Last weekend, I made my first trip outside of the Republic of Ireland since arriving at the end of August. I was in London from Thursday to Sunday visiting my friend studying at King’s College. It was also the first time I made a trip by myself within Europe so I was a little on the nervous side. Since London can be very confusing, I insisted that my friend pick me up from Heathrow Airport. The trip from the airport to his apartment was almost two hours long since we had to take the tube and then an additional bus. This meant that my travel time from Heathrow Airport to my friend’s apartment was roughly the same as the travel time between my apartment and the Shannon Airport, which is the airport that I flew out of. The crazy thing about this is that my apartment is 85 kilometers away from the Shannon Airport whereas my friend’s apartment is only 28 kilometers away from Heathrow. Living in Ireland, I had become accustomed to needing to travel for a long period of time to get places, but those were cases in which I was traveling across long distances. I had forgotten how time consuming travelling within a city can be since it never takes more than 15 minutes to get anywhere in Galway.
My visit to London also marked the first time I has ever been overwhelmed upon entering a new city. Before I came to GW, I lived in Philadelphia for my whole life and I’ve been to pretty much every major city in the US. I think that if I had just gone to London on a trip while living back in the states, it might not have been so overwhelming, but going to London from Galway made me feel completely out of my element. I have to say, there was a number of times this weekend that I was sick of going from place to place and just wanted to be back in Galway. That being said, it was nice to see so many new things and visit with my friend, who is the first person I know from the states that I’ve seen while abroad. I also found the living situation at King’s College to be a bit of a culture shock. My friend lives in a first-year hall (equivalent to a freshman dorm in the states) that is composed entirely of single rooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom on each floor. The kitchen serves as a common area where kids will not just cook and eat, but also hang out and socialize. The students keep very little food in their rooms so pretty much every time they want a snack, they must go to the common room, which is what makes it such a popular hangout. This is a very stark contrast from the living situation in Gort na Coiribe Student Village, which is where I have been staying in Galway. Gort is a large village of townhouses comprised of private apartments within each. These apartments all have kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms and house a varying number of students between apartments. I live in a three-person apartment with one bathroom. Myself and another American girl share one bedroom while our Irish roommate has her own. We don’t really interact with our neighbors because there really isn’t any need to. Most of the people we’ve met in Gort have been through our roommate and the other Americans in the Arcadia program. Even though our living situation doesn’t really give us access to as many people as a traditional college living situation would, I think that this has allowed us to form a much stronger bond with our roommate. Irish culture is very home-centered and you can see that both in the fact that Irish college students will typically go home on the weekends and in how student housing is set up. As soon as they get to college, Irish students will eat and live together much like the way a family does. They have a dining room table where they share meals and when you look in the windows in student villages you will see the kids watching TV together on the couch like a family. As nice as the personal space that my friend enjoys in his dorm at King’s College, I’m very grateful for the experience that I’ve been able to have with student housing in Ireland. I really enjoyed my weekend in London and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to see a place that so many people dream of going to. However, the best part, for me, was realizing just how much I missed Galway and just how at home I feel here now.