The Last Hurrah

Hello —

I am leaving tomorrow. My suitcases are packed, they’ve been weighed oh too many times. My room is clean, the walls are bare. There are too many things in the pantry left to eat, but nothing to make an actual meal. The last bucket list items have been checked off the list.

In order to do so, I spent yesterday traveling across Ireland and back — going first to Kilkenny, then Dublin.

I wanted to go back to Kilkenny because it was my first real trip this semester and one of my favorite cities in Ireland. I went back to my favorite coffee shop, wandered along the streets I had before, and gave in to buying a shirt I’d convinced myself out of purchasing last time.

It was really fun to travel and end up in a place familiar. But, it also felt all wrong to be doing everything for the last time, instead of with a semester ahead of me. Bittersweet, indeed. Heartwarming or heartbreaking, I’m not sure yet.

The final adventure on my list was the EPIC, Irish Emigration, Museum in Dublin. It was a very fun museum with interactive exhibits and a little passport you could stamp in each room! My favorite was the sports room where you had to place an air hockey mallet on a corresponding dot on the table to ‘unlock’ the information. You then spun the mallet to scroll through the details. I thought it was very creative!

I also liked the last room where you could add an ancestor that emigrated to a big board with all of the other museum goers’ ancestors!

I hope Gerald found in New York what I found here. I hope he found a home across the ocean too, but I know he never forgot the land of a thousand welcomes.

– From Ireland