They were telling us about how Irish is taught in the local schools, but that some of the parent’s generation did not learn it so well and they have trouble helping the kids with their homework. Then the high school kids go out into the working world, where everything is in English, and sometimes have an adjustment period between education in Irish and real-life work in English. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but he said here in County Kerry, Irish is spoken K-12 in school.
It also is an issue with children whose families moved from other parts of the EU (mainly Poland and Ukraine) to find work here, because they then need to learn Irish in school and English for everything else.
I love that once we are in town, we can just park the car and walk to everything so easily.
I took this picture from in back of the parked car, and the store is right across the street. The park is immediately to my right, the shops we went to are just behind the grocery store (you can walk right through it and out the other side to the street behind), and the movie theater is about 2 blocks away. Even the church, library, and aquarium are only a 5 minute walk from here.
Brogans Across the Pond 
Hello Darling Brogans! I love seeing Ireland with you! Keep up the great photos and narrative! Back here in NJ we had bitterly cold temps (teens and single digits, even) for three or four nights in a row, so that the lake down at the end of St. Louis Ave froze over solid and I went ice-skating on Saturday and Sunday. Yippee!! We are expecting very mild temps all week though, so the ice-skating was short-lived. A rare treat. Are you getting used to businesses that never put their heat on and leave their doors open all the time?
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Wow! Ice skating on the lake! That hasn’t happened in a long time, right? Bob and Sean were happy to go south to TN this past weekend and escape the cold NJ temps. They said it was in the 60’s in TN on Saturday! As for the businesses not putting heat on, I actually kind of like it. At home whenever I go into a store, I always have to take my coat off and carry it or I am too warm. Here it is the same inside and out, so the coat stays on (unless you are Bobby). Two hours in the movie theater was pretty cold though!
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Irish seems like such a difficult language. The spellings/pronunciations are vaguely related, but not too much! There was so much hubbub stateside this weekend due to the Super Bowl. A quiet weekend looks like a salve. 🙂
Wishing a good week ahead to all!
L,K
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Oh gosh, I’m so out of the loop I didn’t even remember it was Superbowl Sunday!
Last weekend, the Mass was entirely in Irish, not a single word of English (most weekends it is at least 50/50). It was tricky, but it is very lyrical and nice to listen to even if I don’t know what they are saying! We only got a few words of the homily…the ones that there must not be an Irish word for…synagogue, sabbath, and Amen! There are many people in town who speak to one another in Irish rather than English, which surprised me as I thought it was mostly just used in school. Here’s an interesting thing…the locals still do wakes in their homes!
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