Irish People: Generous and Helpful

By University of Limerick International Student Danyal Maheshwari

Before arriving to Ireland, I was curious to discover Irish culture as I have heard a lot about it. When I was selected in Erasmus Mundus intact Master’s program scholarship, the only thing going on my mind was the feeling of luck that I will be able to go to my dream destination, The University of Limerick (UL), Ireland. After couple of weeks I arrived at UL near to flag poles bus stop. I was alone and found myself completely alien to the place as the map I had was of different route. I had map of off campus Student village, but map was from Dublin road to student village not from UL to student village. I was wandering here and there for long time with my friend. At the time we don’t have any local Sim card to call to student village administration to guide us.

My first interaction with Irish was with a lady passing by in her car. She asked the address of the other student, but he don’t know, he was going somewhere. But few minute a second lady stopped her car and asked “Hey lads are ye okay?”, I explained that I was looking for my student village, then I asked if she knew address of my student village. She don’t know where the student village was. She said wished she could help me out but she had to pick her children from school, as the school was about to close. Even though she could not guide me, she was very nice.

Then a guy helped us, now he also did not not know where the student village was, but he gave me lift and took me in his car and after inquiring, he dropped me exactly at student village. The bad luck with us, when we reached at student village and guess what? It was closed because we were too late and it was start of the weekend. And again I didn’t know where we can go to stay on the weekends. Again we don’t know where we can go or stay a night. Then like an angel, I met with one Irish guy who was working in shop near to student village. He asked whether I needed any help. He asked us are you okay? He was with us around 20 mints. He tried his best to communicate to the student village number but it was weekend so therefore no one answered the call. Then he suggested us to go and stay in Travelodge hotel and guided me there. This is when, I realized that really Irish peoples are very generous and very helpful. You might think that arriving in a country, totally different than your own, where they speak a different language, not knowing where you are going, and being too late to arrive in your accommodation, would be a disaster, but I met those first three Irish people that day; they noticed me looking lost and approached me to help.So as I settled into the travel lodge beside the University that evening, I knew this was a country I was going to like.