It Is Good to Be a Bit Lost

Hannah lay curled up into a ball on her seat. She had kicked her shoes off, and I could see one striped sock poking out from underneath her jacket, which she was hiding behind, her face covered by the hood. I had already yelled at her about the hood; it reminded me of a man about to be hung. She had just covered her face with it anyway, and continued to seek sleep.

We were sitting in a small airplane, with only three seats in every row. Outside of the window I could see the green and red lights of the runway, as well as the blinking lights on every aircraft. A large German airplane drifted past us on the tarmac, dwarfing us the way Goliath did David. In the front of the cabin was our flight attendant, half-hidden in shadows, her pale moon face staring out at us eerily.

The entire situation felt surreal.

If I closed my eyes, I could still see myself sitting somewhere completely different from the Newark airport, suspended on the tarmac, waiting for mechanics to fix the engine and refuel our little aircraft. In my mind, I could imagine the arduous trek from Holly Grove 4 with our five suitcases, dragging them down to reception, sweating underneath my four layers of clothing. I remembered the face of our cabbie, who had helped us load each and every suitcase into the trunk, and then chatted with us on the way to the airport, asking us questions like, “Do American high schools really look like they do on T.V.?”

From the window I watched the sun rise over Belfast for the last time. Northern Ireland had made an effort to be sunny for us. The Lanyon Building glowed, Samson and Goliath stood stoically in their permanent retirement, and Belfast Castle seemed to stand straighter on Cave Hill. I traced the familiar hills with my eyes, wondering if I could see the path we had scrambled down three weeks ago, if that was the cave I had climbed into. When I had first come to Belfast, we had been on a bus, and the sky overhead had been gloomy and drizzling. Now I was sitting in the back of a taxi, and I was saying good-bye to the places I loved best.

Victoria was already somewhere over the Atlantic, flying home. Her plane had been scheduled to leave at 7.00 a.m. Hannah and I were leaving Northern Ireland at 11.10. She would get home earlier, but she would miss seeing the sun rise over the green farmland one last time. The sky was my favourite colour, a soft yellow, surrounded by peach and purple haze.

The cabbie dropped us off in front of the airport, and undercharged us out of the goodness of his heart. Then he was gone, leaving Hannah and I with five suitcases we could barely manage by ourselves.  Slowly we pulled them inside of the airport, and got in the queue to check in our bags. We were standing behind a woman who had lost a grandparent, and had flown here to be at the funeral, but lived in America. Hannah said all of the right things to her, and slowly we moved ahead in the queue. Our large suitcases cleared—mine was right on the dot, for which I was grateful—and then I checked in our second suitcase, which only came out to 62 pound. Luckily, I had 42 pound on me, and Hannah supplied the other 20, and we paid the charges cheerfully.

“We must be making everyone’s day,” Hannah said as we hurried off to Gate 22, now three suitcases less, “for being so happy.”

And we were happy. Everything was going as it should. Our airplane was on time. The airport was clean and staffed with kind, friendly people. I was in control of the situation. I was in Northern Ireland. Hannah was ecstatic. She was going home. We wandered through the airport until we found Gate 22, and there we waited. There were large windows everywhere, and it looked as if the sun had fully risen.

We got on the plane a few minutes later, and I was pleased to see that the airplane was full of Queen’s students returning home. Mehgan, the grad student Hannah and I hung out with a lot for our first few weeks at uni, was sitting a few seats ahead of us, and Katie, from anthropology, was on my left across the aisle. We were all headed home.

It was a posh airplane, so we all had little video monitors, and we all hooked into them right away. I watched Lilo & Stitch, Brave, and pieces of The Dark Knight Rises. Then Hannah and I watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer together, which was absolutely terrible. First off, the glasses that they were wearing marked them as different anyway, because only people who had syphilis really wore sunglasses out in public (so the vampires are walking around town with giant badges that shouted I HAVE AN STD) and then the historian in me cringed and crawled into a hole and died because none of the characters were true to their real-life bases at all. I mean, Mary was quite insane; she chased Abraham around the house with a knife once. That cute little quality was completely lacking in the movie. About the time the Civil War started I took the headphones off and started to read, because I couldn’t take anymore historical inaccuracies.

We landed in Newark about one or two there time—I think. Hannah and I got off of the plane and collected our luggage, got our passports re-stamped, and were shuttled this way and that until we dropped off our suitcases again. A wonderfully brilliant man who worked for the airport showed me a neat trick to help me balance the suitcases, and after that I had no problem at all juggling the suitcases. Unfortunately, once we’d gotten it so we could actually walk and carry the suitcases, we had to drop them off again and find our way to our gate for the next flight, which involved talking a little train-trolley-people mover-to terminal A, where we had to wait in another queue (wait, this was America, it was a line) for someone to check our passports for the third time. Hannah was very patient and resigned to all of this, but it annoyed me. Eventually we ended up on gates 20-27, which was a large circular area covered with too many people without any manners or politeness at all. I missed the Northern Irish with their hospitality and their politeness.

We waited there, watching the raining gray sky melt into the velvet blue of night. I bought a hot dog roll, hoping it would taste like the sausage rolls of Belfast, but it was too spicy, too…American. I ate it, but it did not fill me up. Hannah bought a slushie that reminded her of Psych, and when we ate we realised that our flight had switched Gates.

During the suitcase hassle, I had lost Katie without being able to say good-bye, but Mehgan had followed us, and she said that it was normal. So I went up and had my ticket checked, and luckily our flight had only been moved one gate, so we could stay where we were. I read more of I Capture the Castle, and waited.

The plane was moving.

I opened my eyes. Hannah still looked like a dead woman walking, but once we started to move she took the hood away from her face. Her eyes were glassy. We had been on the tarmac a full hour. Earlier Hannah had been annoyed with the delay, talking about how she just wanted to go home, and how she worried that her parents wouldn’t be there.

“They’ll be there,” I assured her. “Why wouldn’t they wait? I’m sure someone told them there were problems with the engine…”

When we had first started crawling towards the flight strip, our engine had shrieked in a terrible, unnatural way—“like a crying baby,” Hannah had said. Sure enough, someone else thought it wasn’t normal either, and they had checked the engine whilst leaving it running, which sounds both dangerous and wasteful. In any event, we had gotten refueled, and we were going to be home in an hour and a half.

“Are you all right?” I asked Hannah.

She shook her head, no.

I was wearing my scapular and had my rosary wrapped around my wrist. The noises had scared me, and suddenly thoughts of dying in a plane crash were very real to me—helped, no doubt, by the little bit of The Dark Knight Rises I had watched over the Atlantic, which begins with Bane in a small airplane and ends with it crashing to the forest floor below.

A thought ran through my mind: I can’t take this, put me on a plane back to Belfast, but I squelched it.  I chewed my gum forcefully (a downside to sitting next to me on a plane—I chew gum like my life depends on it, because otherwise I go deaf for hours) and once we were in the air I started to write in my journal, writing of places that I still carried in my skin. I closed my eyes again, and I could see the sun rising over Belfast. I could see the boy in the Belfast terminal with a backpack that read In Event of a Zombie Apocalypse, Follow Me, and I could still remember Katie standing behind me at the luggage carousel in Newark. My mouth still tasted of Root Beer and a hot dog and the memory of crisps that I had seen for the first time in months, Nacho Cheese Doritos and Lays Ready Salted. The memories were still present, shifting around in my mind.

The flight attendant appeared, and gave Hannah water, which she devoured greedily. I hoped that it would help. I continued to scratch in my journal in the half-light. At one point Hannah leaned forward, and I thought she was going to say something, but she only peered dazedly at the few lines of black writing on the page for a few moments, and then settled down to sleep again.

Hannah had closed the window on our side, but across the aisle I could still see the darkness. We had flown through several rainclouds, which had terrified me, as the lights at the end of the wings blinked like lightning. Now, however, there was no cloud cover. My ears started to feel fuzzy, and I knew that we were descending. I looked, and I could see what looked like water and then a strip of darkness that looked more permanent than the water, aglow with yellow city lights. I thought it looked beautiful.

“Look,” I said to Hannah, but we had turned, and she could not see it. I wondered what it was we were flying over—a great lake, a river, Detroit, another state entirely? I remembered what Hannah had said, when we saw how small our plane was—who in their right mind would go to Detroit anyway? But we were almost there, and there was no going back.

At last we landed, and I stood right away. I was tired of sitting, even though standing was probably more dangerous, because the top of my head was only maybe half an inch from the ceiling of our little aircraft. My ears were ringing.

We got off the plane and collected our carry-ons, and then emerged only a few gates down from the one that had started us on our international journey. “Does this look familiar?” I asked Hannah. “Do you remember this place?”

It was empty now. All of the shops were closed, and only a few people—probably waiting on our rinky-dink little plane—were there. I hurried Hannah through the halls, thinking to myself that everything looked smaller, as if I was dreaming about a place I had been once. We stopped off at the toilet—“Thank God,” Hannah said, “We can call it a restroom now!” and then walked towards the baggage claim. “Why is it so far away?” Hannah asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, walking faster.

We passed a closed Hockey Town and McDonalds, and turned past a large Christmas tree. A few airport officials were goofing off in the empty spaces, joking loudly. We appeared in another empty room, the one we had dropped off our bags four months ago. Full circle, full circle, I thought. I had rained when we arrived in Belfast; it rained in Newark when we arrived, and here we are again. Life goes around and around and around…

I had lost track of where we were; I had stopped. But Hannah knew where she was going. She went to the escalators, and we went down.  What time was it? It was 9.00 in Detroit; it was 2.00 in the morning in Belfast. Was I tired? Was I giddy? What was I? Who was I?

“That person looks familiar,” Hannah said.

I looked, and at the bottom of the escalator I saw a girl in a purple sweater, a matching purple hat on her head. Her hair was long and brown and straight, and she was wearing red glasses and carrying a sign that read: WELCOME BACK REBEKAH AND HANNAH with a picture of Michigan, Carleton marked with a little black dot, and the words “Northern Ireland” scrawled in cursive in a corner.

It was Emily.

I wanted to run down the escalator, but I was trapped behind Hannah, who waited patiently for the escalator’s stairs to run its course. Once I was on level and solid ground I abandoned my suitcase and charged Emily. Over her shoulder I could see mum, smiling, and Hannah’s parents. Hannah went to say hello to her own family, and I went over to mum, shouting, “Mummy!”

“Daughter!” she answered.

Our suitcases came very promptly, and I had to run after my obnoxious pink one, and then divvy up our shared checkered bag. Hannah got her belongings, and I got mine, and then we had to say good-bye.

“Thank you for putting up with me,” Hannah said.

“Thank you for putting up with me,” I replied.

We went outside, and my dad appeared in the blue van. We got our stuff in the van and piled in, chatting and talking. Mum had been talking to flight officials and had known we would be late; they had said we left but had to go back for repairs. Soon we were barreling down the highway—what side of the road? The right, always the right. Not the left.

At home Emily had put up a green sign on the front door that welcomed me home again. “And look!” she said, “Mom made these for you!”

They were pumpkin muffins, food that was unavailable in Northern Ireland. It’s preposterous, but the things I missed most about America were food and my friends. I made myself dinner, loving my first pumpkin muffins in four months, and eating way too many Lays crisps than what was good for me. It was ten o’clock, and Dad ushered everyone off to bed, saying, “You have school tomorrow!”

I sat downstairs by myself, eating my dinner. The Christmas tree had been designed to look artistic this year. It lacked its usual hodge-podge of sentimentality that I always like, with grandmother’s sea green bauble with the missing angle, Emily’s and my childhood Christmas projects, artifacts from mum’s European travels, the nutcracker and the rocking horses I always loved. It seemed alienated from me in its different-ness. The kitchen, too, seemed empty without Patches there to greet me, asking, Where have you been? I missed you, I missed you.

I went upstairs to bed. I knew it was late—three in the morning in Belfast—but I did not feel tired. I stood in my room for a long moment, remembering what I had forgotten. I had not realised I had all of this stuff, I had forgotten the sentiment behind this or that item, I had forgotten to remember this or that. Memories started to come back to me; facets of myself that I had ignored since high school, or had not used since I had crossed the ocean. I used to love Japan, I realised with a start, and I collect movie stubs, and look at all of the books…I never realised I had this many. And I have a violin and a clarinet and a pitiful excuse for a guitar and I collect rocks—and why do I feel lost in my own room?

I unpacked Patrick and Porter and put them on the chair, and then I climbed into bed. My cover felt cold and different, and I was surprised at how used I’ve gotten to my duvet, now in Rebekah’s room in Belfast. There were posters on the wall, but I could not remember what they were, and it was too dark to see them.

Somehow I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew it was morning; my parents were waking up to start their days. I got up with Emily at six, and sat with them until mum left for school and so did Emmy, and then I went up into my room and finished writing in my diary, all of the things I had not had time to write. I thought about posting on my blog, but I felt too unsettled to do that. Instead I wrapped Christmas presents and went to the public library, suprising myself by remembering how to drive, and picking Emily up at school. Some of the teachers recognised me, Mr. Pyle and Mrs. Poth primarily, but others did not; and some it took a few seconds. Mrs. Poth said I looked like a world traveller, and I wondered if I had changed very much.

Later I talked to mum about my day, and said that the reason I was getting through was I did things out of habit. This is always how it is done, even if I had forgotten to think about it. Everything was muscle memory, and so I wasn’t sure if I would get culture shock, as Emily was predicting. How could I get culture shock, if my body remembered what it had always done?

“It’ll be easier to get used to things,” she said wisely, “Because you’re not having to figure out a whole new culture. You’ll get over your jet lag soon.”

This reminded me of one of the last things Ciaran Carson, my Creative Writing professor, said to my class. “To be lost,” he said, with that faraway look which means he is voicing his thoughts out loud, that he has almost forgotten that we are there, “is an experience. To know exactly where you are is no fun. You should always be a bit lost.” When he said it, all I could think of was the Tolkien poem, All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.

And I sat at the kitchen table, staring down at the tablecloth, and I thought, I’m just a little bit too found for my own good.

But I knew that found feeling wouldn’t last for long. In two and a half weeks, I’m going back to Madonna—and I have plans for adventures and good craic there for the next year and a half. And afterwards? Well…the whole world is waiting!  And I plan to get thoroughly lost.                                      

Saying Good-bye (How to Make Proper Tea)

My finals are finished. My room is nearly packed. Upstairs my friend Rebekah is packing her own suitcases; she leaves tomorrow afternoon for England.

Partially as a farewell, as partially as an introduction to British tea, Rebekah hosted tea today in her room. She pulled out her purple trunk and put a blanket on top of it, and she laid out scones, chocolate cake, strawberry jam, whipped cream, and custard. Jennifer came and helped her make the scones, and at five Hannah and I arrived in time to watch Jennifer take the scones out of the oven. In doing this, we were able to see the girls making all of the noise this semester: three girls in pyjamas, with an iPhone and a speaker next to the window, jumping on the table and singing along with the lyrics at the top of their lungs. Behind them were Abercrombie & Fitch bags, with their shirtless men on them, taped to the walls. In the corner was a Christmas tree. “I want a Christmas tree,” I said enviously to Hannah.

Whilst we waited for Jaime, the other American invited to British Tea, and Sophie, the other Brit invited to British Tea, we talked about the proper way to eat (and pronounce) scones. “You twist it in two, like this,” Jennifer said, demonstrating over a bowl. After twisting the scone like an Oreo, she proceeded to put strawberry jam on top of it, and follow that up with whipped cream.

“You don’t put it back together?” I asked, when she took a bite of one half of the scone.

“No,” she said. “Well, you do sometimes, if it’s just jam, but the whipped cream will fall out if you make a sandwich of it.” Then she looked over at Rebekah’s handiwork, and said, “Do you want any scone with that jam?”

Rebekah continued putting lavish amounts of strawberry jam on her scone. “I will, thanks.”

“I don’t think I can eat strawberry jam,” I said. “It makes me think of that song—‘He landed on the runway like a blob of strawberry jam...’”

Jaime and Sophie came up then, and we made more scones for them. Sophie had brought milk, so we were able to have tea, although it was not proper tea according to the list Jennifer drew up for us.

It’s a joke on the internet that British tea tastes like a hug in a cup, but American tea tastes like harbour, and so we wanted to learn the secret to making proper tea. We already know that the tea you order at restaurants is nothing like the tea here, and Hannah and I are going to miss tea very, very much. And if we can’t buy proper tea, we’re going to have to make it. Jennifer was very patient, and went over the nine step list several times with us.

1) Boil kettle.

2) Pour boiled water into teapot.

3) Boil more water.

4) Pour out water in teapot into the sink.

5) Pour new water into the warm teapot.

6) Steep tealeaves (loose leaf is preferred)

            -DO NOT STEW.

7) Pour into cups (using a strainer to catch the tea leaves).

8) Add lemon/sugar/milk to taste.

9) Drink and sigh in happiness.

After spending a great deal of time on this list we made our own tea, but it was made without the use of a teapot, warm mugs, of loose leaf tea, and it still tasted very good. Then we chatted for a long time about fainting and illnesses and terrible things that have happened to us in our youth, and when conversation began to peter out Rebekah pulled out these two fantastic games from her arsenal and we played the Dream Game and the Bicycle Game. When this was finished, Hannah and Jaime taught us (or, at least, everyone but me) to play Egyptian Rat Screw, and when that puttered out because I couldn’t learn the rules and everyone else got vaguely bored, Jennifer taught us to play Pig, which I also lost because I couldn’t learn the rules. My mother has spent my entire life trying to teach me to play cards, and my grandpa used to be a euchre champion, but the only card game I’ve ever learnt the rules to was Go Fish. In this I am very much a disappointment to A) My grandfather, B) My mother, C) My entire high school band class, and D) Hannah, who is really, really good at card games.

We started talking about movies and trailers on the internet, Shia LaBeauf being an actual cannibal, Slenderman, and drunk guys playing videogames. Jennifer started trying to teach me British cuss words (which, unfortunately, I already knew). Then Rebekah kicked us out to start packing, and she got a puppy dog look on her face and wailed, “I’m not going to see you ever again!”

Which was fairly depressing, but not as depressing as what she said after: “Goodbye, my ginger-haired named-sharing friend!”

So we left, and I was very upset, even though I am going to see the other three girls tomorrow, and as I was waiting for Hannah to walk with me to the Treehouse to print something out, I ran into the Northern Irish Rebecca, who said, “Have youse seen the cake we bought you?”

Chelsea, Jenny, and Rebecca bought us a chocolate cake to say farewell. They included hand-drawn pictures, and swarmed around us, taking pictures. They were all dressed up, wearing lovely perfume, and carrying tall high heels in their hands. Our kitchenette was full of Smirnoff bottles and energy drinks, and as Hannah and I sat down to enjoy their cake they had us sniff whatever it was they were drinking. It smelt strongly of lime.

They whisked off, telling us to enjoy and save some cake for them. It’s Thursday night, after all. The Northern Irish are going out celebrating. The Americans are going to watch the midnight premiere of The Hobbit. I went out and had proper British tea, with chocolate cake doused in custard, and scones covered with strawberry jam and whipped cream. Tomorrow night is my last movie night, and to celebrate, Nikola is bringing us Darby O’Gill and the Little People, in honour of the leprechaun museum we visited on Saturday. This is momentous as Sophie, who does not watch Disney movies, is going to be cultured in the art of Disney films.

This was not, however, the first good-bye; nor is it to be the last. At lunch today Hannah and I said good-bye to Jolien, our Belgium friend who went to Londonderry/Derry with us, as well as to Giant’s Causeway and other excursions. Yesterday we said good-bye to Fletcher, a Northern Irish student in origami club and archery club, who took us to see Breaking Dawn Part 2 with Victoria. We sat in the Treehouse and made origami together, and I got to celebrate my last days of being able to drink alcohol by buying it—to my surprise, I was not carded, which was both amazing and seriously depressing. (Thankfully, I will be illegal again in two days!) On Tuesday I had to say good-bye to Shannon, an amazing writer from my Creative Writing class. Tomorrow I’ll say good-bye to Katie, and Hannah and I will have to say good-bye to Sophie and Jennifer and Jaime, as they all leave for England and the States on Saturday. And on Saturday we will have to make the hardest good-bye: The good-bye to Victoria.

Victoria, in case any of you were wondering where she has gone, was not at the tea party tonight because her parents have flown in for the week and are staying nearby. She has been showing them the sights, and I am very happy for her, but it makes me miss my family. I keep wanting to take Emily and show her around Belfast, but I’ve bought her a ton of presents and have prepared myself to spoil her rotten this Christmas.

I’m quite worried about returning home. I am hoping and praying that the flight goes smoothly, and that it is not delayed, and that my ears don’t go entirely loopy, as they are wont to do. Once the technical details are over, though, I will have to readjust to life in the States immediately. Bath & Body Works needs Christmas workers, after all. I will have to overcome my jet lag quickly, and remind myself how American money—and tax!—works. And then I will once again be swept up into Madonna—working at the Writing Center, meeting old friends again and making new ones. Lots of things have changed at Madonna this year, I’ve heard. But that’s a good thing. I’ve changed this year too.

Sophie asked me tonight if I am going to continue blogging when I return to the States, and my initial response was to say, No. I do not think I will blog when I return to the States. This upset Hannah, who wants me to continue talking about the craic we have at Madonna, but once Christmas is over I am going to consider this blog finished. I’ve tried to depict my life in Belfast and Northern Ireland accurately, and I have loved this place very much, even if my initial response was depressing. But my time causing scandals in Belfast is almost at an end. I will probably blog again on Saturday, because something cool is going to happen on Saturday, and once more when I return home, but after that Scandal in Belfast will be at an end. I want to thank everyone who read this blog faithfully (and by ‘faithfully’ I mean both reading every time I put up a post, hoarding everything until you have a spare moment, skimming, or even just noticing that I’m still alive and blogging). You helped make the scandals happen (I’m not sure how, actually. But I feel like that’s something I ought to say.). If I do decide to continue blogging about my life and adventures in the States, I will let everyone know on facebook, but I will not be using this blog any longer unless I feel it is warranted.

Thank you for reading, and I will rejoin you all (hopefully) at 8.00 Michigan time Sunday night!

Leprechauns and Irish Legends

It was time to commandeer a ship.

Moored in the River Liffey was a beautiful ship from the days of yore, full of cotton sails and rope, made of shining wood partially painted blue. 

 

“I’ve been practising my American accent,” Sophie said, as I craned my neck over Hannah’s head to look out of the bus window.  

I raised an eyebrow, turning back to her. “Why?”

“It’ll help, if we get into trouble.”

“How so?”

Jennifer leapt in on the conversation. “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse in England. You didn’t know about it? Oh well, too bad, come along now.”

“Stupidity is not a crime,” I said, remembering what an old friend of mine used to say. “But it’s best just to say ‘no hablo’ and run.”

“Let’s just blame it on the Americans,” Sophie said.

The bus started moving again, and we left the beautiful boat behind us. A few moments later we found ourselves in front of Trinity College, for the second time in our lives. Dublin was just as crowded as it was when we left. Almost immediately I found myself being swept away in the current, going this way and that.

“Come back!” Nikola, the RA, shouted. The seven of us turned back and managed to present ourselves before her. “This is Jaime. Jaime also wants to visit the Leprechaun Museum.”

She pushed a small blonde girl towards us.

“Okay,” we said, “but we’re going to Trinity College first.”

After grilling Jaime about her identity (American. From the south. Studying music at Queen’s for a year) and looking quickly at the Tour Buses, all of which cost 16 euro, we decided to foot it to the Leprechaun Museum, but took our first pit stop at Trinity College, which had the only free toilet for miles and also had a magnificent bookshop that Hannah and I had wanted to check out more thoroughly. On our last trip to Dublin we managed to see the Book of Kells about ten minutes before it closed, but we hadn’t been able to go through the bookshop properly. We each bought variants of the same things, and then headed out for a picnic lunch outside.

Jennifer had made sandwiches, as she had the day we climbed Cave Hill, Sophie had brought along boiled eggs, and Rebekah had made more cupcakes. We enjoyed eating what we had all brought, and I got to try animal crackers with chocolate on the back. While this is not unusual (we have these in America, after all, I’m certain of it) before I was allowed to eat any of the biscuits Victoria (who was sharing the bag with me) and I had to tell everyone the name of the animal featured on the biscuit and then imitate its call. In theory this is brilliant, until....

“Alligator?” I said doubtfully, holding up my biscuit.

“I think they hiss,” Jennifer said.

“They hiss,” Victoria said.

Both of them hissed.

“Clap,” Jaime and Rebekah said, holding out their hands and clapping, so that their hands looked like an alligator’s.

I clapped, and was allowed to eat the biscuit, but I was denied the right to eat the toucan for sounding more like a kookaburra and the monkey because I was not enthusiastic enough. 

 

After our picnic lunch, we left the part of Dublin with which I was familiar, crossed the River Liffey, and followed Rebekah and Jennifer to the Leprechaun Museum.

“How did you guys find out about it?” Jaime asked, jogging a little to keep up with everyone.

“Rebekah,” I told her, pointing at Rebekah, who stood out in her fabulous Harvey the Husky Hat. Rebekah raised her arms in triumph. This did not exactly answer the question, but we moved on. “How about you?”

“Huh?”

“Nikola said you wanted to see the Leprechaun Museum, too.”

“Oh, that? Not really. I think she just wanted to stick me with a group. Last time we went out I followed her everywhere, like a puppy.”

About that time Rebekah shouted that we were there, and we found ourselves in front of a street corner that read LEPRECHAUN MUSEUM. It was small, with fake green grass on the concrete, and looked, very worryingly, like a small child’s paradise. 

We love the Leprechaun Museum!

Sophie and Rebekah show off the museum!

“I’m so excited,” Jaime said, “I’m like a two-year-old at heart. Just to warn you.”

“We’re all two inside,” I said, and from then on Jaime was officially one of the group.

We bought our tickets, and I chatted with the man selling them. He was very friendly, and while his accent wasn’t Southern Irish or even what you would hear in movies, it had a pleasing lilt to it. Standing nearby was a short woman with mussed up rust-red hair, dressed in the part of a leprechaun. I wondered if she was hung over. As she talked to the ticket-seller, though, I realised that she was only exhausted; that morning a group of Swiss tourists had come by and she’d had to give the tour in German. I thought that this was absolutely amazing.

We started off the tour by talking about why leprechauns are so popular, and also why the Irish do not like them—yet, at the same time, dress up as leprechauns when they travel abroad to watch football games. I was reminded very strongly of the Harry Potter books, when the Weasleys take Harry out to see a professional Quidditch game and the leprechauns swoop around dropping false gold everywhere. Then our guide opened a hidden door and let us loose in a room full of giant furniture. 

 

Immediately the two-year-olds inside of us came out, along with the group of Continental tourists who were all much, much older than our little group of Queen’s students. We were all scrambling over drawers, chairs, and tables, taking pictures of everyone as a dwarf. Too soon, our guide came through a fireplace and told us to follow her for story time. I felt like a child again after recess, wishing it could have gone on forever.

We followed her into another dark room, where she told us about the mythical leprechaun gold, and then into another, with a screen depicting scenes from stories she told about leprechauns and Finn McCool, and then she led us into another room with a little fake well in it. After letting us drop in coins and making wishes, we sat down again on tree stumps and listened to her tell the story of the Children of Lir. 

 

It ended with a spot to take pictures, of which we took several, and then we went back onto the streets of Dublin. Coca-Cola was having a Christmas promotional deal, and we all got mini cans of free Coke, and sipping it happily we wound our way to the Temple Bar area for shopping, with me squealing every time I saw a tram pass by.

“Have you never seen a tram before?” Sophie asked, exasperated.

“No!”

“Rebekah,” Hannah said, “that’s what they were building in Edinburgh. Remember?”

“Yes, I know, but I thought they would be trolleys...”

“That’s what we call them in America, I think.”

I shook my head. “No, when I thought trolley, I thought of San Francisco trolleys...I don’t know. LOOK THERE’S ANOTHER ONE!” And another tram passed by, with a child on a bike holding on to the sides and getting a free ride to wherever he was going.

There were lots of stalls set up in the Temple Bar area, but I had no euros to spend—which was a good thing, or else I would have bought books I would not have been able to bring home. After realising that time was running short, we went back, crossed Bachelor’s Walk and River Liffey, visited a tourist shop, and then wandered down Grafton Street, which is a major shopping lane. 

 

Grafton was full to the brim. It was hard to keep track of all seven of us, and it was a task made harder by all of the events going on around us. One man was on a very tall unicycle, and there were three musicians playing tunes. There was even a group of six men painted all black, as if they were statues, with a little stuffed dog beside them.

 

By then it was late, and we went back to Trinity to meet the others. This was not well-organised, however, and involved all of us splitting up to run into different stores, buying more things, and then getting lost. At last, when the sky was a deep gray, we found Nikola, and we reunited with Mark and Manuel, the two boys who climbed Cave Hill with us two weeks ago. The buses were not there, however, and we ran around looking at more shops and then dashing across the road to rejoin the group.

Finally the coach arrived, and our group went around Trinity College towards Marrion Square, where Oscar Wilde’s home resides, and climbed back on the coach and started to drive home.

“We should have commandeered the ship,” one of us said sorrowfully as we again crossed the River.

“Next time,” was the reply.

I settled down against the window and looked out at Dublin. Last time I visited I had not been pleased with it, and found it dirty and boring, full of people who were irritable and mean. That had not been my impression today. Maybe it was because I had spent the day laughing with six amazing girls, or maybe, I thought, as we passed a beautiful display of lights, it was because nothing can look ugly at Christmas. Just like Belfast, Dublin was bedecked in blue lights and Christmas trees, with Santas on every street and Christmas music playing on intercoms. Settling in, snuggling under my coat and getting ready to nap for two hours, I thought drowsily that though I wouldn’t ever like to live in Dublin...maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad place to visit again...I had heard good things about their museum...and I had yet to really enter Oscar Wilde’s house...

“Hey,” Nikola said, startling me, “you girls be careful when you get back, all right?”

“Okay. Why?”

“They’ve closed down City Centre. No one’s getting in, or out.”

I blinked. Things had gotten that bad?

Earlier that morning, on the way to Dublin, Nikola had told us that there was to be a scheduled protest in City Centre over the taking down of the Union flag at City Hall. This has been a big deal for about a week, involving riots in the Holy Lands and in front of City Hall (which is annoying, as that is also where the Continental Market is being held), and also Cosmin and the others at iCafe telling us to please walk home in groups. Hannah had been very happy that we were travelling out of Belfast, and talking about how, on the day we were supposed to go to Dublin two weeks ago, there had been a protest there.

“God’s watching out for us!” she said, before we started to sing all of the riot songs we knew (‘Riot’ by Three Days Grace and ‘I Predict a Riot’ by Kaiser Chiefs).

“We want to go to Saint George’s tomorrow,” Hannah said, concerned. “Will it be safe?”

Nikola made a face. I knew what was going through her mind:

            Belfast is the second safest city in Europe!

            But we put up a peace wall just two years ago.

            Americans have nothing to fear, as they have no political affiliations!

            The boys in the front were caught up in riot acts yesterday.

“Yeah, it should be fine,” she said.

I cheered inside. I thought it would be fun to see a proper Belfast riot.

Two hours later, when we pulled into Belfast, I kept looking around for lights or the large police cars, but saw nothing. We were dropped off safely at Elms Village, bags of Christmas presents in our purses, tired in a good way, planning for finals and our hectic final week in Belfast.