It’s officially summer back home and officially summer for many students abroad, who are slowly trickling back into the United States throughout the month of May.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case for my program. Our finals are coming up in three weeks, but many ?students, including yours truly, need to stay all the way through the month of June in order to take exams in our Complutense ?courses.
Universidad Complutense is the university where we study, and it is a requirement of our program that we take two Spanish classes with ?Spanish students.
Since Spanish universities’ schedules operate differently from American universities, we stay pretty late into the summer.
To console ourselves, we took a trip to Ireland. As you do.
There are, of course, a million reasons to go to Ireland — the Blarney Stone, the Cliffs of Moher and Temple Bar are just a few.
However, as someone who grew up in an Irish Catholic household, it was a look at my own personal history.
Spain is, as a rule, a Catholic country. Yet for some reason, I never considered the differences in the way cultures can celebrate the same ?religion.
I’ve been wandering around the streets of Madrid for four months now, seeing crucifixes and cathedrals, Latin prayers carved into centuries-old government buildings and statues of saints stare disconsolately at sunbathers in the city parks.
However, I didn’t feel a sense of connection until I stepped foot in Dublin and saw St. Brigid’s cross hanging over a door.
St. Brigid is one of the patron saints of Ireland, according to blarney.com, and her cross is hung in the doorway of a home to ward against evil. My parents’ house has one over the kitchen clock.
We saw both Galway and Dublin. Galway is the city closest to the Cliffs of Moher, and tons of tourist companies will take you to the Cliffs for a small duration of time.
On the bus rides to and from the cities, and to and from the national landmarks, I began to see why Ireland’s national color is green.
Even on rainy, cold and cloudy days, the landscape remained a deep ?emerald.
It was one of the first trips I’ve taken in which we managed to see more than one city, and I felt like I got a more rounded and whole view of Ireland’s culture.
Dublin is a modern city with modern influences, and Galway is exactly what Americans think of when they think of Irish villages.
Coupled with the storied religious history, I felt more in touch with my roots than I’ve been in a very long time.
Sláinte, Ireland.
