I’m Learning: One

The trip here was interesting and amusing.

Blue eyes in Philly airport.
Forget “Snakes On A Plane” try “Children On A Plane”. The devil’s kids were sitting behind me. The adopted parents were doing nothing to control them either.
The flight from Philly to Birmingham didn’t have individual TVs and the movie they showed was “Race To Witch Mountain”. Danielle and I laughed… and could only watch about 5 minutes of the movie.
The Indian man on the other side of Danielle chatted to us for awhile during and after breakfast. He also told us we should stay in Birmingham for two days and party with him and his family. The Indians know how to party and there would be good food… tempting, but not enough. Then, he found us after baggage and asked for our number. I must get better at saying “no”.
Black suit, badass boy who stood behind us in the check-in line in Orlando was also one of three people left waiting on luggage in Birmingham. He was going to Scotland though.
Our taxi driver to the dorm was a history buff and taught us a lot of information in the first 20 minutes. Then he went on about how much he loved Orlando and the theme parks. He was fun.

I finished “Holy the Firm” by Annie Dillard on the planes. I will probably read it again, she is delightful. I started “Love” by Buscaglia again on the 3rd flight. He mentions at one point in the Forward to Love that when he was a child his father would not let him or his sister leave the table without telling him something knew they had learned. They’d be washing up for dinner and realize they hadn’t learned anything, so they’d open the encyclopedia and find something like “The population of Iran is one million…”. And while as a child it was a mundane task, he said that even now no matter how tired he is before he goes to sleep he’ll ask himself “Felice, old boy, what did you learn new today?” And if he can’t think of anything he’ll open up a book and find something.

I thought that was beautiful. And it’s making me more observant. I could learn hundreds of things a day, especially being in a different country, but I could also let them easily slip right by. And so I’m observing and listening. And before I go fall asleep, I want to know that I learned something that day and can still remember it that night. So if I can get one or two or three things out of a day, it will be okay. And I’m not going to limit myself to facts, experiential knowledge and random comical things will make their appearance.

Last night I learned that our professor is late and also doesn’t know his way to Johnnie Fox’s pub. I learned that the hour and 20 minutes it took him to get the first load of us there should have taken 15-20 minutes.
I also learned from our taxi driver that Michael Collins started guerilla warfare… apparently.
I was reminded that people are so different. And that many people are actually accepting.

Yesterday Danielle and I wandered around the city. We had chocolate chip scones at Queen of Tarts, we watched the rather long pride week parade from our seats at Queen of Tarts, we found the Temple Bar book market and the ginger bearded man who flirted with Danielle last year, we found Topshop, and we finally found the 14A bus. It’s fun to come back and remember things. And it’s fun to sleep for almost 12 hours.

Tags: Dublin