By ABBY HARRIS

During our time in Ireland, our entire People to People group had the wonderful opportunity to stay with a real Irish family, which would allow us insight on daily life there. Luckily enough for me, I was paired with three of my favorite people on the trip, all three of whom I still talk to today. We were not told whom we would be staying with or whom our roommates were, we were handed a slip of paper, our suitcases, and a kind word of “have fun!” This did nothing to ease our nerves. I was fortunate enough to be paired with a lovely woman named Rita Ryan, who was a beautiful painter and a fantastic photographer. My home stay father was a detective, and sadly we did not get to spend much time with him due to his being out on a case. Their two daughters, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old were staying in Hungary with their grandmother on holiday, learning the language and the culture that their mother was from. The entire family was incredible. Rita took it upon herself to introduce me to the magic of homemade crêpes, Jelly Babies (they’re fantastic little gummy candies–try them if you’re ever in the U.K.!), and the ever-so-magnificent cheese and cucumber sandwich. All of these sound completely strange and quite foreign, but let me assure you that they’re absolutely brilliant. My fondest memory of staying at her home was when she came back from the grocery our first day and Autumn Hardin (one of the girls I was traveling with) and myself jokingly ran outside screaming, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” to help her with the groceries. When we got outside we were still yelling this and she was doubled over laughing.

Spending time with someone from the place I was visiting has easily been one of my best travel memories, if not the best. From exploring the park in her neighborhood to arguing over the end of the movie Hannah, I wouldn’t trade my time with her for the world.