Travelogue


Here, I am going to talk about my host family. My host father's name is Michael Conaty and my host mother's name is Martina Conaty and they have 5 children : Niamh, Niall, Diarmuid, Muireann and Eadaoinn. There is also an other exchange student from Italy named Matteo Marra (but, really, who cares about Italy). In the house, we were, during the first part of the year, we were 8 in the house (Michael, Martina, Matteo, Niall, 3 other girls from Dublin and me) and during the week-end around 10 (Michael, Martina, Matteo, Niall, Diarmond and his girlfriend, Eadaoinn and her boyfriend and me). Most of the family are teachers execpt Martina who is a nurse. 2 of their children work in foreign contry like United Arab Emirates for Muireanne and Greece for Niamh.


Michael Conaty is the funniest and craziest guy I ever know. He is always laughing and smiling and bringing life into the house. He is just the happiest guy in Ireland. Here in Cavan, he knows everybody and everybody knows him. He is like a celebrity. He is always outside, fighting against the British like his grandfather before. According to him, he beats them all between two cups of tea. I think he tells the truth because he seems always very busy and always wakes up very early (around 12 o'clock in the morning) to do what he has to do. The government gave him a lot of medals and cups and prizes but, you know, as he says, "I'm just doing my job". Furthermore, thanks to him, I discovered a new wonderful serie name "Breaking Bad". If you didn't see it, stop everything and go right now watch it and come back after it's done. Did you watch it ? Good, we can continue. So as I was saying, he is an amazing man you have to meet. The only bad point with him it's he lives in dream where Ireland beat the British. I don't want to tell him the truth by fear of hurt his reality but I think it's not good for him to believe in a bullshit like (sorry for the vocabulary) but if he is fine with that, it's fine for me. In his reality, he is the boss in the house (in reality it's Martina) and France needed England to win the World War II. he is not entirely wrong but he is not 100% right. More 10%...But whatever. Despite this little default, he is still a great guy (if not the best) and, as we say in France, "It'll be grand !".

Martina Conaty is a very nice and kind woman. She is also an admirable mother because she achieved the feat to rise 5 awful children without being crazy like Michael ( sorry Michael, I have nothing against you... I promise...). She is a also a very strong woman. Indeed, even if she works a lot, she never complains about her and do what it must do. For example, when she comes back from work late and she has to cook something, she cookes (I forgot to say it but she is a also a brilliant cook) something good without any complaints. I think she deserves a medal just for that. She is always working and, from what I heard, she is a really competent nurse, one of the best in her office. She walks a lot (like, really a lot. I think she is cheating) and she is especially good at it. She is very fast and it's sometimes hard for us to follow here (Yes, you red well, she is faster than us... Stop judging...). However, Martina has a very strange habit : she puts her fries in vinegar, the same way you would put them with ketchup. It's not really common but, who are we to judge ? It's her only fault (if we can name that a fault) and it' not something very important. Despite that, she is still a good person with a big hearth who accepted to take, since 10 years, exchange students from all the Europe and take care of them during one year. Contrary to some people, she does that by passion and that says a lot about her.

Matteo Marra is an exchange student from Italy. I know what you are thinking right now... An Italian, seriously ? Is a kind of joke or something? Because who, with a little bit of sense, would choose an Italian to live with them. But whatever, even if it's hard for you, you have to be used with that. Now you know the terrible truth, we can start. So Matteo is 17 but is around 8 in his head. He plays basketball and is actually good at it. He is a hard-worker for the school and has a very good marks. Here finished all the good thing about him. I'm joking...He can also cook pasta... Now it's finish. So, now I am going to talk about him more in depth. He is a nice roomate and we have quite similar taste so he's a good crack. However, a part of his personality is quite annoying. With an other friend, we call that the "proud of an Italian". He is not alone to have it and almost all the Italian I know have this same problem. I explain myself : "the proud of an Italian" means he is never wrong. He is going to argue with until you agree with him or you give up to speak about that with him. It also mean it's very hard for him to apologise about something or to forgive somebody. Except that and others things I'm not going to talk about but he knows what, it's really nice to share this experience with him.

Niall Conaty is the 2nd older child of the Conaty family. He lives with us even if he is most of the time outside at work in his farm. He loves his sheep and his cows and is very protective towards them. As you can see in this beautiful picture, he is still single. If you want to contact him, just click here to access to his intagram and say hello to him for me. He plays gaelic football and I can't really know if he is good or not because I don't have enought experience in it, but he seems...I think...I hope... Despite he plays a physic game, he is pretty weak in fight and can easily be bitten, even by an Italian (I know, hard to believe). I don't have a lot do say about him but he is great guy, who likes his job and it's the only thing which matters.