Language Barriers

        For those of you that do not know, the official language of Ireland is Irish. Which is nothing even close to the English language. Lucky for me the second national language is English. And everyone I have talked to has spoken English. But where we are staying in Spiddle is one of the few parts of Ireland that speak Gaelic on a day to day basis. It is the language of choice for the schools and the children have to speak Gaelic in class. While, in places like Dublin most people prefer just to speak English instead of Gaelic. Most people consider Gaelic a dying language, because most people in Ireland would prefer to just speak English. A person could make it in Ireland by just speaking English, but not by just speaking Gaelic.
        There is three parts that make staying in Ireland hard for me. One is people with thick accents, two is the fact that I'm hard of hearing, and three a mixture of one and two. John Paul the owner of the Park Lodge Hotel where we are staying has a very thick accent and I honestly don't know what he is saying about 90% of the time. I have to turn and ask someone with me "what and the hell did jp just say?" While most of time I get by just fine there are the select few times that it is hard.

Colosseum

         One place that I have visited where I really felt the language barrier was in Rome. Trying to figure out how to get from place to place and asking people for help was honestly one of the hardest things for me to do. In the subway I asked an attendant if he spoke english and he didn't, but thru a

Jessica and I at the Roman forum 

mixture of few english words, a map, and hand signals we got to the platform we needed. I never felt so out of place as I did in Rome trying to navigate when I got lost. But enough with the bad about Rome I'll tell you I really did love the colosseum and the Roman forum. And the it was the best day I have had in Europe so it worked out perfect. That was by far one of my favorite things that I have ever got to see. Also, the pasta in Rome was to die for!