Skip to content

Tag: kathleenmccarthy1

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

I can’t believe that I’ve already reached this point, but my semester in Galway has come to an end. My last week in Ireland was probably the hardest for me because it consisted of a long, drawn out series of goodbyes. I also had exams up until the morning before I left so I faced the challenge of making the most out of my last few days in Ireland while also studying and packing. During my last full week, I made two trips out of Galway. The first was to Cork, one of Ireland’s largest cities, which is located in the far south of Ireland. My second trip was to my Irish roommate Laura’s home in Offaly. Although the trip to Cork was thrown together at the last minute with two of my American friends, it actually ended up being one of my favorite places in Ireland. Our first stop in Cork was the Crawford Municipal Gallery, which we went to mostly because there was no admission fee. This spot ended up being a great find because not only did they have works from artists like Salvador Dali on display, but they also had a temporary exhibit on Michael Farrell, arguably Ireland’s most celebrated artist. We enjoyed the Michael Farrell exhibit so much that we decided to take advantage of the lecture on Farrell’s work that was being given in the museum’s auditorium by Robert Ballagh, another well-renowned Irish artist. Even though we were hesitant to take advantage of the opportunity because we thought we would lose too much time, we actually ended up learning a great deal about what it means to be an artist in Ireland and about what was behind a lot of the Irish art that was produced in the 20th century. Going to the gallery ended up being the best spot that we hit in Cork, and we didn’t even have to pay for it!

Two days later, my American roommate and I went to visit Laura in Offaly. Laura had gone home because there was a space of over a week between two of her exams so she didn’t see the need to stay in Galway. Laura picked the two of us up in her car from the train station and gave us a tour of the biggest town in Offaly and then of the smaller town where she lives. She also showed us the place where she has worked the past two summers, Bord na Mona. Bord na Mona is a peat harvesting company that extracts turf from the boglands that it sits on. Several years ago, a sculpture garden with pieces inspired by Offaly’s unique landscape was built on the boglands as well.  In the midland of the park is a sculpture that features a large stone brought from Ellis Island surrounded by four large stones representing the four provinces of Ireland. This sculpture is meant to represent and celebrate the Irish presence abroad as well as Ireland’s role as a homeland. After hearing about Offaly so much from Laura throughout the semester, I couldn’t believe that I was finally seeing all the places that she had told us about in person. It was actually kind of a surreal experience to ride around in Laura’s car listening to the radio like I would with my friends back home. It was then that I really became awestruck at how comfortable I had become in Ireland.

Another thing that I made sure that I did during my last week in Ireland was say goodbye to my family that lives in Ireland. Because some of my cousins live in Galway, I was able to spend a good deal of time with them while I was abroad. This really enhanced my experience because it was a lot like having a host family whenever I needed one and helped me to get way more immersed in the culture than I would have had otherwise. Before I came to Ireland, I had been hesitant about studying abroad in a place where I had family because I felt like I would be staying in my comfort zone too much. However, if I hadn’t come to Galway for the semester, I wouldn’t have formed the relationship with my family in Ireland that I have now. At the beginning of the semester, I thought that I would only get to meet members of my extended family in Ireland. Instead, I was actually able to get to know them and now they really feel like family.

Saying goodbye to Galway was an experience with many layers. It involved saying goodbye to my family, saying goodbye to my Irish friends from college, saying goodbye to my roommates and finally, saying goodbye to the Americans on my program that had been with me this whole semester. There was also the matter of saying goodbye to NUIG and Galway itself. By the time that I got on the bus to Dublin, I fell asleep immediately because I was so exhausted from everything that was going on in the preceding days. I also had a bit of misfortune with my flight back to the states. Because the plane was fully booked, all of the overhead compartments were full by the time I was barding and I had to surrender one of my carry-on items to be checked beneath the plane. As I made my way back to my seat, I was stopped by a stewardess who told me that my remaining carry-on bag would need to be stowed below as well.  I frantically tried to remove my personal items from this bag because departure time had already passed and I was one of very few passengers not  seated yet. The anxiety of surrendering my bags to the staff at such shot notice and making sure that they were tagged while holding up the flight as little as possible must have really sent me over the edge because when I finally made it to my seat I just began sobbing uncontrollably. I must say, however, that I don’t think my emotional outburst was simply the result of this baggage nightmare but rather an expression of how overwhelmed I was at the idea of leaving Ireland. I had become an entirely new person in Galway. I had met the Taoiseach, learned how to play Irish sports, kayaked between classes, met and got to know my family, took my grandmother back to her home, completed group projects with people who had never been to the United States and learned how to live on my own in a foreign country. The people sitting next to me on the plane probably just thought I was upset at having my luggage taken away from me when, in reality, I was leaving home in a way that was far more complicated than the type of leaving home that I had done in August.

Goodbye Galway! #GWAbroad #GWU

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

One of the best things about my apartment in Galway is the kitchen. When we moved in, it was already stocked with all the necessary cooking supplies for pretty much anything we might need to cook. My roommate and I started cooking very early on in the semester in part because we are both cooking enthusiasts and in part because we didn’t have very much to do back then. Much like back home, my go-to dish has been pasta this semester, but in the spirit of being in a new place I have been trying new things with it and am quite proud of the results. Having a kitchen is really beneficial when studying abroad because you can save a lot of money on food and manage to eat food that is relatively healthy. Even though I indulge myself pretty often in Ireland because there is so much good food to be eaten, I still try to prepare healthy meals regularly so that I can keep my energy up and avoid getting sick, something that gets overlooked by a number of people who study abroad. It also works out because I can make enough of something to last for a few days and when I come home at the end of the day my dinner is already finished and just needs to be heated up. Cooking is a very big part of Irish life. Student housing in Ireland is very different from student housing in the U.S. in that there is no meal plan or dining halls. Students who do not live at home cook all of their meals in the kitchens in their apartments. Some students choose to live in “the digs” which are apartments in Irish homes where the owner of the house will provide meals as a part of the students’ rent. The landlords in the digs usually make the students’ lunches every day and send them off to school with them. There is a café on the college campus at NUIG but a large number of students simply bring their own lunch. My Irish roommate goes home every weekend, as do most Irish students, and when she comes back, she usually brings leftovers from something her mom has made over the weekend, which makes my American roommate and I very happy. For many Americans, it may seem unrealistic that Irish students would be able to cook all of their meals for themselves as soon as they get to college, but many of them have been responsible for cooking meals at home for some time. It is a very interesting contrast with American college life, which is so dominated by on-campus eating options. Another great thing that has come out of having my own kitchen is that I have gotten really into baking things like cakes, cookies and pies. It all started when the woman that hosted us for our homestay early in the semester gave us some recipes for the apple tart she made while we were there. I tried replicated it when I got back to Galway and when it turned out well, I started baking more stuff. I was never really much of a baker back home but now, one of the things I am most excited to do when I get home is show off my new, amazing baking skills. My roommates and I have spent many hours together in the kitchen baking amazing desserts and it has almost been the cornerstone of our bond as roommates. Ireland has definitely taught me, among countless other things, the magic of making my own food.

Becoming a Better Baker #GWU #GWAbroad

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

One of the things I am going to miss most about Ireland is Penney’s. Penney’s is a discount store in Ireland and probably the most amazing place I’ve ever been. They sell mostly clothing but also have things like shampoo, make-up, bedding and other various household goods. The best thing about Penney’s though is the prices. You can get tops for as low as eight euros and the average price for pants is about ten euros. Most knit sweaters (or jumpers as they are called here) range from about ten to 15 euro, which is a very good price considering how warm they are. Penney’s is the most popular place to shop among college students because of how affordable it is and most of the time when you are walking around campus at NUIG you will be able to recognize the clothes that people are wearing from the racks at Penney’s. Another great thing about Penney’s is that even though the prices are so low, the clothes are comparable to things I would pay a lot more for in the U.S. Not only has shopping at Penney’s been an effective way for me to dress authentically like an Irish college student, it has also proven to be a great way to save money on gifts. When my parents visited with my grandma, all of them left Penney’s with things for themselves and for others back home. It’s also great to know that there is a place I can go when I run out of shampoo and get what I need without paying a ridiculous price, which often happens in Galway if you don’t look for bargains. They also have a wide selection of onesies, or footed pajamas, for about 12 euros. This may not seem like a big deal to the average person, but footed pajamas mean a lot in Ireland in the winter! Even though I’ve got a few weeks left here, I’ve already bought a number of Christmas presents for people at Penney’s just because I thought they were really nice. I’m really excited to wear all of the clothes that I bought at Penney’s when I get back to the U.S.  because I know that no one else will have the same stuff as me, even though here everyone is walking around in the same thing!

There’s No Place Like Penney’s #GWU #GWAbroad

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

One of things that has come up a lot lately is how people will have a hard time understanding me when I get back to the US. This is because I’ve been talking like an Irish person for some time now and much of it is completely indecipherable to Americans.

The most important term to know in Ireland is the word “craic” (pronounced like ‘crack’). It basically means fun, but can be applied to a lot more situations. For example, the most common greeting in Galway is “Hiya, what’s the craic?” This really just means “Hey, what’s up?” In the evenings, you will hear kids saying to each other “Any craic?” to ask if they may be going out. Instead of saying that something was fun, Irish people will say that it was “great craic.” It can also be used to describe people. Someone who is exceptionally fun or easy-going might be told that are “the best craic ever.” It can also be used sarcastically. You might hear students on their way to the library say something like “I have to work on economics and all that craic.”

Irish people use a lot of adjectives that I would never imagine that I would use to describe anything, but alas, I have. The one that I noticed first was “grand.” Grand is used as a synonym for fine. So instead of saying “I’m fine,” people will say “I’m grand.” I noticed it first when I was trying to buy a cell phone and apologized to the guy working at the store for asking so many questions, to which he responded, “Oh, you’re grand.” What struck me about this was that it sends a message to people not from Ireland that something is better than it actually is, since we don’t drop the word “grand” for just anything. Another word that I’ve started using as an adjective is “class.” Class is probably the best adjective for anything. It trumps awesome and great and amazing and any other positive adjective you can think of. Someone would probably say, “That’s a class film.” When talking about a movie they like, or “He’s a class player.” when talking about someone who is good at rugby or another game.  Or, if something really good happens and you tell someone about it, they might say, “That’s class.” Irish people also have a habit of saying "like" at the end of sentences so you might hear someone say "That's so class, like."

One of the funniest stories I have involving Irish slang is the one of how I learned about the word “deer.” The first day that I met my roommate, she was telling me about a place to eat on campus and said, “It can be deer, but it’s alright.” When I heard this I said, “I’m sorry, what?” “It can be deer,” she said, “but it’s not too bad.” “They use deer in the food?” I said. “No!” she said, “It’s just deer!” I told her that I didn’t know what she meant by that and she explained that deer simply meant expensive.

Learning Irish slang has probably been one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about being here. I’ve begun saying a lot of things naturally over time and don’t even notice them anymore. I think that this has made it a lot less awkward talking to Irish people for the first time and also allowed me to fit in better overall. I am interested to see the response I will get from other Americans if I say, “Where is the craic?” back in the US.

Irish slang is so class, like! #GWU #GWAbroad

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

This weekend, I had my first visitor from back home come to see me in Galway. My friend from GW who is studying in Florence, Italy came to visit me during her fall break. She arrived just after I turned in two midterm papers so I was exhausted but very excited for the weekend ahead. The first night she was here was Halloween, so she got a very intense and authentic first taste of Galway. Since Galway’s population is heavily made up of students, the streets are full of people on Halloween dressed up for the occasion. I think this was a great first day to be in Galway because it really gave my friend an idea of the personality that Galway has. The next day, I let my friend explore Galway a bit while I went to class and then in the afternoon we went to the Galway City Museum. After visiting the museum with my friend, I wished that I had gone earlier. Not only did it teach me a lot about the city I’ve been living in for over two months in a very short period of time, it was also free. That night we had an amazing dinner and took in some live music at one of the pubs in town but were in bed early because we had a much bigger adventure planned for the next day.

For the following day, I booked a tour of the Connemara region of Ireland that included a trip to Kylemore Abbey. Connemara is a region in the westernmost part of Ireland known for its scenic beauty and preservation of Irish indigenous culture. It is also where the movie “The Quiet Man” was filmed. As the bus drove us through Connemara, I couldn’t believe it was a real place. The enormous mountains and majestic lakes made it feel more like a fairy tale than reality. Adding to my disbelief in Connemara was our visit to Kylemore Abbey, a one-time family mansion now home to a cloister of nuns. This imposing Victorian castle in the wilderness was build in the late 1800s by a man named Mitchell Henry as a gift to his wife (all the makings of a fairy tale, right?) and became renowned all over the world for its grandiose. I asked out loud, for about the millionth time since I’ve been in Ireland “How is this place real?”

On Sunday, I wanted to do a little more exploring in Galway with my friend so I took her to the Galway Cathedral before heading over to the Salthill Promenade. This is a walk along the Galway Bay that is incredibly scenic and leads to the Galway Aquarium, which we also ended up paying a visit to. After that, we came home and baked a pie, which is one of many habits I’ve picked up here, and my friend boarded a bus to make the long trip back to the Dublin airport. Many people would say that our weekend was full of typical tourist behavior and that taking in multiple nature sites was repetitive and unnecessary, but I think it was really important for me to have a weekend like this. In the past few weeks, things have gotten so hectic with assignments, trips outside of the country and making arrangements for the spring semester back at GW that the spark in my relationship with Galway really did seem to go out. Everything had started to seem ordinary and routine and I had stopped appreciating it in the electrifying way that I had in the beginning. Showing someone my favorite things in Galway, the things that I am going to miss the most, made me realize just how well I’ve gotten to know this place. Seeing someone from home also made me see all the changes that I’ve gone through since I’ve been here. I feel like some people might find me utterly unrecognizable when I go home, which is both scary and exciting. Hosting a visitor in Galway was just what I needed to realize how amazing this experience is and how lucky I am to have met so many amazing people and have the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen so accessible to me. I am truly living the dream.

 

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

In the past few weeks, NUIG has been feeling more and more like GW. Even though this does have a bit to do with how comfortable I’ve become here, it has more to do with everyone freaking out about all of their assignments. There seemed to be an idea back home that when you go on study abroad you go on a vacation and there is no real schoolwork and you have loads of free time on your hands. This hasn’t been the case at all for me! I’ve pulled as many all-nighters, bought as many coffees and had as many breakdowns as I would have back at GW, except over here there is way more uncertainty because so many things are different! Back in the US, it is pretty hard to misinterpret what a professor wants to the extent that you completely fail an assignment and fearing that would just be completely irrational. But here, what you think you need to do and what you actually need to do may be completely different. Because I am studying business, or commerce as they call it in Ireland, I have been fortunate enough to be in multiple group projects. These have been beneficial because they give me a number of people that I can ask about academic things like how much professors expect of us and what they what us to emphasize in our assignments. Even though group projects can be inconvenient, my group projects have really been a great resource for me. They’ve also allowed me to understand more about Ireland and Irish culture by forcing me to spend time with people I’ve been randomly assigned to. Without being out into these groups, I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable just approaching Irish students and asking them about academics and things like that. Being around these kids has shown me just how much anxiety they are experiencing over exams and all the assignments they find themselves with now that the semester is drawing to a close. Before I came to Ireland, I never really thought that the other kids would get this worked up at finals and before big projects were due like the kids at GW, but they certainly do! Thankfully, I have gotten used to dealing with finals-era anxiety and the occasional meltdown from my first two years at college. Among the things that I’ve become a lot better at since coming to NUIG though is hunting for a seat in the library. Unlike GW, NUIG doesn’t really have student space outside of the library, which isn’t very big for the volume of students that it serves. To my complete shock, I’ve actually been managing to get to the library early in the morning so that I can get my hands on one of those coveted seats. This often takes a great deal of effort, but it’s worth it, especially since no one ever gets up once they’ve planted themselves at a seat in the library. I just hope I can keep up my winning streak with library spots all the way through finals season. I guess we will soon find out!

 

Frantic over Finals! #GWU #GWAbroad

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

As most people know, Ireland has pretty strong ties with the US. It’s undeniable that there is a huge population of Irish Americans and a large number of American tourists in Ireland. With so much back and forth between the two nations, it’s easy to feel like studying abroad in Ireland in sort of cheating. I’m studying abroad overseas, but it has been the case a few times where I’ve felt like I’m just studying in a weird, rural extension of the United States. This has a lot to do with the fact that when I tell Irish people that I’m from the US, many of them will tell me that they have relatives who live there, or that they’ve lived or worked there, and sometimes that they were even born there. Although this makes conversation easy to start, it constantly brings to the surface one of Ireland’s most longstanding issues: emigration.  For generations, Ireland has hemorrhaged its population, with tens of thousands still leaving on a yearly basis. Every time someone brings up someone living in the US, Australia, the UK or some other place, it draws attention yet again to the necessity to leave Ireland in order to find work. For visiting students from both the US and other countries, emigration is essentially the elephant in the room.

As most people know, millions of people came from Ireland to the US during the potato famine of the 1840s. The Irish continued to regularly immigrate into the US throughout the early part of the 20th century, however an exceptionally strong wave of emigration cam in the 1950s and then again in the 1970s. During the 1990s, Ireland experienced its first period of economic prosperity that later became known as the Celtic Tiger era. With the nation finally able to retain its population, it appeared that mass emigration was over for Ireland. However, the economic crisis that began in 2009 reignited the exodus of Irish people once more. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) reports that over 200 emigrate from Ireland every day. With the population only being 4.5 million, this is a really noticeable phenomenon.

Being around so many young Irish people has really put a face on the economic situation for me. With a 17% unemployment rate, Ireland does not offer a great deal of opportunity for them. It’s chilling to hear people who are the same age as me talk about the fact that they may have to go as far away as Australia when they finish college or in the years immediately after. Even though Ireland has been characterized by heavy emigration for a long time, it is commonplace in Ireland for extended families to live within close proximity of each other. This means that when Irish people emigrate, they aren’t just living outside of Ireland for the first time, they are living outside of their original family homes for the first time.

Even though the cultural patchwork that has stemmed from Ireland’s relationship with the US and other places that the Irish have immigrated to allows visiting students to navigate the Irish cultural experience more easily, it puts us in an awkward position as well. Many of the students we meet here may very well end up in our respective countries to seek employment. As much as myself and the other visiting students are enjoying their time in Ireland, I feel like many of us will leave feeling grateful that we are going back to our home countries and that we don’t have to make the same decisions that Irish students our age do.

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

The last two weeks have been a complete whirlwind for me. Not only have they been two of the busiest so far in terms of schoolwork, my parents were also visiting and my final exams schedule came out. This means that I had to balance loads of assignments with giving my parents attention and figuring out how I am going to spend my last weeks in Ireland. As stressful as they were, these two weeks actually ended up being really amazing and were almost a defining part of this semester.

For me, the best part about my parents’ visit was that they brought my grandmother with them. My grandmother has lived across the street from me for my entire life and we have always been very close. My grandmother immigrated to the US from County Galway when she was 16, almost 60 years ago.  Having my grandmother visit me in her native country was incredible for so many reasons. I went to the house that she was born in, where her brother still lives, saw the church that she and my grandfather were married in and ate in a restaurant that she worked in. I got to see a snapshot of her life before she came to America and understand what her formative years looked like.

I also got to meet a number of relatives that I probably wouldn’t have been able to meet if I hadn’t come to Ireland to study. While my parents were visiting, I got too meet two of my grandmother’s sisters and two of her brothers as well as two of her first cousins and three of my second cousins. It was so striking to see how similar my grandmother an her siblings were and how much they even reminded me of their own stateside relatives that they themselves had never met. It was also a very emotional experience because many of them had not seen each other in several years. My grandmother had not been to Ireland in five years and my mom had not been to Ireland since she was 8. This meant that pretty much all of my mom’s aunts and uncles on her mother’s side hadn’t seen her since she was a child. While we were in Ireland, my mom met three of her first cousins for the first time.

The experience of being able to see my grandmother revisit her home made me understand her experience a lot more than I had before. The night before my parents left to go home, my grandmother’s sister stayed over at our hotel and she and my grandmother sat up talking for most of the night just like me and my brother do when I come home from college for breaks. They gossiped with each other like two sisters that hadn’t been apart for years. When it was time for my aunt to leave, they both cried, not knowing when they would see each other again. For the first time, I began to understand just how emotional leaving Ireland to come to America all those years ago must have been. I started to see just how hard it was for my grandmother to spend those first years without her family. Without the experience of having my parents and grandmother come and visit me in Ireland, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the things that she had done in the way that I do now. The time that I spent with my family added so much meaning to my experience of studying abroad. The fact that I’ve been able to come to my grandmother’s homeland, experience it as a student and understand the Irish diaspora through the context of my peers is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me and I am beyond grateful that I was able to do this.

 

 

Back to where it all began #GWU #GWAbroad

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

Last weekend, I made my first trip outside of the Republic of Ireland since arriving at the end of August. I was in London from Thursday to Sunday visiting my friend studying at King’s College. It was also the first time I made a trip by myself within Europe so I was a little on the nervous side. Since London can be very confusing, I insisted that my friend pick me up from Heathrow Airport. The trip from the airport to his apartment was almost two hours long since we had to take the tube and then an additional bus. This meant that my travel time from Heathrow Airport to my friend’s apartment was roughly the same as the travel time between my apartment and the Shannon Airport, which is the airport that I flew out of. The crazy thing about this is that my apartment is 85 kilometers away from the Shannon Airport whereas my friend’s apartment is only 28 kilometers away from Heathrow. Living in Ireland, I had become accustomed to needing to travel for a long period of time to get places, but those were cases in which I was traveling across long distances. I had forgotten how time consuming travelling within a city can be since it never takes more than 15 minutes to get anywhere in Galway.

My visit to London also marked the first time I has ever been overwhelmed upon entering a new city. Before I came to GW, I lived in Philadelphia for my whole life and I’ve been to pretty much every major city in the US. I think that if I had just gone to London on a trip while living back in the states, it might not have been so overwhelming, but going to London from Galway made me feel completely out of my element. I have to say, there was a number of times this weekend that I was sick of going from place to place and just wanted to be back in Galway. That being said, it was nice to see so many new things and visit with my friend, who is the first person I know from the states that I’ve seen while abroad. I also found the living situation at King’s College to be a bit of a culture shock. My friend lives in a first-year hall (equivalent to a freshman dorm in the states) that is composed entirely of single rooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom on each floor.  The kitchen serves as a common area where kids will not just cook and eat, but also hang out and socialize. The students keep very little food in their rooms so pretty much every time they want a snack, they must go to the common room, which is what makes it such a popular hangout. This is a very stark contrast from the living situation in Gort na Coiribe Student Village, which is where I have been staying in Galway. Gort is a large village of townhouses comprised of private apartments within each. These apartments all have kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms and house a varying number of students between apartments. I live in a three-person apartment with one bathroom. Myself and another American girl share one bedroom while our Irish roommate has her own. We don’t really interact with our neighbors because there really isn’t any need to. Most of the people we’ve met in Gort have been through our roommate and the other Americans in the Arcadia program. Even though our living situation doesn’t really give us access to as many people as a traditional college living situation would, I think that this has allowed us to form a much stronger bond with our roommate. Irish culture is very home-centered and you can see that both in the fact that Irish college students will typically go home on the weekends and in how student housing is set up. As soon as they get to college, Irish students will eat and live together much like the way a family does. They have a dining room table where they share meals and when you look in the windows in student villages you will see the kids watching TV together on the couch like a family.  As nice as the personal space that my friend enjoys in his dorm at King’s College, I’m very grateful for the experience that I’ve been able to have with student housing in Ireland. I really enjoyed my weekend in London and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to see a place that so many people dream of going to. However, the best part, for me, was realizing just how much I missed Galway and just how at home I feel here now.

Published on

By kathleenmccarthy1

As a college student, I don’t really get much time to watch TV. When I do, it’s usually in the form of binge watching on Netflix or sitting down to watch a show that I regularly follow when it comes on every week. It has been a really long time since I just sat and watched television because there was nothing else to do or turned on the TV and actively looked for something to watch. In Ireland, however, most people turn on the TV as soon as they come home and turn off the TV right before they go to bed. The TV is almost always on in every Irish living room and most conversations are held with the TV on. At first, I had a hard time adjusting to this. In the US, it’s considered rude to be talking to someone and watching TV at the same time. Over time, I’ve actually gotten really used to the TV (or as they say here, the telly) being on all the time and it even feels a little weird when it’s not on. If there doesn’t happen to be anything particularly good on at any given time, my roommates and I will typically put on Starz, which is a music channel that will just play the most popular current songs on repeat. This has led me to unofficially rename our apartment “Club 36” because we have pop music playing all the time. Coming in from class to see music videos playing kind of takes me back to when I was in middle school and I would watch TRL after school, so my experience has been nostalgic in a weird way. Another thing that I find nostalgic about the television culture here is the commercials. In the US, commercials have changed a lot on the past few years. A lot of them now are really subtle and infused with indie music. The commercials in Ireland, however, are mostly geared and making people laugh at feature a lot of slapstick humor, sort of like the ones I used to see in the US when I was younger. You will often hear Irish people talking about what commercials they think are funny or asking their friends if they’ve seen the new commercial for something. Also, many Irish people have told me that a good way of coming to understand their culture is through watching a show called Father Ted. Father Ted is basically the Full House of Ireland because it was a show that aired in the 90s and has since been cancelled. However, absolutely everyone has seen mostly every episode and still makes jokes from it. shortly after we arrived, my Irish roommate actually showed us an episode on Youtube so that we could get what everyone is talking about. I also attended a kayak club meeting where they showed us an episode of Father Ted so that the visiting students would pick up on some of the jokes that the club makes. As nice as it has been to get well acclimated to Ireland’s TV-watching culture, one of the things that worries me now about going back to the US is all of the time I’m probably going to spend with the TV on when I get home.

Unless otherwise indicated, the content and opinions expressed on this web site are those of the author(s). They are not endorsed by and do not necessarily reflect the views of the George Washington University.
Privacy Notice
Viewing Message: 1 of 1.
 Notice

This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Visit GW’s Website Privacy Notice to learn more about how GW uses cookies.