I haven't really said much about it, but Galway is lovely. Ask anyone. The Irish recommend it to tourists and nationals alike. I like it because when I walk from campus to town along the canal, the ducks and the swans paddle beside me, their wakes weaving and their beady eyes never leaving mine.

I like it because I can lace up my boots and walk twenty minutes in any direction and be in old Ireland. I can scale cliff walls and watch the sun do whatever it wants, then takes its hand in my descent. I can fish perched atop some crumbling castle wall or bailey, and for once not give a rat's ass that I can't catch a fish to save my day. A two hour bus ride delivers me into the mountains and I have to breathe deep and heavy to absorb it all and not lose it. I can go to the beach, a real beach, and lay out on the sand and watch my skin turn beat red and clammy, and see how long it takes me before the incoming or outgoing tide threatens my escape path or stinks up the seaweed, respectively, and I crack and put my clothes back on.

I like that I turned in my CV at three different places today, a bookshop, my gym, and a little restaurant and even though I'm not confident about any of them, I passed at least twenty more little places on my way home that would be fine, too. Irish medium wage equates to like $12.

Sometimes the Irish preteens have West Side Story style fights in the city center.

Old Irish people, no matter where or when you see them, city or country, dress like Sunday. Sunday every day.

One day I hiked far, to a place called Silver Strand, to watch the Galway Bay sun melt its way into the ocean. I smoked a cigarette on top of a cliff and stood as close as I could dare to the edge, because cigarettes buzz the hell out of me and I wanted time to slow down, and looking down at the ocean at the bottom of this cliff accentuated the whole thing for me. On my way down I asked an older man where the nearest bus stop was, because the tide had come in over a big part of my path, but mainly because I was still buzzed and getting lazy. His name was Paul. He told me in detail that it was a ways off and laughed at the look on my face. He said that if I could wait a minute he'd give a ride back to near town. I sat for a short time on the edge of the sidewalk until I heard him approach behind me and say, he's alright if I am. I smiled and almost got in the driver seat because the cars here are backwards, and he drove me to the edge of Salthill, and that isn't far at all from my house.