The First Day!

Finally- some time to sit down and catch up on my first five days in Dublin!
There’s so much to write about I’ll split it up into a few posts.

THURSDAY

Erica and I had a great flight on Aer Lingus; it took about eight hours, and I REALLY missed that night’s sleep as the new day wore on, but I sat next to an entertaining flight buddy which made the whole experience pretty enjoyable. His name was Patrick, and he was a Cork native in his mid-seventies who actually studied at BU for his master’s once upon a time. We had a few things in common then, but I quickly found him to be a loquacious fellow. He rambled on about his accomplishments, careers, advice, children, and grandchildren as the instructional safety video played, drawing some annoyed looks from those sitting near us. I tried to slow his tangent by distracting him with a book my mom gave me- The Oxford Dictionary of the Origin of Words (perfect for a linguistics enthusiast like me!) but it only provoked him—he was delighted and shared every word that fascinated him, which ones must have been wrong, and which ones he had a better explanation for. While at the time it was a bit irksome, in retrospect I was glad to have made him so happy. He wrote down the title to buy his own copy. Once we finally landed, he helped me find customs, the baggage claim, and even hailed us a taxi, which was incredibly helpful.

The cab driver was also a colorful character, cracking jokes in the thickest northern Irish accent I’ve ever encountered. Though he had to repeat himself multiple times for me and Erica, the sleep-deprived zombies in the back seat, he was patient and really funny. We checked in, unpacked, and trudged over to our opening meeting, which was cruelly scheduled three hours after we all arrived. To be perfectly honest, I was so exhausted, I don’t remember a single word that was said at that meeting, but I was told there wasn’t much to it. After a solid shower and nap, we were ready to rock. We met a handful of other students in the program and ventured into the city.

It was an amazing night- we walked around the lit stone streets in search of anything, laughing and getting to know each other. We were without phones, without responsibility, just free to explore for one night. We didn’t get terribly far before our appetites got the best of us- though it was about 24 hours earlier, none of us had eaten since the plane food. We found Madigans, the kind of pub you’d imagine in a touristy area- dark wood, dim light, small round tables, mostly empty. The nine of us pushed four tables together and brought the place to life with our vivacious energy. Or we seriously annoyed the staff. Depends on how you look at it, I suppose! But we were so excited to be there that everything seemed so much better- the mediocre fish n chips we all ordered tasted like heaven.

Next stop was Fitzgerald’s across the river- we ordered our first pints of Guinness as legal citizens of the universe and continued to enjoy each other’s company. It was the perfect first night, a small group walking around with no solid idea of where we were going, just soaking it all in.