An American in Ireland

My friend Earnan enjoys the sun and horseplay with his nieces and nephew at a country barbeque

From reading this blog, you probably get the impression that I am a city girl through and through. After all I’m always going on about the differences between the place from where I came (Los Angeles) and where I landed (Drogheda, Ireland). It’s not always the cultural dissimilarities that shock and confuse; it’s the stark contrast between city life and small town country living that often leaves my head spinning.

So you may be a tad surprised by the confession I am about to make: I haven’t always been an urban city dweller. Sure, I was born in Tokyo and spent my formative years in Los Angeles and went to college in San Francisco. But there was a short period of my life where I lived out in the country, and when I say “country” I’m talkin’ authentic, down-home sticksville. When I was five years old, my family moved from Tokyo, Japan to Cherokee Village, Arkansas. Of course you’ve never heard of the place, and why would you? It’s tiny. It’s country. It’s the sticks.

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A beautiful summer night (11 p.m. to be exact) in Drogheda. 

Remember when I first arrived, and I wrote a post about the “Irish diet?” Basically I was amazed that even though I was eating more starch, fat and sugar than ever before, I wasn’t gaining weight. I think at the time (it was still wintery in early March), I chalked it up to the fact that my body – used to the balmy climate of Los Angeles – was working overtime to keep warm in freezing-cold Ireland.

Well, it’s not so cold here anymore. In fact, it seems Ireland is enjoying one of the best summers in recent memory (naturally I am taking full credit for this freakish change of weather pattern). The good news is that we’re having really warm, perfectly-cloudless days and it actually feels like summer. The bad news is that my body is no longer burning calories at twice its normal rate yet I’m still eating like a bear preparing for hibernation. When I recently saw a photo of me that one of my friends had taken, I nearly had a heart-attack. So mortified was I that I actually asked her to remove it from Facebook (thankfully, she did).

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Beautiful cemetery in Clogherhead

Funerals, to state the obvious, are typically bleak affairs. Everyone wears black, there is a good deal of crying and I think it’s safe to say that everyone feels some sort of pressure to behave in an appropriate manner. This includes not smiling or laughing, keeping one’s head bowed down for a good portion of the event and speaking in soft, hushed tones.

Only two weeks after arriving in Ireland, I attended my first Irish wake and funeral for my friend Trevor’s father, Nicholas, who passed away after a long illness. The family chose to do a traditional Irish wake, which takes place over three days. Trevor, who is the eldest son, opted to have it at his house in Clogherhead, the fishing village where he had grown up. The open casket was placed in a room toward the front of the house, and for those three days friends and family came to pay their respects. For Americans, the idea of having a body in someone’s house is a morbid one. But I can say from personal experience that it was anything but.

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All the ladies in the house say “Broomfield Festival!”

Ladies’ Night. The term has many meanings. For my generation, it usually means a night out on the town with your girlfriends involving – in this particular order – dressing up, dinner at a nice restaurant, a trip to the local hipster bar and way too many cocktails followed by a ruinous shot of some hideous liquor at last call. And if we’re being really bad, a visit to the local fast-food joint in an effort to stave off tomorrow’s hangover with copious amounts of greasy but deceptively delicious junk food. Occasionally, someone will get sick and, like true ladies, we’ll always hold her hair back while she pukes into a toilet. Can you think of anything more ladylike?

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a real ladies’ night, courtesy of the Broomfield Festival’s “Transform Yourself Beauty Extravaganza” at the local community center. Broomfield, an area in Collon about the size of a postage stamp, hosts a festival every year and the extravaganza evening of fashion/skincare tips/tea/etc. is one of its most popular events. Local shops display shoes, handbags, makeup and accessories at stalls around the main hall and tea and cake is served to all attendees. The main event includes a mini-fashion show, skincare presentation and a how-to on makeup application.

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 The next generation: boys around town

I hopped into a taxi in town the other day, and in the back seat was a gigantic bouquet of long-stemmed roses.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have!” I proclaimed. The driver laughed and told me that the flowers were for his wife. He’d been “a bad boy” the evening before and said his wife would certainly forgive him after being presented with such a bouquet. Though he didn’t specify exactly what he did, he mentioned something about a lads’ night out and that he’d been in trouble before. “But if I know my wife, these will do the trick!” he said, with complete confidence.

I notice this dynamic – the misbehaving lad and the nagging wife/girlfriend – is a very common one here in small-town Ireland. In any given group of lads at any given pub, there will be talk of the girlfriend or wife who will inevitably be upset with the boyfriend or husband who is a) drinking too much; b) flirting too much with other women; c) staying out too late; or d) all of the above. If one of the lads gets a text or phone call from his partner, the rest of the group will uproariously pressure him to ignore the call. If he actually takes the call, he will be chastised for the rest of the evening and worse, the girlfriend or wife who is calling will be branded as a nag.

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My snaps of LA life: View of LA hillside; Paris Hilton waiting for her car; Surfers at the beach; Restaurant opening party in Santa Monica

It’s hard to believe that barely three months ago, I was packing up my life in Los Angeles and preparing for a whole new adventure in small-town Ireland. As I’ve hinted in several previous posts, I decided to move because I wanted to challenge myself and to force a change that felt necessary.

LA can be a strange place. It’s a city where residents get to observe celebrities in their natural habitat. It was perfectly common for me to see Drew Barrymore in the grocery check-out line or Orlando Bloom picking up coffee at Starbucks. Most people in my circle of friends have some connection to the entertainment industry whether it’s through work or social circles. My freelance work with a well-known celebrity magazine frequently placed me right in the center of Hollywood parties, red carpets and celeb-driven charity functions. One of my best friends works for Screen Actors Guild and my sister is a managing editor for a celebrity gossip television show. There are also actors, musicians, chefs, and filmmakers in my social group in Los Angeles.

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Dear Stacy,

It’s been two months since I moved here, and though life is quite good and probably even enviable to most of my friends back home, sometimes I wonder what I thought was going to happen here. Well, as my best friend I suppose you probably know more than anyone what I wanted to happen. I had fantasies about living in an apartment overlooking the Boyne River, sipping tea on my balcony, selling lots of fabulous articles to fabulous magazines, and of course falling in love with a dreamy guy.

Here’s the rundown so far: I do have an apartment along the Boyne River, but it faces the street, not the river. The view isn’t bad at all; I can see five church steeples and lots of birds and I don’t even mind the glaring nighttime floodlights of the shopping center across the street. I have a balcony, though due to the moist climate and the lack of a functioning drain, the wood is covered in slippery moss – not exactly what I pictured in my al fresco teatime fantasies. Selling lots of fabulous articles? Not yet, though the local paper has actually written three stories about me and I’ve been on the radio twice. I’m entirely grateful but I’ve yet to figure out how to parlay all this publicity into money-making opportunities. The other day I wrote an article about how to break into professional writing (for a friend’s website) and to be honest I almost felt like a fraud writing it.

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There’s nothing like a dinner party to make a new apartment truly feel like home. And though it’s been two months since I up and left the bustling city of Los Angeles for the quiet adventure of Drogheda, Ireland, it was only last Saturday that I finally hosted friends for a home-cooked meal.

I will admit that I geeked out a bit on the preparations: out came the cloth napkins and napkin rings, matching dishware and candles. I cleaned the apartment top to bottom. I even created a playlist on my iPod specifically for the dinner (major nerd, I know!). But when it came to the meal, I made food that could be cooked in advanced so I could enjoy my friends’ company versus being stuck in the kitchen all night.

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Stop yer messin!

While it isn’t exactly the Irish nature to be mean-spirited, they are known to carry on a joke a bit too far. This is why I live in fear. Now before you judge me as paranoid, allow me to share a few gags – all carried out by people I know personally – and then you can tell me if you’d feel safe in this group of jokers. Me? I prefer to sleep with one eye open.

Sometimes, one can just be at the wrong place at the wrong time. As my friend sat in her car, stuck in traffic on West Street (the main thoroughfare in Drogheda), she saw another friend walking on the sidewalk. Foolishly, she called out to him to say hello. He walked over, said hello, reached into her car and promptly removed the keys from her ignition before walking away – with keys in hand. Now most people would get a good laugh, turn around and hand the keys back. Not this fella! He kept walking and my friend had to leave her car parked there, amidst the blaring horns and vocal abuse from annoyed fellow drivers, and run after him to get her keys back.

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Dislike: Lack of variety on television…

It’s been a little over one month since my arrival to Drogheda and I’m starting to settle and adjust to my new environment. Things that I thought I’d never get used to, like driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car, is now second nature. I use my laser card for nearly all my purchases, drink tea about 3-5 times a day and have become quite adept at hanging an entire load of laundry on one clothes horse.

…sigh.

There are some things, however, that I still have a hard time with. And while I realize the following may make me sound a bit like an entitled, spoiled American, I’m just being honest. So, without any further ado, here are some things that drive me pretty nuts:

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