I signed up for a year abroad confident that I was choosing the academic easy route. Good-bye midterms, meal plans and roommates. Hello month-long Easter break, cute European guys and no drinking age.
Studying in Ireland just made sense. I’m an English major. London was too expensive; Australia was too far. Plus, everyone always talks about how friendly the Irish are. And they probably are, if you can understand them.
At first I didn’t realize I was having problems understanding, but rather thought they were speaking another language entirely. I just figured they were all speaking their native language, Irish. So I would calmly look them in the eye and say very slowly, “English please.”
I assumed things would get better as I met more Irish students and gradually acclimated myself to phrases like, “Wat’s da crank? eye tald ye tree times, ah am spekin’ inglish.”
Unfortunately, the university houses visiting students in international student housing, and my international floor consists of six Americans. Well, five Americans and one Canadian. So my opportunities for improvement of my listening skills have been severely limited.
Aside from classes, my sole interaction with the Irish has been through our cleaning lady. No one knows her name, but it’s probably Siobhan, because a disproportionate number of Irish women are named Siobhan. She’s four-foot-ten, with pink frosty lipstick and a perm the likes of which no one this side of 1985 has seen. She has yet to utter a full sentence that I could understand.
Recently my roommate crept into the kitchen to get a glass of water while Siobhan was sweeping the hall. She finally returned forty-five minutes later, threw the door shut behind her and locked it.
“What happened?” I asked. She glanced over both her shoulders.
“Siobhan made me wash all the dishes,” she said.
“But we washed all the dishes last night.”
“Well, apparently we didn’t wash them well enough. She put them all back in the sink and made me rewash them.”
The next day when we heard her creaking up the stairs, we did what any reasonable person would: we hid in the shower. Scarier than being yelled at in a foreign language you don’t understand is being yelled at in your own language, which you don’t understand. Plus, we’re all paranoid that if someone leaves a crumb on the counter top she will take revenge by spitting in our food.
My own introduction to Siobhan consisted of a half-hour conversation wherein she pointed toward the kitchen and squawked something I couldn’t understand, and made the angry-eyebrow face. I am unsure if she was she trying to warn me that the grease build up on the gas burner was a fire hazard or was just commenting that the dinner I was cooking looked toxic.
That same evening, the toaster underwent a process eerily similar to spontaneous combustion, setting off the fire alarm and forcing us to evacuate the building.
It was clear to me what had happened. Obviously, Siobhan was a witch, and she had cast a spell on the toaster.
And thus the lingua franca of our relationship with Siobhan has evolved into good old fashion bribery.
Terrified by the toast incident, we’ve taken to treating the diminutive old woman as a cross between King-Kong and an ancient Aztec goddess, leaving tiny offerings for her on the kitchen table in hopes that she won’t berate us for putting a tetra-pack in with the cardboard recycling. Bars of chocolate, the occasional euro, thank you notes.
Should we ever actually have to communicate with her, we resort to writing notes with a superfluous number of happy face—because smiles are universal right? (And we really don’t want her to spit in our food.)
Darling Siobhan,
Please if its not too much trouble could you possibly consider next time you are cleaning not using the sweater left hanging on the back of the chair as a mop?
Thank you ever so much!
Your very good friends,
the residents of wing two.
Dealing with the ridiculosity that accompanies being an American in Ireland can be very trying; fortunately we live next door to the Guinness factory. And at least that part of the study-abroad fantasy came true.
