Studying abroad in Western Ireland

I will begin to talk about more specific things in following entries, but my method of keeping a journal prevents me from writing at the time I am having an experience. I reflect. As you see below, I am just now understanding what happened to me in Ireland, and how I found a sincere love for the unexpected but always asked Irish question.

Otherwise, I will outline some of my travels while there with photos. I keep a journal of bullet points during my travels because I find I don't otherwise return to them. I will be transferring those entries to here.

A summer program that, though never announced, quite unashamedly exists for the sole purpose of global awareness of the Irish plight and the dying "Gaeilge."

I had always wanted to study abroad, and apart from a short trip to Italy had put off doing so until the summer prior to my senior year of college. I also did not become fully interested in other languages until after my first trip to Europe, the Italy trip during my junior year, and so I intended to study in an English speaking nation. Prior to figuring out where I'd be going, I intended on England. I needed to finish up some extra literature courses for my English major, and so I set out to look for a program.

I found that money and program availablity led me to Ireland, a place I never thought of in academics next to the big names of Cambridge and Oxford. But I found an excellent summer school program in Galway, Ireland. County Galway was a place I knew a lot about before studying there because my research for a play by an Irish writer, Martin McDonagh, had helped me study up on it during my sophomore year of college. And so I was off to Galway. A place that I knew as the cultural capital of Ireland, a seaport city, and place with roots in traditional Irish culture. In many ways I was correct. But when I got to Galway, I found something I never had expected, a culture that was incredibly unique, a culture that was being swept away by time and the ever uninviting Western mindset.

My flatmate's boyfriend was Irish, from what others called the equivalent of a hicktown, Mulingar, Eire. (Eire is Ireland in the Irish language.) Mark told us there was no use in speaking Irish to anyone, no one'll understand you. It was true that there are more speakers of Polish in Ireland than there are speakers of Irish. In fact, the Poles would like their language to be recognized as a national language because of the percentage of speakers, especially compared to the government's official native language.

Galway has one interesting thing, perhaps just next in passion to the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) of Donegal, and that is a university that desires to bring back their forgotten culture. A summer program that, though never announced, quite unashamedly exists for the sole purpose of global awareness of the Irish plight and the dying "Gailge." This unvoiced purpose is what would shape my impression of a beautiful country and people for my summer and leave me as an Irish Republican at heart, fighting for  a true Irish nationalism (peaceful) with strong romantic roots.