From my first journal entry in Ireland:

“I could have talked about going to Ireland, dreamed about it, even planned it and backed out. But I didn’t just think about it or talk about it. I’m there (here), right now, and it’s scary and unbelievable and exhilarating and I’m doing it, and that’s the best part.”
My first week in Ireland was filled with tiny inconveniences, minor confusions, physical orientation, physical exhaustion, and luckily, no doubt or regrets about what I’m doing here. Nathaniel and I arrived late Saturday afternoon, September 12 and Sunday was for rehabilitation and relaxation, though we went with our roommate Zach to a shopping centre (of which there are many) to buy a few things like towels, for the apartment. We learned a few things on our short trip. We started to learn how to use the city bus transit with lots of help from the Dublin Bus app and realised just how necessary coin purses may be here since European currency involves a lot of coins. There are 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, as well as 1 and 2 euro coins. So far, 2, 5, 10 and 20 cents all seem fairly useless, much like our U.S. penny. Malls seem very much the same as in the U.S. and nothing there struck me as overtly unusual or unique.
We did find an American 50’s style diner that we ate at (not very exotic for our first foreign meal I realise). There we heard only American music, and we came to find over the next week that American music is pretty much what you hear no matter where you go, mall, restaurant, pub, taxi, etc. Also, this diner, Eddie Rockets, is also not a single unique restaurant as I first suspected. They are everywhere, I’ve seen probably twenty in Dublin since.
We also got our first lesson in tipping in Ireland, which we hadn’t thought about yet, though I knew tipping practices varied in Europe. We left on our table what we’d consider at home to be a reasonable tip, but were surprised when the staff seemed so shocked by it and wondered whether we meant to leave so much money behind. We later looked up tip etiquette in Ireland online to see what was said about restaurant and taxi tipping. Neither is common, but rounding up taxi fare a euro or two will not usually be met with any argument.
Tipping instigated my first real cultural reflection about the U.S. and how it’s sad and strange that we have so many jobs where people rely on tips because their pay is not sufficient for their work. It’s just one of the many factors that result from “poverty-wages” in the U.S.
On Monday we toured Dublin with our program coordinator, John, and the other ten or so people studying at DCU from the U.S. through CIS abroad. He pointed out many of the good areas for shopping and dining, which bus stops we’ll use often, which areas are “sketchy” or “dodgy” at night and where we should “taxi in, taxi out,” (of which there are many, being a large city), and of course, all the neat places we should check out, the more touristy sites. This included The Guinness Storehouse (which we already, or rather Nathaniel already planned for us to visit), Trinity college, St. Stephens Green, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and more.
After our tour, which got me excited for exploring the city, we had our introduction at Dublin City University. Throughout the week they held some events to, much like New Student Week at WOU, get us acquainted with the campus, each other, and student life at DCU. Orientation was not rigorous and I didn’t end up meeting anyone new during the week, but I did start to get used to the campus, which is small and even more condensed than Westerns, but very modern, and it is only a five minute walk from our apartments, very handy.
During the week Nathaniel and I explored a bit, found some shopping centres, went to our first pub The Back Page and had our first pints of Guinness, watched The Visit at a movie theater close by, saw our first play “Vernon God Little” at the Mill theatre–the Irish/Texan accents were quite amusing– toured the Guinness storehouse and had our pints in the Gravity bar overlooking Dublin and it was beautiful.
Unfortunately, we didn’t do or see as much as we might have liked that first week, partly because we slept for most of it. It was difficult to get our bodies used to the time difference and caught up on the sleep we’d lost. Every day we’d plan to get up by a decent hour, maybe by 8 or 9am, but found it almost physically impossible to wake up earlier than 11. This is an aspect of traveling I’d considered before, but one that I never thought could be such a interference. Besides that, our power went off every night in our apartment which meant important navigational devices would not get charged and we’d have no hot water for showers, I waited to do laundry and then the laundry room was out of commission for the better part of a week, and then we learned that buses don’t always come when they are supposed to. Luckily those were the biggest issues we faced here, but at the same time we were dealing with some difficult news from home we got the day after we arrived, which I won’t discuss, but definitely made the start of our adventure more psychologically challenging.
Some things I learned from this first week were: making friends will be difficult and I’ll have to learn how to put myself out there more, I have to use the crosswalk signals because I don’t trust myself to look in the right direction for cars when crossing, there is no root beer in this country so I’ll have to do without for three months, Dublin is a city I think I could really like, despite not really liking cities ever, and classes and schoolwork are going to be hard to do because I only want to explore.
Ireland is new and different, but I’m fairly comfortable already and I’m so excited for my time here.

Streets of Dublin

The Spire on O’Connell street

First pint at The Back Page

The set of “Vernon God Little” at the Mill theatre

On DCU campus

At the Guinness storehouse, Nathaniel’s favorite place

In the Gravity bar overlooking Dublin from the Guinness storehouse

Departure & Arrival in Dublin:

I’m writing in my journal on a plane, perhaps the fourth I’ve ever been in, sitting with Nathaniel on my left and the wing out the window to my right. We’re skipping several hours of our day as the sun gets farther and farther behind us and we’re headed toward Philadelphia. I’m only just now having time to reflect and consider this start to my journey. We’ve been going nonstop since 7 this morning packing and saying hurried goodbyes (where I didn’t cry as I suspected I would), driving 2 hours to the airport, and running to our flight gate on last call, nearly missing it because we just had to stop and buy some neck pillows (it wasn’t that close though, we made it just fine).

Now I’m thinking about the next two days, arriving in Philly, my first time on the east coast, spending our 23 hour layover there, and finally flying 6 hours straight to Dublin where the real adventure will begin. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole idea of physically being in a new country for three months. I’m not too worried about homesickness (perhaps naively) because I’m not alone. Sometimes that makes this seem like less of a character-building exercise than I might like, and I have to remind myself, that whether or not I’m with my boyfriend, it still takes some kind of guts to move somewhere new across the world and live a different life for awhile. And I don’t think the experience will have any less of a profound effect on me. In fact, I’m betting on the opposite, that it’ll be better, more rewarding and educational and memorable to do it with someone else.

I’m making a list (I really like lists) of what I expect from my time in Ireland, it’ll be something to compare when I’ve returned home. Here are a few, not all, of the thing on my list:

I expect…

-to drink a lot (however I’m not much of a drinker at home, so we’ll see)

-to be slightly disappointed by the amount of things familiar to me (like McDonalds, for example)

-to have something take my breath away

-to get lost

-to hit every stage of culture shock at some point abroad, and perhaps even more when returning home

-to make a few friends (and even more facebook friends)

-to have my name spelled wrong many times (the Irish Shannon, instead of Shannen)

-to have a lot of conversations with strangers

-to ask “what?” a lot, because accents are hard and I don’t want to get stuck doing the awkward thing when someone asks you a question you don’t understand and you just laugh.

-to pick up a tiny bit of an accent

-to learn a lot of Irish lingo and new curses

-to regret how much I packed

-to wish I studied French better the last two years

-to eat something gross

-to eat something (or more likely many somethings) awesome

-to spend a lot of money

-to be inspired to live in Europe

-to see a lot of plays

-to have a really fun halloween

-to take too many pictures

-to be amazed at how old the country, history, architecture is there

-to learn random things about myself and my culture I haven’t thought of yet

-to do something crazy and unexpected

-to stay in touch with home a lot less than I said I would

-to change, in good ways

-most of all, to be surprised.

When I think about Ireland I always have this picture of the beautiful country landscape and of small villages not quite situated in the 21st century, and of old pubs when locals sing songs and ask you lots of questions because Irish are supposedly nosy and extremely friendly people. I know very little about the country and I don’t often think about its more modern developments, in Dublin especially, its largest city and what will be my home for 3 months. Because of this idea, I expect to have a certain experience in Ireland but honestly know how different and probably unidealistic it may actually be. After all, I’m not going to experience the country as a tourist, I am going to experience as a sojourner, and as much as possible, as a local. I know I’ll often be uncomfortable, if for no other reason than I am not comfortable in large cities, I will be shy but try to make friends as best as I can, and as much as possible I will try to get uncomfortable for the experience of it, and try to see the part of Ireland I never even dreamed of before, even if they shatter every idea I had of it before this trip. That is one of the ideas of traveling, right? To make the exotic familiar.

Arrival:

We’ve made it, finally. After our first 5 hour flight and a day exploring Philadelphia, followed by a 6 hour delay, exhausted, we landed in Dublin around 2pm local time. At immigration we wait in line, separated from the line of European union passport holders, and a rude Australian man cuts us. The immigration worker is the first of (I’m sure many) to comment on my name, “Shannen with an ‘e’ huh?”, “Yep.” immigration check goes smoothly and is less scary than I thought, but we struggle with the Irish accent. We find luggage, and get our first euros from an ATM, and they are so colorful. By a payphone, right where he said he’d be, is our program coordinator John here to meet us. Because of our delay we’re the last to arrive, and John who has been up since something like 4 or 5am looks just as tired as we are. We make casual conversation, he makes some jokes and welcomes us to the country and we head toward our small bus. I’m pretty overwhelmed, reminding myself of where I am, really, because so far nothing looks too different. It’s a beautiful day and we all comment on how lucky we are to arrive with the nice weather. At the van, John and our driver have an exchange that reminds me of every Irish exchange I’ve ever heard or read, complete with Irish humor and cursing, and it me excited. We meet an intern from Seattle, Audrey, in the van and she is so nice. We drive to our apartments and I look at everything I can, the traffic moving in opposite directions from home, and the color of the grass, I see a few old buildings, most are new and modern looking, we arrive soon to the apartments. We’re dropped off and told, see you Monday. We go into the office and get our keys and information. Our apartment is 4 bedrooms with a kitchen, and they look just like residence halls at home, and I feel like a freshman again. We catch our other roommates, Zach from Colorado, and Hannah from California. We take a minute to appreciate the start of our journey, because we made it, we are so far from home, and then we fall asleep for 15 hours.

Our first photo in Ireland