Report of the staying in Ireland
From the 12th to the 26th of June, I went to the Gort Ard Youth Center in Galway, Ireland. This organization brings together a handful of French and a dozen Irish students in one big house, in order for them to learn each other’s language. It has existed almost for 50 years. Gort Ard was also in charge of the attribution of students to guest families and the daily schedule.
The 12th of June, I took a plane from Paris to Dublin, from there a bus to Galway and someone came and got me at the Galway bus station. Gort Ard is 10 minutes by car from there.
We spent each day the same way: At 9:45 a.m., we were expected at the center to have three hours of English courses. The lessons were quite basic, we almost started from beginner-level grammar, but at least we had an occasion to check wether we still knew the basics. Our teacher made us write a lesson, then we had a few exercises, a dictation and a reading comprehension task about a book. We were free to take one of the simple ones designed especially for foreigners learning English or one of the center’s library.
Then we had 20 minutes in which we were assigned Irish partners and we spoke to each other, first in French, then in English. One day we organized a game of Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow instead, which gave us an occasion to argue in a foreign language and learn quite special words (like werewolve, scapegoat or seer).
Lunch was prepared by the center and we ate all together. Afterwards we spent the afternoon playing sports in the field near the center. I learned the rules of some typical Irish games, like Irish football. Some day we would instead go around in the city, like to the beach (Galway is on the Irish east coast, as you can see on the map).
Around 4 or 5 pm, we were released and went back to our guest families, which were mostly a 10 minute walk away from the building. Each student was alone with his family. We did the eventual homework assigned by the teacher, watched television or did whatever we wanted. We also had dinner there. Then at 20.30, the French had to go back to the center for the evening. We watched movies or played board games.
The organisation for the weekends was different: Saturday was completely free, we could do whatever we wanted, which meant that we French students usually met in the morning and visited the city of Galway, which is full of interesting places and anecdotes. There are musicians and dancers in the main streets, you can also visit the Galway city Museum, the ruins of the Hall of the Red Earl or the so-called Spanish arch. I learned Christopher Columbus visited Galway in the year 1477. All in all a very interesting city.
Each Sunday we would go on a big trip and be somewhere else the whole day. The first time, we went to the Aran Islands. It took us something like two hours to get there. These small islands are apparently very popular for cycling, given the number of bike rental agencies there. And that’s exactly what we did: we hired a bike each and went around the island. There are, of course, a lot of beaches on the Aran Islands, but also a castle we didn’t get to visit; and then, there is the good weather which makes it a very pleasant place. On the main land it was always kind of cold and cloudy, but on the islands we had a really sunny weather, almost everybody got sunburned. Well, it was a nice day.
The other Sunday, my last day in Ireland, we saw the cliffs of Moher. They’re just ordinary cliffs, and there’s not much to say about them, but that a scene in the Harry Potter movies was filmed there. Of course, it was really nice to go there because the sight on cliffs is always impressive. We had a picknic there and walked around.
In the evening I got a certificate and I left the next morning early.
Pierre Ballif