Saturday- arrival in England!

We all are here... Just a small pack of 40 of us traveling together on one single bus... Playing soccer wherever we stop for more than 30 seconds. Our tour organizer, Barrie, has his hands full hearding cats!

After meeting up in the airport, we all headed off to the Aresenal-Reading game. For most of us, this was our first professional match. It was pretty incredible with a win for the home team!

Heading off to England!

How many lads does it take to sink a mechanical ship?

B&B

What an amazing place

Wednesday and Thursday from Balmy Ireland...

Uhhh....even the locals are a wee chilly....

but, once we get our 15 layers on, fun seems to be no problem.   

Except when trying to figure out 5th grade math...the question truly is:

Are you smarter than a 5th grader Ryan???

On Wednesday we made our way over to Gallway.  The biggest city we have seen yet (keep in mind the 'Village' of New Quay consisted of 1 pub and 1 gallery).

The boys (all of them minus Flood who had to get some shopping time in) headed over to a local aquarium and a very cool place called Pure Skill.  There, the boys got to try out "Irish" sports that they never would get a chance to play otherwise!

The ladies and their escort managed to find a lovely spot for tea, and some WARM woolen sweaters.

After a brief misplacement of the car...

Waiting for Mr. Lambe and Mr. Curtis to find the car.....match starts in 30 min.....

 ...the boys arrived at their first international match in Kinvarra.  They played well in the snow and both sides had a darn good time.  A few of the Irish players were a little in awe of Mori's height and thought that a passport check to confirm date of birth might be in order....

Sorry for the video quality...my hands were a little too cold 

After the game, the team invited us back to a local 

pub for a cup of tea (code for anything but tea).  The boys had one room to themselves with special drinks just for them while the parents chatted it up in another section of the pub, drinking Guiness...uhhh...tea.  Such a cool experience for these kids!!!

Thursday brought another set of adventures...

After packing up the house in New Quay (not an easy feat with 17 people), everyone headed out.  Billy and Kelly headed to Dublin to meet up with Billy's brother and the rest of us headed East to Tipperary and Thurles, John's home town.  

We stopped by a castle named Cashel on the way over and the 

boys after two hours in the car had a little energy to expel.

Lunch on a rock form the 12th century in front of  a castle- not too shabby.  

And then, having surveyed the grounds, a hill!!!!

We finished up with a little historical tour of the buildings.

Then we were on to Thurles, changed into kits (also code for uniforms- it only took me all day to figure out what Maren and John were talking about...) and headed to the local pitch for another friendly.  We had one player down so we had to sub in the youngers.   Liam Flood just might have been the man of the match going up against the local version of Mori.  Even Will Curtis made a guest appearance, letting us know as he ran by, that it felt like he could pop his ears off, it was so cold.

COLD.

Please note that is Liam Flood taking a PK!!! The boy is fearless!

On to John's house where he grew up, where his sister prepared us the most lovely dinner.  

Our hosts even had a 3-d movie ready for the boys!  

Dessert for the adults...somehow these kept falling onto John's plate...

The boys, fed, warm and worn out from all the sliding, sightseeing and soccer hit the hay while the adults headed to John's cousin's pub.  We were treated to a very special performance by two incredible musicians who played at the pub, just for John.  Ryan, Kim, Patrick and Meghan headed out at 3 in the morning...not sure if John ever made it out...he might still be there. Just kidding... sort of....but what an amazing experience.

We are super excited to meet up with the rest of the team tomorrow in London!!! Travel safe guys!

Cheers!!!

Northern enforcements en route!

Oh wert thou in the cauld blast, On yonder lea, on yonder lea; My plaidie to the angryairt, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee.

- Robert Burns
  'Oh wert thou in the cauld blast', stanza1.

Cliffs, caves and cows...

Billy and Kelly landed!  

Now that we have our two official Irish tour guides, John and Billy, we are hitting the Island full-force.

What do you do when it is cold????

You get ice cream of course....and you put a flake in it...

We spent yesterday with the boys exploring rocks (if you look really carefully, you can see the boys on the rocks...the black dots...yep, those would be them) and the Cliffs of Mohr

Brrrrrr.....

Warming up by a fire at a local pub....

 A little soccer warm up in the morning when the sun came out....10 min. later it was snowing...

When you miss 7 days of school you have to make up a ton of homework.   

Unless of course, you are Mori....somehow he managed to draw the no-homework straw!  Lucky duck!

 The youngers decided to go chase down some wild sheep...

 And then we all went to the bird of prey show and a cave tour.

Liam found something REALLY cool to look at... 

After that it was up to Kinvara for dinner and the Ireland vs. Austria match.

Ireland is beautiful...having a great time here!!!

Cheers!  From the Giant Cow!