Bonjour, new roommate!

It's Friday afternoon, and with every passing day I learn more and more about navigating Dublin, living in Ireland, and taking classes at UCD. While this makes me more comfortable in most respects, it also makes me feel more clueless and makes me see that there's still so much that I don't know about living in Europe. While I'm slowly getting used to walking up the left side of the staircase and paying for things in euros, I still can't get over the way people here deal with time. All of the orientation meetings have started at least ten minutes late, and whenever an Irish person says something is "a five minute walk away," it takes at least 15 to 20 minutes to get there. I like to be on time or early for everything, so this is definitely a big change for me. People here seem so much more laid back, and it probably wouldn't be a bad thing if some of this rubbed off on me and helped me relax a little more.

As of Wednesday, I have one roommate (there's still no sign of the third yet). He's from France (yes, my roommate is a guy, but all of the housing here is co-ed so I guess this is normal) and it's been really interesting to live with someone from another country. Yesterday one of his friends from France and another friend from Ireland came over for lunch, and we talked a lot about education systems in our respective countries and stereotypes we have of each other's. A significant portion of the UCD student body commutes to school, and they said that most Europeans rarely go somewhere too far from home. They kept asking me questions about why I would go to school in Boston when I live in California, especially when they found out how expensive college in America is. While we were talking, I was struck by how much more they seem to know about the world than I do. Even though I had to explain the education system in America to them, they knew all about American politics, geography, football teams, and music. Given that the only European events I pay attention to are the ones that concern Prince William and Kate Middleton, I felt very inadequate during this conversation. I know I've received a great education and had phenomenal opportunities to learn, but I couldn't help being a little bit jealous that they all speak five languages and have a much broader understanding of the world than I do. 

One of the things I was most excited about for this semester was the chance to meet people from all over the world and the opportunity to broaden my perspectives on different issues. Although living with a French guy will definitely take some getting used to, I hope it will allow me to learn more about different cultures and will introduce me to new things that I never knew about or considered before. Rest assured, Mom and Dad, this living situation seems like it's going to work out!