The First (Whole) Day

During Which Ireland and I Come to an Understanding

I slept from 8:00 pm to 8:30 am and went to orientation yesterday morning. Orientation was scheduled to last the entire day, according to the itinerary-wielding girls also in my building with whom I walked over. We had left too late for coffee, so we just rowed up in folding chairs and were systematically welcomed to Cork by faculty and students alike. All of them had a sense of humor, and most had reasurring things to say. As opposed to my pre-departure session, the "Five Stages of Culture Shock" section of orientation fascinated me most. Here we all are - I thought, looking around - feeling the same way, which made me then feel small and silly and normal and finally a little bit at ease.

Our coordinator encouraged us not to worry about registering for our regular semester courses yet, only to relax, settle in and enjoy the city. She told us that we will find a lazaire fair academic attitude in Ireland, not like what we're used to. None of us seemed to know what she meant until she, and other professors, casually referenced the pub scene in combination with the likelihood we would all be too hungover to access information online the following day. That said, we were shuffled through our respective early start programs and registered as students with the University.

I remembered that I love studying literature when my professor-to-be summarized the course content: the role of landscape; the interaction between characters and setting.

Student representatives talked about clubs and societies, we were fed strange sandwiches and bottled water, and then warned that the immigration fees were now 250 euro, raised from 100, and that any one who had flown into a city other than Cork would likely have to pay them. When we walked home after the campus tour, I looked at my passport, and found I was stamped not through my stated departure date, but December 20th. I mentally thanked the polite officer for sparing me what sounded like a tricky process, as well as the considerable fee - not to mention the excuse to fly home before Christmas. What had ever made me want to do anything else?

Well; a place like the one I was beginning to see had, but I understood now that there was always going to be the draw of home and the appeal of Ireland working against one another, that life, typically, insists on providing only an imperfect happiness. And that a perfect happiness seems, aside from impossible, too uncomplicated to remain interesting for long.

The trek to the soccer game was long, but on the way I found things in common with another girl in the building: environmentalism (hers, unsurprisingly, outweighing mine as far as the ratio of practice and theory), a tendency toward shyness, and the desire to make soup as soon as possible and hopefully feed ourselves for days. At the stadium I spent far too many euro - 15 for admission, 1.50 for a diet coke, 3.50 for a cheeseburger, and 12 for a green Cork scarf. We cheered loudly, only somewhat intimidated by the fact none of us really knew the rules, the score wasn't displayed anywhere, and the frequency with which the "f word" was used truly boggled the mind. Probably the most surprising was the man two rows above us who clutched a toddler in one arm and shook his fist with the other, shouting the word of choice over her little blond head. She gazed about with the kind of unconcerned confusion I thought might be visible in my face, too.

Cork won, and mental score was actually easy to keep since the opponent never scored. In the regular student section, the assemblage cheered, booed, or sang the entire time. A part of me is still marveling at their lung capacity.

Afterward: tavern! Actually, a club, very crowded, that offered free admission and one free drink before 10:30. We filed in, and the bouncer halfheartly handled our American drivers' licenses to test their authenticity. Mine amused him. "Who's famous from Kansas?" he demanded. I could think of no one, not even - I'm sorry, Abilene! - Dwight Eisenhower. He went on: "Any astronauts?" Yes! I thought, but couldn't remember the Salina native's name.