Grace Huntley: Real Life of a Galway Girl

There are some social situations I have never been able to master. For example, when you’re walking down a long stretch of road and you see someone approaching you from far away. You don’t want to meet their eyes because they’re still a good five minutes away from you and it would be strange to spend the rest of the time walking towards each other staring into each others eye’s. However, it’s most natural to look in front of you when walking, and also a good preventative measure to keep from bumping into things. Therefore, I usually compromise by awkwardly darting my eyes around to the front and then coming back to an imaginary fascinating view to my right (for some reason I always pick the right).

These are some of the uncomfortable situations you don’t have to worry about when you’re surrounded by good friends instead of strangers. Two of my friends visited from the States this last week. It’s was strange at first to have my two worlds of home and study abroad collide, a bit like traveling to the Amazon rainforest and seeing a Pizza Hut stationed in the center. However, it was amazing to be able to show them around Galway as well as Ireland and get to experience things through a new set of eyes. There’s a kind of excitement, a need to take advantage of every moment, to see every site, that I was able to piggyback upon while my friends were here. We watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade and biked around the Aran Islands, and whether it was the beautiful sunny weather, the presence of my friends, or the feel of walking without shoes oh the beach; I had some of my happiest moments in Ireland during this past week.

They say it takes twenty days to form a new habit. This doesn’t apply to forming substance abuse addictions or to falling in love. Instead it’s about the little things: Knowing which way to look when crossing the street; Automatically not leaving a tip when you’re in an Irish restaurant; Looking for the switch that turns on the oven. These tiny details seep into you, diffusing slowly into your bloodstream, sinking into your subconscious. Like the tiny scratches you’ll sometimes receive when walking through the woods, you don’t remember when or how you picked them up but they’ve somehow become a part of you.

I tend to lose things a lot. Just yesterday we walked into town and went to the weekend Farmer’s Market. It’s on a side street to the right of Shop Street, a small cobblestone outcropping dotted with stalls sellin everything from medallions to gourmet olives. I purchased this amazingly fancy cheese and fresh rasberries, a delicacy in a country where the potatoe passes for all the fruits and vegetables you will ever need. However, somewhere between stopping to soak in the sun in Eyre Square, and looking through the mall for comfortable walking shoes, I set the bag down and lost it.

Sometimes being abroad is a little like losing something. Only instead of a bag of berries and gourmet cheese, it’s a piece of your identity. You start to forget little things about yourself like whether or not you say CARmel or CARAmel or which pizza toppings really are the best or if you snore. Luckily, close friends are like having a safe box for all those personal details. They keep them safe so that even when you forget, you know where you can find the pieces of yourself.

Have you ever noticed that when a group of people try to enter or exit out of double doors, there is usually a bottle neck effect? This occurs whenever classes let out at NUI. Students pour out of one of the five or so auditoriums in the Arts Concourse building and immediately make their way for the exit, like passengers jumping from a sinking ship. However, every one seems to have a mild case of the Lemming-effect, prone to following the person in front of them. Maybe this was bred into us as a survival technique from days long gone; following the more skilled guide through the dangerous night around you. Still, now that we have killed off most of the animals that could hunt us to extinction, it doesn’t seem to be that effective of a habit. Even with two doors available, each student will use the door that’s been pushed open by the person in front of them. Sometimes the single file line with stretch back ten, twenty meters in the corridor, a winding human snake of complacency.

So what is it that makes people so unwilling to forge their own way? Does it just not occur to them to try an alternative route, or is there something deeper that makes them hesitate?

Classes at NUI do not function the same way they do at Cornell. Instead of having class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the same lecture hall at the same time, the schedule spins and winds like an acrobat on ecstasy. Sometimes my Comparative Public Policy class will meet in Kirwan Theater, sometimes in Oh’Eocha. At times it’s at 3 in the afternoon and then the next day it will switch to 4. In keeping with this nontraditional system, each class runs for a different period of time, several starting as late as three weeks after the semester has begun. Most classes run for a mere two months total, and instead of continuous assessment, each class has either a final exam or a 3,000 word paper.

Lucky me, this means that I have six 3,000 word papers to finish by the end of the month. After the end of May, I’m one final exam away from being done for the semester. However, this knowledge hasn’t been helping me to start my papers. What is it that helps us paralyzed, that makes the beginning so much more difficult to face up to? There’s a kind of solace in inaction, a refuge in the knowledge that even if you’re not accomplishing anything, at least you’re also not messing anything up. This kind of thinking works pretty well until it comes up against the idea of deadlines. Still, you’ve already gotten yourself into a bad habit, and so, instead of a weekend spent putting your nose to the grindstone and getting assignments out of the way, you find yourself justifying just one more hour watching Scrubs (because really, that JD holds all the life wisdom you ever need.)

Every day I walk the forty minute trek back from school. It’s long, and tedious, and I now know exactly which landmarks are halfway (the hospital) , two thirds (Tesco), ten minutes to go (McDonalds). Five minutes away from my house there is a building slowly going up. In the two months that I’ve been here, I’ve watched the construction transition from a muddy pit in the ground, to a twenty foot high stone wall (stemming from a muddy pit in the ground). They must work on it for hours each day, but since I spend a mere couple seconds passing it, the site seems to spring up from the ground. It’s always fascinating to me how little pieces can add up after a while. My life in Ireland often seems to be like that, a favorite coffee shop, a right turn on the way to school, knowing about the computer lab on the bottom floor the Arts Concourse…and suddenly you have a routine, and you’re already halfway there.

Have you ever heard the story about the man who rebuilds his ship? He starts after a bad storm destroys half his hull one day. Years go by and he replaces board after board, strengthening a part there, a sail there. Finally there comes the day when the whole shop is composed of new pieces. The question is, when, if ever, did that ship stop being the vessel he initially had?

Sometimes, I feel that Ireland is merely stripping me down the most elemental pieces. Some things remain the same; my procrastination on papers for example. Other times, I feel like the abroad experience is changing me, seeping into my bloodstream to subtly alter each of the cells it comes in contact with, and it scares me, to look in the mirror in the morning and not know if the same person will be staring at me that night.

Yesterday, when I was leaving the Arts Concourse building, I got stuck in the same old herd of students trying to leave. I was shuffling along, content with my place in the crowd…until suddenly I wasn’t. I walked forward, pushing my way through the throng, and exited through the other door. It’s not everything, but it’s a start. 

This last weekend i travelled to Brussels, Belgium, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. While there I sampled the waffles, the chocolate, went to the Anne Frank House, saw Starry Night at the Van Gogh Museum, and went on a tour of the Canals.

Did you know Belgium is responsible for creating the saxophone, the Smurfs, and the www in every web address ever?

I felt like a typical tourist during my trip. Over the last two months, Ireland has begun to feel like home. I can navigate my way around Galway. I know where to go for a cheap meal. I even know the time tables of the library right now. Travelling to Brussels and Amsterdam was the first time in a while I’ve felt truly out of my comfort zone, and the first time on this trip that I’ve had to navigate a country where I didn’t speak the language.

Stereotypes are a prevailing reality in any country you visit. Ireland is known for it’s rolling hills, St. Patrick’s Day, and the Guinness Factory. Belgium is famous for it’s waffles, chocolate, and architecture. Amsterdam is renowned for it’s canals, tulips, and the Red Light District. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the problem with stereotypes and how they become perpetuated. I’ve come to the conclusion that as a tourist you typically enter a country only knowing the bare bone facts, in other words, the stereotypes. It’s a lot like going to college and only knowing that there are five jobs out there, Doctor, Teacher, Lawyer, Police Officer, and Rock Star.

Therefore, when you enter the country you immediately gravitate towards what you know. Especially for broke study abroad students, most out of country experiences involve trying to hit up all of that country’s stereotypes. This creates a cycle in which the country’s stigma is experiences, carried home, and then related to all of the traveler’s friends, family, and semi-acquaintances. 

Have you ever seen one of those T-Shirts people have in the US that says, “Everything is bigger in Texas?” I feel like I should get one of those for when I travel around Europe, only instead of Texas, I’d have to change to to the USA. A striking difference in each of the cities I have encountered, is the size of things. From portion size, where at McDonald’s in the States they load up your to-go Big Mac with extra packets of salt and ketchup and (FREE) mayonaise, to our vehicles, where you can regularly see such gems as Hummers cruising the New York City streets, we tend to do things to excess.

Our laughs are louder, our obesity problem is greater, and our buildings are much much taller. Still I have to wonder, with all of our emphasis on bigger is better, what is this X-tra size really getting us? Europeans seem to have scaled down the package and yet included all the essentials. They are the sleek iPod to our 8 track tape…and there’s something charming about strolling down a street that hails from the 1800s and being able to see the city skyline hovering twenty vs. 220 ft about your head.