barry's tea (to my knowledge, the most popular tea in Ireland)