Getting There

I'm more outgoing now than I normally am: I incessantly bothered the unfortunates on both sides of me for the entire eight hours of the flight. However, I did succeed in gleaning some funformation from them. On the left, we had an expert in 16th-century English poetry who guest lectured in Trinity but lives in New York. On the right, we had a trainee occupational therapist from Cork who's off to a massive yoke of a house in Alaska with 20-odd others to do voluntary work.

I got pulled for a random security check by a pair of rather tense security dudes in JFK. Maybe I'm just projecting. In any case, there was deffo some rather tension floating about.

The subway was pretty generic. But it did lead to one of those classic gawky-tourist moments when I emerged for the first time from the depths. People look so cool here. It's not like anywhere I've been before. There's the studied hipsterness that's visible around George's Street in Dublin and there's the if-you-throw-enough-money-at-it-some-of-it-will-stick approach of UCD's more moneyed denizens, and then there's this. My new neighbours are not rich. They aren't even comfortable. Nonetheless, they look shit hot. They're wearing saggy denim, XL t-shirts and sideways caps. They're cruising around in shiny cars with their particular tunes banging on non-standard sound systems. It's all flamboyant and fresh and new.

Running around fields, peeling spuds and doing maths

The more you do these things, the better you get at them. I'm still unremarkable at peeling spuds.

Leaving, however, is different. I've been doing it over and over again for the past week. I'm still a bit mediocre at it. It's got an unpleasant mix of awkwardess - because of the collective inability to find anything appropriately profound to say - and genuine sadness. The only really thought-provoking moment in all of this (it's almost over now - I can only think of one more goodbye that I'll need to do with an actual person (as apposed to abstractions ("Goodbye, mighty craic") and consumer products ("Goodbye, Mikados"))) was when Mam noted that it'd be approximately 72% worse if we were doing this in the 1950's and I'd probably never see Mammy, the ould sod or Taytos again. I can see why people in that position would be nostalgic and patriotic and lonely. I don't think I'll be tearfully yowling The Galway Girl into a pint of red diesel while I'm away, but I can see why, in slightly different circumstances, someone would want to.

Sorry for the excessive bracketing - I blame the maths. I think you'll be satisfied to find that I at least got all the closing brackets correct (which took quite a while).

Documentation

Wouldn't recommend it, personally.  A far better approach is to dispense with your COEA, DS-2019, j1, insurance, check-in sheet and i-94 and instead row in from Cuba. Then, set up a vast cocaine-dealing empire, purchase a palatial residence, get all crazy freaky paranoid in the head and eventually get killed in an enormous gunfight while clutching an ak-47 to your chest.