So your dad is a high school principal and he sends you to Ireland?
Okay, I'd say that's a win, buddy!
Thanks for the share.
"The journey took about an hour, streaking effortlessly over the dark and gleaming sea under a brilliant sun. Smaller lush green islands slid past us in the distance. I watched the long wake of water folding back into the sea behind us, sipped at my champagne and thought of an old bridge that I know in Sturminster Newton in Dorset. It still has a cast iron notice bolted to it that warns anybody thinking of damaging or defacing the bridge in any way that the penalty is transportation. To Australia. Now Sturminster Newton is a lovely town, but it astonishes me that the bridge is still standing.
Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than me (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, and it's often quite a shock) discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia?
I spend a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British."
Douglas Adams