St Patricks Day….in Ireland!

Yes, Yes, I hear ya! An Irish person, living in Ireland, preaching about the awesomeness of St Patricks Day. How cliché!

But hold up a second, I have my reasons for being seriously over excited about St Paddys Day this year. On March 17th 2013, 9 short days from now, I will get to celebrate all thing Irish on my home stomping ground for the first time in FOUR YEARS!! That’s right, I have spent the last 3 years in a row abroad, and have celebrated Guinness, Leprechauns and ‘The Galway Girl’ in not 1, not 2, but 3 different continients.

 There is so much talk at the moment about emigration and how there is nothing left in Ireland for young graduates. It would seem while most of my generation have already emigrated, and many more are debating the move in the near future, I have strangely found myself back in Ireland, back in Cork, living at home and working locally. And dare I say…I’m loving it.

So while I look forward to St Patricks Day at home this year, 2013 – The year of The Gathering, I find myself reminscing about the last 3 Paddys Day spent abroad..spreading my love of all things Irish to the Ozzies, the Koreans and of the Dutch! The only thing that would make this year better would be if all my amazing friends that I made, loved and sadly had to leave whilst abroad could be here with me to join in the celebrations. Here’s to you….Slainte!

 

Paddys Day 2010 in Melbourne Australia with some awesome Couchsurfers!

Teaching ‘all things Irish’ to my students in South Korea. Paddys Day 2011.

My students in Korea enjoying St Patrickd Day decorations!

Cycling to the pub…only in Holland!!

Spending Paddys day with my classmates from Brazil ans Sweden in an Irish pub in Holland!

 

 

 

 

 

ONE FIT MUCKER!!

Guess what? I have set up a new blog by the brilliant name of ONE FIT MUCKER. Don’t worry…I’ll still be posting about my travels here, but posts about my new mission to get fit and have fun doing it will be posted on my new blog with lots of great photographs from each event.

The challenge : To participate in as many wild and wacky adventures before the end of 2013, with the goal of having as much fun as possible while increasing levels of fitness at the same time.

This will not be your average fitness blog.

This is not about running. Not about marathons. Not simpply about getting fit. It’s about getting down and dirty on crazy adventure courses, spending more time outdoors rather than in the pub (although there might be a bit of that too!) and strengthening friendships through day time excursions rather than night time sessions!

By the end of the year I’m going to be… ONE FIT MUCKER!! Check it out now.

Money for Mud

I’m delighted to say that I shall be putting my travelling shoes on again in March, on a journey of a lifetime to Kolkata, India.

India will be country number 36 for me…a tiny bit closer to my goal of traveling to 50 countries before I’m 30.

However before I go, I am determined to raise €1,500 for The Hope Foundation, a charity which does amazing work in Kolkata with street and slum children, giving them a brighter future. HOPE has so far helped over 30,000 children through education alone, and I want to be part of their amazing story.

SHOCKING FACT: There are currently over 250,000 street children living in Kolkata, living on the streets with no shelter from the elements, no one to care care for them or to protect them. HOPE works tirelessly to help these children through education programmes, healthcare, skills training and their 8 protection homes for young boys and girls.

To raise money for HOPE, I have signed up for the ‘RUNAMUCK CHALLENGE 2013′ which considering by shocking levls of fitness, is sure to be quite the challenge! If you would like to donate to this very worthy cause, and like to see me get absolutley battered and bruised and covered in mud from head to toe..then PLEASE DONATE HERE!

I will post photos here of both this event and my experiences in India, so you will be able to see exactly where your money is going and all the good it is doing!

Thanks for your support!
Janet xxx aka Journalist On The Run

Family Portraits

My sister celebrated her 30th birthday recently, and to celebrate my parents hosted an amazing party in our house…something we have not done in about 10 years. In fact the last time my sister had a birthday party at home, she was still in primary school and I believe I was scarily obsessed with barbie dolls that could ‘have babies’ with the push of a button! Safe to say it was quite some time ago!

One thing that really made the party special, was that we had a professional photographer on hand who took some really amazing photos of the party, capturing the smiles, the laughs and the overall mood perfectly. It was also the ideal opportunity for us as a family to have some family portraits shot, something we have never done before.

Here are some of my favourite photos from the night, with special thanks to Christian Haubold. Enjoy!

 

Family Portrait: Dad, Pam, Me and Mum.

Sister Sister: Two generations of sisters.

Sisters: Pam and I

Recreating the past: Pam in a pose similar to her great, great (maybe another great I’m not sure..) grandmother!

My TV Debut….in Georgia!

Just back from the most amazing trip of my life. Truly an eye opening experience. I met so many lovely people, learned more about Georgia than I know about my home country, tasted delicious Georgian wine, enough cheese bread to last me a life-time, had dinner with the Dutch Ambassador, walked along the border between Georgia and the breakaway state of Abkhazia, saw snow-capped mountains, swam in the Black Sea, and even featured on National News!

Trip report to follow, but first here’s a taster of my TV Debut on the Georgian News, following an interesting discussion in the Government buildings with the Minister of IDPs, Refugees and Accommodation about the IDP situation and durable housing solutions.

A Balloons Eye View

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know that last Thursday I lost my amazing GoPro camera, after attaching it to 23 helium balloons, and watching in dismay after the wind snapped the rope and it floated high into the sky over county cork. (You can read about all the drama HERE.)

What you might not know is that I was stopping at nothing to get that camera back! I contacted the local radio station, and used the power of social media to get the word out to everyone in the area to keep an eye on the skies for a crazy contraption consisting of 23 balloons, a styrofoam mount and a tiny little camera!

On Good Friday I had an email from a girl I sister went to school with, Debbie Deane, saying her husband had found my camera in one of their fields, over 20km from my house! I was speechless. My parents did not know what was going on as I jumped up and down mouthing silently and pointing at the computer. We simply COULD NOT believe someone had found it. I jumped in my car and drove down to collect it, with a smile on my face that was not going to be leaving anytime soon.

I had a great laugh with Debbie and her husband as they told me about how they had been checking up on a sunburnt cow when they spotted the balloon in the field and went to investigate. They then went home, put the memory card in their computer and looked through the photos to see if they could recognize the owner but had no luck. Later, Debbie’s brother arrived, and recognized me straight away! An Easter Miracle!

When I arrived home I couldn’t wait to look at the photos and I was not disappointed! There were over 900 photos of the Cork country side, as the camera took a photo every 2 seconds on its crazy adventure in the sky. Next thing I knew I had National Newspapers contacting me, saying they wanted to publish the story! You can read the Irish Examiner article HERE, and the Irish Independent article HERE.

My friends could not believe my good luck and one remarked, “You come home for 1 week and you make the papers!” Life really is one big adventure.

Mapping the balloons journey from my house to Innishannon

How to lose 300 Euro in 3 seconds

With so many balloons and color, you would think this would be an uplifting tale but sadly it’s the devastating story of how my 3 month old, 300 Euro GoPro Camera is now floating over the skies above Ireland, or maybe even over the Atlantic!

Yesterday, the gloriously sunny day that it was, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to attach my camera to a load of balloons and attempt to get some great aerial shots of my hosue and farm. Half a tank of helium, 23 balloons and a little help from my younger cousins and our kitchen was a maze-like rainbow of colour and string!

I made a mount for the camera using some old styrofoam, and attached the mount to the balloon bouquet using 4 evenly cut lengths of twine. With one end tied to the camera mount, and the other end tied to my 10 year old cousin (my thinking behind this was unless the wind is strong enough to lift my cousin off the ground my camera will be safe!) we were ready to get going.

As we slowly let the leash out more and more, the balloons, mount and camera slowly rose higher and higher above the house, taking what I hope would awesome aerial shots of the house, garden and farmland.

Then suddenly, in front of my eyes, a gust of wind yanked the whole masterpiece, the twine snapped, and as we all jumped and screamed trying to grab the end of the line, we watched as my amazing camera (my pride and joy, ,my most prized possesion) glided quickly up into the clear blue sky. Within minutes it had risen hundreds of feet and was only a tiny speck in the distance, drifing away from me and towards the local town!

I ran inside, grabbed my car keys, and frantically drove to the other side of town to see if I could catch a glimpse of what direction it was going. The trip was fruitless and I drove home slowly, feeling a mixture of sadness and shock, in total disbelief at what had just happened! I mean the whole thing was almost comical!

 

I text the local radio station, RedFM, and they rang me back straight away, so I could speak live on air and tell their listeners my little dilemma! Within an hour somebody text in saying they could see the balloons flying over the banteer area, well over 50 miles from whereI live! Although this got my hopes up, I soon realised that within another hour, if the wind kept blowing in a North Easterly direction, my dear camera would be breezing over the Atlantic Ocean! Devastated.

RIP GoPro, at least your farewell was a colorful one!

RIP GoPro, Safe Trip across the Atlantic!

The (Irish) Sea of Nakedness

I will never forget the day I got naked with a few thousand other brave souls in Dublin harbor. It was for a Spencer Tunick Art Installation and was right up there with some of the wackier things I have done in my life.

Standing knee deep in the freezing, Irish sea or laying down on the hard, cold rocky pier back to back with naked strangers, as a ship sails in from England (no doubt full of puzzled passengers!) was a morning I’m not going to forget anytime soon! I can’t begin to imagine what was going through those passengers minds as they saw a few thousand naked Irish people welcoming them into Dublin Port at 5 o’clock in the morning!

“Welcome to Ireland, the friendliest nation on Earth!”

"Welcome to Ireland!" A sea of nakedness!

It's a wee bit cold...a sea of nakedness!

How to get a Billionaire’s attention…

My friend Allan and his “unusual” attempt at securing his dream job with Alki David in LA!

 You can help him out by retweeting this link on Twitter!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

Crazy clowns taking a break from face painting on International Children’s Day in Dublin.