A Morning with the Larkins

Mark Larkin (pictured left) has pretty much spent his entire life in Dundalk, Ireland. Except, of course for time in Denmark, the Canary Islands and 10-weeks in western Montana in 1997 as part of the Building Bridges program.

Mark is now 33-years-old and a recent graduate of the Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) in Creative Media. He was working for an American computer hard drive company when he came upon an advertisement about a video game design class at DkIT. He started taking more classes at night and was about to start going to school full-time when he was "made redundant" or laid off. He took his severance money and jumped into the next stage of his life.

By his second year, Mark was writing, directing and acting in a student film. you can see Mark's second year film by clicking here. For his final year project, Mark and his teammates created a Flash program that uses logos captured by a webcam that then work as a trigger to play a short video movie to instruct viewers about advertising methods. Mark said he liked this project because it forced him to learn some new computer software. He's very adaptable to new software. He watches online tutorials and gets involved with online communities to teach himself what he wants to know.

Since graduating, Mark's been looking for work in Ireland but not finding much success. He said the recession has stopped a lot of the media work that was being done here. But he keeps himself busy by creating posters for the musical acts that perform at his friend's night club in Dundalk. He also designed two scarves for his favorite team Dundalk FC.

Mark is the first member in his family to graduate from college. As you might expect, Mark's parents are extremely proud of their oldest son. Gerard Larkin, Mark's father, said he and his wife Marie (pictured left) were lucky because all three of their children were just great kids. He said Mark would come home from grade school, have a wee bit to eat and lock himself in his room until he finished his homework.

When we were done with the interview, Gerard and Marie made us tea and served us biscuits (cookies) and cheesecake. We got to talk to them about Mark, their other kids and grandkids as well as Gaelic football. Marie works at the railway station in Dundalk following in the footsteps of her father and her grandfather. Gerard worked there too but was laid off. Married 35 years, Gerard remembers the first day he and Marie met. "It was the 23rd of December," his story started. Marie blushed and said, "He always remembers the dates." It was great to get to meet the Larkins. They are very proud of what their son has accomplished. "He always speaks very highly of Montana," Gerard said.

Now Mark is continuing to learn. He's using the language program Rosetta Stone to learn how to speak Swedish. He will journey to another country on Wednesday when he travels to Sweden to help his brother do finish work on a new house. He'll also spend some time looking for work possibly with a video game designer. "They say there's no recession in Sweden," he said. "It sounds like a good place to be."

In the afternoon, we traveled to the coast west of Dundalk and Newry and took yet another back road on the way home to Hillsborough. This part of the coast (the Mourne Mountains are pictured at left) is much different from what we saw in the northeast. It's much more commercial and setup for tourists. Once place even had go-carts and miniature golf just down the road from an medieval castle.

We're getting around with more confidence these days. We only had to turn on the "sat nav" or GPS when we got into Dundalk to find the Larkin's house. Tomorrow it's back to Dundalk to have lunch with another of the Missoula visitors, Laura McShane.