Why Do The Irish Like Being Told How To Live? Immigrants Expectations and...
My lesson for prospective immigrants reading this post is: you cannot always believe what you see, hear, or read when you are on the outside looking in. The reality in country is likely to be quite...
View ArticleIreland Is Not One Thing: Why Immigrants Should Travel More
When we moved to Ireland in 2011, my wife and I promised ourselves that we would travel more faithfully in Ireland than we had in the United States. Though we’ve traveled quite a bit in the U.S., we’d...
View ArticleWhere Are We Going: Expectations of Life & Country
For migrants (emigrants and immigrants), notions of “destination” and “direction” are key. They are going someplace new, but, more importantly, they must concern themselves with where that place, their...
View ArticleThe Local: Where Are You From
In a country as small as Ireland, where local parish control of life (so called “parish pump politics”) was, and is, still so important, the seat of knowledge, the gathering place (the pub), became...
View ArticleRuminations On Land: Thoughts On the Value Of The World
Walking the dog today, in the first real sunshine we’ve had in weeks, I once again found myself thinking about the country I’d moved to. It wasn’t the people or the government that troubled me; my...
View ArticleWhy Ireland Is Better Than the United States: One Man’s Joy At Not Living...
After nearly three years of living in Ireland, the thrill and curiosity of not living in a superpower has dulled a bit, but still fascinates me. On a daily basis the need not to compete with everyone,...
View ArticleStone Fences: Struggle, Sacrifice, and the Expat Life & Legacy
For the past week I’ve spent an hour or so every day digging in the garden, preparing a 4-foot by two-foot patch of ground for planting. Ever day, as I pull dozens and dozens of stones from the ground,...
View ArticleThe Land Of All Things: For Expats There Is No “Perfect” Place
For those of us who like to travel, and have long wanted to live overseas, we often imagine that there’s some country/place out there, some golden, shining bastion of goodness that will cure...
View ArticleLearning the Language: Social Context Clues For Expats
One of the first things my wife and I noticed when we arrived in Dublin was that being American (or presumably from anywhere else) was kind of a mixed bag of good and bad. On the one hand, as long as...
View ArticlePeople Of Faith: The Real Irish Religion
With stores jammed with chocolate bunnies and half of Ireland packed into the off-license the day before the “End Times” (the nationwide Good Friday moratorium on alcohol), religion has been on my mind...
View ArticleThanksgiving in Ireland: The Importance of Sharing Old Traditions and Making...
Each year around Thanksgiving I’m amazed at how many of the Irish I meet are familiar with American Thanksgiving traditions. I know that’s not a typical immigrant experience. Ireland and the U.S. are...
View ArticleEverything Is Ireland’s Fault: Or Why I’m a Bad Immigrant
Hey, Ireland, I’ll let you in on a little secret. As much crap as you talk about the immigrants within your borders, we talk about you too. Even after nearly five years of living in Dublin, a town I’ve...
View ArticleImmigrant Awareness: American Isolation, Social Media, and Brexit
It seems all too obvious that living in another country would, or should, increase our awareness of the world; but I was not prepared for how much it would open my eyes not just about the rest of the...
View Article
