Homestay, 19-21 September

I spent last weekend with an Irish family as part of IFSA-Butler’s homestay piece of our program. Before talking about that, though, one side note. I was in desperate need of a haircut. I knew that there was one in the shopping centre in the city centre, but never before had I had the guts to go into town alone. On Friday, though, I decided to give it a try. That was one of the things that has consistently bothered me: that I was too scared to venture out that way alone for fear that I wouldn’t be able to find my way there and back, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to safely make the journey even if I followed the right streets (i.e. crossing the roundabout near my apartment). I am happy to say that I made that journey, and I made it safely. It wasn’t the most direct route, but it was a route that got me where I needed to go! Hooray! (Later, when my cousin’s wife came to Galway on vacation, I would make this same journey at night—in the dark—which was something for which I was even more proud of myself!)

My homestay was in County Mayo in a town called Castlebar, about an hour and fifteen minute drive from my apartment. While looking out the windows of the coach (bus) on the way to Castlebar, I was impressed with how quickly the city of Galway ended. After only about five minutes, suburban sprawl seemed to have ended, giving way to farms of grazing sheep and cows and rustic homes and farmhouses. I remember noticing the same thing when driving from Limerick to Galway about three weeks ago.

I (and Jordan, another study abroad student from the Butler program who goes to school at The Johns Hopkins University) stayed with a family of four: Michael (the father), Vera (the mother), Killian (a 9-year-old boy), and Kelvin (a 12-year-old boy). Michael is a part-time milkman and part-time postman, and Vera is a child-minder (baby-sitter). Their family was very welcoming of us, and I got the feeling that it was their first experience with a blind person. They, like many in this country, wondered whether I would be able to climb the stairs to the first floor (what we would call the second floor the Irish call the first floor, what we call the first floor they call the ground floor) and whether I would be able to navigate the home. I explained how I handled both of these things every day, and that seemed to put their fears to bed. Killian would ask me a lot of questions about this during my stay there, which I appreciated for then I could give him answers and know that he wasn’t assuming.

That first night, Vera cooked us quite possibly the best burger and chips that I have had so far in this country. Jordan commented how the chips were much better than the chips he cooked the other night, and we discovered that it was because Vera cooked the chips in a deep fryer whereas us students typically cook chips in the oven. I remember hers being much more moist (and hot!) than ones that I’ve ever cooked at home.

Because the tap water tastes so bad in my apartment, I have been searching for some sort of flavouring to add to it. When I ask the workers at local stores for something like this, though, they look confused, so I have assumed that this sort of product is foreign to the Irish. I learned from Killian, though, that his family almost always uses the flavouring when drinking water: Mi Wadi is the name of it, and it’s basically a syrup—high sugar and probably not at all healthy—made to taste like pomegranate. Tasty indeed, and now I want to buy some! (And, no Gill and Ryan, I did not offer to drink the bottle for cash as I did with Hershey’s Strawberry syrup freshman year in the Mount Vernon Pub! I did try it by itself later, though, when Killian wasn’t looking, and found it to taste good, but not good enough to drink instead of eating dessert!)

Jordan and I gave them the presents we had bought for them that first night, too. I brought a box of Frangos, the mint chocolates that used to be made by Marshall Fields in Chicago; he brought a book of American dessert recipes, a box of chocolates (though more common ones like Milky Way, Snickers, etc.), and a book about the history of New York taxicabs. (He’s from New Jersey, but close to the New York border. Sam, you’d punch him for this one, but he said, “I’m from New Jersey, and we like to think ourselves as being from New York City.” Ha!) Vera would consistently offer us his chocolates, but I noticed that she never offered mine. When I cordially asked her if she had enjoyed mine, she told me to “shhh – those are too good to share; I’m keeping those in my ‘secret place’ all for myself, unless Michael is very good to me then I’ll share one or two!” By Sunday, they had eaten all but two of the Frangos!

We watched a lot of television on Friday night, including “America’s Got Talent” hosted by Jerry Springer – a European show that goes around the U.S. looking for talented singers, dancers, dogs, etc. to compete in Las Vegas; and the English equivalent of Jay Leno – who was interviewing Ben Stiller about “Tropic Thunder,” which had just been released here in Europe. It was interesting to see how similar the shows are to the U.S. ones, and just like back home, they have hundreds of channels and nothing of any good quality is on the air! Throughout the night, though, each person drank 3 or 4 cups of tea and plenty of slices of sweet cake!

Saturday, I joined Michael on his post run. He is responsible for collecting the mail from the public mail drops (the equivalent of the USPS boxes around the cities) and from some of the post offices. He then took this post to a central sorting facility a couple of towns over. Next year, he said, the postal system was likely to be taken over by a German company and his job wasn’t a guaranteed one. The German company has a decent shot at getting the contract, he said, because right now the postal system has a 97% accuracy rate for overnight mail but the government wants a 99.9% rate. To the current company’s credit, in one year they have moved that percentage from 90% to 97%. Michael also said that his milk runs are becoming less frequent because of the hard economic times. He used to deliver milk twice a day, 5 days per week, but now he’s down to one run per day, three days per week. The reason is that another company has come in and delivers “about the same quality milk” for 50 cent less per litre.

It was fun to join Michael at work, mostly as a way to see the town and surrounding towns as well as to see what life is like as a postman – a lot of jumping in and out of the van! It’s interesting to see, too, how the Irish government outsources different parts of the mail system. For example, Michael works for a news agent (general store), who holds the contract for completing the route that he drives every Saturday.

We then went to Kelvin’s (the 12-year-old) soccer match, a championship game that his team lost 6-0. In addition to working the few hours before the game, Michael was trying to hunt down other parents to see who had taken the game balls from the shed near the soccer field. He never did manage to learn who took them, by the way, and they happened to find one in his trunk that was his family’s ball!

We went that afternoon, with almost half the town it seemed, to a pub to watch an English soccer match. (I say soccer, by the way, and not football, as football refers to Gaelic Football, a combination of basketball, volleyball, and soccer.) People flocked to this pub because they didn’t get the channel that the game was airing on, for paying for the channel was more expensive than a couple of pints a few times a year when they wanted to watch it! Michael’s team won, but I wasn’t too interested in the game. Instead, I focused on the people at the pub. Little clusters formed of people watching the game, reminding me of my aunts in Texas who watch the Dallas Cowboys play and yell at the TV when the team does stupid things or cheer when they win. Some things, it seems, are universal around the world!

We moved pubs – with Killian (the 9-year-old), Vera, and Michael – and drank some more. The conversation was interesting, learning about the Irish dating scene back when Vera and Michael were dating. Turns out, like so many Irish, that they met in a pub about 20 years ago!

The family went back home, as the law requires anybody under 18 to leave a pub after 9 p.m., but Jordan and I stayed out. We found a group of other students in our program, and found a pub called Bosh, featuring hip-hop and pop music. It was nice, though, because the music wasn’t too loud and the lighting didn’t make it too dark either. I enjoyed my time there, too, because it seemed like people weren’t in the mood to get drunk but just wanted to have some nice, chill conversations with one another. I tried a new beer, too, which was darker than my current favourite (Carlsberg) but much lighter than Guinness (then again, what isn’t lighter than Guinness?).

Jordan and I had an interesting taxi ride home that night. Our driver didn’t know where our host family was staying after we gave him the address, and after going out of our way several times, he got us there. But he wanted to charge us €25 for what should have been €7 – I suggested that we pay him €6 but Jordan gave him €8. (Michael told us not to pay more than €6, and that was all that I had to go on.) The taxi driver then, though, had the nerve to tell us that we have to know where we are going, not just an address, next time; a “taxi is not a clairvoyant” he said. Seems to me, and Michael later agreed, that if you give a driver an address, it’s his job to find it! Oh well. I wasn’t going to let this taxi rip us off, after my and Lanty’s experience in Limerick on our first day in Ireland!

Sunday was a quiet day – we slept until noon, something that Vera does every weekend. I did manage to wake up before her, though, which was a strange feeling! We had a massive dinner around mid-afternoon (as is typical for an Irish family on the weekends). As is also typical, every meal that we ate with our family featured three kinds of potatoes (in this case: a potato salad, mashed potatoes, and potato wedges). Tasty and filling, indeed. For the first time in a long time, I was not actually able to finish what was on my plate!

I enjoyed the time with the family. Michael told Jordan and I that we were certainly welcome back anytime this semester or on our next trip to Ireland. I’ll have to take him up on that offer, as there is a lot around Castlebar that we didn’t have a chance to see. Many sights are within a half hour’s drive of Castlebar, but they’re not easily accessible without a car.