A B, a V, and a U-Shaped Curve

Hello again, and welcome to post number two! I can’t talk about my second week in Ireland without talking about both the highs and lows, because this week was packed full of both. Because it’s always best to end on a happy note, I’ll start with the lows:

I finally had the moment we all knew was coming since I announced I was planning to study abroad: the moment where I cried and called my parents and told them I wanted to come home. There’s something about knowing you’re stuck in a foreign country for half a year that really makes you idealize things about home. While it’s easy to miss the practical things like hot water, a washing machine, and working internet (my accommodation could be nicer), I’ve been surprised at the way being here makes me long for things I haven’t noticed myself actively missing in forever. Suddenly I miss fall in Illinois, using 58's oven for chocolate cookies, living in a tiny box with my freshman roommate, and homecoming season with my high school friends. I still feel pretty lonely here, and the time difference is a bigger challenge for staying in touch with busy friends and family than I imagined, so I’ve been doing a lot of what I do best when left on my lonesome: baking. In the past week I’ve made cookies, bread, scones, and even my own jam from scratch. They told us at orientation that homesickness is like a U-shaped curve, where at first everything is exciting and wonderful because it’s new, but then it gets a little harder before it gets easier. Well, I’m currently in the phase where I randomly burst into tears in public restrooms and feel a little prickly that everyone has an accent and won’t use the term “french fries,” so I’m thinking I’ve probably hit the bottom of the U.

Despite my U-shaped struggles, however, this week also held some tremendous highs and some big new experiences. I began the week by attending mass at Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, which is only about a fifteen minute walk from my home but is one of the grandest places of worship I have ever seen. I was surprised to find that they still use the old mass (think, "and also with YOU," not "and with YOUR SPIRIT"), along with the Book of Common Prayer, which was familiar and comforting to me.

Classes also started this week, which is apparently a much more casual affair here at UCC than it is at Penn, considering I showed up to two classes where my professors did not. While I now have my class schedule down to two days a week, canceled classes and miscommunication with Penn had me trying a bunch of classes every day last week, which kept me close to Cork and helped me get to know both my campus and my host city a little better. In honor of this, here are some fast Cork facts to help you picture where I’m at: Cork is the second largest city in Ireland but is still small by US standards with a population of only about 200,000. Cork has an ongoing rivalry with Dublin and often refers to itself as the “real” capital of Ireland, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. The River Lee runs right through Cork and forks as it comes in to town, meaning that the City Centre is technically on an island. University College Cork has a main campus, but many of the academic buildings are just dispersed throughout town and on all sides of the river. I am taking an Irish Step Dancing class that is over a mile and half away, and I cross both parts of the River Lee (over a bridge known, unfortunately, as the “Shakey Bridge”) and walk up a narrow stone path to get there. Speaking of Irish Step Dancing…it’s the most fun thing I’ve done here, and I’m even getting academic credit!

This weekend, one of my American flatmates and I traveled to the nearby town of Cobh for our first day trip of the semester. Cobh is located about a half an hour’s train ride away along Cork Harbor and is actually pronounced “Cove,” because apparently in Gaelic B + H= V. The town, formerly known as Queenstown, was historically a major emmigration port during the potato famine. I have to admit I had never given a ton of serious thought to the consequences of the Irish Potato Famine before Saturday, but I now know that it was completely devastating. In just five years over a million people left Ireland (many through Cobh), knowing they would never see their families again, because it was literally the only chance they or their children had of survival. That is like a quarter of Ireland’s population today!!

Cobh is also home to the last docking location of the Titanic, and as a longterm Titanic super-nerd, I was beyond excited to walk through the museum. They gave us each a ticket and assigned us the name of a real passenger that had departed through Cobh, and at the end we got to see if we survived (I did!). The museum included replicas of third and first class cabins, some of the last photographs ever taken of the ship, and a view of the remnants of the dock where the Titanic, as well as the ships carrying emigrants during the famine, all departed from. Our tour guide encouraged us to imagine all of the sadness that must have occurred on that dock as families said goodbyes that, in that time period, they knew were likely to be final, and the whole experience was much more emotionally impactful than I had anticipated.

Finally, this weekend we also celebrated my flatmate’s birthday! Since I am old to be studying abroad, many of my flatmates are still under 21. It turns out that, on weekends, many of the pubs/clubs here in town where they have dancing are still 21+, even though the drinking age here is 18. Luckily, after our jeans and rain jackets finally convinced one bouncer that we were not the wild type they were trying to avoid, we finally got admitted to one pub that was hosting some sort of work event, a possible wedding, and an American Western movie screening all at once.

All in all, this was both a pretty difficult and also a pretty necessary and rewarding week in the process of adjusting to being abroad. Glance below for some pictures of the Cathedral, UCC, my housing complex (and it's weekly motivational signage), Cork, and Cobh. And sign up for the mailing list for automatic updates!

Cheers!

Summer