CELT

Hello all! As you may or may not know I spent the last month taking an intensive Teaching English as Foreign Language course. I will soon be a certified TEFL teach! I turned in the last of my work this afternoon. It was a 140 hour course over the span of a month. It was a ton of work, but I haven't had that much fun in school in ages. It was such a good group of people. I loved the teaching aspect of the course and I earned distinction in all my teaching practices. Long story short I am so happy I did it. I really feel like it gives me a worst case scenario fallback and a skill that hopefully I can put to good use regardless of what I end up doing.
I have a interview with Minnesota Reading Corps, which is a branch of Americorps, on June 7th. Fingers crossed. I made it through the initial interview round. I would love to be back in Minnesota for a bit. Georgia is off the list; the program has really changed since last year and I am no longer comfortable participating in it. Then the plan is back to grad school for a history PhD. I love human rights law, but is readily apparent that history is my passion. That and I really feel that one of the reasons human rights seems to be failing rather epically on some fronts is because history, economics, sociology and political science are not taken into account when analyzing a situation. That and conclusions based on bad history are going to be bad conclusions and there is a lot of poorly conducted history research out there. I would like to make some small contribution to curbing this trend.
Heading to Amsterdam to visit a friend of Sam's on the 1st. I can say that it is never a city I would have chosen to visit, but a free place to stay and I'll go almost anywhere. It does actually look like a beautiful city however and I am really hoping to see a flower market. I love all things botanical, can't get much better than Amsterdam for that kind of thing.
I am currently nurturing a few house plants. I have four lilies that Sam bought me. I am fairly sure they are going to bloom like crazy just as soon as I leave for vacation. Then I have some rocket, spearmint and cilantro which are happy as can be. My sage and basil are hesitant to spout, I keep hoping.

Happy summer! Hopefully the weather is better than the rain here!
Working on my thesis...it is crazy to think that I am only an 8th done. Seems like I've been at if for ages. But, it will get done and hopefully it will be something worth reading!

Organic Farming and calves

Two weeks ago we went out to Kinvara with Sam's mom and brother. It's just a bit outside of Galway. A beautiful little town, right on the water with a picturesque little harbor and an old castle. We walked around the town, played with a so little sheep dog for a while, and watched the tied come in. The we went on an organic farm walk. I had never seen anything like it before. Such a process. I had no idea how much works goes into running that sort of operation. He is constantly cycling crops through and has to have everything timed to the day, because of limited amount of space he has. He had a few huge green houses which he weeds by hand. This alone impressed me. Never mind the amount of work that goes into running and maintaining the whole process. Then on the drive back into town Sam's mom pulled over so I could pet some calves! They were sooo sweet. Then out to eat at Eddie Rocket's, which is the Irish version of the American restaurant Johnny Rockets. I always find eat there a little surreal. But, after a walk around an organic farm and petting some calves, nothing really satiate the appetite like some non-organic beef...(the irony was not wasted on me). Hope all is well with everyone!