News

Father's Day Fun

🎉 Father’s Day Gift-Making Fun! 🎁

Join us at the Christchurch Irish Society for a special afternoon of creativity and fun just in time for Father’s Day!

Kids can:
🍪 Decorate cookies
🧲 Make personalised magnets
🖼️ Create custom picture frames
🎨 And more crafts to show Dad how much he’s loved!

🌟 Limited tickets available – don’t miss out!
Perfect for kids to make something meaningful for the special dads in their lives.

📍 Christchurch Irish Society
📅 Saturday, 6th September
⏰ 3:00pm – 5:00pm

$10.00 Per child

Please note: A parent or caregiver needs to be present for the duration of this event, we'll have tea & coffee & snacks available

👉 book your spot today!

Click this link to buy tickets!

Kylee's June/July Blog: A journey of belonging between Aotearoa and Éire.

When people ask me, "Where are you from?" I hesitate, not because I’m particularly mysterious, it’s just never a straightforward answer.

I was born and raised in Auckland, but I haven’t lived there since I left for university in Dunedin in my early 20s. Technically, yes I’m from Auckland. But does it feel like home? Not really.

Right now, we live in Christchurch. But over the past 17 years, my Irish husband and I have been constantly back and forth between New Zealand and Ireland like two very confused homing pigeons. It’s been wonderful and costly, my bank account might never recover (Honestly, the cost of international flights for a family is right up there!) but this is the reality when your life and heart are stretched across two hemispheres. When you’re married into another culture, your idea of “home” becomes beautifully complicated.

Because of our (maybe sometimes questionable life choices) We’re deeply rooted in both places, yet fully settled in neither. It’s a wild paradox: feeling completely at home in two places, and yet never entirely at home in either. Always a little bit homesick for the place you’re not.

Home, for me, isn’t pinned to a single point on a map. It lives in the rhythm of my footsteps along a quiet boreen on the Aran Islands, where summer evenings linger endlessly, the sun slow to surrender, slowly giving up and dipping below the horizon. It’s in a crowded village pub on the West of Ireland where music spills out the door, and the craic flows as freely as the Guinness, laughter rising like smoke into the rare and extremely beautiful still night.

Read more …

Jean Scullion