In the Sunshine of the Glen

I spent the past week in beautiful Glencolmcille, in an Irish immersion program. Glencolmcille is located in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) region of Donegal, in the northwest of Ireland. I arranged to do a home-stay with an Irish family. The first night I arrived, it was raining (of course), but there was a fire in the fireplace, and I was greeted by Kathleen, my 'ban-na-tee' ('woman of the house' in Irish), and her Irish sheepdog, Missy. It could not have been a more perfect image.

But first, a brief background about the Irish language:

In 1800, if you had drawn a line down the middle of Ireland from north to south, the western half would be Irish-speaking, and the eastern half English-speaking. During the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, millions of Irish speakers perished. The spread of English continued due to the effects of British colonization, and Irish was pushed further westward. Today, there are only a few regions on the west coast of Ireland, called the Gaeltacht, where Irish is spoken as the everyday language. Out of the over 4 million people who live in Ireland today, under 100,000 live in the Gaeltacht.

Glencolmcille is in one of these regions. The school I attended was called Oideas Gael (pronounced 'ed-jus gail'). Everyone at the school was very passionate about speaking and teaching Irish, about keeping it alive. The first day, we were told that Oideas Gael means "Gaelic education," but during one of the last days of class we were doing vocabulary and we learned the word for a prescription you would get from a doctor- oideas. So Oideas Gael isn't just a Gaelic education, it's a prescription, a recipe, a remedy for the current state of the Irish language.

The view from my host family's house:



In the center of the glen, there's an old church. Paddy, an older gentlemen who had many great stories to tell, was my roommate at the house. Paddy said there was a fairy bush by the church, but he wouldn't tell me where it was.



The mountain overlooking the glen.



After the first morning of class, we walked down to the beach.



Some perspective for those mountains...



Class focused on conversational Irish, on learning phrases that we can use right away. This was a good approach, because the spelling of words in Irish is FREAKY. Example: the Irish word for thank you is pronounced 'go-ro-my-heh-git,' but it's spelled: go raibh maith agat. Notice how many consonants get dropped... weird. Irish is a notoriously difficult language, and I was only able to learn some basic conversation in a week, but here are a few phrases, spelled phonetically:

Hello: 'Gia-ditch,' literally 'God be with you'

Hello in response: 'gia-es-more-ra-ditch,' 'God and Mary be with you'

How are you: 'cad-jay-mar-ata-too?'

Are you going to the pub tonight?: 'an-will-too-a-yannu-go-jee-an-choch-tar-warn-ya-a-nacht?'

One of my personal favorites is the word for whiskey: uisce beatha ('ish-ke ba-ha), which literally means 'water of life.' We learned lots of relevant vocabulary.

On the night of the World Cup final, everyone went to the pub to watch the game. Afterwards, I walked outside to find a lovely sunset:



Classes were held 10-1 and 3-5. We had two tea breaks a day, as well as a long lunch break from 1-3, so that we had time to rest our brains. Given the intensity of learning how to hold a conversation in such a difficult language in under a week, the frequent tea and biscuits were quite welcome. On one of our lunch breaks, we drove down to a place called Silver Strand, where there was a nice beach. One of my classmates lent me his wet suit, so although the water was freezing, I was nice and toasty!



Each night, we had a social activity. These included Irish music, Irish dancing, and a reading of Irish poetry (my personal favorite). On the last night, each level (there were six levels of classes- I was in the first one, naturally) had to do a brief performance. Level one ('level a-dole') decided to do an original rap in Irish, a performance which, embarrassingly enough, can be found on my Facebook profile.

Everyone became very bonded. Paddy and I became good friends. He would tell me stories about Irish myths and the meanings behind different place names. At the end of the week, he told me that I was an honorary Irishman, and that if anyone questioned that, I should tell them that the Fairy Queen herself declared it so.

A picture of Paddy and me on the last day. Although I'm smiling in this picture, it was a very sad goodbye.



Me, Paddy, and some of our classmates and friends.



The last meal I had in Glencolmcille was at the cafe at the Folk Village Museum. There were many examples of traditional Irish cottages. It was a nice way to end a week of learning about the beauty of traditional Irish language and culture.