Becoming the Tourguide

This weekend, my best friend Lindsey came from the United States to visit me. If you think that's nuts, it's ok, so did I. But it was just what I needed; nearing the middle of the semester, I was hitting a rut, finding everything about Ireland a nuisance, and wishing I could just go home. Getting to show Lindsey Dublin, suddenly "my city", changed all that.

It was awesome to be the tour guide and the tourist at the same time. We visited a lot of tourist locations that I never would have seen if she wasn't there; we went to the Guinness Storehouse, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublinia. We also got to revisit places I was already familiar with, like Trinity College, the GPO, and the Dail (yes, I did tour Ireland's Parliament twice in one week).

I also felt a strange sense of pride in being able to tell her the history of the city. I could point to the bullet holes in the Daniel O'Connell statue and know why they were there. When she asked me who Charles Stuart Parnell was, I knew. And damned if I couldn't regurgitate the principles of proportional representation on the spot. I knew where to find a good pub, good food, a good weekend getaway town. I felt like I knew the city, knew the country. When we went to Howth, Lindsey said she felt like she was really in Ireland, and I was proud to be able to show her a piece of what I'd been experiencing for weeks.

Having Lindsey here not only brought a little piece of home to me, it also made Dublin feel a little more like a second home. It gave me a second wind, a new wave of enthusiasm about studying abroad, and reaffirmed why I was here in the first place. I wanted to assimilate into another culture; I feel like I am.