Thrown Out of a Pub for not Drinking Enough

One of the challenges of living in a different land is rewiring all those cultural reflexes that guide us to make appropriate choices almost effotlessly. I am thinking now about crossing the street. I have been crossing the street for about 59 years now and my unconcious pattern is to look left, then right, then left, then right one more time, then cross. It has worked well enough to keep me alive.

In Ireland, this process has to be reversed in order to keep from stepping in front of a car barreling down the left lane from the right. They jokingly say that in Ireland, a man on the streets is run over every 10 mintues...and boy is he getting tired of it! Well I am not that man, but I have been surprised how much mental effort it takes for me to adjust this mental pattern in order to accomodate the cultural reality of folks driving on the left side of the street.

We were thrown out of a pub yesterday, my first. We were not actually thrown out, but refused service. The waiter demanded that we unplug our computers and leave immediately. We discovered that even though we bought our lunch there every day and afternoon drinks to boot, it was not enough to justify our use of their "free" WIFI. I suppose that if we were drinking a little more guinness we could have stayed. Only in Ireland do you get thrown out of a pub for not drinking enough!

So we have faced the cultural reality that it is not the United States where we sat leisurely for hours sipping tea on working on our laptops. The apartment will have to serve as our offices as well as our living quarters. Another lesson in culture!

On a more serious note, it is now clear that Shawn's dad is dying and is likely to pass in the next several days. Tomorrow I put her on a plane for North Carolina. In our living and in our dying, be near us, O Lord.