At one point during our stay in Waterford, I walked to Tesco — a grocery store — by myself.
A few days before, two of my traveling companions met a pair of 13-year-olds walking around downtown.
Apparently that was normal in Ireland. So normal that one of the girls’ parents had let her six-year-old sister tag along.
Waterford is over 1000 years old, so I guess they’ve had enough time to work out public safety.
Still, I’d never been in a foreign country, and everything felt vaguely sinister.
I had that tingling hyper-awareness you get walking into your first day at school or a new job.
In theory, you know how everything works.
You’re fine!
You’ve done nothing wrong.
But there’s still a voice of doubt backed into a corner of your mind where it can see all the exits, sweating nervous bullets and naming every worst-case-scenario.
Aoife (pronounced EE-fuh), a 12th century ruler in Waterford, went through something similar.
Aoife’s father, Dermot, was the king of Waterford until he was banished to England for stealing a neighboring king’s wife.
Dermot promised Aoife’s hand in marriage to the warrior Strongbow in exchange for helping Dermot reconquer Waterford.
Strongbow attacked and overthew Waterford in a single day.
According to the man guiding our walking tour of the city, Strongbow and Aoife were married immediately after the battle.
They say her dress was covered in the blood of her husband’s enemies.
On top of that Dermot’s other daughter showed up to the wedding, and she had never been informed that Aoife or her mother existed.
Likewise, Aoife and her mother had never been informed Dermot had any other children and/or wives.
So there Aoife was: 17 years old being married to a 40-year- old man, covered in the gore of war, wondering if those were bones or just gravel crunching under her feet and watching her family act out an episode of the soap opera Days of Our Lives.
Bottom line, we both felt exposed to potential disaster and very uncertain about the environments in which we found ourselves.
Small disasters are inevitable.
Embarassing ourselves and pushing past false assumptions about the country we were visiting was part of the experience.
When most of the group went on a bicycle trip down the Waterford Greenway — a 46 km walking/cycling trail — I assumed I’d be fine wearing my 30 pound backpack.
I also assumed that the trip would not be entirely uphill.
Both of those were mistakes.
What’s important is remembering that mistakes are okay.
If you keep going after them, you’ll be fine.
I pedalled 12, ham-string snapping miles up that trail, and forced myself to keep the backpack on through all of it.
Eventually, the time came to turn around and ride that bike 12 miles downhill.
I tried applying the brakes several times, but I kept going.
Similarly, when the other students realized they’d taken three and a half hours to travel 13 miles and only had 50 minutes to get back to the bus before it left, they kept going.
By the time they made it back they were panting so hard they couldn’t form full sentences and had to crawl up the bus steps, but they beat their deadline.
When Jade*, one of my group mates, got separated from everyone on the Greenway, made a wrong turn and disappered into the Irish countryside, that was a mistake.
“I bet we pass her on the way back,” several people said as the bus driver gave up waiting and drove the rest of us back to our acccomodations.
Nevertheless, Jade kept going, eventually running into a panicked Dr. Arbor and Dr. Levine and calling a taxi.
We learned not to take for granted that everything would be exactly like it was in America.
Some examples were fun.
The sun sets at 11 p.m. and rises at 4:30 am, that the flusher is on the left side of the toilet and that Irish people leave their tilt-and-turn windows open 24 hours during summer.
“Why is everything in this country backwards!” cried Jean-Claude after realizing he had to flick light switches down to turn the lights on.
Tesco doesn’t have plastic bags, so customers are supposed to bring something with them to transport their food home or accept the brown paper sack the cashier offers you at checkout.
Other examples were more stressfull.
“Hi!” Jade cried out her window to a group of Irish collegiate men passing in the courtyard below.
She assumed it would be a quick interaction.
The collegiate men assumed we were having a party in Jade’s apartment.
“How did they get in the building?” all nine of us cried when the collegiate men began banging on Jade’s door.
What can I say, even the Irish made mistakes.
“Are you from Spain?” a cab driver asked me after hearing my accent.
“Are you two in love?” an older Irish couple asked two of my traveling companions.
“No,” said the one.
“It’s complicated,” said the other at exactly the same time.
I bet Aoife said the exact same thing on her wedding day.
To be continued...
*Names changed for privacy
•Ethan Mitchell is a staff writer for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected].
