Maia's (Mis)adventures

I sit in the window and watch the world outside explode. The latch is broken and the wind fights my body for control of the panes framed in wood, my shoulder wedged against the corner to keep the cold out. The streets are abandoned today, the arts week tourists undoubtedly hiding inside, wondering what they are doing here. The few souls unfortunate enough to be outside, or ignorant enough to not realize the danger, walk with heads bent against the 74km an hour winds whipping through town. The tiny triangle flags hung over the square flap furiously in the wind, and I'm impressed by their resilience to stay in the air, as tables and chairs and signs fly across the sidewalks and streets against their will. Text pour through the work group chat, one after the other. "Please don't go outside today unless you really have to, guys." Yeah, no problem. I fetch the keys from the stairwell and let myself into the restaurant in the gray morning light. The calm after the sto...

Wandering through the misty, gray streets of Galway, we finally come upon the shop Fabio recommended to buy fuel. Faherty's Paints. We head inside the cramped space, knocking cans with our bags in the tiny aisles, and search, but all I see is paint and varnish. The only other customer in the shop leaves and the elderly man behind the counter asks if he can help us. "Yes...someone told me I may be able to find paraffin here?" I ask uncertainly. "Yup! You twirling fire?" He asks, upbeat, and leads Maya and I to the back corner. I laugh, "Is it that obvious?" I didn't expect him to know the reason so quickly. He shows me his selection. "Oh, you've got white gas too...that's what I usually use." "Now, you could use the white gas," he replies. "It is cheaper and it'll work, but the paraffin burns better. It's more of an even burn and it puts off less black smoke. It's better for your health and for you...

I have gotten more and more readers writing me or leaving comments on my blog, saying that it's wonderful to read about what I'm doing, but now they want to know *how* I'm doing it. So, this week, I'll try my best to put together a list of tips on how to make your travels easier.  If you read my blog for the stories, but have no interest in doing it yourself, I apologize, but you probably want to skip this week. It'll be quite boring for you. Please tune back next week! ^_^ If you read for inspiration and want to travel yourself, then hopefully there are at least a few helpful tips in this post. Bear with me, I've never tried to put everything into one collection, I'm just learning as I go. So..."How did you do it?" How did I do it... Well... I realized if I didn't change something, I was going to effectively kill the person I wanted to be and become someone I didn't like. Once I came to this realization, there wasn't mu...

Maya and I get our days off to line up and we hop on a bus to Galway. She's got a busker friend from Portugal who lives there and is happy to have us crash on his couch. Fabio The Fiddler. We arrive to a beautiful, sunny day (which is quite rare), and it doesn't take long to find the racket of the Galway Street Club (a large busker group) flowing down the street. What a rag tag group. They look like pirates, with gravelly voices to match, and I immediately love them. I want to be friends with all these people. Their music is lively and energetic, and we bounce around for a bit until they're done. We go to the pub with them that night, and Maya keeps telling all the musicians that I play guitar really well. A claim which is certainly not true, but I've told her that I want to get more into music, and she's trying her damnedest to make it happen. "She also spins fire!" She tells a few of them. "Oh, yeah?" Johnny's attention is caught....