Ireland Week One.

With so much going on, I can barely sit down to write about my adventures in the Republic of Ireland, so I apologize for that, blogsters.  Everything that has happened in the past 7 days has been a blur, as I have had orientation, tours, shopping in Limerick, and of course, socializing at the local pubs and night clubs.  I haven’t even unpacked, and my space bags are strewn across my floor like the Irish Aran Islands.

To fill you in with my basic living arrangements, I live in Kilmurry 54.  My address is:

Lindsay Nystrom

House 54 Room 6

Kilmurry Village

Castletroy

Limerick, Ireland

I live with an Irish girl, Fiona, and 4 Irish lads, Gavin, Paul, Dean and Eanna.  We live in a flat with 2 floors, 2 bathrooms, a living room/kitchen and 6 separate rooms.  All of the flats are connected to each other in a village style and our closest neighbors in 53 are 6 guys, two guys from Wisconsin, Jeremiah and Tyler, and 4 Irish lads.  So basically I’ve been living in an Irish frat house for the past week.  Some of the guys in my house are on sports teams, soccer and hurling, so all of their lads come over to our place as well, so at any given time there are about 10 Irish boys in my kitchen.

My flat in Kilmurry Village

Now girls and parents alike, don’t get your undies in a bundle, as they all have been extremely nice to me and probably more considerate than if I lived with 4 American guys.  They actually shower and do dishes and clean up after themselves at least somewhat.  I’ve been in college houses in the States that have been much much worse.  Although I don’t quite understand why it is necessary to smash empty beer bottles in our kitchen floor.  It is the most amusing thing to them.  At least it was cleaned up by the time I rolled out of bed this morning.

My backyard has horses. Does your backyard have horses?

So what do you want to know? I have tons of experiences and friends already but there is too much to cover unless I want to be here for 3 hours writing.  I’ll tell you basically what has happened in the past week and the differences I’ve noticed between the States and Ireland.

Did you know???

• Most Irish people have no idea where Minnesota or Nebraska are in the States.  Most of them ask if New York is close by because they have a general idea of where that is, along with L.A. and Canada.  I guess I just assumed that everyone takes geography of the world and the various states are included in that process.  It’s kind of humbling to be in a place in which the citizens have no clue where you live, when you originally thought most people would have at least a general idea of the location of most states.
• I’ve never been in a room where there’s been more than 2 cultures present, and suddenly I’m eating lunch with an Australian, a German and an Italian.  I’ve had to considerably slow my speech down because nobody can understand what I’m saying, and sometimes it’s hard to joke when other cultures don’t know American slang.  As it is, the Irish housemates I have could be talking about me in the kitchen when I’m sitting right there and if I’m not concentrating, I can easily miss the whole conversation.
• At first I admit that I saw each person as a walking version of his or her country, and now that I’m better friends with some of the students I can see the person underneath the accent.  It’s not that I was stereotyping them; rather, I had no previous experience with a student from, say, Germany, and I had nothing to base my interactions on except her accent and the small amount of talking we could achieve through many hand gestures and multiple descriptions.  Now, my German friend Cata promises to teach me some German if I teach her some English so we can communicate easier.
• The Irish supermarkets have HUGE aisles just for a zillion kinds of yogurt and yogurt drinkables.  They probably need all the probiotics they can get after eating so many  greasy chips (fries).  (Chips in Ireland are called crisps.)
• Even though it rains every other day, it keeps the grass quite green all winter long.  I celebrated when I arrived and it was 50 degrees and green vegetation was everywhere in JANUARY.
• There are “traveling people” in Ireland, according to my housemates.  They are basically rednecks with mobile trailers who apparently park in awkward places and can be dangerous folk.  Good to know….??
• When the Irish people ask me what my stereotype of Irish people are, I of course explain that we often think Irishmen are drunk 24-7.  They deny this, claiming that it’s just a fable.  For denying this they surely made a lot of jokes in orientation about drinking, along with claiming that most campus clubs get together and drink at the pubs as their social activity of choice.  In fact, one of the members of the international clubs had a slide show in which the last slide was a picture of him “right now” and “later tonight,” which consisted of him puking into a bucket.  I’m not quite sure if the Irish are poking fun at themselves or if this is just the typical world-wide college lifestyle.
• I’m slowly learning Irish slang, as “craic”=fun, dear=expensive, bum bag= fanny pack, lads=can be generalized as guys is for both genders in the States, dodgy/seedy=sketchy, etc.
• The Irish drive incredibly fast, especially around the roundabouts, and everytime the car jerks to turn, I see my life flash before my eyes as I assume the other vehicles will t-bone us when we turn right.  Then I remember that the other cars are supposed to driving on the left side of the street.  Duh.  I also had a bad experience with a taxi driver in which I couldn’t understand his thick accent over the phone, so he was shouting expletives at me and my friends as we got in the car.  He even radioed to his other taxi drivers “not to pick up anymore foreigners” as we were sitting right next to him.  Cool.

As for specific personal adventures I’ve had, that may have to wait until next time.  I’ll leave you with one story:

The other night I ended up at Icon, one of the night clubs in downtown Limerick.  First of all, this dance club was all I imagined Euro dance clubs to be and more, minus the music, which was horrible.  I didn’t know that every pub and dance club had the same exact soundtrack of the top 10 American singles of the past 6 months, plus the odd addition of songs from Grease, which doesn’t make sense at all.  If I hear “I Gotta Feeling,” “Tik Tok,” or “Grease Lightening” one more time I swear I’m going to bring in my ipod and DJ the crap out of the Irish DJs.  Last night was even worse at Molly’s, when the last few songs consisted mostly of Green Day singles from the 90s and other anthems that are played at middle school dance functions when all the kids just want to jump around and shout lyrics.  If they are going to play throwbacks at least play Ace of Base to stay true to their European roots.

Some new friends, Morgan is my galpal from Australia and Jeremiah (top) is from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Anyways, back to Icon night club.  All the swirly lights and multiple floors were intense, along with the great lack of the typical American male choice dance move “the grab the girl from behind and make general gyrations in her direction.”  So I end up going to the bathroom, where I decided to make small talk with the intoxicated Irish girls in line with me.  Bad choice.  So the Lady Gaga-esque beaded shoulder decorations and elevated shoulders are the “hip” thing (Jeremiah, you sly dog, leaving me no choice but to use the word hip against my will), which I am extremely jealous of and am going to out to find a sparkley blue Gaga beaded top as soon as possible.  So I compliment this girl with especially decorated shoulders, and she immediately whips her dramatic makeup smeared face over to me and laughs.  All I said was, “I like your beaded shoulder pads,” and she freaks out.  She said, ” SHOULDER PADS?!! THESE AREN’T SHOULDER PADS!!!” in a high pitch vulture voice.  I calmly said, “Well, what else do you call them then?” and she goes “THEY JUST AREN’T! IT’S JUST PART OF THE SHIRT OK?!” Geez, I was just giving her a compliment, but when I guess when I gave her the choice whether to take it or leave it, she definitely left it. Weirdo.

Also, on a side note, I met some of the UL Ninjas (The ultimate frisbee team on campus) and the guys on it are just as goofy as the ones at home.  Some things don’t ever change.  I can’t wait to go to practice tomorrow.

Well, I smell something similar to pancakes downstairs and loud Irish accents booming, so I think it’s that time yet again for socializing.  Ciao for now.

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