Home is Not Where You Live, but Where They Understand You.

It has been exactly three weeks since I have left Cork city to return to the United States and for me, coming home has been a very surreal experience. At first I felt like a stranger in my own home and almost as if I had returned to a foreign country. However, immediately upon my return I was welcomed by many of my friends and family making coming home a bit easier than I had anticipated. It took a bit of time to get used to the different smells and sounds surrounding me. I could hear the train that’s just down the road, smell the flowers that bloom every summer in the tree out front, and see all the cotton that releases from all the cottonwood trees in the neighborhood. As irritating as the train horn is, as overwhelming as the smell can be, and as aggravating as that cotton flies, it’s familiar things like that that make coming home feel nice.

The Truth, It Hurts.

One day my friend Patty, a slight, smiley blonde from Minnesota, was in the dorm kitchen cooking breakfast when Eunice, one of the women who works in the building, walked by. Patty, being the sunny, amiable type, smiled and said good morning and asked how Eunice was. Eunice broke into a responding smile, replied, and after a short conversation, turned to go – but not before cheerfully observing that though Patty was very thin when she had arrived in the dorm, she was “now getting fat!”

This directness is the kind of thing that still takes me (and a few of my other friends) by surprise down here. It is one of the culture clashes that I’m not sure will ever entirely pass – even after months here we still trade stories about the surprisingly candid comments that we hear.