Blog

Hello, Fox Cities! Do you remember me? If not, or if this is our first encounter, my name is Rebecca Turchan. I just finished my junior year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, but I’m a lifelong Fox Cities resident. It’s great to be back at the magazine after a long year away. I look forward to reacquainting myself with the area. I live to eat, so similarly to last year, I’ll be blogging my farmer’s market finds, looking for creative and tasty ways to use in-season produce.

You may be wondering (or not, but humor me here) what I’ve been doing in my time away. Aside from cooking and eating copious amounts of sugar, I’ve spent the past five months in Ireland! I never could have anticipated the impact this travel experience would have on me. I’ve explored 5,000 year old tombs, climbed the cliffs where Voldemort hid one of his horcruxes (and had a small nerd freak out), tasted blood sausage (consensus: spicy, does not taste like blood), and learned some Irish!

Traveling all over Ireland is easy, since the whole country is approximately the size of Wisconsin. Consequently, I got to visit a variety of other countries on my great European adventure, such as Scotland, Belgium, Spain, and Hungary. It’s incredible how much diversity the world contains, and I am so thankful that I got to see even a small sliver of it.

But more importantly to me than all of my travels, I made lifelong friends from around the world. Maybe that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Being rather socially awkward, I never expected such a thing to happen. I suppose it’s reassuring to know that there are other weirdos in the world like me.

Now that I’m back home, I’ll have to find ways to incorporate my travel adventures into my everyday life. I’ll try and weave in some Irish stories into my blogs, and perhaps even a smattering of Irish slang.

Slán go fóill (that means goodbye for now!)

—By Rebecca Turchan