More of Connemara

Connemara beauty....

…and Kylemore Abbey, formerly a castle built by a very wealthy (and apparently kindly) gentleman for his wife and nine kids.

It's now a Benedictine Abbey and girls' boarding school... Anyone want to repeat high school?? ;)

Glimpses of Connemara, Ireland

Hello, again, still from Galway - but today Tania and I took a bus tour to the largely undeveloped, rocky and beautiful region of Connemara, just north of here. This is yours truly in Connemara today...

...and in front of the Cathedral in Galway (last night).As I'm sending these along, don't feel like you have to respond. Just enjoy. At some point, I may switch to uploading to a blog site so I don't clog the downloading process. :)

Amateur Photographer

Galway, across the Galway Harbor, from the vantage point of Claddaugh (a fishing village-turned-popular extension of Galways' holiday and student accomodations)...

That was yesterday's afternoon biking detour on the way home...

I really wanted to zoom in and crop the pictures, so more detail would show up, but at the moment I'll have to leave the zooming to you! (On the blog, click any picture to see a larger version...)

A Room (and a Town) With A View

Galway Bay, as seen on my bike ride home through the village of Salthill (just a bit north of Galway) where I'm staying...

...and my view out to the tip of the bay from the attic!

Another Glimpse

Clinic was at 8am today, so I had time for some early morning photo hunting. Being on the western edge of Europe we have sunshine from about 6am-9:30pm, and the rain has held off for a few days! So these are views from my bike route to work: The old English Cathedral up the Corrib River... Another riverside shot in the morning sun...

The mysterious ancient manor, under reconstruction that I spotted out of the window of the tearoom in the operating theater.Really, you know you are not in Chicago when you look up from operating and out a window-lined corridor, which looks out on... a pasture with cows wandering around. I passed many beautiful horses out to pasture today, but it was not (traffic-wise) a good time to pause for photography practice. :)

First Glimpse

Hello, everyone!

So this is my first little episode of Glimpses of Galway, courtesy of my month-long international medicine elective at the Galway Clinic. I'll send some every few days, and I realize not everyone will be THAT interested so feel free to pick and choose what you glance at. For those who haven't got an update thus far, this is day 5 (if I include day of arrival) and life is getting into something of a routine. The alarm goes off at 5:30am, we're up shortly thereafter and on the road by 6:30am. The first couple days we didn't have bikes and it was raining - i.e. intermittently pouring - so we did the brisk 25min treck to Eyre Square and hopped on the bus to the Galway Clinic. Today, however, was gorgeous and we finally biked the whole distance. It's about 45min right now since we aren't used to the hills. The way back is substantially easier and faster, so I took all sorts of detours today and biked along the harbor (see next email). We are usually home between 5 and 6pm for a great dinner. It's always good, homemade by Margaret (the mom of the house), and includes dessert and coffee. Aiden, her husband, also enjoys cooking and we usually reap the benefits of that at breakfast, in terms of fresh-made scones. Since lunch is light (fruit with cheese sandwiches, supplemented by a morning snack of scones which appears in the operating theatre tea room every morning), the heartiness of the other meals is welcome.Below is a glimpse of the cheery attic room that Tania (also a fourth year Loyola medical student) and I share. It's a good thing we are on the short side!

I wish I could capture the view through our window, but I'm still working on the through-the-glass photography.

Thanks for the notes everyone has been sending...