FORDHAM STUDENT MAUREEN FISHER ATTENDED UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN FROM JANUARY - JUNE OF 2002 AND WAS A PART OF BOTH THE INFORMATION STUDIES DEPARTMENT AND THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT THERE.

The second I stepped off the plane in Ireland I knew things would be different. Yes, they spoke English and yes, they were my ancestors - but right away, there was something different in the air. The feeling I got was compounded when a kind man with ruddy cheeks picked up my over-packed suitcases and offered me a ride to the school I would be attending for the next six months. His cheery demeanor and cockneyed accent were charming, and I immediately felt at home in a country I had never been to before.

Juniors in college study abroad. This is a fact of life in the U.S.- and many students even choose the school they attend according to how good their study abroad options are. Students go to England, Spain, Latin America, and Australia - pretty much any country that isn't wartorn. Although, there are some who are even adventurous enough to go as far as Africa. When I decided to go to Ireland, I knew that in a way I was taking the easy way out - I didn't have to learn a foreign language, or find my way around a city where I didn't even know how to ask for directions. However, now that I've been through the study abroad process and home for four months, I realize that I had many misconceptions about living in a foreign country as well as about Ireland itself.

There were many differences in Ireland that were apparent immediately, even though the Irish people spoke my language. The first thing I noticed was how laid-back the Irish are. Time isn't as important to people and the society as a whole. It's just not as structured there as it is here. They wake up later and arrive at work when they arrive, not worrying the whole time that they might be late. Time is even less of an issue in places like Dingle or Glencolmcille. Smaller towns like these know it's dinnertime when dad comes home, not because it's 5:30. Or they hear the music coming from the pub down the road and they know it must be around 9, and everyone's gathering to talk about the day. One person described a typical Sunday for her family living outside Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. "We get up and go to mass, of course. Then everyone, I mean everyone, gathers at the pub - children, parents, grandparents. That's where we spend the rest of the day, talking and eating together. It's about neighbors becoming like family," she said. In Dublin, where I lived for 5 months, it was more time-oriented, being the largest dry in Ireland. However, even there people rarely worried about things starting on time. On one occasion, my parents who were visiting wanted to see Irish dancing at a pub downtown. When the dancing hadn't started by the advertised time of 8pm, my dad asked the bartender what was going on, in a typically American, frustrated way. The bartender just smiled and said, "Welcome to Ireland.....what can I get you to drink to pass the time!"

Friendliness is like a plague - everyone has an opinion to offer, directions to give, advice to dispense, and smiles. This was strange to me at first - I was suspicious of strangers who smiled and tried to explain how the Dublin buses work. However, I quickly adjusted and realized how nice it was to have your driver tellyou, "have a good day" when you exited the bus. Young men in Temple Bar offered to show my female friend and I around for our first night in Dublin, and we were happy to accept. Here in New York we probably would have been too scared. But these men simply brought us to a bar they particularly liked, bought us Guinness, toasted us, saying, "Slainte!" and "Welcome to Ireland!" and then went on their way. No harassment or annoying begging for our phone numbers accompanied their friendliness.

Classes in Ireland were also different than they are here in New York, at least where I go to school. Classes are large, and very focused. No one participates in class, the teacher just lectures for fifty minutes, and that's it for the week. Everything else you are expected to do on your own read, study, research your topic. More is left up to the student - the teacher is available for extra help but much of the learning is self-taught. This was exciting to me as I was able to test myself on how well I could do in a class where the teacher wasn't babying me along.

Even though there were obvious differences in the culture and people of Ireland, there were also similarities that were even more shocking to me. For some reason, I had preconceived notions about Irish teenagers and what they would be like. I made friends with two girls who lived across the hall from me, and was surprised every day that even though they had a different accent from me, they liked all the same things. Their apartment was decorated much like mine back at Fordham, and their movie selection was eerily similar. As I got to know them, even their personalities and the things they liked to talk about reminded me of my friends back in the U.S. I was also astounded that they wanted so much to be "American". The cooler Irish kids were the ones who wore fake GAP clothes and listened to Blink 182.

Although I thought this was sad, I also understood where they were coming from. American culture is shoved down their throats, from movies to television to music to magazines. They are constantly being told America is the best place to live, and many have relatives who live here. So why wouldn't they want to be like us! I tried to tell them that they were lucky too - they had things that we didn't. A better sense of where they came from and of the culture of their country, a deeprooted history that has affected the rest of the world, and a magnificent landscape are just a few things that come to mind. Not to mention the friendliness and less stress in their daily lives, which I have already mentioned. Nothing I said could convince my newfound friends, and so we promised our homes on opposite sides of the ocean would always be open to each other.

In this amazing experience of studying abroad I learned more than I can say here. A love of Irish culture is one thing that will always be with me, and I hope to go back there as often as possible in the future. But more importantly I learned that we aren't all that different from people living around the globe. We have most of the same values, needs and wants. The way we go about getting them is what's different about us.