Halloween in County Cork

It's Halloween in West Cork and mouths are filled with sweets, bags overlowing with toffees, crunchies, chocolates and sours.

Mom sews new buttons on the second-hand Dracula outfit, painting Ericito's face white with a dab of red under his pouting lip, him shouting, "put more blood here, Mommy!"

Dad and I will meet them later at the town hall when the kids' Halloween-disco party ends and set dancing begins. I never had so much fun dancing a waltz step like I was at a hoe down!

Earlier we drove to the beach. Ahh, Inchydoney. The first time in memory I smelled a seabreeze that carried strong hints of cattle and horse dung. The one-degree celsius air temps didn't deter the surfer or the labrador playing in the sea. And I, wearing Hannah's knit hat and gloves and Rich's winter jacket feel happy to be walking under the green hills of Clonakilty.

I'll run in the morning to Upton amidst stud farms and famine walls. Back in the 1840s during the great famine, men were paid a bowl of soup for a few day's work building two-or more-story walls of limestone rock to keep starving people, like themselves, off the wealthy estates. Lower walls marked boundaries of land, as well.

At All Soul's Mass this morning as at All Saint's yesterday, the priest referenced the impending presidential campaign in the States. It's on the radio, the tele, and in every stranger's mouth when they hear my American accent. Guess who the Irish seem unanimously to be rooting for? Same as the rest of the world I've met in two months of travel. Go Blue. Go Bama!

Ann, Ricardo and Eric treat me to a day in Cork (the third largest city on the island after Dublin and Belfast) and lunch at a wonderful Berekeley-esque vegetarian restaurant, Cafe Paradiso, right on the River Lee. We bump into Ann's boss, Sean, who runs a cement company and employs her to design organic, bio-diverse gardens. Sweet job. She loves it. Needless to say, I feel right at home. California crunch in the Ireland bog.