Married to America, Having an Affair with Ireland

My husband Bill and I moved to Ireland from Ithaca, NY, in February 2008. Some years ago I found out that I was eligible for dual citizenship (my grandparents were born here) so we spent 2004 travelling around the west of Ireland to see if we might want to live here. That year we worked on farms and in home gardens in exchange for room and board through a program called WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), which was a great way for us to get to know other organic farmers and gardeners while traveling inexpensively. We enjoyed the beauty and relaxed pace of life in Ireland, and we fell in love with County Clare - the dramatic coastline, the Burren, the wooded hills of east Clare, and of course the music! We felt the market town of Ennis was just the right size - big enough to have culture and variety but without the typical problems of bigger cities. We went back to America after our year of wwoofing and saved our pennies to move back, and here we are now, in a gorgeous little thatched cottage in the hills of Ballynacally, 8 miles south of Ennis. It hasn't been an easy year (moving here in the wettest summer on record didn't help) but it's been exciting, challenging, and at times really great craic!