Dia daoibh! I have arrived in the beautiful town of Gleann Cholm Cille in County Donegal, a four hours’ drive from Dublin. I felt pretty jet-lagged over the past few days, but I’ve now recovered and am thoroughly enjoying the culture and the natural beauty of the town.
I already know my way around pretty well; there’s just one main road with a few pubs, a one-room grocery store, a post office, and a café. Further down the road you can see some houses, a fire station, a launderette (a.k.a. a laundromat) and Oideas Gael, the Irish school where I’m studying. I’m staying with an absolutely lovely family at a Bed & Breakfast accommodation. My hosts are both from Dublin but moved to Donegal for the natural beauty and peace. It’s easy to understand their motivation for moving — the landscape around here is breathtaking! I’ve included some pictures of the mountains, rivers, and beaches, but it is impossible to fully capture the scale of the surrounding countryside in photographs.
I was placed into an intermediate-level class yesterday at Oideas Gael, and we had two hours of classes. There seems to be a wide range of language abilities within my class, which has been nice because I feel slightly more advanced than some of the students but also thoroughly challenged by many of my other peers. There is an intense focus on spoken Irish in my classes. We occasionally write or read, but for the most part we spend the whole day speaking and trying to use as little English as possible. I was a little nervous about the intensity of spoken conversation at first; I am definitely more comfortable reading Irish than speaking it. But this focus is one of the reasons why I wanted to come to the Gaeltacht, and I have already been growing more comfortable speaking the language even if I make a lot of mistakes. The speaking activities have also been very educational, and it’s been wonderful learning about both ancient and modern Irish culture through the country’s traditional language. Today, for example, my classmates and I learned about the Celtic calendar year, role-played as employers/employees to practice job-related vocabulary, and planned menus for various occasions to brush up on food vocabulary.
The emphasis on speaking also helped to “break the ice” and allowed everyone to meet each other fairly quickly. Meeting my fellow classmates has been perhaps the most enjoyable part of the trip so far. Everyone has an interesting story about their reasons for studying Irish. Students come from all over the world; I have met people from various parts of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the United States, Germany, Canada, and Sweden. I have felt an instant connection with almost everyone I have met, because we all share a love for languages and are excited to improve our Irish together.
