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    City of Dublin

    March 11, 2016

    A Dolphin in Dublin

    Ireland is an amazing place. Its culture is so very different compared to that of the United States. One of the first things I noticed was the difference in speech. Not necessarily the Irish accents; I was expecting that, but what threw me off was for days when I was first exploring the city, I found myself hearing people speaking different languages from all over Europe. When I was walking around getting my bearings, I would hear people speaking in French, German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish. This new influx of languages was something that was so foreign to me that at first I just tried to ignore it and go about my business. But as I started taking my classes, I came to love hearing all these different influxes of sound and pitch, and I loved watching all the people as they went by. As I continued with my very first culture shock experience, the thing that startled me most wasn’t how different everything was, it was surprising to me to see everyone act the same way. It was if I hadn’t left America at all. Watching these people interact and go through their life as just another day was so surprising to me. Although I was hearing all of these different new languages, the things I was seeing weren’t that different from home. That didn’t mean that the Irish didn’t have a different culture however. In fact, my first day there walking down the street and watching people I noticed that whenever you made eye contact with a passerby they would very casually say hello to you regardless of whether or not they knew you. After I had gotten myself situated, I began to ask questions about the Irish culture and learn about their heritage. I learned the history of the 1916 Easter rising, that the foundation of the city as originally a Viking settlement, and I learned that the biggest difference between the Irish and the American cultures was the Irish concept of time. Time was always relative to the Irish. To elaborate, if there was a party scheduled at seven at night, some people would arrive ten to twenty minutes late, while the Irish would show up maybe an hour to two hours late and still be considered on time. Moreover, this ideology rolled over to when the Irish would show up for work, and while it wouldn’t be an hour or two late, the idea of an American showing up late to work was something that I wasn’t accustomed to at all that is not something that’s done here. Thankfully for classes, the Irish would always be on time. Once I had gotten used to this wonderful new culture of kindness, I had finally gotten my comfort zone to a place where I could travel outside of my home city of Dublin, so I went to Belfast. Belfast is the city on the northern tip of the Irish island, but it is still technically connected to Britain, and it is still a part of its government. When Ireland successfully got its independence from the British, they made an agreement to keep Belfast and the surrounding counties under British rule, partially because they wanted to keep the large shipping port that was there, but also because a large majority of the citizens of Belfast, and the surrounding area, were Protestant. This eventually led to Ireland’s civil war. In a brief summary, the Irish civil war was an attempt of the Irish people to bring about a united Ireland by terrorizing the British citizens, and then allowing the island to be united. This went on for many years, and while there wasn’t any huge battles, there were many protests and terrorists attacks. When I went to Belfast, I had been studying the war through the works of Irish playwrights, and I felt I had an understanding that was very different from the usual historical sense. When I went on the black cab tour and heard firsthand stories of what people went through, I had an even better sense. People are passionate beings, and having heard many stories from the Irish people, I feel that I can now go into the real world and be ready for things I didn’t expect to see coming. The cultural shock pushed my boundaries, and it was something that although initially scary, turned into a wonderful experience that I will never forget. Contributed by Andrew Gripe '16 Majoring in Theater Arts
    Category: Global Dolphins