Three weeks in Mullingar

“This is some rescue. You came in here and you didn’t have a plan for getting out?”

Ireland is a local country for local people. That is the latest thing I have read. It seems a lot of expats who come to Ireland have trouble finding friends. I’ve researched the internet and it seems like people find the Irish to be kind of uninterested in meeting foreigners. I’ve been here for three weeks now and I am still without friends. But to be honest I think it’s about how you approach people yourself. How do you try to sell yourself? When you come to a different country you can’t expect dinner parties and lunch dates right away. You just have to have the right mind-set and believe that you will get friends at some point or I think that if you have already decided that you aren’t going to meet anyone because the Irish won’t invite you to their place or drink a beer with you at the pub, then you are never going to find any friends. The Irish people most likely do have their own friends so in all honesty you’ll have to be the one to approach them because you’re the friendless one and you’re the one looking for friends and not vice versa.

Even though I am still as lonely as when I came here I try my best to go to the pub. I don’t go every day, because I don’t want to make the wrong impression. I’ve always been a supporter of Manchester United so when they are playing I try to go down to the pub to watch the game. In that way I have a purpose for coming to the pub and if I don’t get to talk to anyone I still have the game to keep me occupied and there is also the chance of meeting other football fans. So far I haven’t spoken to many people at the pub – apart from the bartenders, who are really nice to me. But I’ve had conversations with a few people (that doesn’t make them my friends though). But you got to start somewhere and you can’t really expect everything to happen in one day. I think it’s just nice to go out and just have a random conversation even though it’s only for a few minutes.

I have read that people find it hard finding friends in Ireland and some people seem to think it’s weird that they don’t have dinner parties and whatever. I’m not used to dinner parties and lunch dates so to me it’s not weird at all. I would think it was a bit weird if I all of a sudden was invited to dinner somewhere. 

So just like with the prices you shouldn’t trust everyone when they say something. You have to look at your own life and country and how you normally do things. It might be normal for an American mother to have dinner parties with other mothers, but it has never been like that in my family. The only people we have dinner with are family.

But there is a bit of truth in what some of the people are saying. Most of the people I’ve spoken to are people who are sitting at the pub alone. These people are easy targets but despite being an easy target they have been really nice and open. Even though there are groups of young people (mostly boys) they don’t say anything to you. They don’t even look in your direction.  And I’m almost pretty sure that if you say something to them they will give you a short answer with no sign of wanting to actually start a conversation. But again it takes some time and if you keep coming to the same place you will eventually feel more relaxed at that place and you might end up making some friends at that place one day. That is my strategy though. I think the most important thing is that you have to understand that you’ve come to their country and you have to understand their culture and then be happy and show them a positive attitude even on the worst of days.

But wouldn’t it just be grand if we could just use the Jedi mind trick on people in order to make friends and make it seem like it was their idea. Oh, how I’ve always wanted say, “I just Jedi mind tricked you!”