Good Night, Sleep Tight

It does not seem possible, but I am now closer to the end of my time in Ireland than I am to the beginning of my study abroad experience. I have no idea how two and half months went by so quickly. Although I still feel like it was only yesterday that I landed (and sat waiting on the plane for four hours) in Shannon and I vividly remember my first meal in Ireland (a McDonalds’s apple pie ordered off of the “Euro Menu”), after ten weeks of studying abroad, it is certainly safe to say I have had my bouts of homesickness. Thankfully, there have been no major meltdowns and to be honest, the adjustment of being away from home was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Perhaps going to college five hundred miles away from home makes the jump to studying abroad five thousand kilometers away from home a little easier.

The conclusion I have come to is that there are two main types of homesickness. The first type is what I felt during my first few weeks in Cork. I missed my stuff. Yes, it was that simple. Until February one of the things I missed most about home was my own bed. I could make it through the days just fine, but once I turned off the lights and got in bed, I wished I were at home. My duvet was scratchy, my mattress was lumpy, and the heat from the radiator never seemed to reach my bed. These small nuisances culminated into feelings of “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” Unfortunately, though I did manage to bring over a dozen pairs of shoes in my luggage, I forgot to throw in my ruby red slippers. I just wanted the familiar coziness of my bed at home. During the day, I was dealing with all sorts of new things; a different campus, living with new people, attempting to understand tricky accents and foreign slang. By the time I was ready for dreamland, I was done dealing with new things with an open mind. I missed my bed. I missed my stuff.

Luckily, as days went by and turned into weeks, I adjusted. I know my way, sort of, around campus, I would like to kidnap my three Irish flatmates and bring them home with me, even Emma whose Waterford accent sometime just makes me tilt my head to the side and say “I don’t think I understood one word you just said…”, and I started to have quite a good bit of craic (pronounced like “crack,” it is Irish for “fun”). I have made peace with my duvet and discovered just how to curl up in bed to avoid any and all lumps. While I still feel that whoever decided putting a radiator on a wall beneath a desk should not be in charge of the heating layout in student apartment, at least my scratchy duvet is warm.

It seems my desire to blog always hits in the wee hours of the morning. Upon completion of this entry, I will be going to bed – yes the very same bed I just blogged about! Be sure to come back later this week when I blog about the other type of homesickness (I can feel your anticipation growing). It is a little bit deeper than my longing for a pillow-top mattress. : )