Welcome to my first ever non-compulsory
blog (should you search my former blogger.com pages you will find an assortment
of 400 word Spanish entries regarding articles from El País). In truth, I’m no blogger—I’ve never even kept a journal. It was only after writing a five paragraph
email to my Nana about my first four days in Dublin that I decided blogging
might be a worthwhile pursuit. And so tonight, exactly one week since my
arrival in Ireland, seems to be the perfect moment to share with a broader
audience my first few stories from abroad.
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| My first home in Dublin |
To start more or less at the beginning, I’m
not cut out for hostels. I fully appreciate all their advantages for cheap travel,
but the simple truth is: no me gustan. In all fairness, I probably couldn’t have
hoped for better than Abbey Court Hostel in City Centre for my first days in
Dublin. It is in the heart of the city, basically clean, seemingly secure, and
staffed with very very kind young Dubliners (note my use of skeptical adverbs).
My problems were strictly personal: basically I was paranoid about leaving my
passport and computer alone in the room, and I am overly concerned with
hygiene. Oh well, c'est la vie.
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| Margaret changing the pots (again) |
Needless to say, I was happy to move into
my Rathmines apartment about a 1.5 miles south of City Centre (I need to
adjust to the metric system! And writing in British English, see “Centre”). The two-bedroom flat is a quirky little
place….you know that famous Irish rain? Well I expected that, what I didn’t count
on was foul weather inside the
apartment! On our first night in Rathmines my roommates and I came back from
the pub, surprised to find a flood of water by the balcony door. Just now I had
to pause my blogging to set up bowls under a fresh leak. While the suspicious
drainage problems of Rathmines Square may be cause for concern, all other
problems we have had can be summed up as foreign naiveté. Who knew power
outlets had to be switched on? We have
managed to put food on the table every night, but I never expected to be so
baffled by a pot of pasta (…still not sure how fusilli can be simultaneously
over and under cooked). Laundry has been something of an adventure as well. Our
fancy washer/dryer all-in-one machine isn’t actually capable of a proper “dry”
cycle in the conventional American sense. All laundry has to be hung out to
dry. In Ireland. Where you can pretty much count on at least one rainfall in a
72 hour time period. See the dilemma? My solution has been to avoid laundry
thus far, which will be fun when I run out of clothes sometime next week.
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| My first Guinness in Ireland at the Guinness Storehouse, also my first legal drink! Disregard the airplane/hostel grunge look... |
If you’ve read this far, I’ll try not to
lose you by recapping my whole orientation experience….lots of meetings and
information sessions, etc. But in all seriousness, it’s funny how some of the
most basic details of daily life change when you travel. This is the first time
I’ve had to text on a flip phone in many years! But more than all the oddities
and quirks I’ve encountered and will continue to experience, I am absolutely
infatuated with the city of Dublin. Eras just blend together and “old” and “new”
coexist in a way that only makes sense east of the Atlantic.
And this blog post is already too long to accommodate a discussion of Trinity
College. I’ll save that topic for when “uni” actually starts (I’ve already
been teased for referring to "college" as “school”…after all, only little kids
go to school!)
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| The Tall Ships take the River Liffey |
Stay tuned next time for more dorky tourist
revelations, and themes such as “bitches love cider.”
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| The Bleeding Horse is the spot man |
With Love,
Lauren
