Touched by Magic: A Week in the Emerald Isles

As a present from my parents for graduating high school, I was allowed to go to Ireland, Wales, London, and Paris with my school. This would not only be my first real trip abroad, but it would also spark the wanderlust that lay dormant in me for years. Despite this, I remember prejudging the hell out of Ireland. I mean come on! I was going to London! What girl wouldn't want to go to London after seeing the parent trap six hundred times?! Paris? Are you kidding me? The city of blinding lights. I didn’t want to waste my first travel experience in Ireland, who would?We spent 5 days on the Emerald Isle. I watched from my plane window as the pilot announced we'd be landing, and all I could see was green. Specks of white littered the vast expanse of different shades of green, and all of this was surrounded by a deep gray sky. I had thought Ireland would be black, white, and dull like Kansas in the Wizard of Oz. Little did I know just how much it would become my Kansas. As soon as I touched down and my group walked into the customs area, and the nice little old Irish man asked how long I would be staying, I was absolutely sold. What was this accent and why hadn’t I noticed it before? Those five days were the start of my intense obsession with everything Irish. The green grassy fields that of course were filled with my favorite animal ever -- sheep, the nice locals who treated me like I was an exotic movie star, when really I was just someone who had the pleasure of having melanin in my skin. However, even more than I loved the country itself, I loved the accent. Maybe it was the musical way they spoke. Every sentence spoken was like a song that tugged at my heart and rooted me there. It was so musical that I imagined that I was not the only one restraining myself from breaking out into a full Irish jig whenever one of them spoke. My free time was spent popping in and out of the tiny little shops in the town square and talking to the locals who strangely found my New York City accent just as refreshing as I found their Irish accent. I loved Ireland and all that it had to offer. The tiny country is really a diamond nestled in the rock of the huge European cities whose fame could dwarf any country that size in comparison. The experience I had in Ireland only showed me how vast the world is, and how much it had to offer.