Cheers...and some panic

My 49.5 lb and 49.3 lb suitcases were zipped, I had said goodbye to Kevin and the family, and I was seated safely on my flight to Dublin. I thought the hard part was over.  But then I realized that I was completely alone in a foreign country. For an entire year.

The first day was a blurry, exhausted welcome. Kevin Whelan chatted my ear off for about 20 minutes in the airport while we were waiting for the other two girls to arrive and go through customs. Normally I would have enjoyed his accent and chitchat, but in my sleepy state (cursing the sleeping pill that had not even begun to wear off), I found the conversation impossibly confusing. I tried to be reasonably outgoing--he recognized this and congratulated me. He was positive I'd fit in well in Irish culture, since conversation is less about exchange of information, and more about entertainment.  As he told me this, I became aware that I was doing a very poor job of "entertaining" him. I didn't even have the energy to ask him to repeat himself when his accent became too thick to understand. So I just nodded a lot and asked him where I could get some coffee.

The O'Connell house is just as charming as I pictured it. Cobblestone streets, colored doors, the whole bit. They greeted us with tea and biscuits, which was a miracle cure for my sleepy state. Then it was down to business. We got mobiles, we packed our suitcases into taxis, we grabbed leftover gear from last years' students.  I got my room key and made my way up three impossibly long flights of stairs with my backpack, suitcases, and school bag. My shoulders were aching like crazy, exhaustion hadn't disappeared, and my room looked horribly bare. But it was all worth it for the view from our common room. Trinity college is spectacular. It feels like Hogwarts, and then some. Not many Trinity students had arrived yet, and the grounds were silent. You could hear the birds chirping, the cars passing by from what felt like miles away. I felt a powerful peace, and let myself really relax for a moment. Then, I discovered my phone was missing.

About two hours later--after I'd gone back to the O'Connell house, searched through dozens of bags, hauled about three garbage bags worth of pillows/hangers/hairdryers and straighteners back to Trinity, then searched through everything all over again (making a complete mess of my room), I determined that my phone was, in fact, gone. I used my calling card to call my mom (of course) on the last few minutes on Marah's Vodafone.  I talked to my mom for about 5 minutes before a pre-recorded message from an Irish woman cheerfully told me that I "Do not have enough minutes to continue this call. Please top up!"

I told myself to try to have a good time. "YOU'RE IN IRELAND!" I kept repeating to myself.  I had to keep reminding myself to relax and open my eyes to what's around me. Siomha and Mike, the two other ND-Trinity students, went to grab a bite with me. We were taking our time, soaking in Grafton street, when it began to pour without warning. All three of us cursed the sky, feeling incredibly insulted that Ireland would rain on us on our first day. Looking like tourists, we ducked under an awning and looked around, frustrated with our situation. The Dubliners popped up their hoods and umbrellas without a second thought. We ducked into the closest pub/cafe we could find. Tea and grilled cheese sammys were just the ticket. It was around 7 o'clock, and we were all planning on going to sleep around 8, so we raced back to Trinity.

I wanted to really soak it all up. I put on my gorgeous raincoat and walked around the peaceful campus. I was trying to salvage the hectic day. I loved the cobblestone street, the buttery, the Samuel Beckett theatre, the boys at rugby practice. But then I suddenly felt lonely. Overwhelmingly lonely. Not to mention frustrated by my lack of phone/sheets/food/towels/etc. I decided to try to call my mom again, just to get some kind of comfort. After about an hour trying to use my calling card on a pay phone (about 6 apathetic Indian men with thick accents got to listen to me yell at them), I just paid for a call to the states on my credit card.

A word to the wise--never make a 30 minute phone call from Dublin to Michigan. It will cost you 68 dollars.

After a panicky phone call, I realized that I hadn't slept in literally 48 hours, and THAT might have something to do with my devastated state.

On to day 2. Everything looks better in the morning. We had a walking tour of the city. Kind of. I was put in Eimur's walking group. Eimur, a young Irish woman working at the O'Connell house, didn't feel quite up to the historical walking tour that Joe Stranix or Kevin Whelan had in mind.  She decided, instead, to show us the best bars, the cheapest restaurants, the cheapest grocery stores, and best clothing shops. This kind of tour would have been utterly FANTASTIC if I had had a remarkable memory and wasn't still jet lagged. But I remember slim to none of that tour. Much of the tour was spent trying to convince myself that I was going to make friends here. Quickly discovering that I was the most outgoing person in the group (surprise, surprise), I tried not to be too talkative. But, somehow, I still ended up as the clown. People chatted with me a bit, answered all my questions, and laughed a little too hard at all my jokes, but they all looked a little terrified. Eimur thought I was delightful though, so there's something.

That night, Siomha, Mike, and I pooled our resources and made dinner--rice and soup. I definitely had to go shopping the next day. At around 8:30, I got a call from a girl at UCD, inviting me over. They were going out. Of course I wanted to go. I grabbed the 6 euro bottle of wine I had bought at Tesco (they didn't card me! woo!), threw on an Irish-y dress (basically anything dark, and grungy, with tights and boots) and headed out to find the 10 bus. Eimur told me there was a 10 bus that would take me to UCD close by Trinity. Unfortunately, her version of "close" wasn't mine. I went about 20 yards and passed four different bus stops. None of them served the number 10 bus. So, I took a taxi.

Never. Again.

It cost me 14 euro. The little old man was very sweet....he kept calling me pumpkin and advised me to stay away from the "fuckin black cabs, fuckin blacks takin over this fuckin country ruinin my whole fuckin life." As much as I enjoyed listening to his...wise...advice, I was pretty pissed when some UCD kids told me that the cab ride shouldn't have cost a bit more than 9 or 10 euro. But, I got there. In one piece. I had a lovely time with a couple girls from Notre Dame--Mary, Caroline, and Maisie (short for Mairead!). Then we met up with one of their Irish roommates and his friends and made our way to the UCD student bar.

Drum roll.....I had my first Ireland Guinness. The first few sips were great. Nice and smooth. But then I realized I had to drink the entire thing. About a half an hour later, my stomach was full, and I still had about a quarter of it left. My friends were itching to get going to Dublin, so I passed it off to a thankful UCD-ND kid who finished it off for me in one gulp. I spent the rest of the evening with some 15 UCD kids, as we struggled to get on and off the bus in one piece. We went to a bar called Flannery's, which was great.  We met a bunch of unfriendly and very unsober Georgetown kids who convinced us all to go to a club. The club was, I believe, called Coppers, and packed with Irish kids. We were just about the only Americans there. However, the music was ENTIRELY American. After a couple renditions of "I'm on a boat" and "Low," in addition to some Blink 182, I was ready to head out. A couple Irish guys had a good time torturing us and making fun of us for being American, but they backed off a little when they heard my name was Clare Mairead Cooney and Maisie's name was Mairead O'Malley.

Day 3

(I'm going to try to keep this short because this is becoming obscenely long)

Tons of shopping. I felt like I was getting a bit more organized. It took me the ENTIRE day to get everything I needed (a HUGE trip to Dunnes, a trip to Moore st. for some fresh fruit and veggies, a very shady trip to an underground Moneygram station where I was nearly mugged/attacked/offered tattoos and hair extensions about 15 times). Then I came home and cooked my little heart out. I made pesto pasta (whole-wheat, of course) with mushrooms and chicken (that I sliced and cooked myself, thank you). Then I made cooked the chicken, onions, and peppers for fajitas for the next day. It was all pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.

I wanted to go see Happy Days at the Samuel Beckett theatre on campus. I'm not a huge fan of Beckett. I always get a little bored during the performance, and I always leave feeling depressed. But this time I wanted to go see Happy Days anyway because I wanted to get a feel for what the student players group was like. I called up Becky Sees, stage manager extraordinaire and coerced her into coming over to Trinity from UCD.

Unfortunately, the show didn't have any students in it. No Trinity student are back yet, so the players group was hosting a professional show. The show had just two people in it. But it may as well have been a one-woman show. I don't want to get into it....but I'll give you the brief, depressing description. Basically the stage consisted of a woman visible from only the waist up, the rest of her body buried in a pile of dirt. She was an incredibly talkative, ditzy, optimistic mess, and the entire time she is talking to her husband Willie behind her, who we never see. She cannot leave her hole. All she can do is go through her purse, brush her teeth, brush her hair, file her nails, and look at the shot gun in her purse with curiosity. She constantly begs Willie to look at her, to come over to her hole. When he gives a grunt in reply to her begging, she exclaims "Oooh! Willie! You ARE talkative today. Ahh...this will have been a happy day."--Talk about depressing. In the second act, she is buried entirely in the dirt, with only her head and neck visible. She is much less optimistic. Willie has stopped responding to her entirely. That was when it REALLY hit me that she was slowly but surely sinking into her grave. Her husband and she had lost all connection. She was stuck in her position. We are all stuck in our ways. We are all on our way to our graves. Then, in the last moments of the play, Willie makes his way to his wife. They are both near death, and he can barely move. He touches her cheek, for the first time in years. She explodes with bitter rage, miserable that he abandoned her for so many years.... It was a crazy play to watch. Very well done, but very depressing all the same. It was inspiring in a way, too.  An encouragement to really live in the moment, experience joy IN the moment, not AFTER the fact. Kick out rosy retrospection entirely and enjoy what you are CURRENTLY experiencing. Not "this will have been a happy day," but "This IS a happy day." It's certainly something to think about, in your marriage, in your life, in your relationships.

So, naturally, I was determined to make the best of the night. Becky and I ran to my room in Front Square, squealing in the pouring rain. Siomha, Mike, Becky and I made our way to Messers MacGuire and had a "point."  I had one of their own brews....an Oktoberfest. The rest got a Guinness. We were a quiet group (especially when we got into discussions about Happy Days) and I felt a couple pangs for Kevin and Pat and the fam (I'm used to loud people!) but I had a good time. To end the night, the four of us stayed up late eating toast and Nutella, listening to music and swapping stories.

Day 4

Skyping and calling and emailing and organizing. I finally got out of my flat when the UCD kids called me at 3:30 and convinced me to walk around Dublin with them.  Dublin, and Trinity campus itself, are really a different world than I'm used to.  For example, two woman sitting on a bench at Trinity, making out.  A cyclist cursing a bus driver, and the driver stopping the bus JUST to get out and give him the middle finger.  A homeless man telling us that we're ignorant pricks.  An old man peeing right out in the open on a sidewalk--I'm not in Kansas anymore.  Dublin is much faster, much more grungy, much more heroin-filled, and much rainier than I ever expected. It's not all that dramatic though. There are some things that I love, some things that I expected from the trips to Ireland I went on when I was 11 and 14. I love hearing live music on the street (nearly every person is singing something by mumford and sons).  I love the cobblestone street, the friendly little men. I love the accents (and mine is nearly perfect...I'm not trying to put one on at all, but quite a few of my words..."sorry" and "cool" for example, are becoming completely Irish).  Dublin is just a bit rough around the edges.


So. In total. It was a messy first few days. Lots of tears. Lots of fear. Lots of calls home. But also lots of excitement. And each day, it's getting easier. Tomorrow I'm off to Galway!! I couldn't be more excited. I'm ready for the country. I'm ready to remember why I loved Ireland so much. Maybe I have some bones to pick with Dublin, but Ireland and I will get along just fine.

Cheers,
Clare Mairead

P.S. I'm sorry for the length. This is hardly a blog...it's more a diary that I encourage you all to read (I've kept out a lot of things, to protect the innocent!)

P.P.S. I kind of have to go by Clare Mairead, don't I? After all, I'm in Ireland.

P.P.P.S. I miss wine. Beer is painful.