Arts & Culture
Travelog: In Search of Deeper Meaning (or Olivia Rodrigo in Dublin)
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Dublin is filled with 21+ clubs.
I say this not just to pettily express my annoyance at deliberately studying in a country with an 18+ drinking age only to discover that clubs enforce a higher standard. In fact, I’m as interested as I am miffed: Why are they doing this? Culture shock for me has come in the form of that question and its relative unanswerability. After all, I don’t know why the drinking age in the U.S. is 21 exactly, nor do I know why we drive on the right side of the street, don’t need to hail buses, play a different brand of football than either Gaelic Football or Rugby or refuse to install air conditioning in brand new boiling brick buildings. Many of those would take a Google search or more, but the little differences pile on faster than I can or care to research… Hence, culture shock.
Wanting to integrate into my host country’s culture means trying to attain a sense of what culture means.