5 Days and Counting

5 days til we're home in Greeley. Exciting, but surreal! It's hard to believe that our nine months here are over. Everyone's getting a bit sentimental around here as we begin to say our farewells. Here's the highlights of the past few weeks...
Me, Sarah, Steph & Lori atop one of the Twelve Bens.

Kylemore Abbey in Connemara-sooo beautiful!

Steph, Lori, Sarah & Me atop Croagh Patrick-where St. Pat reputedly drove the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. The view was stunning!

Believe it or not this is Ireland-a beach in Connemara. The current sunshine could almost make you forget how bad the weather was for so long. But not quite :0) The sun's been shining ever since here and it really is quite lovely. It's been a busy past few weeks. Steph came to visit and we had an amazing time. As many of our friend's time here is wrapping up, there were 4 parties in a row to attend. I don't think Steph minded though :0). We took hikes, did some sight seeing, shopping, sleeping late, laughing and plenty of silliness with our friends here. I'm so glad she came to hang out with us! We really had a ball (though she might not say the same about the Croagh Patrick hike ;0)

The day that Steph left I came home packed my bag and caught a flight to Salzburg Austria which was AMAZING. I went with two friends from here-Sarah and Becky. We did so much!Here's downtown Salzburg-so charming!

Here's the pegasus fountain, which if you're a Sound of Music fan will look very familiar.

Here's Becky & Sarah displaying our location. While Ireland was having sun, we had some good old Irish weather for our hiking day in the Alps-it was still beautiful in spite of the fact that we only caught a few glimpses of the snow covered peaks through the dense clouds.
Here we are in Erlangen with our friend Max (who was here with us in Ireland-one of the supper club members). He showed us quite a time at the Bergkirchweihe (don't ask me to say it-they call it the berg for short though) it's Germany's 2nd largest beer fest (2nd only to Oktoberfest) and it was quite a party-an 11 day party to be exact. We went for a night and then for the next morning (so we could see the puppet show-it was hilarious!)

Here's Becky and I chowing down on brats and drinking amazing beer! Max's fav is Steinbach and since I also like darker yummy brews, that what I had and it was delicious! Yes, that is a one liter mug I'm drinking from. Those German's know how to throw a party! Max was a wonderful host for us, showing us his home town in style.

Our last stop was Dettelbach (this shot is from our host's back yard down to the village) with Becky's friend Emily & her husband Joe. They took us to a wine festival in the next village over-Obereisenheim. This was a much smaller affair-and is more typical we were told. The village folks come out and drink the local wine and eat loads of food while a 2 person band plays. Our hosts even were wearing authentic German garb. It was brilliant!

I started feeling a bit sick-you know the kind of thing that if you just chilled and got extra rest you'd be fine-and of course it was as we came into Germany where the beer and wine festival were unavoidable ;0) So, I'm still sick right now. I have quite an impressive cough and I sound and look pretty rough. I've been going to concerts all week-Blayne's was yesterday and though he wouldn't say he was pleased with it he is very glad to have it over with. The next few days we'll be packing and hanging out with our friends. We're going to miss being here in some ways, in spite of our excitement to be home. It's been a wonderful time. This has been long enough. See many of you soon! And for those of you not it CO, I'm going to try to keep this up once we're home. For the last time-love from Ireland!