IRELAND

After nearly a year in the workforce, I truly began to feel like I was at peak adulthood with a healthy amount of responsibility and compensation, but not many time or energy consuming commitments (besides Chicken of course). At baseline I need little motivation to travel, so living in this happy medium was reason enough to book a trip.

Jacklyn and I have been best friends since we were in the third grade. We eventually went on to do irish dance together, and the intensity of the sport resulted in a trauma bond that only served to strengthen our friendship even more. When choosing a destination for our trip, Ireland seemed like the blatantly obvious choice.

Jokes aside, I encouraged this destination. Not only was it on both of our bucket lists, but we grew up in a predominantly Irish and Italian town, with many of our friends’ parents and grandparents being immigrants from these places. Because of the anticipated similarities between cultures, I felt like this would be a great country to introduce Jacklyn to European travel.

Throughout the trip we found ourselves drawing countless parallels between the greater Boston area and Ireland; we felt so comfortable there. Locals welcomed us a bit more warmly than other Americans after finding out we were from Boston, and that Jacklyn was of Irish descent (if it wasn’t already obvious with her freckles and red hair). We were often told “Boston has more Irish than Ireland” and “Boston is Ireland’s largest suburb.” We found that Boston’s pubs are astonishingly similar in appearance to Ireland’s, even some with the same name (the Druid, the Dubliner, Emmett’s, etc). We also found that the last names of our high school classmates were plastered on signs and businesses throughout Ireland- Maloney, O’Grady, Shannon, Ryan, Connolly, O’Halloran, to name a few.

Besides the wonderful company she provided, I loved traveling with Jacklyn and watching her learn about European cultures and communication styles firsthand; it made me realize just how much of our identities hinged upon growing up in the US, and being “American”. I found myself thinking back to all that I learned in my “Global Communications” course I begrudgingly took while studying abroad to satisfy criteria for my global public health minor.

We truly have a sense of entitlement as Americans. We often caught ourselves feeling implicitly frustrated with the lack of urgency and catering within the food service industry- no one would check on you during your meal, you often seated yourself, and service times were drastically slower in comparison to those in the States. Was this a result of restaurant employees being paid fair wages without requiring tips, or was it simply because most European cultures value longer mealtimes and view it as quality time with loved ones? It truly seems like a nature versus nurture debate to me.

We also found ourselves in awe of the welcoming environment created by the Irish locals. They were quick to strike up conversation at pubs or during bus tours, asking us about our backgrounds and our trip. Were they just a few pints of Guinness too deep, or was Irish culture more deeply rooted in community than the individualistic culture we are so accustomed to? (This posed less of a debate for me, as both are probably true).

All in all, our trip was an amazing opportunity to explore a new community together. We were able to spend time in Dublin, Belfast, County Clare, and Galway, and saw landmarks like Giant’s Causeway and the Cliffs of Moher. We both left feeling exhausted and fulfilled after a busy week, but with a strong desire to return, as we weren’t able to even scratch the surface of the views and experiences Ireland has to offer. Maybe one day we will return (with a willing third party to safely drive us around on the other side of the road), and do just that.

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