ONE DAY LEFT! It had been such a great trip. No sleep and not knowing me elbow from me arse (sorry for the term, but I dare you not to smile when saying it). This trip was great.
Little did we know, we still had one more character left awaiting to fulfill this adventure. When we walked back to the backpacker's dormitory after going out for dinner and sleeping most the day since we landed from London earlier that morn, we had a new bunkmate waiting to welcome us. With his giant African smile, tidy habits and bed making skills, and friendly personality followed by deep thoughts til late hours of the night, he was our new roomie. His name: Emmanuel. He was in his early 40s but looked like early 30s. A clearly hard working man with a skinny tall frame and well-kept black tennis shoes he tucked nicely under his bed. Traveling from northwest Africa to find work in Ireland, Emmanuel wanted nothing more but good deep conversations with fellow world travelers and most importantly...advice on his life. Emmanuel was sweet as sugar and wouldn't hurt a fly, but what seemed to be harmless life questions soon turned out to be a 3 to 1 counseling session. Tina, an Austrian teen (or "Australian" according to Emmanuel), and myself life coached our way through the evening. Tina and I got ready to go out for our last night, packed our bags while Emmanuel asked us questions and watched us apply our makeup. He flattered us with compliments on our dresses and shopping. At one point telling me I looked like a girl from a music video he watched as a child. When he showed us on the internet which one he talked about it ended up being an 80's video named LaQuinta. I tried to take it as a compliment.
Emmanuel was a deep dude and said he admired us girls in our way of life and "...just being free to live" as we got ready to leave for the Pub where they were having live music. If you couldn't sense it so far, Emmanuel is a very "thought consumed" as Tina would say. After what seemed like hours of him dominating conversations, which we didn't mind and actually found entertaining in the beginning, eventually ended in us backpedaling to the door with him writing homework. Yep, we gave him homework. Never a dull moment. I often wonder how I'd function with a dull moment since my life is too strange to have one sometimes. We went to a pub, which Emmanuel declined the invite to because he doesn't like pubs or drinks...or coffee...or soda...or juice...and so we left him with a checklist of things to reflect on. We told him to make goals of what he wants in life and come up with plans of how to achieve those plans. Life 101. Somehow though, Emmanuel managed to make this simple exercise into a complicated mess of goal confusion. Tina tried to simplify, "Emmanuel, what do you like?" Emmanuel said, "I want to play sports." I encouraged him in that. "That's great Emmanuel. (Thinking he liked playing sports) Write that down! Which sports in particular?" Emmanuel chose soccer. Without question I continued with my enthusiasm hoping we could slowly leave him writing in his notebook while we snuck out the door. "Why soccer?" I asked out of curiousity. He looked puzzled and turned to Tina saying, "Tina, why do I want to do sports?" He got his pen ready to write the answer. Tina looked at him, confused at this point and like a teacher trying to hide her true feelings of disappointment with why her student is the way he is, she said, "I don't know, Emmanuel. Why DO YOU want to be a soccer player?!" I tried not to laugh because I could tell this was slowly becoming less fun for Tina. Emmanuel had no clue. We gave him ideas: to be on a team, to make friends, to get in shape....he wrote it all down saying, "Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah....that's a good one." Emmanuel didn't even know how to play soccer or why he chose it. He just wanted adventure in his life. He just picked the first thing that came to mind when thinking "cool". We had actually regressed from our initial starting point. Tina and I looked at each other. We tried. It's time for a Guiness.
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