It has been a cool, windy day, the kind perfect for packing and reflection. There isn't much left to do now, as I have freed myself of most of my Irish-born library. One of my Canadian friends, a fellow historian, spent a few hours picking through the books I've gathered in my time here, and most of those he left behind were books he has a copy of. Rather, we spent a few hours being incorrigibly boys (honestly, incorrigibly historians, I've had similar conversations with a few of my female friends) rambling over the usual topics - life in college, the better libraries we've seen, military history (HIS university offered a lot of military history! Augh!), model cars/airplanes, notes about Irish culture, Canadian whiskey/beer ("whisky" to the Irish, scotch to the Scots, and bourbon to the Americans, except Jack Daniels which insists that it is an "American whiskey"), the joys of the old school Nintendo (8-bit), merits of various video games, how TNT differs from dynamite, Steinbeck, Vietnam war movies, books we found unbearable, Joseph Conrad, Europe's history in Africa, roommates, memorable professors. This is a conversation we'd been meaning to have for a while, but could not in good conscience inflict upon the rest of our social circle.

The fellow taking the apartment is another Midwesterner. Trying to get him and any one of my roommates in the same place at the same time proved to be a challenge, but in the process I had a pleasant conversation with him. Now that I've been gone a while, there is a much greater ease with other Americans, more so with those who also stem from a region where Mother Nature is openly hostile half of the year. Blistering summers, biting winters. Ahh...

I find myself listening to a lot of Tom Waits these days. With most everyone working or gone, I leave Ireland in much the same place that I entered it - living out of a suitcase, spending a lot of time with my own thoughts, punctuated by singularly poignant conversations. No one really lives in Galway or Dublin, they are simply coming or going at a different pace. Sandra wants to spend a year in New York, another in Australia, then have a family. Sara is from New York. Sarah is Spanish, passing through Ireland en route to Italy. Michelle is Irish, returning from Italy... To tell someone about home, or someplace you spent some time, requires you to come to terms with it yourself. We try, but mostly, we fail.

Shared some peanut butter with Sandra's friends from France. They were not impressed.