Churros and Chocolate

Remember nap time? For most of us this idea is a thing of the past, a reality only in vague memories of kindergarten classrooms, replete with cardboard pinups of the alphabet and hand turkeys on the walls. However, in Spain, nap time, formally titled siesta, is part of daily life, as normal as the double cheek kiss hello and the pig legs hanging over the bar at restaurants.

Three weeks ago I was lucky enough to visit Sevilla in the south of Spain, only a Ryanair skip and a Renfe high speed train jump, from Dublin, Ireland. I was immediately assaulted with a completely foreign culture, complete with 7 Euro tapas meals, bottles of wine for 1.6 Euros, and 2 Euro bus trips to visit ancient ruins (Italica). After nearly fourth months of living abroad you'd guess that I would have become accustomed to culture shock, but Galway, with it's pastoral hills and small-town feel, is easy to make into your home.

Sevilla was quite possibly the most romantic place I've ever been. When you're in love, you typically see the world through idealized glasses. An oil stain becomes a rainbow of colors, a cracked asphalt sidewalk is merely a nesting ground for the dandelions poking through. However, Sevilla provided the glasses without the oxytocin. The air actually does smell like orange blossoms, due to Orange trees dotting each sidewalk, and the Royal Gardens actually do ring out with the music of fountains and children's laughter. Sevilla even has it's very own castle, which, when it's lit up at night, looks like every fairy tale I've ever imagined.

In only a couple months I had allowed myself to become a little smug. I had felt like a pro at navigating Galway's back roads, at locating the nearest grocery store, at bringing my own shopping bags so I wouldn't need to pay when I arrived. Travelling to Spain thrust me into a whole new world, a place where I was once again a stranger. Still, whether due to my past experience of adjusting to culture shock, or simply the welcoming environment of Sevilla itself, it was a much softer landing this time.

Even wandering around the Madrid train station I found myself sucking up the details. The jungle of plant growth that grew wild in the middle of the downstairs floor. The sign that said "No Turtles" that stemmed from people leaving unwanted pets in the giant green space. The ten foot tall stone baby's head that greeted you as you walked out of the station.

I don't know about you, but I often find myself wouldn't what would have been. I typically regret the things I've done more than the things I haven't simply because making a choice means closing a door. As we get older and find more and more options closed off to us, it can be a hard fact to face that we no longer have the option of being a famous ballerina, an astronaut, an Olympian athlete. Going to Sevilla was like having five days to walk around in my "what ifs." What if I had chosen a country other than Ireland? What if I had picked a place that spoke a different language, where the culture was not just the flip side of the page but a whole different book? Leaving Sevilla, I was plagued with a gnat storm of doubts, tiny nagging alternate forks that whizzed through my mind.

When I stepped off the plane into Dublin Airport the air did not smell like orange blossoms. There was no chance of me going go to see a Flamenco performance in a hidden club through a blank red door and no possibility of getting a meal for less than ten euros that wasn't McDonalds. However, I felt something inside of me soften when I heard the first lilt of Irish accents, and a knot in my shoulders that I hadn't known was there loosened at the sight of BusEireann. Coming back to Ireland felt like coming home, and that was enough.

Knowing Where to Look

There are some social situations I have never been able to master. For example, when you're walking down a long stretch of road and you see someone approaching you from far away. You don't want to meet their eyes because they're still a good five minutes away from you and it would be strange to spend the rest of the time walking towards each other staring into each others eye's. However, it's most natural to look in front of you when walking, and also a good preventative measure to keep from bumping into things. Therefore, I usually compromise by awkwardly darting my eyes around to the front and then coming back to an imaginary fascinating view to my right (for some reason I always pick the right).


These are some of the uncomfortable situations you don't have to worry about when you're surrounded by good friends instead of strangers. Two of my friends visited from the States this last week. It's was strange at first to have my two worlds of home and study abroad collide, a bit like traveling to the Amazon rainforest and seeing a Pizza Hut stationed in the center. However, it was amazing to be able to show them around Galway as well as Ireland and get to experience things through a new set of eyes. There's a kind of excitement, a need to take advantage of every moment, to see every site, that I was able to piggyback upon while my friends were here. We watched the St. Patrick's Day parade and biked around the Aran Islands, and whether it was the beautiful sunny weather, the presence of my friends, or the feel of walking without shoes oh the beach; I had some of my happiest moments in Ireland during this past week.

They say it takes twenty days to form a new habit. This doesn't apply to forming substance abuse addictions or to falling in love. Instead it's about the little things: Knowing which way to look when crossing the street; Automatically not leaving a tip when you're in an Irish restaurant; Looking for the switch that turns on the oven. These tiny details seep into you, diffusing slowly into your bloodstream, sinking into your subconscious. Like the tiny scratches you'll sometimes receive when walking through the woods, you don't remember when or how you picked them up but they've somehow become a part of you.

I tend to lose things a lot. Just yesterday we walked into town and went to the weekend Farmer's Market. It's on a side street to the right of Shop Street, a small cobblestone outcropping dotted with stalls sellin everything from medallions to gourmet olives. I purchased this amazingly fancy cheese and fresh rasberries, a delicacy in a country where the potatoe passes for all the fruits and vegetables you will ever need. However, somewhere between stopping to soak in the sun in Eyre Square, and looking through the mall for comfortable walking shoes, I set the bag down and lost it.

Sometimes being abroad is a little like losing something. Only instead of a bag of berries and gourmet cheese, it's a piece of your identity. You start to forget little things about yourself like whether or not you say CARmel or CARAmel or which pizza toppings really are the best or if you snore. Luckily, close friends are like having a safe box for all those personal details. They keep them safe so that even when you forget, you know where you can find the pieces of yourself.

Chrysalis

Have you ever noticed that when a group of people try to enter or exit out of double doors, there is usually a bottle neck effect? This occurs whenever classes let out at NUI. Students pour out of one of the five or so auditoriums in the Arts Concourse building and immediately make their way for the exit, like passengers jumping from a sinking ship. However, every one seems to have a mild case of the Lemming-effect, prone to following the person in front of them. Maybe this was bred into us as a survival technique from days long gone; following the more skilled guide through the dangerous night around you. Still, now that we have killed off most of the animals that could hunt us to extinction, it doesn't seem to be that effective of a habit. Even with two doors available, each student will use the door that's been pushed open by the person in front of them. Sometimes the single file line with stretch back ten, twenty meters in the corridor, a winding human snake of complacency.

So what is it that makes people so unwilling to forge their own way? Does it just not occur to them to try an alternative route, or is there something deeper that makes them hesitate?
Classes at NUI do not function the same way they do at Cornell. Instead of having class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the same lecture hall at the same time, the schedule spins and winds like an acrobat on Ecstasy. Sometimes my Comparative Public Policy class will meet in Kirwan Theater, sometimes in Oh'Eocha. At times it's at 3 in the afternoon and then the next day it will switch to 4. In keeping with this nontraditional system, each class runs for a different period of time, several starting as late as three weeks after the semester has begun. Most classes run for a mere two months total, and instead of continuous assessment, each class has either a final exam or a 3,000 word paper.

Lucky me, this means that I have six 3,000 word papers to finish by the end of the month. After the end of May, I'm one final exam away from being done for the semester. However, this knowledge hasn't been helping me to start my papers. What is it that helps us paralyzed, that makes the beginning so much more difficult to face up to? There's a kind of solace in inaction, a refuge in the knowledge that even if you're not accomplishing anything, at least you're also not messing anything up. This kind of thinking works pretty well until it comes up against the idea of deadlines. Still, you've already gotten yourself into a bad habit, and so, instead of a weekend spent putting your nose to the grindstone and getting assignments out of the way, you find yourself justifying just one more hour watching Scrubs (because really, that JD holds all the life wisdom you ever need.)

Every day I walk the forty minute trek back from school. It's long, and tedious, and I now know exactly which landmarks are halfway (the hospital) , two thirds (Tesco), ten minutes to go (McDonalds). Five minutes away from my house there is a building slowly going up. In the two months that I've been here, I've watched the construction transition from a muddy pit in the ground, to a twenty foot high stone wall (stemming from a muddy pit in the ground). They must work on it for hours each day, but since I spend a mere couple seconds passing it, the site seems to spring up from the ground. It's always fascinating to me how little pieces can add up after a while. My life in Ireland often seems to be like that, a favorite coffee shop, a right turn on the way to school, knowing about the computer lab on the bottom floor the Arts Concourse...and suddenly you have a routine, and you're already halfway there.

Have you ever heard the story about the man who rebuilds his ship? He starts after a bad storm destroys half his hull one day. Years go by and he replaces board after board, strengthening a part there, a sail there. Finally there comes the day when the whole shop is composed of new pieces. The question is, when, if ever, did that ship stop being the vessel he initially had?

Sometimes, I feel that Ireland is merely stripping me down the most elemental pieces. Some things remain the same; my procrastination on papers for example. Other times, I feel like the abroad experience is changing me, seeping into my bloodstream to subtly alter each of the cells it comes in contact with, and it scares me, to look in the mirror in the morning and not know if the same person will be staring at me that night.

Yesterday, when I was leaving the Arts Concourse building, I got stuck in the same old herd of students trying to leave. I was shuffling along, content with my place in the crowd...until suddenly I wasn't. I walked forward, pushing my way through the throng, and exited through the other door. It's not much, but it's a start.

The Red Light District

We arrived at 9pm on a Thursday night. By this point we had been travelling for over 36 hours. During that time period we had slept only in 1-2 hour increments, and of those, only stolen the kind of sleep from which days spent travelling by train and bus into lands where you do not speak the language will get you.

The Red Light District is neon and flashing lights. It's the spiritual home of all individuals who have ever had a case of the munchies, fast food joints perched on every corner like Starbucks in NYC. The streets are dark and wet, littered with wrappers from artery-clogging delicacies. Sex shops, their front windows rife with bullwhips, handcuffs, and sporting signs like, "the most vibrating store in Amsterdam," stand proudly next to Indonesian restaurants.

The air is continually tainted with the smell of marajuana, enough to give you a contact high when you decide to take a stroll. Coffeeshops (these do NOT sell coffee) dot each street like splatter paint, oozing lazy coils of smoke from their beckoning doors. The partons sit inside the light-dimmed cafes, eyes opened to half slits, blood shot and drowsy. They talk about the meaning of life and the universe and existentialism and then always loops back around to where you can get the best weed.

I never knew what a peep show truly was until I set foot in the Red Light District. In my mind I tried to discern meaning from denotation...figuring that it was much like the way we used mannequins in the States to lure people into our stores. Only, instead of mannequins they were real women, and instead of wearing clothes, they were mostly nude. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk inside the head of the person in charge of making one of those online sex sites? The ones that pop up on the screen at the worst of times with blinking bold faced letters, advertising every fetish imaginable, and some you never knew existed? That was what being on the streets felt like.

Each street catered to a different fetish. One of the streets sported heavy set women, poised in front of their windows, fleshy stomachs bared, heavy breasts hanging low on their chests. Another street catered to the more S&M style patron, women decked out in leather straps and spiked collars, whips in hand, black boots riding high on their thighs.

They stood garbed in skimpy bikinis and lingerie, striking poses as the tourists passed by. Most wouldn't meet your eyes, but some were brazen, attempting to single out clients by tapping on the glass partition. Behind them you could see into a tiny room, just big enough to fit a single cot. If the patron was interested, he would enter their room, either by the front door or around the back. The deal would be struck, the curtains closed, and anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour later he'd be back out on the street. Strangely, or not so strangely enough, there were no streets that I saw which catered to a female patron. Then again, these would probably have to entail fancy hotel rooms with a thousand thread count sheets where the guy takes you out for dinner and a movie before you make sweet yet tender love and then cuddle.

I always thought I believed in the legalization of prostitution. I thought it was something akin to providing kids with sexual education that covered more than abstinence; it was going to happen anyway so we might as well make sure it was as safe as possible. I believe that a woman can make the choice to be a stripper and that it isn't anything to be ashamed of. However, after seeing these women working the peep shows I'm just not sure where I stand anymore. They just looked like they wanted to be anywhere but there.

The Safe Road

This week, while sipping my pot of Hermes tea in Java's (all the tea is named after Greek Gods and Goddesses), I heard Galway described as the graveyard of ambition, a blackhole for creativity, andthe place where upon entrance, all writers immediately become devoid of inspiration. Needless to say, this was not encouraging.


Since arriving in Galway, I've found it difficult to sit down and write. This is not due to a lack of free time. If anything, the abundance of time I've spent watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother, reading Jodi Picoult novels, and making grilled cheese sandwiches is staggering...and a little embarrassing. Instead it's been due to a lack of heart wrenching angst, mind-bending stress, or panicky euphoria. Ireland has been a level plane of steady "fineness," a mediocre purgatory of "well that was nice."


Often, when approaching relationships, we are unconvinced of their validity if there are not fireworks or butterflies present. We're so conditioned to the roller coaster feeling of oxytocin and adrenaline induced alarm that when it's not present, we feel that something must be wrong. It's much the same for me and creativity. I draw my inspiration from the high highs and low lows that appear whilst I'm sinking or flying on emotional shoots and ladders. I'm suddenly at a loss when instead of pitfalls and wings, I'm given smooth sailing.

My days here blend together. I have so much free time that it's maddening and instead of being productive, I find myself sliding into slow-born tedium, stretching out a task that under pressure would take ten minutes to two days. However, rather than making me feel content and at ease, this slow pace has begun to make me anxious...small things seem a tiresome burden.

Tomorrow I plan to walk out to the cliff overhanging the beach. Regardless of the weather I will bring pens and my notebook and plug in my headphones. I kind of hope it will rain.

I went to Galway because it seemed like a safe bet...a nice change (emphasis on nice). It was a gentle way of expanding my view of the world. I spoke the language, had visited the country before, would be surrounded by other friends exploring Europe. I was a mere five hour plane ride from my family and would face no situational hardships besides the typical obstacles brought on by studying abroad. However, as I talk to my friends dispersed around the world, going on adventures where things can kill them in the jungle or tackling the social intricacies of navigating a society in which you are clearly an outsider and at times unwelcome...I wish I had been more brave.

People ask how Ireland is and I tell them the truth. I tell them it's beautiful, that it's great and that I feel so lucky to be here. However, sometimes I can't help but wish I was falling down a little bit more...because it'd be nice to have a reminder about how to pick myself up.

Addendum: Perhaps I have been overly hasty looking for inspiration inside myself and in the environment around me. I had forgotten that all too often my best inspiration comes from the other people in my life. Thanks to those...

The Green Tea Here Is Brown

In the US, we include phrases like, “Dancing Through Life,” as fanciful metaphors within our bestselling Broadway plays featuring green women with conformity issues. In Ireland, dancing through life refers quite literally to the activities one participates in from venues as varied as a coffee shop on Shop Street to the College Bar or to the clubs next to my favorite coffee shop, Java’s, and from events ranging from birthday parties to Ceili (Kay-Lee) Irish dance sessions to traditional music nights. For some reason, smiling across a crowded room becomes a lot easier when the person is currently breaking out a Lord of the Dance move or doing “The Shopping Cart” (If you’ve never done this dance move please stop reading right now and try it out.)

In the last week, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to experience each one of these venues, surrounded by a comforting buffer zone of my group of friends, which makes the experience of flailing about in public much more manageable to the point where sometimes, it actually seems like a good idea. My first dance experience in Ireland was an informal session. After scouting high and low, my friends and I have finally located a cafe down the street from the local biker bar that we have decided to claim as “our place.” It’s reassuring to have a coffee shop that recognizes your face when you walk in. It’s a lot like the bar from Cheers. One day we even aspire to becoming so regular that when we walk in they ask, “the usual?” The upstairs of this quirky cafe is resplendent in reds of differing shades, lopsided couches positioned on the scuffed wooden floor and a baby grand piano nestled in the corner. It was there, at three in the morning, that I had my first dance in Ireland, whirling myself about like a solitary waltzer while my friend played a song by the Frames (the Irish band that did the music for Once.)

After a solid month of avoiding the dance clubs, last Saturday we set aside our pride and our flats, and, armed with with three inch heels and packets of travel tissues (all of us were amidst the most fun part of a cold), set out for Cuba (this is undoubtedly my cheapest travelling experience). In the streets, hired guys and girls mark passersby with UV stamps which allow you free access on weekdays and half price on weekends. Because I'm smart and eloquent I shouted, "Hey, I'd totally do that for money," when we spotted them on the street. The second floor of the club is all black lights and alternative music. I made sure to get a special glow in the dark eyebrow ring for the occasion. There was a lot of jumping up and down, and for one of my friends, even some being carried through the air. I still maintain that that should be implemented as the new mode of transportation.

The final night of dancing was a step into the traditional. In Ceili/Social dances, people dance in groups of 2-8 people. There’s something compelling about a national identity that prevails here in Ireland that baseball and hamburgers just don’t quite make up for back in the States. Ceili Dance. <--That's a video of the bar. It’s like stepping into a giant family reunion, only with less drama and more drinking. It's hard not to feel like an outsider at times when a group of people all start doing the same dance moves (I always scoffed when this happened in the movies). However, there's something to be said about an outsider perspective, the foreigners' version of anti-drunk goggles perhaps. Already the foreign has started to become familiar, and it's a little go going from color to black and white. I want to believe that appreciation isn't negatively correlated with comfort level...but it would explain all though divorces wouldn't it?

Often I feel as if I need something to commemorate this experience. There's the constant pressure that accompanies events like New Year's Eve and Spring Break to make study abroad feel like the time of your life. It's like continually having the need to make every moment one where (if you had your own theme music...and I SO wish i did) the song from Rocky would be playing or Good Riddance would start at the end of each night.

I've been stuck inside due to my awesome immune system for the past few days. I'm suffering a little bit of cabin fever. Hopefully though, when I'm well enough to leave my house, I'll start making those scrapbook style memories.

If that doesn't work I could always just get a tattoo.

Straddling Two Worlds

The honeymoon is over. I've lost my rose colored glasses somewhere by the wayside of the never ending Irish roads, and now they lay abandoned and covered with dew amid the gravel and banana peel coloured grass. As a Human Development major, and after having worked with youth groups in the past, I technically should have been more prepared for this part of my trip. Whenever a group of people enter a new group or situation they begin going through a cycle of adjustment. The first level is forming, where everyone is still trying to find their space and figure out where they stand in this new environment. The next level is storming, when people tend to become dissatisfied with the group and mild tensions arise as people reevaluate whether this is really where and who they want to be. Eventually norming kicks in where a semblance of peace and amicable living is achieved within the group. It all ends with (hopefully) performing. This last stage is akin to the kid who has to be carried kicking and screaming to his first day of summer camp and then sulks away most of his summer. However, something happens where everything falls into place that last week and when his parents come to pick him up, he's loathe to leave, standing arm and arm with the summer camp friends he's made.

Currently I'm in the storming phase. The idiosyncrasies of Ireland that up until now I've found so endearing are starting to wear on me. Why does is make a laser sound when I cross the street? Is everything truly "grand" and do I really deserve a million thanks? Are Wednesday and Thursday really the best nights to go out to the pubs (you turn into your own parent here even more than when you went to college, because after a month of nonstop partying and slacking off you remember, at the end of this I still will have 6 3,000 word essays to write)? I eagerly await the emails and messages from friends back home, devouring stories of life back in Ithaca and reading the last word with a disappointment to rival the child who just accidentally licked her favorite ice cream cone too hard and is now staring at a melting blob of Mint Chocolate Chip slowly gathering dust while it puddles on the sidewalk.

However, as Potluck, the foreign film we went to see on Wednesday, reminds me, the worst times on your trip end up being the stories you love to tell the most. Looking back, those of the times when you felt the most strongly, even if it was bad. Those are the memories you choose when trying to convey the experience, small life snapshots that attempt to sum up the entire 5 month experience. I've started to adopt that attitude when taking pictures. On a trip to Connemara recently, where we visited the Kylemore Abbey and the Frankletter Education Centre, I was tempted to take millions of pictures of the landscape, mountains rising up like new buds from desolate fields, crags jostling with the sky for space. However, I tried to keep in mind the monotony that pictures of the landscape can turn into at times, I mean how many rolling hills can you really appreciate? I ended up focusing in on the details, little pieces of the journey that would help add up to the total experience, the opulence of the dining room in the Abbey, it's mahogany banister that outlines a twisting staircase, the ivy curling down the corners of a white marble fireplace, and most importantly, the people who share the experience with me.



Many of my friends who come back from abroad say that the most frustrating thing is when people say, "Oh you went to [put in your country here] huh? How was that?" I never quite understood before, but I'm beginning to. Studying abroad isn't like going on a vacation or telling someone how your day was or deciding what you're having for dinner. It's the total of 5 months, give or take, of days spent hungry or tired or lonely or awestruck, a semester of reshaping and testing the personal identity you've built up for yourself. How do you describe a period of time where you stepped into another culture with an adjective? Maybe I'll think about it until that moment, most likely I'll just go back to the old faithful standby of abroad descriptors and say something like, "Oh man it was totally amazing."

For the last couple weeks I've been giving myself some slack. You're just getting started, I'd comfort myself. Or there's plenty of time to accomplish everything you want to do during study abroad. However, now we're a month in, the experience is 1/5th finished and we're not playing house anymore. The life that's slowly been creeping in is steadily solidifying around you until one morning you wake up and you've built your life here, with all it's mundane traditions, Saturday morning quirks, favorite eating establishments, and new foreign identity. I guess this is the time to take stock of how the experience is going, a personal checkpoint to make sure you're on the right track.

I'm not sure when the moment is that I'm going to start fulling identifying with my life here. I both look forward to and dread when that moment will arrive. It's hard to move on when so much of me is invested in my life back home. Sometimes I think it's necessary though to fully appreciate my time here. Other times I feel like I'm quoting the opening speech to every study abroad meeting they made us attend (man those guys get inside your head.)

No regrets right? Well I'm working on it.