Monday, February 23, 2009

i'm alive!

i've been here for nearly a week and this is literally the first chance i've had to write a real post.

i got to skibereen safely last tuesday but had some troubles getting through immigration so i'm now here on a one-month work visa. i'm going to see if i can get it extended to the normal 3 months so that i can travel after i'm done working on the farm but i'm not entirely sure what will happen.

the family is wonderful. barbara is in her 30s and is the one who brings in the wwoofers. reuben is her 7 year old son and the main reason i'm here. they live with barbara's father who has an unintelligible irish brogue but luckily he prefers smoking a pipe to talking. three dogs round out the home--puppy, a cute little jack russell terrier that adores barbara, pudsy, another jack russell who's taken a shine to me and is quite possibly my favorite dog ever, and christy, a huge and slightly stupid german shepherd mix. other assorted relatives and friends are constantly in and out and all have been very lovely to me.

my main job here is nannying for reuben. he is... a handful. he also happened to have last week off of school which meant we spent all of the last 5 days together. there was lots of exploring (there are some lovely woods behind the house), catching bugs, building legos, and planting potatoes. today he's back in school so i have the morning to myself. he's a sweet boy but i relish the time off.

the farm is about a 10 minute drive from skibereen itself. i've only been into town once so far but it was quaint and cute. various relatives have offered to take me to various villages in the coming weeks which will be nice. the farm is beautiful but a change of scenery is always welcome.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Michelle, tell me about the farm: how big is it, how far are neighbors, is everyone nearby farming, is it just crops or also animals, who do the farm goods go to as buyers, how many are working where you are living, WHERE are you living (in the house with the family?), do they own the land? etc.

    ReplyDelete