So the one and only time I’ve been abroad, I went to Ireland, on the back of graduate-student funding, to present about Irish poets (Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Eavan Boland, and Mebh McGuckian) at a conference in Galway. This was 21 years ago (holy shit).

Cut to today, when I was cleaning out a bin of mysteries and discovered a grocery bag full of memorabilia from my trip, including a TON of actual physical pictures (remember those?), two scraps of paper with strangers’ email addresses on them*, and a journal from my time in Ireland.

This journal is embarrassing, let’s start with that. I’m presenting it mostly as is because if I’m going to be self-indulgent, I’m also going full disclosure. Besides, y’all probably can’t read my terrible handwriting anyway.

It was a wonderful trip, caught in that weird time when the Internet existed, but social media and smartphones didn’t. I did a lot of traipsing about and meeting people named Michael. Probably my favorite thing about the trip is that, other than the first few days, the weather was actually quite sunny, such that all the locals had sunburns and squinty eyes from looking at the sun like, WTF?

I spent most of my trip eating powdered soups and hitchhiking because I was quite broke, and it was awesome. I’ve never been anywhere else (well, okay, Canada I guess [I kid; Canada was also fantastic]), but I might just go back to Ireland next time I’m in position to travel abroad. Heck, I didn’t even make it to Dublin!

*Don’t think I didn’t email those addresses on the off chance they’re still active. Who are those people? I have no idea! It’d be fun to find out though!

Have a great Night Thread, Avocados!