At the time of writing I have been in Dublin for about three weeks, getting fully oriented by Arcadia University’s College of Global Studies, moving into my flat, and starting my Semester Start-Up module. Life is insane, and again I apologise for the slight delay in my recounts. Actually, no I don’t. If I wanted to give you minute-by-minute updates of my year abroad, I’d use Twitter. Though I suppose you could just pretend that you’re receiving my tweets with a dial-up connection. O, sweet nostalgia! Back in my day when we wanted to look at cats we had to wait fifteen minutes for the image to load. Harrumph.
On a similar note, I had the worst travelling experience of my life on my way to Dublin. No, I didn’t get scurvy. Or die of dysentery. If Zebediah had thought twice about trying to ford the Liffey with the 893 pounds of buffalo he shot, we would have made it just fine. But I digress. Usually I consider myself somewhat adept at getting form one place to the other. I look both ways, wax my ears around Sirens, and keep the bags of wind secured. Yet for some reason the gods were against me this time.
When we last left our heroine, she was in Bristol. She had the brilliant idea to just not sleep before her 6.00a flight on Tuesday morning since her coach left at 1.57a. Remind her never to think that fourteen hours of constant travel is an okay thing ever again. First, she missed her train because the staircase with a giant “13” painted on the wall actually led to Platform 15. Even though she realized this before the train actually left the station, she was still quite miffed at the fact that she had to catch two other trains and arrived in London nearly an hour later than she planned. At least it couldn’t get worse, right? Wrong. She then spent an hour on the tube, missed the bloody 1.57a coach BECAUSE IT DIDN’T SHOW UP, and eventually arrived at Gatwick to find out that she pay £12 per kilogram to check her backpack. So she just started bawling in front of a poor, sleep-deprived Aer Lingus employee at 4.00a. Needless to say her day was off to a great start.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is to always read the fine print when booking airline tickets. And the eight-foot-high platform number when boarding a train. One learns so much by studying abroad.
I made it to Dublin in one piece and was promptly oriented by the lovely Arcadia staff. That first day was rather low-key since most of my comrades were impressively jetlagged even though they all came from the East Coast. Five hours, shmive hours. Arcadia fed us lunch and then pushed us out of the nest and into the heart of the city. We functioned like a cute little flock of American ducklings tottering all about Grafton Street and the Trinity campus, our cameras firing like incessant machine guns as our squeals of excitement floated through the hustle and bustle. You can plant as many flowers and leafblow as many wet sidewalks as you want, Puge, but you can’t beat cobblestones. I’m just saying.
I did not take this picture.
Even though much of the orientation process involved sitting in a room and getting talked to, we did have some fun events to break up the monotony. One of the highlights was learning to play both hurling and Gaelic football, two of the most fun things I have ever been forced to do. I saw a county hurling match when I travelled around Ireland a few years ago and still remember how much I loved it. I had no idea why this was important or how scoring worked or even what teams were playing, but as I sat surrounded by thousands of bloodthirsty Irish people, I ended up enjoying myself nonetheless. Anyway, most of you probably have no idea what hurling is. Imagine combining the best things about hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and baseball into one sport. Or imagine the most vicious game of croquet ever played by the manliest men ever to wear short shorts. THAT IS HURLING. THAT IS WHAT THEY DO FOR FUN HERE.
Loggers, did I mention that it requires an axe-shaped stick? No? WELL IT DOES.
As awesome as hurling is, Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland. It has nothing to do with American football; it’s more of a hybrid of soccer and rugby and volleyball and war. You cannot throw the ball, but you can touch it with your hands. And you can bounce it like a basketball. But you have to take four steps before doing so. And you can’t bounce it twice in a row; you have to kick it back up to you before you can bounce it again. And in order to pass it, you have to volley it to another player. Because you can’t throw it. It’s confusing, yet beautiful. Google it. After an hour of instruction in the pouring rain we were deemed good enough to play against nine-year-olds. Below is proof that I, the least athletic human being, participated.
I grit my teeth and continued to be a tourist for the next few days. Eventually I was forced to hop on the dreaded “Hop On Hop Off” bus tour. This is where I draw the line. The one good thing to come from that afternoon was finding an amazing library when a fellow Trinity student, Andrew, and I didn’t want to pay money to go inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Marsh’s Library was built in 1701 and is the oldest public library in Ireland, which means that everything is leather-bound and musty and kept on oak shelves that are so high they require ladders. This is a dangerous place for an English major to roam freely. One of the librarians said that one can use the collection for research purposes, so I need to think of some believable projects that will grant me access to books that are older than my country and worth more than my university education. Leave suggestions in the comments.
I soon grew tired of living out of my suitcase and could not wait to settle into my flat at the end of the week. All of the Arcadia students live in Rathmines, an area of Dublin about two miles south of the city centre. It takes about twenty minutes to walk to Trinity every day, though I hope to improve this time as I evolve into a real life Dubliner and learn to walk as quickly as they do. I’ve already begun jaywalking on a regular basis, so I am well on my way. I should have enough experience points by the end of the month. Anyway, thinly veiled Pokémon references are usually my cue to begin wrapping things up (Shelby, return!), so here are some pictures of my flat. It’s probably the swankiest place I have ever lived and not as flat as I expected. We have automatic lights in the hallways and bathrooms that thrill me. Dublin, I choose you!
