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| Closest I'll be to home until December! |
This weekend we took a fieldtrip with our Folklore
class to one of the Aran Islands, Inis Oirr (pronounced Inisheer). These are
three islands off the coast of Galway that remain very sparsely populated and,
in my opinion, capture Ireland’s beauty perfectly. The island that we were on
is the smallest of the three: it has a population of about two hundred people. Multiple
people that we met on the island told us “We have three churches, three pubs,
one store, one soccer field, no police, and no hospital.” Clearly they have
their priorities straight. After we took a look in the “museum,” which was
actually a one room house that has been filled with objects from the island’s
history, a group of us rented bikes for the day and biked around the island. We
made it almost entirely around the island in only one afternoon, and the views
were breathtaking. We also stood at the furthest point of the island, which is
the closest we will be to America this semester! We took a ton of pictures of
the landscape, the lighthouse, the ocean, the farmhouses, the cows, the castle,
and everything else we could find. There was one house, though, that really
stood out in my mind. It was a thatched-roof house just a minute’s walk from
the ferry. The house itself was nothing too out of the ordinary for Ireland: a
quaint thatched-roof house with whitewashed stone walls. But in front of this
house was a yard containing a child’s sized soccer goal, with soccer balls
scattered around the yard. The yard was enclosed in a stone wall, also expected
in an Irish country home, but there were little flowers peeking out from the
spaces in between. I’m not sure if it was the calmness of the island, the sight
of a house so far away from home that had a yard resembling my own New Jersey
backyard so much, or a combination of the two, but I could not stop looking at
this house. Whenever I think about
Ireland, that house is what I think of: something so different from my own
home, but so similar in many ways. I was also able to somehow get a hand-knit Irish
sweater that originally cost €80 for €35. The man at the store, who looked old
enough to be my grandpa’s grandpa, refused to take any more money from me. I thanked
the man about fifty times, but I am not sure he knows how appreciative I am of
his totally unnecessary kind gesture. That night Erin, Claire, and I went on a walk
along the water, and had one of those conversations that only be described as an
extended realization that there are people in this world who know exactly what
you mean, even when you can’t find the right words to say. Everyone in our
class ended up at one of the three pubs together later that night, and Claire,
Erin, and I stayed late into the night, listening to the live music, and making
friends with the people who inhabited this tiny island. “Hi, I’m Kerry!” I
would say. “Oh, wonderful! You know that’s
a county here, right?” they would respond. Before I could say anything, Claire
would jump in, “I’m Claire!” and this would really get them going – Claire is
another county in Ireland. At this point, we would really throw them off,
because Erin would introduce herself, and seeing as Erin is basically the Irish
word for Ireland, we earned ourselves the nickname “the county girls.” One of
the locals even jumped between Claire and me and said “And I’m Limerick!” If
that joke is lost on you, take a look at a map of Ireland. The guys playing
music dedicated their last song to “our American friends – the county girls,”
and I can honestly say that my experience on the Inis Oirr is one that I will
never forget. 
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