This nice Saturday morning marks my one week anniversary in the fair city of Dublin. And by fair, I mean an expensive, rainy, alcoholic bog. Like any first week in a new foreign city, life has been eventful, hectic and full of culture shock. To recap: I left my glasses at home, my wallet in a taxi, spent a ton of money on drinks, had some great Guinness, toured the James Joyce home, bonded with my new housemates and even went to a new school. And boy the Guinness is good....soo smooth. So far I like my house, even though the shower is tiny and dirty, there is no room to put anything in the bathrooms, the lighting is limited, the stovetop starter doesn't work, and the upstairs shower has gigantic leaks down to my floor and we are suffering from extreme water damage. Meanwhile, down the court, the girls have this great house that costs the same as ours but came from an Ikea catalog. But I'm not bitter.
Dublin is a great walking city, which is important because there is no subway. We're taking the buses everywhere and are getting comfortable with the routes. It's about a 30-35 minute walk from our house to the city centre but less than 10 on the buses, which conveniently stop right by our house. The neighborhoods are diverse and interesting and the layout of this city in many ways reminds me of Boston. One crucial difference is that here, the same stretch of road will contain many different street names. Basically the street changes names every other block. In many ways this makes sense, because if you tell a cab driver Leinster street, they'll know exactly what block to take you on, whereas if you tell a cab driver in Boston to go to Commonwealth Avenue, he could take you to a myriad of spots along a 10 mile route. However it is very confusing for someone used to the American system, especially if you're trying to walk home and looking for Rathmines road and not realizing that Lower Camden street is Rathmines road. But again I'm not bitter.
Our place is south of the city, and our school is even further south. There is a bus that goes straight to school, but that stop is a full mile from our house. Making several of those walks has progressively deteriorated the health of my left foot, which bothered me so much last night I had to stay in (my liver, wallet and brain were also contributing factors). In the future we might take a bus from outside our house into the city, and then take another bus from there into the college, but that is a very indirect route that may take more time. I'll have to see. The UCD campus is big, green and fairly widespread, with very poor and expensive dining. One cafeteria we found charges 25 cents for a tiny packet of "tomato sauce" which you may know better as ketchup. The Irish are not famous for the cuisine, and it shows, although so far I've had some good meals of Bangers and Mash (sausages and potatoes) and Fish and Chips.
My housemates consist of Matt (Georgetown '10), Chad (Cornell '10), my roommate Jason (Cornell '09) and Sang Hyup (sic) who's 24, from South Korea, began learning English 10 months ago, has served in the army and is starting his first year at Dublin Institute of Technology. That might be the last we hear from him. Matt, Chad, Jason and I all love drinking and having a good time, which I think is a general pre-requisite for anyone visiting Dublin, so we're getting along well. Down the court, the 6 girls include 2 hoyas, Diane Healy and Casey Potter, a girl from San Francisco whose name Thuy Nguyen is just too similar to another friend of mine, and 3 girls from Bentley who love to hang out with themselves. Another house nearby contains 9 Georgetown men and one unfortunate Cornell boy. My friend Greg from Notre Dame lives on UCD campus and has seemingly limitless Fighting Irish friends also with him on campus, as Notre Dame's presence in this city is so big that they actually have their own centre. Let's see if they can win a football game though.
My biggest concerns now are chiefly financial. After freespending my way through Beijing, Dublin is a completely different beast, simply because the Euro is so depressingly strong. Although I do count my blessings that I'm not in London (sorry Crystal!), these prices are influencing every one of my decisions. If I were to drink like I did in Beijing, my average night out would cost over 30 Euros, nearly $45, and since so far we've gone out every night, that just can't continue. I haven't seen a lunch less than 5 Euros, and as a result us Americans will spend a lot of time eating and drinking at home. I hope to become a good cook here and also master the pregame. I'm also seriously considering getting a job here, possibly at a Chinese takeout restaurant so I can continue working on my Chinese, but I'm really concerned over how much time I'll have. Schoolwork may become difficult, and I will be playing Frisbee here, so we'll have to see how that works. Keep checking the blog, the next few days will include a wild night of partying tonight, NFL football tomorrow, and classes on Monday.
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