Back to Ireland to make new friends 6

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Ireland is a country that has a special place in my heart. Part of my family, from my mother’s side, came from there originally (though I am one, just one, generation off from being able to get an Ireland passport myself, damn it).

I haven’t been able to spend much time there in my travels, it is on the long list of places that I’d like to go kick around for a few months and explore a lot more fully. My travel writing history with it goes back to even before I took my RTW trip and started this whole blogging business more serious. This post about a golf trip that my brother and my Dad and I took was one of the first things I wrote.

Why Ireland This Time?

This trip was mostly about meeting some great newer bloggers and helping them take their blogging to the next level, at our most recent BlogHouse. (If you are a blogger and want to get put on our mailing list, where we announce future BlogHouse events, just go to the bottom of that last link and input your email address).

Our lovely home for BlogHouse, Bansha Castle

We were fortunate enough to have our BlogHouse hosted by FlipKey which provided Bansha Castle for our use. It was a truly spectacular location, about 2 hours south of Dublin by train.

Bansha is a small little village… but of course there were still a few good pubs, even if the population of the entire area might not have hit 1,000. The weather was typically Irish for most of the time we were there, and yes, you can read that as overcast and rainy, but the sun occasionally broke through and frankly, it didn’t matter that much, because we were inside teaching and learning for about ten hours each day.

Our great group of participants this time around — all of which you should check out and hopefully follow:

Julika Epp from Sateless Suitcase
Megan Belt from  A Passport Affair
Brendon Vince from Nerd Travels
Murissa Shalapata from The Wanderfull Traveler
Jaclynn Seah from The Occasional Traveller
Béatrice Bernard-Poulin from BeatriceBP.com
Lance Longwell from Travel Addicts
Andrew Wahba from True Travellers
Jo Fitzsimons from Indiana Jo
Helen Davies from Helen in Wonderlust

The BlogHouse crew, squinting back into the sun… yes, sun in!! (For about 15 minutes)

Although we do the BlogHouse as a business venture, the main reason I love teaching there so much (I’ve now done all three of them) is that each and every time, I walk away reinvigorated from the whole experience.

I have been blogging for five years now. And though I am not going to dwell on it, it is a much more difficult professional life than I think most of you would imagine. Being exposed to bloggers that are just on the starting point of their blogging career, all excited and enthused about the future, can’t help but be a shot of adrenaline into my work soul.

And it has been every single time.

So, my thanks to the bloggers that showed up ready to work, listen, and push back on us instructors when they had different opinions. I look forward to following all of them in the future and helping them along this path they have chosen.

Now, you go give them a chance also. They are great.

Many thanks to our additional sponsors for this event, who helped make it all possible: HostelBookers, HostelWorld, and Trivago. They were so fabulous to work with.

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