Cork, Ireland

After saying goodbye to mom and dad in Scotland I flew to Dublin, Ireland and took the bus a few hours south to Cork to meet my first Workaway host family. [Workaway is an online site, similar to Wwoofing, that hosts and travelers from around the world can join and connect with each other. Hosts post any type of project they want help with, including farming or gardening, building, “child minding”, working in their local restaurant, or even just coming for a chat in English. Travelers pick where they want to go and what type of work they want to do. In exchange for their help, hosts give travelers a place to stay and food to eat!]

My host parents Marie (pronounced Mary) and Dave picked me up at the bus stop in Mitchelstown, a short drive from their home and foaling farm. Upon arriving at Ballykenly farm, I was greeted by the four dogs: BB, Polly, Daisy, and Fenton (endearingly named after this viral video).

As soon as I arrived I was in heaven! I was surrounded by four dogs, 22 horses (including 5 foals), and the nicest family! In those first few minutes I thought I’d be moving in permanently.

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I soon found a few things about rural Irish life that weren’t quite the perfect fit for me, but overall I had a great time and felt quite lucky🍀 for my first Workaway experience.

Liked-

• The family! And the animals
• The Irish accent became quite endearing to me, especially all their unique sayings and colloquialisms
• Irish culture and chattiness
• Food

Liked less-

• The weather
• The cold (note sleeping bag under the covers)
• Lack of hiking or running culture and location
• Didn’t get to ride a horse:(
• Light workload + non-American lifestyle = a bit slow paced some days
• Couldn’t get anywhere very easily [was a bit stranded on the farm]
• Food

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Normally they host Workaway travelers or vet students to help with the horses and foaling, but because this was their off-season, I spent most of my days in their new vegetable tunnel. It felt a bit reminiscent of mom’s new favorite movie, Biggest Little Farm, as the family is thinking of transitioning to organic farming. So, we would head out to the tunnel in the morning to collect basket-fulls of tomatoes as well as cucumber, courgette (zucchini), potatoes, beetroot, cabbage, and more tomatoes. This would occupy us until dinner, trying out new pickling recipes and looking for jars and space in the refrigerator to store more vinegar-soaked vegetables than one family could possibly eat.

This made for amazing lunches in which I’d pile every single pickled vegetable on top of some of their fresh lettuce with a slice of ‘bacon’ from dinner the night before. Which leads me to the general topic of food. Their diet consists of:

• milk
• tea (in the milk)
• butter
• potatoes

Supplemented of course with extremely large quantities of meat and bread. They eat meat for every single meal, and not sparingly. Potatoes may usually be saved for dinner, but they are such a staple that one night we had baked potatoes from their garden for dinner… with a side of frozen baked potatoes. Good thing I was there over national potato day! Butter goes on everything in slabs so thick you’d think it was cheese. Finally, tea is more a cultural necessity than a beverage. In between any activity, usually lasting from 10 to 30 minutes, would be a good long break for tea, as well as following every meal. Tea would always be black and and a minimum of 1/3 of the cup was saved for Irish whole milk. And sugar. Along with tea came biscuits (store bought shortbread cookies) and lots of chatting, as the Irish do. These were some of my favorite times, as it was interesting to hear all about their perspectives on politics, culture, history, and BREXIT. The whole family was fun to talk with, though I gained enormous appreciation for our exchange students Megan and Simin, as I found myself exhausted from trying to understand the thick Cork accent despite the fact that all of us are native English speakers!

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Dave was by far the most difficult to understand, but he was my favorite. He is a jolly man who loves to chat and joke around. I always thought he and dad would get along great, especially since I’m not sure who is more in love with their lawn mower!

Unlike Katie, Dave simply will not eat pasta or rice, so when it was my turn to make dinner this posed a bit of a challenge. I decided to make him my homemade bread, which was quite rewarding because he ate nearly the entire loaf and likely a whole stick of butter for dinner. I also made an olive oil-based bean dip for the bread, but god forbid eating bread with olive oil instead of butter! This was much too adventurous for Dave to try, but the other family members seemed to think it was a great idea.

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During my week or so with the Corbertt family I learned a lot about horses and foaling, the troubles with Northern Ireland and the implications Brexit has on this, how to properly play a game of billiards, pickling, and how to enjoy a nice long cup of tea without the American-famed sense of urgency.

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On my last weekend, I got to venture away from the fields a bit to visit my friend Katie whom I also studied abroad with in New Zealand! She is currently halfway through getting her PhD studying the microbiome in Cork City. I got a chance to see the city a bit and she also took me to the Irish mountains!

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In Kilmacthomas- I was so happy to finally be out in the mountains again, and to see my favorite sheepies! I even got a tuft of fluff!

As I got on the bus to take me back to Dublin, I found myself ready to Ireland and see another country, but sad to say goodbye to my incredibly sweet and friendly family.

That night in Dublin before I flew out I stayed in a hostel and met a 60-something year-old woman from Shanghai who immediately took a liking to me as I ‘look like her’. In the typical Chinese way she not-so-subtley took pictures of me as I FaceTimed Katie, then asked if we could take a selfie. She said I was very open and happy, unlike the other girls in the hostel who didn’t even say hi to her. She asked about my parents and for the first but not the last time I learned it is difficult to explain adoption to people who speak minimal English. Finally I saw in her face that she understood, as she suddenly looked serious and nodded at me. “Ah yes. I know your story. You are very lucky”, she said. At 4am as I left the hostel to catch my flight she got up and took my hands telling me “you learn Chinese words” and wished me luck on my travels.