Hello from Ireland!
Well, hello from Lahinch, specifically. For those of you that don’t know, that’s on the west coast, south of Galway. It’s a beautiful coastal town that I will be calling home for the next month. Well known for it’s surfing and golf course, Lahinch hosts many tourists every year.
My name is Emily Nevins, I’m a English and Marketing student as Hastings College, and I am one of the lucky students who was chosen to be a part of the Irish Fellows program at Hastings College. This means that, not only am I in Ireland right now, but I will have the opportunity to complete a research project while I’m here. I’m sort of cheating, because I’m actually going to do two, a publishing internship and a writing project. And these blogs too, of course.
This week marks the beginning of those projects. Two days ago, four other students and I made the sixteen hour long journey from Hastings to Lahinch, Ireland along with Dr. Babcock, our professor. Our trip is one of many that have been made over the seventeen years that the Irish Fellows program has been running. Dr. Babcock has faithfully piloted the program, bringing students over once a year for a three to five week trip during which they conduct research and learn about the community and country they’re living in. In a few days, Dr. Babcock will return to Hastings to finish his sabbatical, turning the rest of us loose to complete our projects.
My group is the most recent of these trips. After spending the first few weeks of the block learning about the history of Ireland, we set off. None of us could truly believe it was happening. We were admitted into the program last spring and have been preparing ever since. Yet, Ireland still felt far off as we started our drive out to Omaha airport.
The reality of our trip didn’t settle on us until our second plane began to land and Ireland came into view. The sun was just beginning to rise at 7:30 AM in Ireland (1:30 in Hastings) and the coast peaked out from under the clouds, the waves crashing into the shore below.
The sun continued to rise, lighting the green pastures below us. It was surreal looking out at the land all parceled into little fields and separated by short stone fences. It isn’t often that you get to actually visit the places you learn about in history.
“We’re in Ireland,” I said to Kierra, one of the other girls who was sitting next to me on the flight. “We’re really in Ireland.”
The green pastures stretched out as far as we could see. Cities began cropping up. I tried to follow along on the map on my phone, guessing at which of the cities below we’d end up going to. We have a whole month ahead of us. We could visit them all if we wanted.
The plane landed and we stepped off as a group. We cleared customs easily enough. Now we were really in Ireland, standing on Irish soil. The place was familiar and foreign all at the same time. Things that we knew all looked just a little bit different.
The biggest change though was that in Ireland cars drive on the left, not the right. The final leg of our trip, a cab ride to Lahinch from the airport, quickly introduced us to that concept. It’d be the hardest to get used to, we all agreed. Thankfully, none of us plan to drive while we’re here.
Before we knew it, we were at our home in Lahinch. We have a quaint townhouse all to ourselves. A beautiful garden glistening with dew and rain out back is filled with flowers. The cozy interior promises several warm and dry days inside watching rain storms blow through.
We’ve spent two nights in the house now and we’ve already gotten a taste of Irish weather. I write now from an overcast afternoon curled up with a warm bowl of stew and bread.
If you want to know more about Irish Fellows, follow along here on the Gold Room or the Department of Languages and Literatures’ Facebook and Instagram pages.
Until next time,
Emily Nevins
