It's my first day in my new house on Observatory Court and my third day in the great city of Dublin. My initial feelings of this place have been lukewarm, which is about several degrees higher than the actual feel of this place (about 64 degrees). I feel like I'm not even here yet, mostly because I've only been with my parents, haven't met any other study-abroad students, and have yet to get drunk (what??). So yeah, it's like I'm in Dublin Limbo - can I elide that into Dublimbo? Either way it's not a great place, like Annie I'm holding out for tomorrow in the hope that other study abroad students, including Greg, arrive and come hang out. For now, I'm alone in this house that has limited light bulbs (luckily there's one in the bedroom and the bathroom) with a South Korean student who isn't going to our college and isn't really much of a talker. Oh and I lost my wallet. Again.
This time it was in a taxi, which was very strange because I remember looking at dad as he paid the cab driver and thinking about asking him to get a receipt, but then I figured that I hadn't left anything behind so why bother. While I am still in shock at the loss of the wallet, it hasn't been found and I must assume it to be gone. Which sucks, having no credit, bank card or ID in a foreign city is not ideal, and if my parents weren't here I'd be really screwed. Luckily, they were and my mom gave me enough money to last until I get new cards shipped. Unluckily, they are here and my dad gave me a yelling of a lifetime and now is in one of his legendary sulking moods in which the sun implodes on itself until he emerges from his state of continual bitterness. I don't want to gloom this wonderful, usually cheery, blog up, but to sum up my current status: I'm alone with a South Korean in a dark house in the south of Dublin with no wallet, no contact from my dad, no numbers in my cell phone except that of my aforementioned dad's, no booze in my blood, and suffering from a lingering cough. And my ankle is not responding well to several days' worth of walking. Yeah
I think I'll make a final post about Beijing sometime, as i began work on a newspaper article about that which the Voice never got back to me about. So I'll edit that and put it up here, and then transition to making this blog about Dublin. If anyone has any ideas for a new title for the blog, preferably one as priceless as Tanked in Tiananmen, let me know. I also want a picture that captures the transition from Beijing to Dublin. And what a transition it is! Before I even arrived, I had remarked upon leaving a country where I looked like the inhabitants but couldn't speak the language for a country where I didn't look a thing like the inhabitants but could speak the language. I hadn't really understood all the subtleties involved with that type of change though. For one thing, my friends and I really walked around Beijing like we owned it. We dressed well, could afford anything we wanted and our conversations in English were either feared or respected but were nonetheless private. And we were better looking too. Well let's just say I don't walk around Dublin with that kind of cockiness and I still haven't gotten a feel for how the locals perceive me.
Dublin is very international. I think Americans tend not to give Western Europe enough credit for diversity - after all, they didn't incorporate African slaves into their society. While I like to think of all non-American countries as homogenous racial masses, the truth is that cities everywhere now are full of immigrants. Even in Beijing, the center of the ultra-prolific Han people, there were caucasians, Koreans, Russians and Kazakhs every so often. Dublin takes this to another level with a large amount of immigrants from India, Eastern Europe, China, South Korea, Eastern Africa, Jamaica, Italians and seemingly an influx of French and German tourists. Most servants within the restaurants that we've visited are not native English speakers, and I've already spoken Mandarin with 2 people. The streets are generally active but not crowded, a very welcome change from the peoplepalooza that was every public setting in Beijing. Orientation begins on the 4th, my roommates for some reason still haven't arrived on the 2nd, and I'm holding out for better times with the wallet and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment