Blog 6 – Pervading Perseverance

Greetings friends!

 

Life is dynamic, ever-changing, shifting with the tide and often flitting between boisterous beauty and fickle frustration. It doesn’t feel like that long ago when I first arrived in Ireland, ready to take on the new things that were bound to be coming. But I am here. I have been here for a decent amount of time, and the things that I am learning and experiencing are arduous, but more fruitful and profound than I ever could have imagined. It all starts with a pinch of uncomfortability, a spoonful of optimism, a cup of prayers, and a conversation. Thank you for being here, in this moment, today, reading my blog. I pray that you can find a time for reflection as you consider how a particular moment has perhaps shaped you!

 

When endless amounts of things are going on, it can be easy to get distracted, stressed, anxious, and focus only on what lies in front of us. But there is loads more to life – not just our earthly life, but our eternal life. The world demands us to have overwhelming workloads, but things don’t have to be complicated. They are actually quite simple when we remember that Jesus completed the ultimate work for us – we must simply believe in Him! Look to the Lord with a grateful heart for the things you are the most thankful for! I urge you to find some gratitudes in your own life! 

 

Three things I am grateful for:

1. Letters (many of my friends and family compiled letters for me to open up while being abroad, and they always put a smile on my face and joy in my heart!)
2. Forgiveness (not every day is a perfect day, but we have a perfect Savior who died on the cross and rose again for our sins, granting us forgiveness and everlasting life – thank you, Jesus!) 
3. Pilates (I have a yoga mat that I use to stretch and strengthen my body through pilates workouts, and I always feel relaxed and accomplished when moving my body in this way)

 

Conversations. Do you enjoy conversations with others? Or does it overwhelm you to have to think about speaking with another person, especially about an uncomfortable topic? Are you an introvert or an extrovert, primarily? What about talking with someone from a different culture? Does that change your answer to any of these questions? Think about it. 

 

The prompt for my blog today pushed me to step outside of my comfort zone and talk with someone from another culture! Now I know what you may be thinking, “Uh, Katie! You live in a different country! You speak to people from other cultures daily!” If you are thinking that, you would be correct. Yes, I do speak with people from different cultures every day. But I decided to push myself a bit with the person with whom I spoke. 

 

I am currently taking a class entitled “Aesthetic and Expressive Activities” (AEA), a physical education module focusing on how to teach gymnastics and dance to middle school-aged children. I love this class because of the content I get to learn, but I dread this class because of how uncomfortable I feel around my peers. None of them seem to enjoy gymnastics and dance very much, especially not to the level that I enjoy it. This causes a chasm of space to sit between myself and all of my peers. However, all of these people are wonderful Irish athletes who are smart and driven to teach children how to move their bodies. Ding, ding, ding! A commonality. I have a passion for movement…and so do they. I decided to have a conversation (more like an interview) with one of my AEA peers, Igor. 

 

Igor is a charming man with a very unique background, which enables him to have a beautiful perspective on life. He and his family are Polish, but he grew up in English-speaking Ireland. His culture is mixed, and he would say that he has a “very different culture” from his home life, being primarily Irish. His story is fascinating, real, raw, and insightful. I pray you find joy in hearing about my takeaways from this conversation. 

 

My takeaways:

• Small Towns vs. Big Towns

• Growing Up

• Education Systems

• Family Life

• My Own Epiphanies 

 

Igor grew up on a farm in a very, very tiny place in County Leitrim, Ireland. The population in his village is only about 400 people! Think about that…the village that Igor grew up in has fewer people than the number of people that attend MLC! Crazy! He continued to explain that to get to a store, or anywhere for that matter, his family would have to drive forty minutes to an hour away, to a completely different county. I found this to be similar, yet different from the way towns are in America. Although New Ulm has always felt quite small to me, we have stores in town that are not more than a five-to ten-minute drive! But when I am living at home in Sparks, Nevada, there are certainly places close to home and other places farther away. For example, my doctors are on the other side of town – forty minutes from where I live! While Igor and I have different perspectives, we both have a forty-minute drive to a place we regularly visit. He drives that distance to get to another county for a store, and I drive that distance across one city to go to the doctor! 

 

Growing up, Igor worked on the farm, played outside, did sports, and became fascinated with working with cars and mechanics. Like all children, he found ways to have fun, even if he had to be really creative to find things to do. But isn’t that refreshing? Our lives have shifted so much since the release of new technologies. It is at our fingertips, even at young ages. But how wonderful that Igor had the opportunity to experience a childhood that could promote experiential learning, motor development, curiosity, and imagination! 

 

A very large part of Irish culture revolves around their Gaelic games (especially hurling and Gaelic football). Igor said, “growing up in Ireland, if you don’t participate in a certain sport, you can be seen as an outcast…to fit in, you nearly have to participate in some sort of sport growing up.” In America, I feel that there is lots of encouragement for children to participate in extracurricular activities in general – sports, dance, music, theater, etc. In Ireland, it is either sport or Irish dancing/traditional Irish music. Both countries value children gaining life experience through an outlet, but I perceive Ireland to be a country that has a very focused outlet to match with their cultural ideals of pride for their individual counties. 

 

When it comes to education in Ireland, there are a lot of differences! One school that Igor went to broke the record for having the largest number of students in one year with 72 students! When he said this, I laughed because I thought about my middle school years when we had over 2,000 students in our school for only two years of schooling (seventh and eighth grade)! 

 

Additionally, at the end of secondary (high) school in Ireland, all students must take a “Leaving Certification Exam” or “Leaving Cert.” The score that students receive on this exam determines much about their future. Each university/college, as well as each program at each institution, requires a particular number of points on the Leaving Cert. So, an individual can not even be considered for a particular degree program without a high enough score. In Igor’s case, he did not originally do well on his Leaving Cert, and he ended up pursuing an alternate route of education for a year. At this time, he grew as a person, and through a teaching experience with his former PE teacher, he decided that he wanted to become a physical education teacher himself! By completing this coursework and doing well, he was able to apply to the University of Limerick without his Leaving Cert score and has been successful in his program! His determination, perseverance, and resilience were really inspiring to listen to. According to Igor, many people think that the Leaving Cert is the “end all, be all,” but he says, “No! When there is a will, there is a way!” How empowering! 

 

Through conversations with many different people, I have found that family life in Ireland is quite similar to America. For Igor, he is the youngest of six siblings. His siblings live all over Europe (Poland, Germany, England, and Ireland), and they very rarely have the opportunity to see one another. Similarly, depending on the situation and family, some families live spread apart across the United States and don’t often get to see one another either! Igor also had many pets (cats, dogs, etc.) growing up, a common experience among many American families. There are large families and small families in both countries, but when we really get down to the nitty-gritty, family is family, no matter the country or culture. 

 

Something that I thought was refreshingly strange when talking to Igor was his complete surprise when I asked him to give me five fun facts about himself. He was so caught off guard that I would ask him to think about things about himself and share – I mean he really struggled for a little while. But it got me thinking, why was this such a hard question for him to answer? If someone asked me that question, I could easily come up with five things in less than five minutes. What is so different about him and me that would make a question of that sort challenging? I really don’t have a particular answer for you, but my thought is that perhaps it is a difference in cultural communication. In Ireland, they are incredibly indirect communicators and love telling elaborate stories. In America, we are much more direct in our communication, and we often ask questions like this during “icebreaker” conversations. We also really enjoy talking about ourselves, whereas I find less of that to be true in Ireland. Anyway, that was just a little silly goofy thought I had! 

 

To finish my conversation with Igor, I asked him what his favorite thing about his home culture is. Of course, he considers his home culture to be Ireland, not Poland, but his answer was striking. He said that his favorite part about Irish culture is “how rough it is.” Wow. What are your thoughts on that answer? I can definitely tell you that I was not expecting him to say that, and I was wildly intrigued to know what he was going to say next! He explained that in sports, you are always “clashing with players” and “getting dirty all the time.” This kind of activity and way of being brought up “toughens you up.” At a young age, Igor would work on the farm, milk cattle, then go and do construction work, come home and finish with the cows at the end of a fourteen-hour workday. This physical labor was “rough” and “hands-on in a good way” as it “toughens you up as a person,” he said. 

 

 Igor’s tenacity, persistence, and determination have been flooding through his veins for his entire life. From the cultural differences between his family from Poland and where he grew up in Ireland to his village being far away from anything, his overcoming educational adversity to be at the University of Limerick, to his inspiring mindset on “roughness,”, he is a tremendous example for us all. We are only limited by our mindset… 

 

Highlights of the past few weeks include: 

1. Galways’ Macnas Parade (we took a quick day trip to Galway to see their famous Halloween Macnas parade, filled with incredible art, costumes, and choreography) 
2. Accomplishing Big Assignments (I have been productive in completing many of my big assignments, which feels wonderful! Thank you, Lord, for giving me strength!)
3. Conversations (I have had so many meaningful conversations with a variety of individuals – it fills my cup with joy to listen to others and share Christ’s love with them!)
4. Pam’s Irish Dance Classes (Pam is one of my professors, and she needed an extra person in two of her Irish dance classes this past week, so I got the opportunity to Irish dance for four hours straight)
5. Gilmore Girls (it is always a wonderful way to end the day or have a brain break when Nessa, Laura, and I watch an episode of “Gilmore Girls”) 

 

Low-lights of the past few weeks include:

1. Frustration
2. Brain Fog
3. Silly Buses 

 

Learned Insights from the Low-lights:

1. Frustration is a real and universal experience. It comes with the territory of being in communication with others and maintaining relationships. But it is such a blessing, if you really think about it. When one experiences frustration, it is a way of reflecting, emoting, and recognizing that a problem needs to be solved! It can be a tool for us to guide our next steps, and if one is frustrated with other people, it is a blessing that there are people in one’s life to be frustrated with! 
2. Brain fog. Another one of those universal experiences when our brains are on overload, are fried, and really can’t think very well. I have been experiencing quite a bit of this as I am doing my best to complete a lot of large projects. But again, this is a healthy tool that our bodies and brains give us to tell us that we need a break! We need to take a nap, drink water, eat, or move our bodies to refresh our brains once more! 
3. This past week, Laura and I went to shop for our groceries when we ran into a myriad of silly goofy bus issues. One bus driver wouldn’t let us on the bus, then we got on a bus going the wrong direction, then the driver took his break, then we got stuck in traffic, then he didn’t let us off at the stop we wanted, and then coming from the store, we missed the bus. There was every opportunity to be frustrated and upset with this situation, but Laura and I just completely accepted the wacky morning and laughed at everything! It made these unfortunate events so much more fun and a memory that I will forever hold in my heart! The next time something is happening that seems awful in the moment, I challenge you to embrace it with a smile, a laugh, and a good attitude. Nothing you do will change the current situation, but how you frame the situation with your mind can make all the difference! 

 

Scripture that has helped me to persevere:

• 2 Timothy 4:7 – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 
• 1 John 2:6 – “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” 
• Psalm 56:3 – “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” 

 

These past few weeks have been crazy, busy, and full of many moments spent with God as I look to Him for strength. I pray that you continue to keep your eyes and your hearts set on the One who made you, cares for you, and who can guide you through adversity with grace. Continue to keep your heart filled with the love found in Christ’s death and resurrection, for He is our true source of perseverance! 

 

May you ever be blessed,

Katie Gilkey