When I embarked on my first journey out of Italy in months and months, I was still a little shocked that it was happening at all. For the longest time, the likelihood of me being able to join my class on their trip to Ireland was fairly nonexistent. My Permesso di Soggiorno (Residence Permit) is a required document for leaving Italy and had not yet arrived. In fact, this document was not in my hands until three days before our departure. Only a week before that I was notified that it was on the way and would arrive in time, so I was quite lucky that my school let me pay so late and all.
As I boarded the airport-bound bus with my class and the two other 5th-year classes from Luzzago that Moday, I left behind my huge pile of scholarship applications and everything else that was on my mind for a bit of time to focus on enjoying Ireland and bonding with my classmates. I had some goals in mind:
- Eat a non-sweet breakfast for once
- Enjoy as much Starbucks as possible while I can
- Locate Urban Outfitters and buy something
- Find a bookstore and soak in the abundance of ENGLISH literature
- Be less shy and bond with classmates
I'm proud to say I managed to do all those things. I also left Italy with a few worries in mind. I can be a worrier.
- What if they only ever want to eat Italian food?
- What if I forgot to pack something important?
- What if the girls I room with talk all night and I have to talk back resulting in ultra-tiredness or (worse) am left out of the conversation and turn out to be That Girl Who Goes To Sleep Before Everyone Else?
- What if I can't understand the Irish accents and everyone thinks I'm miserable at my own language?
- What if I'm constantly left out and have no one to talk to for the entire trip?
Now, some of these worries were silly and others turned out legitimate. Like the packing thing. That was sort of a problem because I (and this is strange because I always overpack) did not bring enough outfits to last the whole trip (however, this coincided well with the Urban Outfitters goal) nor did I remember my electrical converter or ponytail holders. It wasn't the end of the world, though. I managed. The other legitimate worry was the Italian food thing. I feel strongly that one should eat Italian food in Italy, but when you're in Ireland for just a few days, it's a good idea to eat Irish food while you have the chance no matter how much you miss your pasta. At every meal there was some group going off to an Italian restaurant. I, luckily, managed to find a select few who weren't at every meal but one. Italians in general are just so attached to their cuisine, and not adventurous with their eating at all.
As our AerLingus plane took off from the Milano-Malpensa airport and started the journey towards Dublin, I scribbled excitedly in my journal: "In the plane! I am going to Ireland! It hasn't taken off yet. The flight attendants are still situating the baggage. It is so strange to be surrounded by English again after 6 months of pure Italian. Hopefully a week in an English-speaking country won't interfere with my Italian learning too much. I don't think it will, especially seeing as I'll be surrounded by my Italian class the whole time. I'll have plenty of practice with them, and at the same time everything else will feel incredibly easy in comparison to how it has been because I'll be able to understand without such intense concentration. And we're moving. No take off yet, but we're moving. I love the feeling of lifting from the ground. I can't wait. AND WE'RE OFF!" My seat on the plane was next to a really interesting Irish psychologist who splits his time between Italy and Ireland and specializes in the effects of living in a new culture. He was super fascinating to talk to, seeing as his studies were basically focused on exactly what my life's been about here. I didn't start chatting with him until the end of the flight, but it was nice.
We arrived late Monday night. We took a bus from the airport to our hostel, the Four Courts Hostel, very nicely located in downtown Dublin, right on the river Liffey. It was very friendly with lots of chatter and brightly colored murals. The rooms were plain and had lots of bunk beds. My first hostel. It made me want to do the whole backpacking-through-Europe thing. I don't remember doing anything that first evening but finding our room, picking out or beds, and going to sleep.
Tuesday morning, we started out with a walking tour and saw some government buildings and such around Dublin. We stopped along the way for lunch and I got my first Caesar Salad in forever, which was awesome.
That afternoon, we went to a fishing village called Howth just outside of Dublin. There, we went to a place called The Summit, which was gorgeous with all these golden flowers everywhere and an amazing view. It reminded me of a scene from Once. The beauty of the Summit was magical. We only spent about five minutes walking on that hill, but I thought about it a lot more in the bus and later. There was a feeling to that place that I find difficult to describe. The golden flowers, sunbeams, winding paths, glittering ocean all synthesized into something very romantic, yet lonely. Maybe lonely because it was so romantic. Goodness, I just wrote a whole lot of mumble jumble that probably only makes sense to me about how The Summit made me feel, so I took that out, but you can read the poem I wrote about it here. If you aren't much of a poetry person, I won't be offended if you skip that.
After the Summit/Howth Head (A side note: On the day I'm writing this, we read a passage in English class from James Joyce's Ulysses that took place there on that very hillside. Now I have to read Ulysses because I'm enchanted and intrigued. It's lucky I bought a copy when I was in Dublin. I'm going to start it as soon as I finish A Confederacy of Dunces) we went down to the more inhabited part of Howth, the actual village part, and we walked among all the fishmongers' shops and the boats. We stopped and stood on a rounded stone outcropping where we could see across the bay. We took our bus back into Dublin and I remember that I listened to my iPod because everything was very quiet. I think people were tired. When we got back the the Four Courts Hostel, we got freshened up for dinner, which was at a place called the Brazen Head.
The Brazen Head is apparently Dublin's oldest pub. I had some yummy Bangers & Mash. The English teacher, Prof. R that accompanied us on the trip (she's not the one that teaches me) was organizing the paying at the end of the meal and I think she about drove the manager of the place crazy. At one point on this trip I was trying to tell Prof. R that "I hurt my foot," and when I spoke she didn't understand and asked me to please repeat myself but try to speak as if I were from England because she learned British English and I wasn't making sense to her. I put on my best English accent and she still looked at me like I was out of my mind. Eventually I switched back into American-style and just spoke incredibly slowly and pronunciated: "Eyyyyyyyyyyye HuuuuuurrrrT Myyyyyyy FooooooooT" and she finally got what I was saying and congratulated me on sounding British enough finally. It was so weird. I mean she speaks English pretty well despite the fact that she makes no sense half the time, but I always have to repeat myself ten billion times for her to understand me and it gets on my nerves because she's looking at me like I'M stupid and suck at English because she's having difficulty understanding and, you know, she's perfect at English so it must be something I'm doing wrong. I think she thinks that the fact that she's an English teacher makes her the queen of the English language and grants her the power to never be wrong/confused. I'm SO glad my normal English teacher is Prof. G and not Prof. R. I know it sounds like I'm ranting a bit about her, but I think this is a good cultural point. In Italy, THE TEACHERS ARE RIGHT ALL THE TIME, END OF STORY, NO DEBATE, OKAY, MOVING ON. One time (once again this happened with Prof. R when she was subbing in my class) a teacher was trying to find us a video on youtube. She was looking for an interview with Sylvia Beach, but she was spelling it the Italian way, Silvia Beech, so nothing was coming up and she was getting frustrated and I knew what the problem was so I tried telling her (very politely and discreetly, it wasn't like I was calling her out for the whole class to hear) "Why don't you try spelling it with an S-Y instead of S-I and a E-A instead of E-E?" but she SNAPPED at me and said "NO, I KNOW I AM SPELLING IT CORRECTLY!" Which she wasn't. I know because I googled when I got home to make sure. And I found the interview she was looking for lickety-split, too. In the States, the student-teacher relationship is much more relaxed and, in my opinion, lends itself better to learning. We still respect our teachers, but the difference is that if we respect them, they respect us back. Not the case in Italy. Anyway, the lady taking our bill at this pub understood nothing Prof. R said, and I'm fairly certain that Prof. R understood nothing the lady said, yet she pretended to so eventually the poor lady got so stressed that she asked me to help and I did (quietly, so as not to seem a threat to Prof. R's sovereignty) and it worked out fine. Afterwards the teachers let us all go out for drinks, which was fun. My drink of choice on the trip was Bailey's because it's IRISH cream and delicious and seemed appropriate. I don't know if it was that night but at one point I had this thing that was basically a huge Bailey's milkshake and it was heavenly.
Since this post is so long, I'm going to cut it off here and make the Ireland trip posting a 2-part thing. Until then, enjoy this collection of footage from the trip!
~Chandler
(lunch break with the lovely 5^B)
That afternoon, we went to a fishing village called Howth just outside of Dublin. There, we went to a place called The Summit, which was gorgeous with all these golden flowers everywhere and an amazing view. It reminded me of a scene from Once. The beauty of the Summit was magical. We only spent about five minutes walking on that hill, but I thought about it a lot more in the bus and later. There was a feeling to that place that I find difficult to describe. The golden flowers, sunbeams, winding paths, glittering ocean all synthesized into something very romantic, yet lonely. Maybe lonely because it was so romantic. Goodness, I just wrote a whole lot of mumble jumble that probably only makes sense to me about how The Summit made me feel, so I took that out, but you can read the poem I wrote about it here. If you aren't much of a poetry person, I won't be offended if you skip that.
After the Summit/Howth Head (A side note: On the day I'm writing this, we read a passage in English class from James Joyce's Ulysses that took place there on that very hillside. Now I have to read Ulysses because I'm enchanted and intrigued. It's lucky I bought a copy when I was in Dublin. I'm going to start it as soon as I finish A Confederacy of Dunces) we went down to the more inhabited part of Howth, the actual village part, and we walked among all the fishmongers' shops and the boats. We stopped and stood on a rounded stone outcropping where we could see across the bay. We took our bus back into Dublin and I remember that I listened to my iPod because everything was very quiet. I think people were tired. When we got back the the Four Courts Hostel, we got freshened up for dinner, which was at a place called the Brazen Head.
The Brazen Head is apparently Dublin's oldest pub. I had some yummy Bangers & Mash. The English teacher, Prof. R that accompanied us on the trip (she's not the one that teaches me) was organizing the paying at the end of the meal and I think she about drove the manager of the place crazy. At one point on this trip I was trying to tell Prof. R that "I hurt my foot," and when I spoke she didn't understand and asked me to please repeat myself but try to speak as if I were from England because she learned British English and I wasn't making sense to her. I put on my best English accent and she still looked at me like I was out of my mind. Eventually I switched back into American-style and just spoke incredibly slowly and pronunciated: "Eyyyyyyyyyyye HuuuuuurrrrT Myyyyyyy FooooooooT" and she finally got what I was saying and congratulated me on sounding British enough finally. It was so weird. I mean she speaks English pretty well despite the fact that she makes no sense half the time, but I always have to repeat myself ten billion times for her to understand me and it gets on my nerves because she's looking at me like I'M stupid and suck at English because she's having difficulty understanding and, you know, she's perfect at English so it must be something I'm doing wrong. I think she thinks that the fact that she's an English teacher makes her the queen of the English language and grants her the power to never be wrong/confused. I'm SO glad my normal English teacher is Prof. G and not Prof. R. I know it sounds like I'm ranting a bit about her, but I think this is a good cultural point. In Italy, THE TEACHERS ARE RIGHT ALL THE TIME, END OF STORY, NO DEBATE, OKAY, MOVING ON. One time (once again this happened with Prof. R when she was subbing in my class) a teacher was trying to find us a video on youtube. She was looking for an interview with Sylvia Beach, but she was spelling it the Italian way, Silvia Beech, so nothing was coming up and she was getting frustrated and I knew what the problem was so I tried telling her (very politely and discreetly, it wasn't like I was calling her out for the whole class to hear) "Why don't you try spelling it with an S-Y instead of S-I and a E-A instead of E-E?" but she SNAPPED at me and said "NO, I KNOW I AM SPELLING IT CORRECTLY!" Which she wasn't. I know because I googled when I got home to make sure. And I found the interview she was looking for lickety-split, too. In the States, the student-teacher relationship is much more relaxed and, in my opinion, lends itself better to learning. We still respect our teachers, but the difference is that if we respect them, they respect us back. Not the case in Italy. Anyway, the lady taking our bill at this pub understood nothing Prof. R said, and I'm fairly certain that Prof. R understood nothing the lady said, yet she pretended to so eventually the poor lady got so stressed that she asked me to help and I did (quietly, so as not to seem a threat to Prof. R's sovereignty) and it worked out fine. Afterwards the teachers let us all go out for drinks, which was fun. My drink of choice on the trip was Bailey's because it's IRISH cream and delicious and seemed appropriate. I don't know if it was that night but at one point I had this thing that was basically a huge Bailey's milkshake and it was heavenly.
Since this post is so long, I'm going to cut it off here and make the Ireland trip posting a 2-part thing. Until then, enjoy this collection of footage from the trip!
~Chandler
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