Nesting

My dance intensive with Irish Modern Dance Theatre wrapped up on Friday with a final showing of some of the material we worked on throughout the week. It was sort of thrown together, but there was a lot there, it ended up being around 18 minutes! It was an exhausting week, but jam packed with tons of creative sessions, technique classes, and a great working artistic environment that I had been missing for so long!

After exchanging emails and facebooks and saying goodbye to all my new Irish (and French) dancer friends, Mom and I headed out to find her colleagues who were waiting to take us to Ikea!

We spent hours upon hours getting sucked into Ikea-land touring the showrooms then deciding what all we needed for our little home. This part was a little hard for me because I hadn't seen our place yet, but I put faith in Mom's ideas of what we needed.

The "house" (I say "house" because that is what it's called here since it has its own front door, upstairs and downstairs, but in the US it would be a tiny town home or an apartment) is furnished but minimally, so we needed some homey touches. Moms colleagues are helping us out a lot though lending duvets, a drying rack for laundry, some towels, and other things that could have cost us a fortune. But we got to pick out our own bed linens and some lamps and such. 

By the time we loaded up all our goods and drove to Athlone, then switched cars, and unloaded at our house it was nearly 11pm and we were exhausted! But it was so exciting to see our little "house" for the first time. We are less than a block from the River Shannon, and we are in one of the oldest parts of town. These are our keys...

Did I mention the OLDEST PART OF TOWN! How cool!

 This morning we took it slow, working on Irish time as the locals say. I finally had a great nights sleep and woke up refreshed! It is so nice to be in such a cool-different-new place, but not be rushing around to see everything. Every time I have been away from home I feel like I constantly want to see the next big sight, or pack my days full because I will only be there a week this that and the other. But I am starting to really feel like we live here, it's weird! 

Mom's colleague and her husband came over in the morning and helped us figure out all the weird electrical things here (electric shower anyone?!) and then we went to the grocery store just down the street and they helped us tote our bags back in their car. 

Here is mom in front of our house before we headed out!

 And here is River Shannon (you can see from moms bedroom window, and is less than a block from house!) This was on our way to the shopping centre, our house is right behind the yellow building on the right! 

When we got back from shopping we had ourselves a little afternoon "cuppa" with some Baileys just to be festive...

 Then mom started cooking us some vegetable stew 

 while I started assembling some Ikea furniture to complete our home! 

 We enjoyed dinner in our little dining/living/everything room, then I braved the electric shower (it takes determination to get clean over here!) In a minute we are headed out to the pub down the street to check it out and get a beer or two before spending the second night in our new home! 

More pictures to come of our home when we are more settled!