We Give Directions; A Tour of Belfast's History; I Make a Confession

Yesterday was a historic event for Hannah and I. We were lurking by the McClay library, trying to find No Alibi, the bookstore that we had found quite by accident the day before. Hannah was insisting that we had to go down at least three streets to find it. I was adamant that we had to pass the Theological Building and go straight. Hannah plunged ahead, and I followed slowly behind, limping. Travel has not been kind to my body; I sport all sorts of bruises with mysterious origins, my feet hurt, and I’m limping.

Because I was crawling along at about the speed of a turtle, a car driving down the street was able to overtake me and wave me over. “Yes, hello,” the woman sitting shotgun said, “Would you happen to know where Elms Village is?”

They were talking to me

As if they actually thought I might be able to help them out

As if I actually knew where Elms Village was

And…I did. I had been ready to respond politely but sadly that I had no idea how to get wherever they were going, because Hannah and I were lost ourselves; but then suddenly the back of my brain started shooting off fireworks and saying, “You know how to get to Elms Village! You know! Tell the woman!”

I forgot that I had an accent, which people have been commenting about all day; I forgot that I wasn’t a Belfast native. I said, “You’ll need to go back to the main road, and go on University until the road becomes Malone.”

Hannah had heard the commotion by then, and had doubled back and supplemented the information. “Yeah, the road splits into Stranmillis, but you want to stay on Malone.”

“It’s right past a BP station, on the left,” I said.

They thanked us, and left, and Hannah and I jumped up and down and screamed. We had actually given directions!

“I hope they get there okay!” Hannah said.

I had the feeling they would.

Then we went down the three streets, only to find ourselves in a ghetto, and I turned out to be right about where No Alibi was.

Today was our first Sunday in Northern Ireland, and Hannah and I went to Saint Bridgid’s church, just down the road. It was a beautiful little church and was very full, but it was disorganized. There were no ushers, and the responses were given without order. I’m so used to the responses being slow and stately I forgot half of what I was supposed to say, and spent most of the prayers just listening to the way the others prayed. No one prayed in unison; everyone just talked out loud at the same time without rhythm or rhyme.

The priest was barely taller than the altar servers, but he had a good, loud voice, and I could understand him easily. He gave a sort of pre-homily at the beginning of Mass, and during the actual homily, he talked about what Jesus means to us. “It is my answer,” he finished with, “and, I believe yours as well, that Jesus is the human face of God.”

He was also loud about the prayers while consecrating the Host. Usually, at home, the priest sometimes speaks out loud and has us respond with, “Blessed be God forever,” but I could actually hear him asking God to forgive him his sins as he washed his hands. Usually I can’t. They also rang a bell when the priest held the Host and Chalice up, and he held them up for a very long time, which I liked. The Hosts are different here. They’re smaller, and don’t have patterns on them; when I went up to receive mine, this confused me quite a bit.

After Mass, Hannah and I went on a bus tour of Belfast. We passed the Titanic quarter, and were shown the major tourist attractions of Samson and Goliath, two giant cranes on the riverside. Growing up, I loved stories of the Titanic (although I only just saw the movie last year) and adored the fact that when my great-great-grandmother came to America, she had come on the Carpathia, one of the ships that picked up Titanic survivors. Coming to where it had been built was like a giant circle; I was coming back to where I had started. I could see the hand of God working in my life, guiding me, directing me.

“When the Titanic sank,” our guide told us, snapping me from my reverie, “there was an official investigation that led them back here, to Belfast. We told them that it wasn’t our fault. The ship had been in perfect working order when it left, and it wasn’t our fault that the captain was English, the navigator was Scottish, and the iceberg was Canadian!”

After that we went to the peace wall. The peace wall we went to is the tallest one of its kind, and it separates a protestant section of Belfast from a Catholic one. Quotes from the Dalai Lama, famous poets, and visitors were written on it. Perhaps I should have been frightened, but I couldn’t be. I’ve heard about what happened, and I read about the Troubles in the Ulster Museum, but it still isn’t fully real to me.

The thing about everyone here—the tour guides, the professionals, the students, my friends—they all say in the same breath, “This is the Europa Hotel, which was the most bombed hotel in the world until the Hilton in Afghanistan bypassed it a few years ago,” with, “Belfast is the second safest city in the U.K.!” I’m not sure what they want me to think. I know that a riot broke out in the North this week, and I know that the part of Belfast I live in is very safe. I consider myself smart enough to avoid dangerous situations—the reason I am not in the common room right now, because there are freshers with Smirnoff—and I know what parts of a city are seedy and which are not. They tell me, “No one will hurt you, because you are American,” and I’m caught between this ugly, privileged feeling I never knew I had inside of my body before, and this dark worry. For it is fairly obvious that I am American, and that I am gullible.

After the bus tour, Victoria, Hannah, Mel and I went down to Saint George’s Market, and about everyone we met there commented on our American accents. “Is it that obvious?” I asked, without thinking (of course it’s obvious, you eejit, you don’t even know the difference between a five pence and a two pence!) but I suppose what I had wanted was to just be a bystander or observer, to not be looked at and automatically be labeled as foreign. Some of the vendors at the Market even asked us how long we were in town, as if we all knew each other and had come together for a weekend away. “We’re here for a semester,” we tried to explain, and they nodded, their eyes blank, and a different ugly feeling started slithering around in my gut: inferiority. 

I think that this might be the appropriate time to announce that I am suffering from culture shock, which means, among other things, that I am tired, unhappy, cold, and homesick. Considering the fact that I haven’t been homesick since third grade, this is a new feeling. I have been looking forward to going abroad for years, and I daydreamed all of my life of being exactly where I am now, but now that I am actually here I find that I am lonely. Lonely is a new feeling for me, too. I feel completely isolated and invisible.

Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote, “Your first discovery when you travel is that you do not exist,” and that explains a lot of what I’m feeling right now. I do not exist here. I do not know how to phone the police, how to find a music store, or even where to buy tea. I am helpless and at about the same intelligence level as a third grader, so people look at me oddly. One of the Irish girls who moved in this week told her mum there were two American girls living in nearby, and her mum cautioned her, “Speak slowly; remember, we Irish talk fast.” Once upon a time, I talked fast, too. Now I limp along, both on my feet and in my words, so the Irish can understand me, so Mel can understand me. I feel as if I have a handicap, and I am sick of it being looked at as a handicap.

I’m also very much out of my comfort zone. I wrote to you earlier about the ceili dance that was held at Whitla Hall. The dance got out at about ten at night, and when we left, there was a solid group of about fifty of us walking back to the dorms. But as we walked, as we passed each bar, a large group siphoned off and slipped inside. In the end, only four people walked back into Elms Village; the rest were all out, drinking. Some are new, light drinkers; they laugh becomingly and teeter on sea legs. Others drink heavily, and go off in search of getting drunk, waking up late the next morning and then heading to the pub again that night. Tonight I was invited to a party in the common room, and when I went to check it out, there was Smirnoff everywhere. The freshers were celebrating their independence.

I am a teetotaler, for reasons that I cannot really explain or expect to be understood. I myself, if I am being honest, do not know why I am a teetotaler. It’s just something that I am. I plan to have only three “sips” of alcohol in my life—the one I had prior to First Communion, when my teacher wanted to make sure we wouldn’t make faces at the taste at Mass, when I first got here, and when (if) I get married. My idea of a “sip” of alcohol is that I let it touch my tongue, and a little raindrop slides down my throat. At nineteen, I am not ready for everyone to be drinking.

I do not know if I am ready for this, period.

I think about Madonna a lot. Last night I drifted off to sleep imagining room 255, comfortable and warm, with my bird bedspread and all of my favorite books on Egypt, my CDs, and all of the friends I love and care about. I do not feel as if I have made friends here, that I am accepted, or that I am accepting what this place has to offer. I love Belfast so much it aches, sometimes, but I am tired and cold and I hurt everywhere. This morning when I got out of bed I was so stiff that it hurt to move my legs, and I thought I might crumble to the floor.

Sometimes I feel as if I might cry, if it weren’t so hilariously funny.

All of this is what I believe is called culture shock. For every high point in my day there are two low points, but I am trying to take this experience a day at a time. I know that the German boys are cute, and that the music sounds like home, and that today I found two pennies on the ground. I also found the looseleaf tea I like, so I can make myself a proper cuppa to go with my breakfast. I have bought books, so I have familiarity back in my room. I try very hard to spend as little time as possible alone, or in my room, even if it means limping around campus.

Sometimes I think that I might want to go home.

But I try not to think about that. Because then I really might cry.

And if I really do want to go home—if I want to give up on something that has been my dream since I was a child—I will have to reevaluate everything about myself, and how I see myself, and what I want for myself.

I don’t know if I’m ready for that, either.