Search Results for 'Guatemala'

People from Westmeath spent €16,730 on gifts for the world’s poorest people last Christmas, that is according to overseas development agency, Trócaire. The charity thanked the people of Co Westmeath for remembering families in need overseas when planning their Christmas shopping, as it launched its 2012 Christmas gift range.

A Claremorris family of nine are packing up their home life and taking it on the road to central America for a family gap year. Kevin Griffiths and his Danish wife Franckiska Blitger are leaving their life in Claremorris in 60 days along with their seven children, aged from 15 years old down to one year old, to take on the adventure of a life time.

Christmas has crept up again. A time for joy to the world, and peace among men or, conversely, of panicked late night shopping, and the anxiety that accompanies the realisation that you have exactly seven minutes before shops close. It's Christmas Eve, and you are empty-handed (aside from, if you are like me, a few little presents that you accidentally got for yourself). That perfect gift has eluded you once more, and all the time you thought you had, as you browsed nonchalantly, has vanished into the ether. Aimless wandering is one thing, but the real challenge comes when setting out with a specific, particularly hard to please person in mind. This can lead to blind panic, often resulting in decidedly bad choices. I aim to, at best, give something of practical use to the recipient, preferably something that they wouldn't buy for themselves, or, at the least (and this is perhaps the last refuge of the desperate), to knock a laugh out of them. Some notable failures include impulsively bought jewellery, assorted DVDs (which now lurk, mockingly, on the shelf, still clad in their original cellophane), and a festive geansaí, which, upon opening, was immediately earmarked for return. One year out of frustration and laziness I bought a friend a book that I suspected she would never open, but that I wanted to read. After an appropriate waiting period I 're-gifted' it to myself, and everyone was happy – I got the brownie points and the goods. This year I hope to avoid the blunders of the past, and furnish my nearest and dearest with things that will, without hyperbole, change their lives for the better.

MARTÍN PRETCHEL, the artist, musician, storyteller, and teacher will be telling traditional stories in the Galway City Museum on Thursday November 11 at 7pm.

When Billy Cameron first went to Cuba in the mid 1990s it was just for a sun’n’fun holiday on the beach. He had no idea the Caribbean island nation, its people, culture, and society would become one of his great personal and political passions.

THE TAPESTRY of Colum McCann’s novel Let The Great World Spin is so rich and deep, so varied and rewarding, that the book needs to be read several times before it can be fully appreciated.