Sin e. That's it (literally in gaelic). The boxes are now gone. 9 of them are now winging their way to New Zealand. We had a bit of stress as we don't know whether any of them are over our 40kg weight limit, but nothing can be done about that now. With any luck any charges for being over weight will outweigh what another box would have cost us. The house feels strangely empty at the moment. Like something's missing. Almost i guess like it's not our house anymore. It's hard to explain. Suffice to say, we're on our way. Today is Matt's last day of work and we're leaving our flat on Monday to head up to Clonmel where his Aunt, Uncle and cousins live for a visit and to break up the trip up to Dublin. It's been consistently cold and drafty here--the kind of chill that just gets into your bones and you can't help but shiver. I can not say that i'm going to miss that. Warm weather is a very tantilising idea right now. Like every packer i keep feeling like i've missed something but at this point if it's been missed it's now going around the world with us.

Not much more to say really, that's about it. So so long for now...

It's starting to sink in that i'm actually leaving Ireland. Matt and i posted a bunch of our stuff for sale up on the Gumtree and People's Republic of Cork and managed to sell the desk, chair, printer and DVD player within minutes to his colleagues. Then after a night of drinking we managed against our true desires to wake up at 9am on Saturday and after some showering and food make it to a car boot sale in Rathcormac. Car boot sales = garage sales. Except to a higher level not really possible to describe. We arrived and got our nifty trader sticker and started to unload our stuff (plus Dan's TV) in front of the trunk nicely displayed on plastic crates. Well suddenly it was a freaking feeding frenzy. People must have thought--"Ooh let's get their stuff while they're still may be bargains". I'd say in the first 5 minutes we got rid of 60% of our stuff. There were definitely some characters at the sale tho...the word Pikey comes to mind--And not necessarily in a good way. In any event after a mere 2 hours there we were left with our tent about 5 books and Matt's spare motorcycle helmet. It cleared a nice corner to put stuff in inside our flat. But what really caused some nostalgia was packing up the desk. Matt's desk and chair which sat in the corner where we played on our computers side by side are now all packed up ready to go to their new owners tonight. In the meantime Matt's hijacked the kitchen table to have his computer on, my laptop is living on the wooden case that the turntables are stored in and there's 2 semi empty boxes living in the center of the room (kitchen) where the table was. Starting to pack stuff up tho really made it start to sink in for me. We're leaving. We're really leaving Ireland. As excited as i am, i'm not sure i'm able to fully grasp the magnitude of our trip yet. It's huge. Our move to New Zealand is huge and we're doing it.

I've been wondering if perhaps i didn't give Ireland enough of a chance. I think being out of work the last 3 months has weighed on me and has jaded my opinion of the place. It is beautiful here. There's nice people. I'll still say the weather sucks. But it's been my home for the last 10 months straight--which seems like a longer stint that i've done anywhere..even in Bloomington (the longest i stayed in London was 8 months straight). So in my last 2 weeks here i'm going to try to truly enjoy Cork as a tourist. With Thom coming to visit i think i might be motivated to do a bit more than usual.

So here's to a final taste before a big gulp and on to the next one....

So i suppose i'm about due for a post. Things (despite being unemployed) have been a bit hectic lately. First let me back up to last month. As we were coming up on about 1 month before we needed to go into uber packing mode, Matt gave in his months notice at work. What we were not planned for was their response. Previously we had joked about what we would do if they offered him some kinda crazy salary raise to something like 100k a year. We sadly had admited that we'd have to pass since i wouldn't be able to work. Well, after giving in his notice and really explaining WHY he had to leave his boss sat down and said, "No, we want you to stay--we'll pay for you to change tickets, etc..." and Matt had to once again explain it was because of my lack of a visa. The boss calls him in again and says, "We'll get Lindsay a visa". Appearently the CFO of the company has ties to lots of immigration or more so just Laywer types. They'd cover the cost and everything. This combined with new information that Ireland had just adopted an new EU wide mandated unmarried partner law put a stop on our plans. We told them we needed to know for sure what was going to happen (that i would successfully have a working visa by the time we returned) and we needed to know ASAP (basically 2 weeks as we'd have to give notice on our flat if we were leaving as planned). Like most things and people Irish, they dragged their feet on it all and sadly we had to turn their offer down. To be honest i had mixed feelings about the idea of staying here. It makes me sad that being unemployed and bored here the last few months has slightly colored my opinion of this beautiful country.

But in any event that's over and we're going to be on our way in 3 weeks. Which is incredibly scary as we still have a flat full of stuff. We meant to go to a carboot sale this past weekend but that fell through, as we just didn't have our act together. That and we went out on the town the night before as another of our mates is leaving this week. Slowly but surely all but one of the friends we've made here is off to greener pastures.

Otherwise things are the same here. Fall has definetly arrived and it's much cooler. Not that it was really ever all that warm here. I'm definetly looking forward to warm sunny beaches. A few friends are coming by in the next few weeks--Thom, my mate from University, and Jon, Matt's cousin in London. Hopefully we get room for them cleared out in time!

Well that's about that really. I promise to write again before we leave.

XXX