Dublin, Ireland

Dublin is a city that doesn’t know it’s a capital city. It is BREATHTAKING. Strolling around the neighborhood waiting for our couchsurfing hosts to get home on the first day, Michelle and I encountered so many smiling, helpful, wonderfully English(ish)-speaking Irish people. It gave us both the warm fuzzies. I love France and all, but the Irish people from whom we asked on the street for directions consistently stopped whatever they were doing to walk us all the way to where we were going, chatting with us the whole way there. It was so comforting. I miss small talk and smiles from strangers.

Everything is so GREEN. I mean everything – the landscape, the décor in the pubs, the Irish “football” (soccer) team gear and the leprechauns. They’re a lot bigger than I always pictured… about the size of Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland, and with a similar job description. Odd. Dublin reminded me a lot of Hong-Kong in that it was so futuristic. Because of the recent explosion of the Irish economy (dubbed the “Celtic Tiger”) over the past 15 years, Dublin has just built and built and built. There are some really old, historic, preserved buildings still with bullet holes in them because they served as strongholds against the British in the wars for independence, and then right next to those, there are beautiful, shiny, modern glass buildings of interesting shapes being reflected into the river that runs through Dublin. At night, the buildings light up in different colors (like in Hong-Kong, not like in Las Vegas… it’s classy and mesmerizing). There is also a gigantic knitting needle with a light on the top called the Spire that cost the government 5 million dollars! It’s pretty. Now the country is bankrupt and construction has stopped on a lot of really cool structures that are just sitting there unfinished, and our hosts were saying that while it’s a cool landmark… maybe that 5 million would have been better saved for other things. But you can’t predict these things. Even still, Ireland has one of the strongest economies in the world today and is, I believe, the most expensive city in Europe right now. Go Ireland!

We were here during the World Cup qualifier between Ireland and Italy. It was CRAZY! We watched it while eating dinner in a pub in Temple Bar, the area with all the pubs. Everyone was wearing green and drinking Guinness (or Guinness with Blackcurrant for the ladies) and each time we scored the crowd was so intense I felt like I was at an Obama rally. We scored twice but each time we scored, Italy scored, so it was tied 2-2. We still qualified, so it’s all good. Yes, “we”. I love Ireland.

Bulmers Pear Cider is delicious. It is served over ice, which shocked our French friends. What an affront to the cider! Yep, I encountered a TON of French people in Dublin. Everywhere Michelle and I went we heard French (and by “heard”, I mean occasionally eavesdropped, and by “eavesdropped” I mean occasionally stalked). We almost missed the plane to Dublin for – count ‘em – 12 different reasons. We listed them on the plane but they’re too numerous to remember. One of the reasons was that we missed the bus transferring us from Paris to the Beauvais airport and had to take the next one, so when we got there, we RAN off the bus and through the airport, along with two others… our new French friends. When we got there and the plane wasn’t even there yet, we all had coffee together and spoke in French. It comes in so handy knowing another language.

Last night I met up with Allie McCann, a friend from home that is basically like a sister to Kylee and me, and her friend Taylor. We went to dinner in Temple Bar and WOW was the crowd different! We went out on Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night with our hosts. Friday and Saturday were CRAZY. The pubs were packed with young people from all over the world, people were dancing, singing, doing everything you imagine young people doing in Dublin at night. It was the craziest nightlife I’ve ever seen. Sunday night was a little more mellow and we went to a pub where there were customers playing the guitar and the sax and singing. It was a veritable jam session in the middle of the narrowest pub in Dublin. They were good, too.

Then there was Monday night. Allie, Taylor and I walked into The Stag’s Head, which Lonely Planet called the best pub in Dublin, “and therefore the world”, and it was filled with 50-65 year old men sitting around tables drinking together. What a different world! They didn’t serve food so we left and as we were leaving, a group of said men started talking to us and offered to show us good pub to eat at. We ended up sitting with them and talking for hours about Irish culture and American culture. They said they like meeting Americans because “They’re a good crack.” The word crack is so prevalent here. It means fun/atmosphere/vibe/laugh/anything you want it to mean, I think... (One of the men said he’d asked his friend in Florida how the crack was in Florida and his friend was shocked.) They gave us a huge list of classic films (mostly American) to watch and a book to read and we in turn gave them a list of things to do, like “make guacamole” and “watch The Princess Bride”. One of them is a Battlestar Gallactica fan! I was so stoked! Oh BSG, always bringing people together.

Well it’s time to board my flight back to Bordeaux, so I’ll leave you with that. Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Life is good.

La Campagne (sigh...)

J'adore the French countryside! I went to a little village about 2 1/2 hours south of Bordeaux by car this weekend with my French family and a couple that are good friends of the family. We could see they Pyrenees in the distance! It was so peaceful and picturesque. I felt like I had stepped into a fairy tale. The house belonged to Félix's grandmother and they go there several times a year to relax, including every Christmas. The house is old and beautiful with greenery everywhere. There's a huge attic with a homemade movie theater (a white sheet and projector) and another room with four beds for the kids, I'd guess. Downstairs there's an old piano that doesn't work in the main hallway across from a bookshelf full of old French books. There's a fireplace and rugs everywhere, curtains picked out by my mom and a patio in the back overlooking a field surrounded by the giant trees that Félix grew up climbing. We picked figs together in the back yard and made fig jam. It smelled so good. It's a huge tradition every Fall. We picked over 10 kilos of fresh figs and made tens of jars of jam. We have 21 jars stored in the kitchen now, not to mention the others that the couple have.

We watched the American TV series, Weeds, together at night and it was very interesting to discuss the next day at lunch out in the back yard under the shade of the trees. They asked me about race relations in America and about the problems with suburbia - the supposed American dream. It's difficult to answer those questions and speak for everyone. I grew up in a small town that has all the trappings of suburbia but isn't a suburb of any city, and I know about race relations in America because I have studied it in books and I grew up with the American media, but so did most of my generation around the world I suppose. I have never viscerally witnessed or experienced any overt or explicit racism or sexism of any kind in America. (Egypt is another story.) Yet, I KNOW these problems exist. The same goes for the problems stemming from the conformity and monotony of suburbia... yes, that exists, and yes there weren't too many other options at night in high school other than bowling, the movies and maybe the beach, but I was never suicidal over it. I LOVED my life in high school and I still love Pismo Beach. However, I know that just describing my life doesn't give them the full picture of the American reality. So, I did my best to give a fuller truth. In retrospect, I should have told them more about my life as well, because it's not all problems. I am SO grateful to be born in America, just like they all seem so utterly satisfied to be French. :)

In total, this weekend was a huge breath of fresh air. It was completely relaxing and great for the spirit. I read half of a novel in French and they all helped me with the words I had highlighted in blue on the way home. The book has a lot of slang in it so it was sometimes a rather interesting experience trying to translate, like when they were trying to describe "con" and Félix burst out with "FUCKER". lol. (People write lol here, too. Not sure how that translates into French...)

Ma Famille Française !

My family is amazing. My French mom, Anne, is so warm and welcoming! She's also a great cook and every meal is home-made, authentic, delicious French food! I love it. I don't think I've eaten preservatives in about 3 months now because everything here is so fresh. My mom makes bread almost every day and she makes her own yogurt! She's extremely nice and a very caring mother. Her and Félix, my French brother, have a very playful relationship, which is neat. He's 18 and studying very hard to go to one of the Grands Écoles, which is the most prestigious type of university to go to here. He's incredibly intelligent. He speaks perfect English, Spanish, some Japanese, some Italian, and of course French. My mom speaks French, English, and Italian fluently (and she claims that she's the weakest in languages of the family). They have the hugest personal library I have ever seen! And tons of DVDs in all languages. They have a projector and we watch films and TV shows on DVD (like Weeds) in their living room. Also, my mom is a professor of math at the University of Bordeaux 2 that I go to here so I got to go see her office yesterday and she introduced me to all the staff we came across. She was bragging about me since I go to UCLA and I'm an American who speaks French. :) She's a sculptor and a painter too so her artwork is all over the house! She is the same age as my American mom and has a boyfriend who's from La Martinique, an island in the Caribbean that is part of France. He's really nice, although I've only met him once. Tomorrow I'm going with my family and a couple of their friends to the French countryside. I'm so excited! We're going to pick figs and make jam and play card games and watch a DVD together and relax.

As far as classes go, I'm taking 3 political science classes and 3 sociology classes, plus a French methodology course to learn how to formulate essays in French. Apparently it is the exact opposite of everything that has been drilled into my head by the American education system. I really like most of my classes, especially the sociology classes. I can get by for the most part understanding them, except for one professor of European Institutions who speaks really quickly and with a low voice. He's really funny, except I can't understand the jokes. I LOVE my Social Psychology course! It is SO interesting. It's making me want to study it in Grad School. We'll see... I want to learn everything, so I might have to choose. Drat.

J'adore la France ! I feel so comfortable here. It's a perfect fit. The language is beautiful and the culture is so rich it seems to permeate every single molecule - even our cat, Pantoufles ("Slippers"), knows how to be French. I've made some French friends already, although they all happen to be boys. Hmmm... it's slightly harder to meet French girls here. I'm finally settled in-moved into my room, class schedule set, tram pass acquired, layout of Bordeaux conceptualized, and feeling great. I'll try to keep you all updated now. I'm sorry that I haven't written a blog up until now, but as soon as I got to Paris it was GO GO GO until the end of July and then I was traveling all over Europe until the end of August with my cousin, Brooks, and my American mom. Then I had an intensive language program here and I was adjusting/forging really close relationships with other UC students from California, etc, etc... hopefully some day I can write something about July and August. For now, I had to skip it or I would never have started writing!

Feel free to comment on the blog with news from home! Or email me at jj.bailey@sbcglobal.net.

Je vous aime beaucoup !