This article is part of Letters home for Christmas, an Irish Times series exploring views about Ireland among young emigrants as the year draws to a close
Last December, 25-year-old Sinéad McCann found herself in a hostel on an island off Cambodia, spending Christmas Day with three Cork men she had met only days earlier in a Cambodian shop.
“We ended up exchanging Instagrams and they had no plans for Christmas, being typical Irish boys travelling,” she said. “I was like, well I’m heading to this island for Christmas if you want to join me.”
The Waterford native had spent the weeks prior volunteering as a teacher in a Cambodian school. Encounters like these have become a familiar pattern for McCann, with travel a top priority since moving to Dubai last year to work as a secondary school teacher.
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“The more I’ve travelled since being in Dubai, I’ve realised that Irish people are everywhere. I was in Sri Lanka four weeks ago and we were counting on my phone, I think we met 32 Irish people,” she says.
Despite loving her Cambodian adventures at Christmas, it was difficult for McCann to watch her family’s festivities through a phone screen.
“On Christmas Day, I Facetimed my grandparents, and my little brother is quite young,” she recalled. Watching on a screen as her brother opened his presents from Santa “was just not the same”. “I don’t want to miss these little experiences.”
This year, McCann is spending Christmas in Ireland. She had a “complete misconception” about what it would be like, assuming it wasn’t acknowledged. But the city proved her wrong.
“In Dubai, people do everything at extremes. We have the Christmas trees, the Christmas markets, we still have carol singing, the concerts, the brunches, there’s lights being turned on in Irish venues. The lead-up to Christmas here is amazing. It’s unique.”
There are some slight differences to Christmas at home. In school, a “winter break” is celebrated instead of a Christmas break, students are “secret gift-givers” instead of secret Santa and Christmas jumper day is called winter jumper day.
About 12,000 Irish nationals live in the United Arab Emirates, with more than 4,000 of them working as primary and secondary-level teachers.
McCann, a qualified home economics and biology teacher, spent six months teaching in Ireland before feeling there was “more out there” for her.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like home”, she said. “I just wanted independence, to live differently.”
McCann assumed Dubai would be “an easy move” given its large Irish community, but found the first couple of months a difficult adjustment.
“Coming from a small village, I knew everyone; everyone had each other’s backs. You always had a friendly smile,” she said of home. Dubai was “quite a culture shock and just very different”.
McCann is now settling into the rhythm of life in the UAE, where she teaches food and nutrition alongside design technology classes.
Social media has become crucial to staying connected to home. She shares snippets of her life on TikTok, giving advice to Irish teachers thinking about moving to Dubai.
She hears from teacher friends about the “lack of permanency” and “burnout in the Irish education system, because of long commutes”.
While missing friends and family, McCann’s local GAA club in her adopted home, Dubai Celts, has become a big part of her life. Founded in 1995, it was one of the first GAA clubs in the Middle East.
She describes Dubai Celts as an “absolute godsend”.
“They’ve been like a second family,” she said. .”
The move made McCann realise she “wasn’t grateful” for her life in Ireland. “I always assumed the grass was always greener. Dubai is amazing, but there’s something so special about Ireland. My future children, my future family, I want to bring them up in Ireland,” she says.
Ireland is “a privileged place to live”, but McCann doesn’t think it’s a great place for people in their 20s.
“Home will always be there,” she says. “With the housing crisis, the high rents, there’s no reason to stay right now, not when you don’t have commitments, you don’t have a family. Maybe it’s me being independent and free spirited, but I think there’s more to living your 20s than living in Ireland.”
This Christmas, she will spend about two weeks back at home in Ireland with her family. It means she will get to open presents with her younger brother in person, rather than over a phone screen.
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