Dear Ireland,
How've you been? It's been over a month since I first met you, and I meant to write a long time ago. Oops. School just started for me and the mentality of the final stretch is setting in already. It's back to classroom setting learning for me, I'm afraid, but you began to teach me the importance of travel. To visit new places and make familiar those things which are foreign is more than an escape from the ordinary. Other ways of life are brilliant to dive into.
Clichés aside, you were magnificent. I'm grateful just to taste what you, the little oft-forgotten island out on the edge of Europe, have been brewing the past few thousand years. And no, it wasn't whiskey (although I'm sure you guys mastered that too. They wouldn't let me confirm for myself). You became your own nation, tenacious and proud. You survived with some of your culture intact after almost a thousand years of English invasions and colonialism, so congratulations! You finally shed the title "British" and became "Irish" for good, except some fussy folks to the north, and for that I'm proud of you.
It seems you're not so different from America. Dublin, at least - I didn't get to see the old blood that flows through Ireland, the farms in the middle and port cities of the west. The parts I did get to meet reminded me of home in New Orleans. You're a strange beast, filled with people who've been through a lot. Tired and proud. We're like that too. Besides, we both like ignoring the plentiful garbage cans around our fair (if cluttered) cities. We both take our sports seriously (Saints fans to the grave - and yet we'll never be as intense as your loyalty to county teams). We're both old and falling apart in places, but that adds to the local charm. Our streets don't make any sense to outsiders, but we locals don't get lost. Our streets curve around the river, and yours carry all the mad directions of cobblestone roads you've had for centuries.
It's been grand.
This isn't goodbye - I'll be back one day. More than one day, if I'm lucky. Say hi to Dublin for me, and fuss at Northern Ireland for throwing a tantrum again.
Cheers,
Marisa
