This Is It...?

Well, folks, this is it.

I'm sitting here in my derelict room in Leeside, with my maps of foreign cities stripped from the walls and my suitcases clustered on the floor. It's bare and damp and would be very saddening indeed if it weren't for the sun streaming in for one last sunset through my floor-length window. 

Tomorrow I'm going to get on a plane and start my progress back to the United States, where things will be significantly less green and the accents will be completely comprehensible. 

These past five months have been some of the best of my life. Cork has come to feel like home and I can't imagine suddenly leaving, which is exactly what I'm about to do. Mostly I've been distracting myself by enjoying the surprisingly clement weather with trips to the shores of the Lough, having tea outdoors in all the restaurants we hadn't yet tried, watching football matches with the lads, baking incessantly, and, of course, studying for my finals which have at last concluded. The people I've met and adventures they've accompanied me on have made my time in Cork unquestionably blissful- like a vacation from real life, wherein everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. 

It makes little sense to keep an Irelandiary, one might say, when one is no longer in Ireland, and as of 11:45 AM tomorrow, I will no longer be.

BUT

BUT (you say),

"What about Skellig Michael? You've been witholding that one from us for months! And what have you been up to for the entirity of the month of May, anyhow?"

The Irelandiary, I have decided, will live on for at least a few more thrilling chapters, for I, sirs and madams, have many more stories to tell and a solid seventeen hours of air travel in which to type them! So this isn't really IT, I suppose; it's merely me putting off finishing my packing, becuase packing makes the fact that I'm leaving all too real.

I'd better get on that packing, so I will leave you for now. Should you want to empathize with me, look up an Uillean Pipe lament on the youtube and weep big crocodile tears while thinking of rain, sheep, stout, and tweed.

My next post will come to you from The Land of Hope and Dreams itself, but rest assured that there is still much to tell concerning the land of Saints and Scholars.

Until that time~