Glendalough was our first workaway on this trip, and it set the pace in so many ways. We knew little about the hostel we’d be working at, aside from the fact that it had over 100 good reviews on workaway. Since most hosts on workaway have around 5-10 total reviews, we knew that this was a good sign. After our arrival, though, I wasn’t so sure. We got to the hostel and Eugenio, one of the desk workers, gave us a quick tour. We realized that this place was huge, much bigger than any hostel we had worked or stayed at. We were also quickly introduced to the other volunteers before they went out to a pub in the next town. It was a hasty entrance, but we were able to get settled for the night.

The next day, we started to fall into the routine. Our job at the hostel was to help with housekeeping, and as it was the start of winter, the place was pretty empty. With 12 people on housekeeping duty, our tasks were completed within 2 hours. After finishing up our work for the day, we ate lunch and set out on the most famous hiking trail in Glendalough – the Spinc, or White Trail. This ended up being the best hike we did during our time in Glendalough, and honestly my favorite hike we’ve done during our whole time in Europe. The trail wound through the woods and along a lake, then climbed up a hill next to a waterfall, over the cliffside into a valley filled with deer, and then came back down along some switchbacks, followed by another incredible waterfall. The views for the entire hike were much better than I had ever expected to see in Ireland. The fall colors were still showing – everywhere we looked were burnt oranges, deep reds and maroons, various shades of green, yellow, and brown. We came back feeling elated, but exhausted and I also noticed that I had begun to feel sick.

Some photos from our hike on the Spinc Trail:

That night, I had a crisis. I was feeling tired and sick, along with facing some regrets about leaving home and coming on this trip. We hadn’t even been gone a week, and I was starting to wonder what the hell we were doing. I was staying in a room with 7 other girls and it felt like there was nowhere to get a moment of privacy, even in such a huge hostel. I was having a hard time opening up to the other volunteers and was feeling pretty lonely. I started to spiral and think about booking a ticket home or finding a different workaway placement. However, I also knew that these feelings would pass once I settled in – I just had to let myself do that.

The next day I woke up feeling better about our living situation but feeling even worse physically. I took a covid test, and it turned out positive. We had been travelling a lot in the past week – from Florida to NYC to Iceland to Ireland – so it wasn’t a huge surprise. I would spend the next 5 days locked away in quarantine, which honestly turned out to be such a nice retreat. I had to rely on Liam to bring me all of my food and drinks, and I still didn’t have a plug adaptor (who knew Ireland used the UK plug??) so I had to rely on others to let me borrow theirs. On my 3^rd day, Liam also tested positive and joined me in the covid quarters. It was nice to have a companion, even if we now had to rely on our coworkers that we barely knew to bring us all of our food. Liam was also pretty annoyed, since he was totally asymptomatic. He would end up being in quarantine for another week before finally being released.

After my break from civilization and the hostel social scene, I was finally ready to give it another shot. I felt refreshed and ready to make some friends. I remember talking to another volunteer, Martha, for a long time one afternoon, after which we quickly became great friends. Every night there seemed to be an activity. Some nights we’d all play cards, other nights we’d watch a movie, and on special occasions someone would make a meal from their country or we’d have a potluck. On days off, we’d adventure to nearby towns for groceries, pubs, or to go on a cliff walk by the sea. A few weeks into our stay, we discovered the game Settlers of Catan, which jumpstarted a new obsession. We began to play Catan every single night, sometimes even multiple times a day. Martha and I were very into it, and once we got another volunteer, PJ, hooked, the three of us would play every afternoon as well. PJ also taught us a couple of different card games, my favorite of which was Taiwanese poker.

After a few weeks, we had thoroughly settled into Glendalough and were finding it harder and harder to say goodbye to other volunteers as they moved on. We started a tradition of having a movie night every time someone left, watching a movie from their country. We watched French, Danish, Czech, Italian, Taiwanese, and American movies (and we also had a 4-night marathon of the Twilight series). On Thanksgiving, we had a potluck where everyone prepared a dish from their country. As Christmas got closer, we had some Christmas movie nights where we baked cookies, drank hot cocoa, and watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the Grinch, and Elf. One night we played a very intense game of hide and go seek combined with tag, and another night we played Sardines (where PJ somehow managed to hide for a solid 30 minutes without anyone finding him). By our final weeks, the only volunteers were French and American, and the French outnumbered the Americans 2-to-1. I even got to practice my French a little bit, learning important words like “putain” and “merde” (don’t look those up).

Despite my initial regrets, Glendalough came to be our home, even for such a short period of time. I never expected to make friendships like I did, and when the time finally came to say goodbye, it was so hard to do so. The fact that we all live in different countries makes it even harder, as I don’t know when, or if, I’ll get to see these people again. However, we’re all connected on social media, and I know if I ever find myself in the same city as one of them, I’ll reach out. We already had the opportunity to visit Tereza, one of the volunteers, later on in our travels when we were in her home country of the Czech Republic. We left Ireland eager to see more of Europe (and to escape the Irish winter), but I’ll always look back fondly at our 1.5 months in Glendalough and the many great friendships we made there.