Assimilation

I now have been a Dubliner for a month. Everyone reading my blog from home probably assumes “A month is enough time to acquire a full blown accent” or “She MUST have a lover by now” or “She probably can drink more than I can!” or “She knows Dublin like the back of her hand by now.” Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), none of those are true.

Looking back at myself a month ago and today there are a few things that I will admit are more Irish. I am used to not having mixed taps now, paying 2 Euro for a cup of tea, I don’t laugh when I see the Tayto brand of crisps (for whatever reason I thought that was the funniest thing in the world), Irish accents are a little less exotic, I’m used to giant class sizes, I don’t get tipsy off of just one pint of beer, and I feel like I can walk the entire day without the arches of my feet cramping up. My roommates and I even got called regulars at a pub a couple weeks ago. Except that I’m known as the girl who doesn’t have an indoor voice, which may not be the best reputation to have in the world.

Despite the appearance that I might be getting the grasp of Irishness truly is and blending in, it still takes me by surprise that cars drive on the left side of the road. My head’s instinct is to look to my left first, not my right, and if I haven’t broken that instinct by now I don’t know if I ever will. The other night my flatmate Lucy had to pull me back more than once from me walking out into incoming traffic, which normally I am very cautious. I suppose I am getting ballsier in terms of crossing the street (I used to be the idiot who would sprint across the road), but it doesn’t help when you forget which side cars drive on.

I cannot figure out the public transportation system for the life of me still. Buses are frustrating because you pretty much have to know exactly where you get off and where you are going; the bus driver never calls out what street intersection people are on. They are also really unreliable, the other night we wanted to do some shopping at Tesco in Sandymount, but we waited a good 30 minutes both going there and coming back in the freezing cold. We did some shopping the other day on the other side of town, and we knew what bus we needed to get on to get back to our apartment, but it almost seemed easier to walk back for whatever reason even with the rain pounding against our fragile shopping bags that inevitably split open. I almost reached my apartment when a middle aged man made eye contact with me and started laughing. I probably looked absolutely crazy; my hair was drenched, I was carrying a bundle of clothes and food, my jeans were soaked up to the knee, and I probably looked ready to kill someone.

There’s also so little of Dublin I feel like I have actually seen. I’ve been stuck in my own Dublin 4 bubble, in this little nook of town. There is a surprising amount I have yet to explore, such as Phoenix Park, the biggest urban park in Europe. You are probably wondering, “What has this girl been doing with her time if she hasn’t been to something like that?” The answer would be not knowing how to budget my time. I spend so much time staring off into space, or facebooking, or watching Living on the Edge (British version of The Hills) or attempting to play the tin whistle that I acquired in Galway last weekend. I will explore my own backyard soon, once I feel like I have some sort of organization in my life. For now everything is so up in the air that my response is to do nothing at all.

I may be getting used to separated hot and cold taps, but something as simple as figuring out what direction cars drive or how a public transportation system works goes to show I have a long way to go before full assimilation. Speak to me after I actually can impersonate an Irish accent and when I actually explore the rolling green hills I see everyday out the window beyond the frantic city.