An Irish Interlude

I write this on the last night of my time in Ireland. I've seen a lot since I arrived here just under a week ago. In two days I graduated college, drove home, and then flew across the Atlantic.  Monday morning saw me arrive in the Dublin airport, full of a mixture of emotions perhaps best explained as vast uncertainty.

Of course, there have been ups and downs. I now bear a grudge against the Dublin bus system, for one. But on the whole this last week has been an amazing adventure, and well worth the strain of being on my own in a foreign country. And I learned that I'm not the only one crazy enough to do this. More than once I've introduced myself to another twenty-something girl, usually in a hostel, and found out that she too is on a solo trip.

I saw the Book of Kells in Dublin, visited a twelfth century church/castle in Cashel, and seen the last bit of land my Irish ancestors saw before they emigrated to America, never to return home. At times it's been hard being alone, but there have also been advantages. Besides the obvious of having complete control over my schedule, I've also met people I would not have otherwise. In Dublin I hung out for a while with a girl from Chile. In Galway I met a group of four girls who were St. Louis University, and found out that one of them had been on a NET retreat when she was younger. In Cashel the owner of the B&B I was staying at, seeing me waiting in the front room alone until it was time to walk down to the bus stop, invited me back into the kitchen, introduced me to to his mother, and sat me down at the kitchen table for some coffee while his mother told me about how she had been a teacher in San Antonio for a few years back in the fifties.

Cobh was an interesting town. It's on the southern coast of Ireland, in County Cork, and was a major immigration hub in the eighteen hundreds. I visited the Cobh heritage center, which had a very good series of exhibits on the town and the immigrants who left there. After growing up hearing about my Irish ancestors and attending the North Texas Irish festival it was almost surreal to finally be in the place I had always heard about. While walking around the town I also happened upon St. Colman's Cathedral, a truly magnificent church built in the eighteen hundreds in the Gothic style. The sheer scale of it was awesome, in the Biblical sense of the word. Seeing churches like that allows me to understand the idea that a structure could point you to God. I visited twice, once just to walk around and then the next morning for Mass. The soaring arches and beautiful stained glass windows left my soul uplifted.

From there I went to Galway, where I stayed two nights and was finally able to fulfill my goal of hearing traditional Irish music in a real Irish pub. Since I had a full day there I was able to take a bus tour around the surrounding countryside, a region called the Burren, which is all boulders and low mountains and abandoned buildings of grey stone standing among the mist. We also went to the Cliffs of Moher, which stand hundreds of feet above the Atlantic as it crashes at their base. The west of Ireland has a reputation for being wilder than the rest of the country, and I have to agree. There is something yet untamed about those rock strewn miles. Many of the hills are lined with famine walls, low walls of rock built by the peasants during the infamous potato famine. They had to work to live, and since they could not farm they built long pointless walls in order that their landlord would still feed them. They stand as a testament to the desperation of those times.

I think that it was that day, among the wind and the fog, that I truly fell in love with this country. Of course, I liked it before. I have visited many places that I liked, but fewer that I really fell in love with. The Texas hill country was probably the first such place. Northern New Hampshire was one. I know already that Ireland is another. While it is now time for me to head to the sunnier skies of Spain, part of my heart now belongs to Ireland. I mourn having to leave, but I welcome the new adventure.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

"The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for me." 

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When I was younger, I used to have maps taped all over my walls. I would spend hours staring at them, wishing I visit the places on them. Picture a quiet, nerdy sort of fourteen year-old planning theoretical trips, sometime to South Pacific islands, but most of all to Europe. That was me.

I've been a lot of places in the eight years since then. I even took a year off of college to become a traveling Catholic missionary. But the Big Trip I always intended to take to another continent remained just a theory. Until last fall, that is. That was when I finally decided I was sick of waiting for an opportunity to travel to fall in my lap. So I did some research.

In a week I'll be graduating college. I've decided to spend the summer in Spain, working as an au pair and making good use of my Spanish minor. I'll be watching two little kids, a boy and a girl, for a family in Pamplona, a city in northern Spain. Then in the fall I'll return to Texas to begin my time as a graduate student in English.

First, though, I'm spending a week traveling Ireland alone. Am I nervous? Well, yes. But all my best adventures have been preceded by this sense of nervousness, the temptation to turn back, the hearkening of a good book in a familiar room where no one will ask me to talk to strangers. And each time I have stubbornly refused to give in I have grown a little braver. Besides, I know that if I didn't go I would never forgive myself. So I am going to Ireland.

America, land of my birth, God willing I will see you again with the changing of the seasons. And to all those reading this, I very much appreciate prayers for safe travels.