Boston!

Update: Right now it’s 7:30 p.m. on Sept 8. We just finished our first day of work on the farm. Pictures of that to come but I have a post I’ve written and some photos of our stopover in Boston, so that first. I had a few days without internet but should be posting more regularly from now on.

Boston: Sept 7

After a year of planning and many more years of dreaming, I am finally sitting in an airport waiting for a plane to take us to Ireland. What a surreal feeling!

For those of you who don’t know the back story, here’s a quick preview of what’s to come and how it came to be.

In my freshman year of college I met a girl who had worked on an organic farm in Japan through a program call WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). I immediately thought it sounded incredible and decided then and there that I would WWOOF one day.

Basically, WWOOF is an international organization that connects organic farm hosts with eager volunteer workers. All room and board is provided in exchange for work on the farm. Not only is it an excellent way to travel cheaply but you also get the life changing opportunity to live with and learn from someone from a completely different culture than your own.

While I’ve had the idea to WWOOF for a while, it became real about a year ago when my boyfriend Jacob and I decided we should go together. About six months later we were choosing hosts and buying plane tickets. And now we sit waiting for the plane to arrive.

During our WWOOF adventure we will be in Ireland for three months spending a month and a half at each farm. Our first destination is in Powers Cross in County Galway and the second farm is in Glensallagh in County Cork. I’ll go more into farm details later.

Yesterday, we flew out of Seatac airport on a red eye flight to Boston. Once there, we had a 12 hr layover so we hopped on the subway and spent a few hours exploring historic downtown, walking through old graveyards and having lunch at a great place in Little Italy in the North End.

What struck me was how relatively young our country is compared to the rest of the world. Pretty soon we will be visiting castles and ancient graveyards!

Anyway, our flight to Shannon leaves at 7:30 p.m. so we have a few more hours to kill. We’re spending the time catching up on some Z’s. Currently, Jacob is curled up on three seats next to me snoring.

Pretty soon we will be en route to new experiences and three months of a new life.

Bye, bye PNW. For now.

Other quick travel anecdotes:

-Boston’s weather was muggy and wet from tropical storm Lee.

- We met a couple at the Seattle airport who were also on their way to Boston and would then be heading to Ireland after a few days. We met them at the airport bar. They’ve been to Ireland a lot and were really excited for us. They plan on following the blog.

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Here are some photos from Boston including one of the oldest graveyards and Jacob and me having lunch in Little Italy. The statue in the photos is actually of Irish immigrants who flocked to Boston and lived in squalid conditions or were shipped back to their country to starve during the Irish potato famine.