which doesn’t happen in mexico… completely ignored in fact, though once a mexican person knows I am irish I get to hear the story about the turn coat irish who adandoned the american side in some border war a long time ago when they were still fighting over texas and ran over to the mexican side to fight for them instead.
thats the thing about being irish the whole world is happy to see you, generally for stuff thats completely cliched like an ability to drink the rest of the pup under the table (my alchohol tolerance is practically zero) and myths of the fighting irish from american history. We would pour off the famine ships dirty, hungry and looking for the nearest bar.
One thing about being irish from over the seas is that there is a view of ireland that is completely romanticised and in soft focus and hazy memory and nothing what-so-ever to do with the reality of back home. I suppose this happens with any displaced people and there is a part of irelands history that is everything to do with being displaced from need and a hope for a better place somewhere else and if you weren’t the one to go personally then all your hopes and dreams went with the person who was going. Even now every single family I know has relatives in america or england.
Maybe it is buried in our physce to consider somewhere else as better, more money, more opportunities, someone from somewhere else is more exotic, wiser, richer, better; or maybe thats just me. Its one thing I have realised in all my travels. Doesn’t matter where I am or what I doing its still me being there and doing it and trying to find that better place just doesn’t work because I can’t run away from me.
