Ring of Kerry

Looking back at the four months I've spent in Ireland, my favorite weekend was the Ring of Kerry Heritage trip. This was a trip scheduled by Loyola for us to go on. As we took the bus ride from Cork to Kerry, the tour guide handed out sheets of paper that had Gaelic words written on them. She had us practice our Gaelic for most of the bus ride. We learned words like hello, thank you, your welcome and cheers. Gaelic sounds nothing like it is written so this was a big challenge. Gaelic is Ireland's traditional language although it is rarely spoken anymore. Mostly everyone speaks English so Ireland is trying to enforce Gaelic to be taught in all schools to keep their culture alive.

The first day we got there we had two guest speakers that talked to us about living in County Kerry and playing Gaelic football. The first speaker was a woman who grew up in a small town near Cahirsiveen, Kerry where only Gaelic was spoken. Kerry is the main countryside of Ireland. She had to go to school outside of the small town where she could not talk to anyone because of the language barrier. She didn't start learning English until she was 6 years old. This amazed me because I had always thought English was spoken in all parts of Ireland.  The Gaelic football player taught us how to play. For someone with no coordination like me, I didn't want to embarrass myself. Gaelic football includes bouncing the ball off your foot to "dribble", passing it to other players with only a certain amount of steps allowed and shooting at the goalie as hard as possible. This was the second Irish sport I had seen. (Hurling was the first.) And I am positive I could never play either of them, yet the player told us they are born into playing and they are even required to play on the same team as their ancestors did. In America, we have so many options to play different sports or to stop playing if we want. They only play the sports that their parents played until they are too old to play anymore. If they don't make it to the professional league, they still play for fun.

The next day we hopped on the bus and did the tour of the Skellig Ring. This is a less touristy route of the Ring of Kerry. We went across a bridge to Valentia Island and we hiked up Geokaun Mountain.  This hike was a steep incline but it allowed us to get up close to cows and sheep. The kelly green grass spread out over the countryside.  Shamrocks could be growing everywhere making it very bright.  I stood at the edge of a dark cliff that screamed dangerous.  The angry water crashed against the cliff.  I uneasily walked right next to a cow that was chomping on grass like a lawn mower. The top of this mountain had the best views in Ireland that I've seen.  That night, we had an Irish Ceili set dancing class. This is a traditional Irish step dancing version of square dancing where you dance with every person in the room.  Everyone in the Loyola group learned the dance together and laughed at each other. Messing up was inevitable. We learned several types of dances by the end of the night.

We finished off the trip by making stops at Torc Waterfall and Ladies View in Killarney National Park before heading back to Cork. Torc Waterfall is a waterfall surrounded by trees covered in moss. It makes the entire area green, which is exactly what I pictured when going to the Emerald Isle. This trip was an amazing way to get to know the Irish countryside. I took my family back to all the places that we went just to see them one more time.