- Unknowingly sign up for an island bike tour. Fumble for balance while you try to pedal over eight kilometers of narrow gravel roads. Achieve a good three meters. Cry—because you haven’t done this since you were seven and you’re just as terrified as you were then, because all the stylish French and German students on this trip are already racing down the road with grace and confidence, because you’re holding up your new friend from Ohio while an odd Irish gentleman watches over your little breakdown and because you’re literally the only 20-year-old on this entire fucking island who’s afraid of riding a bike.
- Forgo the tourist attractions for a few hours and hole-up in cafe that’s also a gift shop and also a house. Get pulled into a conversation with four locals about pubs, politics, and past friends. Listen to their stories about Marty who had a false leg and whose stiff dancing at a festival some twenty years ago unintentionally inspired a trendy new dance style amongst the entire town.
- Join a tour in which your driver stops to point out beautiful sea-cliff views to everyone’s right. Take a picture of the cow to your left instead.
- Have an uncomfortable conversation with a Danish girl in which you tell her that although America’s culture of political correctness can be a bit over the top sometimes, no, it’s not okay to say the N-word just because a black rapper did it first.
- Meet a French guy in a hostel common room. Drunkenly tell him Si, you can speak a little French.
- Make plans with your friends to go clubbing on a Sunday night in an old-fashioned city. Be the only ones in the club aside from the bored staff in the corner eating greasy takeaway pizza. Go home and giggle at your reflections in the bathroom mirror while munching on vending-machine Pringles. Consider it a great night.
- Try your hand at Irish Tinder. Observe that pretty much everyone is a Fionn, Conor, Rory, or Eoin and that it’s just slightly more common to find guys posing nude with strategically placed beer cans, books, and cats. Have an intense conversation with a ginger-haired Nathan—one of said nude boys—in which you debate the significance of sliced bread. Let a solid twelve hours pass before you delete your account.
- Discover that the Irish “greeting” that one guy from class—the one who’s a law student and a painter on the side—gave you to use on the barman is actually a rather inviting innuendo. Something about squeezing uh little erm ya know. Think, “You asshole, I listened to you talk about your art.”
- Confuse friendliness with flirting too many times. You’re not used to people notw anting something from you. What a concept: being nice just to be nice.
- Master the art of pushing buttons to exit buildings.
- Realize you’ll really miss your old monotone professor, the one who’s predictable slides and outlines have probably been the same for the last fifteen years. At least Michael was a man whose consistency you could count on.
- Muster the courage to take the bus. Pace around the stop a few times, check your phone to make sure which bus you’re taking. Check again. Recall the last time you topped up your Leap Card—wait, when was that? Shoot, is there enough time to run to Spar? Let the cringey scene play in your head: holding up the line only to find you have a balance of zero and the subsequent excruciating 20 seconds it’ll take to dig the exact change out of your pocket. Realise no one else is around to hail the bus before you, or really for you. Check that bus number again. Jingle the already-counted change in your right hand. Decide you really are in need of some exercise. A walk couldn’t hurt right?
- Get asked for directions. Allow yourself a moment of satisfaction before you admit that sorry ma’am, you have absolutely no idea where that Luas stop is.
- Never cough or sneeze into your elbow. Let that shit spew. That’s the way Europeans do it.
- Traverse the city streets right as the Christmas lights begin to twinkle on. Stroll past that Tex-Mex cafe with the best flat whites in town. Take in the buskers on Grafton Street with their guitars clasped tightly against their chests, bundled in thick scarves and worn fingerless gloves. Whether they sing to the passersby or to the cobblestones, they do so with a tenderness that touches the deepest catacombs of the soul.
- Return home and find yourself at a loss for words to the question everyone asks but never wants to know the answer to: how was your time abroad? Struggle with how to make them feel the island trips, the pub stories, the freshman false-starts. Decide to compile every awkward moment, every uh-oh, every speck of serendipity. Hope it does something. Realize it was never for them, but for you when you start to forget this time and how it moved you. Think about that ratty pair of sneakers you left in Dublin. Know they’ll likely be circulating around there for a while. Take satisfaction in the fact you’ll always have a foot on Irish soil. Feel your eyes swell. Crack a small smile. A nostalgic nod. Congratulations, you’ve just won at being a “foreigner.”
LSJ Major. English Minor. Grocery shopping enthusiast. Incessant giggler. It’s not dessert if there isn’t chocolate in it. Please sneeze into your elbow.
Comments are closed.