Friday, September 4, 2009

"Hello, I'm an American and I don't know anyone."

Never before would I have prized and despised the words that title this post more than I did my second day in Ireland. I must emphasize this, it is my SECOND DAY in Ireland.

So the day starts off rather bleak. Now, I don't mean the weather, if you begin to think that the weather here is "bleak" you will go mad. That is because it is, at some point in the day, dark, rainy, and cold. It was probably sunny five minutes before that but God can't let the Irish get too carried away in their celebration of the day.

I've come to find that the Irish people want to tell you an answer. If you have a question they will do one of three things. Either they will tell you the answer, find someone who can tell you the answer, or come up with some old story that might lead you to the answer. Often times the latter two fall in conjunction with each other and you get this Irish argument about who has the proper story and where whatever you are looking for actually is. But those stories usually are false, at least now, and so you will be running all over campus because someone faintly remembers there being something that you are looking for in another building. Sounds confusing? Walk about four miles trying to look for a building you've "walked right past over to the left" and confusion is the least of your worries.

Now luck is something I've come to believe in while here in Ireland. It is because at moments I just get lucky as hell. For instance, I was lucky when I was on the bus my first day that the reason I found UCD was due to two other people also going to the campus being on that bus. And on my second day a girl walked past me who was an international student talking of a meeting the internationals were having later that day. I had not heard of this (perhaps because I am a graduate) but decided to go anyways.

Going there I learned a lot about the campus and met some of the people from various clubs as well. But, of note in this story, I also learned of the bar. That's right ladies and gentlemen, there is a bar right on my campus. So, after the meeting and the over priced BBQ (Where we also learned that if you don't BBQ in the rain, you just wont BBQ in Ireland) I walked over to the bar.

This is where I learned three valuable things. One, Guinness is amazing in Ireland. The majority of the taste is not so different, Guinness is Guinness, but there is a freshness about it - a degree of flavor that is just missed when it is transported over seas. The same goes for a Smithwicks (I asked, it is pronounced Smitticks or Smithicks. Usually due to the accent that drops the 'h' in a 'th' sound.) But there I stood, at the bar, with Pitbull's "I know you want me" playing in the background and I decided I needed to meet some people. So, I slammed down my drink, grabbed a new one, and walked up to some people at a table as the music switched to "Killing in the Name of" by Rage... Yeah, the music is like that here.

I met about four people, all of which were excited to meet an American. To cut the length of this short, through them I met about four more people and we all decided to go to another bar. This was because the bar was going to have free drinks from 11 - midnight. Woohoo, my first European club. This was going to be amazing.

So, we get to the club and begin the drinking. I had quite my fair share - but that is hardly the point. You see, I could pick out the American women easily. They were the extremely drunk ones who were flinging themselves around the place. And it just so happen that as I was taking a drink one flung herself at a man who drunkenly flung himself at me. This sent my arm shooting up into my mouth and breaking off a part of my front tooth. That's right everyone, in my second night in Ireland I broke a tooth at a club. I gave the guy one look and he damn near ran away. He reluctantly stayed long enough to apologize before disappearing into the crowd.

So what did I do? Well, it didn't really hurt... And there wasn't a dentist open at midnight. So I decided I would continue to party and go to the dentist the next day. That should be easy enough, right?

1 comment:

  1. That's so weird. Dad chipped his tooth in another state a few months ago and was a little worried about finding a dentist there. It's truly different when you think about being in another country! Glad things worked out for you.

    ReplyDelete