Drop Off

On Saturday (the 6^th) we participated in a drop off. Basically, this means that we divided into our sight groups (the groups which we’ll be writing our group blogs with), and then Tammi sent each group to a different tiny town near Galway for about 5 hours (3-8). Our job was to discover the distinctive of our town.

My group (me, Emily, Paul, Elisha, and Olivia) had the town of Oranmore. It was a very cute little town, with some very well-to-do residential areas surrounding it. There was also a castle there. Much of it was origina

l, but some of the pieces were brought during World War I by the army commander who owned it. He died at 106, and his daughter owns it now. Her niece was getting married there that day, so we weren’t able to go inside. While we were looking at it we met a very helpful couple who told us all about the town. There were many unfinished building projects there, because during the Celtic Tiger economic boom (another fun thing for you to look up. 🙂 a lot of progress came to the town, but it left during the recession. The people of the town h

eld really closely together, though, they’re such a community. All of the graves in the graveyard are the same families. The population grew from 400 to 7,000 during the boom, but the town is still very much a family.

The old church was turned into a library when a new one was built, and it’s a beautiful library. Men just sit in there and read the newspaper while little kids check out stacks of books. It was such a great place. We learned so much.

We ate at this amazing Italian restaurant. Olivia thought she wouldn’t be able to find anything to eat, but it turned out that they offered to make anything she wanted so that she could eat it. I had hake on top of real Irish mashed potatoes with wilted kale and tomatoes. It was AMAZING.

More on this next time (we’re going to have a longer drop off in Greystones!)