Conquering America captures the true life experiences of a girl in her mid twenties that got the opportunity to go work at the headquarters of her company in America. It contains fun things she did, the strange things she encountered, the missing and longing for the things she left behind in South Africa as well as finding herself, losing love, finding love and the joys and ordeals she encountered with immigrating to America. The outline of this book is based on the weekly "Pittsburgh Posts" that she sent to her loved ones back home to inform them on what she is doing, also to educate and tell them what she did and what she found. These weekly posts got very good feedback and her distribution list grew as the months flew past. This book will appeal to everyone that has lived overseas, everyone that is currently living overseas, everyone that wants to live overseas as well as anyone that loves to travel. Life lessons learned and general knowledge obtained is shared in a straightforward manner in this book.

Kissing the Blarney Stone was one of the top things we both wanted to do. Parking the car in the expensive dedicated parking lot, we first headed in the wrong direction, but eventually we found the entrance to the gardens surrounding the castle. We walked around the gardens trying to see the castle. While walking on the path one big tree after another passing us by, the intimidating view of the tall wall of the castle greats you by surprise. Approaching the castle, I saw a cave and had to explore it. Kevin, not being one for dark confined spaces reluctantly followed a very enthusiastic me. I was like a kid in an amusement park, wanting to go deeper and further and always wondering what lies over the next hill, the next corner. It was a cool damp atmosphere, but very pleasant for both me, who is always cold and Kevin who is always warm. Eventually Kevin got me out of the cave underneath the castle, which according to legend, connects the castle with three cities. We headed into the castle which is being renovated on the one side. The castle consisted of spiral staircases with rooms continuing straight out of the stairs. Curious I wanted to see every room and explore every corner and stone. The floor of the rooms where trampled through by visitors for centuries and the stone staircase was shiny smooth from all the traffic through the ages. We met a fair sized man with his little daughter on his hip. He was white from shock and told us it is ridiculous to bend over backwards to kiss the Blarney Stone with a small-build man holding your legs. This triggered my interest and we spiraled upwards to the top of the castle. There was no line to kiss the stone. Kevin went first. He went down, lay on his back, hold onto the two black railings, bends over backwards, kissed the stone and was done. My turn came; I went down, grabbed on and kissed a stone. The guy holding me told me it was not the right stone, I must bend down more and there I saw it, the smooth almost green coloured stone, and right at the bottom of the ledge. I kissed the stone and got up. It was so quickly over. We stayed a bit longer at the top of the castle to take in the beautiful green pastures and the cows grazing lazily on the green grass. Kevin kissed me, long and intensely after kissing the stone. He stared at me with the same intensity than what he kissed me with and said, "There is something I want to ask you?" As he pulled out the ring of his jeans and try to balance him on one knee on the uneven floor. The tears sprung to my eyes. I pulled him up and gave the beautiful and delicate ring one look. Kevin started to pull the ring from its safe cushion with his nervous fingers. I was very nervous that the ring will fall and then it will be gone, lost in the crevices of the Blarney Castle. But Kevin did great; he put the ring on my finger. He asked the guy behind us, who was there with his family to take a picture of us, engaged and on top of the Blarney Castle. The ring was heavy on my finger. It took me a good few weeks to get use to the weight on that finger that was previously reserved for someone worthy, and that someone came along with the most beautiful heart and ring. I could not have chosen a more suitable ring myself, than what Kevin has done. Thereafter, every time I do not have my ring on, I fell as naked as `n newly born baby. My Irish holiday was made.