OK, I don’t live in Europe anymore and haven’t updated this blog in almost 2 months. Things were crazy… I was completely obsessed with my thesis work and had no time for anything, even eating. I managed to eat one meal a day for 2 months and still GAINED weight. Of course, I’m the fat American no matter where I live. Then I was stressed out about moving and trying to slam 4 suitcases’ worth of clothes into 2. (I succeeded by the way). Then the holidays came, and there was no time for blogging.

Now that I’m back in NYC I’ll backtrack and write some posts about my last few weeks in Italy, but starting with my birthday trip to Ireland that I took in November. Here is goes!

Standard Guiness tourist pic

The Italian boy and I went to Ireland for my birthday, since it was on my 30-to-30 bucket list. We went for 4 days and did the “American tour”, which means driving all over like maniacs trying to see as much of the country as possible. We started in Dublin, then drove to Cashel, Kenmare, Killarney, Doolin, and then back to Dublin. We got to see everything we wanted and had really amazing weather- it was sunny for 3 days out of 4!

Watch out Ireland- Suzanne is behing the wheel!

I crossed off a second item on my bucket list by driving on the opposite side of the road. I was behind the wheel for about 5 seconds in Doolin… you can see me trying to shift with my right hand in this pic (force of habit!!) I freaked out though when a car started coming down the other lane and a little boy was walking on my side of the road… someone was definitely about to die, so I made the Italian take over the driving responsibilities. My 5

seconds behind the wheel still counts, right?

Happy birthday to me

Last pic of my 20′s

I turned 30 the last day we were there, when we were just strolling around Dublin. We had seen that most of the parking spaces were free on Sundays, so didn’t think much about parking in a small street off St. Stephen’s Green. After about 2 hours, we returned to find a wonderful present from the city of Dublin- a boot on our rental car! (Or clamp, as they call it in Irish.) I had a small freak out, since we had a flight to catch and who knows how long it would take to remove it. Thankfully, the Irish CSR who answered the phone told me it would take 20 minutes max for the tow truck to arrive. We had parked in a 2 hour max parking zone and had been gone 2 hours, 15 minutes. Ugh. But, we managed to get to the airport on time so it was still a good birthday.

I have a few more travel stories to write about, particularly my Italian robbery by the local mafia. Stay tuned!

Barf.

Not all Italian food is good. Some of it can be quite revolting.

Take cream cheese for example. Cream cheese is only used in a few dishes in America, and it’s almost primarily used for breakfast, on bagels. That’s it.

In Italy, the Italians I know put cream cheese on EVERYTHING!

When I go to the sandwich shop with people at school, the Italians ask for “philadelphia” on their paninis, without fail. Why on earth would someone choose a Kraft cheese product when there is fresh mozzarella, gorgonzola, provolone, parmaggiano…. the list goes on.

The other gross thing about Italian cream cheese is that it comes in many strange flavors. Like these two shown here- tuna and ham. There is also olive and the brand-new chocolate flavored one. Healthy!

Anyway, I know I am super behind on my blog, but my thesis is due in two days, so this weak photo post will have to do for now. I’ll post something more significant next week… promise!

I can almost see the pot of gold

I turned 30 this past Sunday and I managed to cross off some bucket list items before the day. I’m pretty busy cranking out my thesis dissertation now, but I’ll post a quick update until I have time to write a post.

I went to Ireland with the Italian to celebrate my Dirty 30s. We had a great time, and I think I saw more rainbows in those 4 days than in my 30 years of existence. The weird thing about them was that you could actually see where the rainbow ENDED. In America, you can never see the end of the rainbow- it usually disappears before it “hits” any part of the landscape. It was pretty neat to see the “end” in Ireland, and no wonder the Irish have legends about pots of gold.

This pic is of the mythical double rainbow, which we saw on our first day! Too bad we didn’t find any leprechauns…