Farewell Finlough

While everybody back home is busy celebrating the Fourth of July, we are beginning to prepare for our departure from Finlough. It's hard to believe that we've already been here for about a month, but at the same time I think that we are all ready to move on and leave the simple life for the big city (aka Galway). Life here has certainly given us all a glimpse into a rural Irish lifestyle. It's been so nice to live with no distractions, to live slowly and simply. There isn't all that much around us on a daily basis to really detract from the beauty of the meadows or the lake, or distract one from just being present in a moment. Life hasn't been without some minor inconveniences. The tap water is undrinkable, and the filter slow; a fair host of bugs share the house with us; no washer or dryer; and no nearby mode of transportation. However, don't think I'm complaining! - for the good far outweighs the bad. We've gotten to cozy up to warm fires in the fireplace pretty much every night, have a beautiful old house all to ourselves, befriend the local taxi driver, enjoy the pleasure of cooking and eating the plants that we ourselves harvested, and sleep soundly after a hard days' work. And while I know this next bit is going to sound corny to anyone who has lived in the country before (but come on! I'm from the suburbs), I'm proud to say that I now know my way around tools: spades, pitchforks, rakes, strimmers, mowers, shearers and even scythes! A lot of the work has been pretty labor intensive, involving a lot of digging and weeding and trimming and even cutting turf! If I don't have some serious guns by now, then I'm a hopeless case. I've learned so much about vegetable care, knowledge that I know I will use the day I am able to start my own garden. Living on a farm has overall been such a good experience, and really given me a new appreciation for all of the work that goes into producing some of the food that we eat everyday (conclusion: carrots are needy little jerks).

When I think of our time here as a whole though, both on the farm and the days off of it, the thing that stands out the most is just the wonderful kindness of the people around us. As we've been digging in the tunnels we've ended up listening to a lot of Irish radio, and just like when you're watching a tv station for so long you essentially have the commercials memorized, well the same goes for radio. And there is an "advert" that really stands out in my mind when I reflect on the time here: it's for some initiative called "give one percent" that encourages people to give to some charity despite the country's economic troubles. There's a line in it that claims "we're one of the most generous countries in history," and after spending three weeks in small town rural Ireland, I can definitely believe that. Everyone we have met here has dumbfounded us with their openhearted kindness and generosity. Complete strangers want to go out of their way to help us, three out of place Americans, feel welcomed. Whether it's someone offering to show us the town, a neighbor taking us to their kids' (gaelic) football game, a delivery man refusing to tip us after going out of his way to find our place in the middle of nowhere, or the taxi driver acting as our tour guide by taking us out of his way to show us a nearby town's attraction (and of course pausing so that we might take pictures of such a historic windmill), everyone we come across just seems to be one of the nicest we've ever met.

Getting ready to dig!

Granted, there has been a fairly small sample size, as the cow to people ratio around here appears to be at least 50:1. It might just be a County Roscommon thing, since people are so happy to see another human around here that they do whatever they can to be friends. But I don't think so. We're leaving for Galway on Saturday, and I expect that as we travel around to different parts of the country, we're bound to encounter some more of that wonderful Irish generosity.

Farewell Finlough, Hello Galway!