March 22, 2010
This conversation happened a while ago, but I think it’s interesting. My friend Andrew asked if it was weird for me to be surrounded by so many white people all the time (since I’ve been here). I keep contrasting this conversation to the one I had with Dalya on Free Pancake Day at IHOP, when she asked me if it was weird being the only white person around.
Irish people listen to my kind of music. They are pretty obsessed with Tom Petty (totally awesome!), and pretty much every band I started listening to in the 6 months or so before I came here are Irish. Saturday night I went to a pub called Ziggy’s with my friends Iosmina and Stephen. It was a Saturday, so there we were some of the youngest people there (most UCC students go home on the weekends, so the city empty’s a little). Iosmina has an awesome bowler hat that almost everyone in the pub wanted to try on. They blasted good ol’ rock music all night. The best part of the night was when Twist and Shout came on, and half the bar got up to do the Twist.
Last night I went with Kristin, her sister, Iosmina, Stephen, and three of their French friends to a pub to listen to some Trad. It was a good bit of craic. The band had the entire bar clapping and stomping along to the music. It was also fun listening to people speaking a different language and trying to speak to them. That was an early bar, so when it closed at 11, we went to the Old Oak, where there was another live band. They were covering every great rock song ever, so it ended up being a really strange mix of songs, sounding a lot like my itunes shuffle. We started talking to the people at the table next to us. It was a birthday party, and they kept giving us chocolate, so I was completely ready to be friends. There was a British guy who bonded with us over not being Irish. He said he hates Irish people. I’ve always heard about how nice the Irish are, but I’m starting to think they’re only nice to other Irish people, because no one else in the world seems to like them, and I haven’t really been able to make friends with them, only other foreigners. But, at this other pub we go to (Fred Zepplin’s) is a hardcore club. All the live shows I’ve seen there have been death metal, and some of the patrons wear black and spikes and that kind of thing. The first night I went there, I tripped and knocked into some guys drink. I was expecting him to yell at me and make a big deal, but instead he apologized to me and asked if he spilled any on me. He was totally ready to ask the barman for paper towels. I never find that kind of nice in New York.
The Irish are very eager to disprove some stereotypes. I have hear 100 times that German’s drink just as much as the Irish, and that there is a higher percentage of French people with red hair. Crazy.
Lastly, tonight my friends boy-thing invited us to a concert at the school. Turned out to not exactly be a concert. Everyone got a songbook as they walked in. It was a shape-singing group. They sang Southern American religious songs. I had a really hard time following the words, singing the notes (which would be hard for me in any setting) and so I just sat back and listened. It was really nice hearing all these people sitting together using only their voices to rejoice in the glory of god. My friend was in shock the entire 2 hours, the “concert” was not at all what we were expecting, and I don’t know that I would go back, but it was fun to witness once.
