My new job

Well, I've already told many of you that since Easter, I've been working full time at Bunratty Castle. The castle puts on banquets, which are similar to madrigal dinners, so I perform at the banquets. I know how it sounds - it's nearly cliche to say that I moved to Ireland, live in a village and work singing in a castle down the road. But, that's the truth.

See, I hadn't written about it before now because I wanted some time to formulate opinions about it, get used to it and try to approach broadcasting my perspective with the necessary delicacy one should have when writing about their job online. (See many others who have used their blogs as a forum to air their honesty about their job and have since found themselves unemployed.)

Overall, I love my job. I was working in an office in Limerick before, which had me commuting 40 minutes each way in rush hour traffic. Now, I make the same money without the commute and with much less stress than an office job. Really, it's the kind of job that makes me feel like I'm on summer break and I'm going to have to go back to work sometime soon. But I am at work! And they actually pay me to do this! Who can pass it up?

The one hesitancy I ever had about auditioning for the job is my accent. Probably the majority of the audience from evening to the next is Americans, so I felt like a bit of a fraud, inviting my fellow countrymen in for an evening in an Irish castle only to be greeted by a fellow American. The funny thing is, not that many Americans either notice or say anything about my accent. Every once in a while someone picks up on it, but it's not nearly as often as you'd think. I chalk that up to having just the slightest twinge of an Irish accent now in me that comes out more when I'm more or less 'acting' for the role of my job (I mean, how American is anyone going to sound when they're dressed up in a big velvet dress and calling people 'My Lord' and 'My Lady'?). I always feel like my story is a good one; I'm not here for school or for some year off to travel Europe, rather I met an Irishman and he 'imported' me! It is rather amusing, though, when American guests ask me what part of Ireland I'm from originally, and I answer 'Indianapolis.'

The banquets are silly and amusing. We do them twice a night and they're on every night of the week during the peak tourism season (April-October). It takes surprisingly little motivation to repeat the same program each night, mostly because the crowd is always different. Unlike other more traditional performing experiences, the crowd's involvement is important to the flow of the evening, and since the audience is different each time, it keeps it interesting.

I'm sure I'll have more to say over the coming months about this position. I get to see people from all over the world coming in and out of the castle, and sometimes the cultural observations are surprising. But I'll leave it at that so I don't open up a diplomacy can of worms.