I thought I spoke English. Then I moved to Ireland.

I arrived in Ireland on a May morning with a suitcase, some English and absolutely no idea how to pay for the bus.

A girl from the company I had travelled with picked me up at the airport. We got on a bus, and I quickly discovered that knowing how buses work in one country does not mean you know how buses work in another.

She paid for me.

That should have been my first clue.

There are so many things nobody teaches you about moving abroad because they are too small to make it onto the checklist.

Get your visa.<br>Book accommodation.<br>Buy your flight.<br>Bring your documents.

Nobody writes:

Learn how to pay for the bus.

Or:

Prepare yourself for the possibility that the English you studied for years will become completely useless the moment an Irish person starts speaking.

I genuinely thought I knew some English before moving to Ireland.

Then I heard Irish people speak.

How are ya?

Sorry?

Howareya?

…What?

In Argentina, at least when I was learning, we were mostly exposed to American English. Nice, clear textbook English. The kind where people pronounce the words you were taught.

Ireland had other plans for me.

For a while, understanding people felt like trying to solve a puzzle in real time while maintaining eye contact and pretending everything was completely fine.

Luckily, the Irish are incredibly patient.

That is still one of the things I appreciate most about living here. Ireland is full of people from everywhere, and there seems to be an understanding that English is not everyone’s first language.

People repeat themselves.

They slow down.

They point at things.

They watch you stare at them in complete confusion and somehow don’t make you feel like an idiot.

Most of the time.

I Knew the Bus Number. That Was Enough.

During those first few days, I had to figure out where my school was before classes started.

Eventually, I learned which bus would take me home.

The 16.

Perfect.

There was only one small problem.

I had absolutely no idea where to get off.

I was also learning how to properly use Google Maps, so there I was, alone on a Dublin bus, watching streets I didn’t recognise pass by the window and trying to calculate whether I was going in the right direction.

Eventually, I went to the driver and tried to explain where I needed to go.

I have no idea what he said back.

None.

But apparently my face communicated more effectively than my English because when we reached my stop, he called out to me to make sure I got off.

And I did.

Success.

This is something I don’t think we talk about enough when we talk about moving abroad.

You don’t just move countries.

For a while, you become strangely incompetent at ordinary life.

You don’t know which bus to take.

You don’t know how to pay.

You don’t know where people buy certain things.

You don’t understand the electricity bill.

You don’t know what you’re supposed to say at the till.

You don’t know why everyone is looking at you like that.

And then, slowly, you learn.

My Minimum Was Sushi

Before leaving Argentina, I had decided on one thing.

I didn’t want to arrive in Ireland and automatically become a cleaner simply because I couldn’t speak English well enough to do something else.

I knew how to make sushi.

So on the journey from Argentina to Chile, with my mum beside me, I told her:

“My minimum is sushi chef.”

That was my plan.

The only issue was finding someone willing to hire a sushi chef who could barely understand the training.

It took me around two months.

Facebook groups. WhatsApp groups. CVs sent everywhere.

My CV was probably terrible. I was also discovering that CV rules were different here: no photo, no gender, different expectations, different format.

Eventually, someone called me for an interview.

In English.

I survived largely by showing them photos of sushi I had made.

Why explain your skills when you can simply provide photographic evidence?

I got the job.

During training, people would explain things about food safety and temperatures.

“Check the temperature… below five degrees…”

I understood approximately nothing.

So I developed another professional skill:

Smiling.

I smiled. I nodded. I watched what everyone else was doing.

And eventually, I learned.

Then I received my first payslip.

I remember that week very clearly: I had worked 32 hours.

There was something extraordinary about looking at that money.

It was mine.

Nobody had lent it to me. Nobody had given it to me. I had worked those hours, in another country, in another language, doing something I knew how to do.

My first proper payslip in Ireland.

I was ridiculously proud of it.

Then Came Butter

By the time I worked in a bakery, my English was better.

Or so I thought.

One morning, around eight, I was making sandwiches when a British customer came in.

I had my sentence ready.

I had learned entire sentences by memory because that was much easier than improvising.

“What would you like in the sandwich?”

Professional.

Fluent.

Prepared.

He answered.

“Spread some butter.”

I stared at him.

Sorry?

“Some butter.”

Nothing.

My brain searched through every English word it had ever learned.

Nothing.

He pointed.

I looked.

He repeated himself.

I still had absolutely no idea what this man wanted from me.

Eventually, he gave up.

And then, somehow, I looked at the butter and asked:

“Would you like some butter?”

YES.

That was what he had been saying.

Butter.

We were both speaking English.

We were both talking about the same butter.

And somehow we had spent an entire conversation unable to establish this fact.

He laughed.

I laughed.

Welcome to language immersion.

Around the same period, I sometimes worked on the till.

We had a meal deal: sandwich, drink and crisps.

Simple.

Except I was Argentine.

So instead of asking customers if they wanted the deal with crisps and maybe a 7UP or Coke, I would enthusiastically ask:

“Would you like some chips and seven?”

People would look at me.

“Chips and seven.”

More staring.

In my head, this was perfectly clear.

Chips.

Seven.

What else could anyone possibly need to know?

It took me a while to discover that the packet of potato chips I was referring to were crisps here, while chips meant the hot ones.

And apparently nobody else had received the memo that 7UP could simply be called seven.

But this is how I actually learned English.

Not from a book.

Not from an app.

From repeatedly embarrassing myself in front of strangers until one day I stopped embarrassing myself quite so often.

You Also Have to Learn How to Sound Like Yourself Again

Language wasn’t the only cultural adjustment.

I also had to learn that the way I communicated in Argentina didn’t always translate well here.

Argentinians can be direct. We can say something that sounds mildly aggressive when translated literally and mean absolutely nothing by it.

We talk fast.

We interrupt.

We exaggerate.

We use our hands.

We use our faces.

I use my eyes.

A lot.

It took someone at work actually pointing it out for me to realise that sometimes my tone, my expressions or the way I said things could be interpreted very differently here.

At first, I thought everyone hated me.

Then I realised:

Maybe, Marcia, relax your face.

It took years.

Interestingly, I eventually discovered that I have a slightly different personality in English.

I’m sweeter.

Calmer.

Softer.

In Spanish, I can speak like a machine gun.

In English, apparently, I am lovely.

Who knew.

Then There Is the Irish Clock

Moving abroad also changes things you would never think required changing.

Like dinner.

In Argentina, dinner at 10 p.m. is completely reasonable.

In Ireland, I’ve become a person who can eat at six or seven.

Six!

My Argentine self would consider that an afternoon snack.

Going out required an even bigger recalibration.

In Argentina, midnight could be the beginning of the pre-drinks. You might arrive at the club at two-thirty or three in the morning and get home at seven.

Nine, if there was an after.

Ireland?

By three, it’s over.

So you adapt.

Dinner happens earlier.

Pre-drinks happen earlier.

By ten, the party is properly going.

By two-thirty, you can be in bed.

And somehow you wake up the next day almost like a functioning member of society.

Revolutionary.

Then there is the weather.

People told me it rained in Ireland.

I heard them.

I believed them.

I still don’t think I understood what they meant.

It rains.

And rains.

And rains.

There is a reason this country is that green.

Winter is another experience entirely.

Until Christmas, I can handle it. Actually, I love it. Halloween arrives, then Christmas lights, decorations, events, colours, Santa Claus everywhere. Dublin becomes festive and beautiful.

Then January arrives.

January in Dublin is depression with a postcode.

The lights disappear.

Christmas is over.

It’s dark.

It’s wet.

Good luck to everyone.

The Housing Ladder Nobody Dreams About

And then there is housing.

If you have ever lived in Dublin, you already know.

When I first arrived, I stayed in a residence that had basically just opened. For a little while, it was only me and the girl managing it.

A couple of days later, another Argentine girl arrived after having problems with her accommodation. I invited her to sleep in my room because, frankly, I didn’t want to be alone.

We became friends.

Later, we found a shared room together.

In 2019, we were paying €550 each.

For the same bedroom.

And that was part of learning another reality of living abroad: sometimes your definition of success becomes very specific.

First, maybe you’re renting a bed.

Not a room.

A bed.

You can literally rent a vacancy in a shared bedroom.

Then perhaps you graduate to having your own bedroom while still living with six or seven other people.

Then you live with fewer people.

Maybe a friend. Maybe a couple.

And eventually comes the fantasy.

The ultimate Dublin luxury.

Your own apartment.

Forget the yacht.

Give me a one-bedroom with nobody else’s shampoo in the shower.

At Some Point, the Strange Things Become Normal

Seven years later, there are things I do without thinking about them.

I queue.

I’m punctual.

I ask permission.

I’m careful with how I speak to people.

I don’t throw rubbish on the street.

I say sorry constantly.

I understand the buses.

I eat dinner early.

I know that crisps are crisps and chips are chips.

And I would never offer anyone “chips and seven” again.

Probably.

There are other things Ireland will never take out of me.

My mate.

The way I speak Spanish.

The way Argentinians party.

My obsession with Argentina despite all the reasons Argentinians regularly complain about Argentina.

And that directness — even if I’ve learned to package it slightly more politely.

Living abroad is often presented through the big things.

The airport photo.

The new city.

The job.

The trips.

The independence.

But so much of it happens in completely ordinary moments.

It’s a bus driver realising you have no idea where you’re going.

It’s smiling through a training session you barely understand.

It’s sharing a bedroom because that’s what you can afford.

It’s discovering that the word you’ve been confidently using for months is not the word everyone else is using.

It’s learning how another country eats, speaks, works, queues, rents, drinks, apologises and lives.

And then something strange happens.

One day, you realise you haven’t thought about any of those things in years.

You just know.

The bus arrives and you get on.

Someone speaks and you understand them.

You go to work and English comes out without rehearsing the sentence first.

You complain about the rain like you’ve been doing it your whole life.

The things that once made you feel completely foreign have quietly become your normal life.

And maybe that’s one of the strangest parts of living abroad.

You don’t notice the exact moment a foreign country stops feeling quite so foreign.

It just happens somewhere between the wrong bus stop, the shared bedrooms, the early dinners and the butter you couldn’t understand.

What is the smallest thing you had to learn when you moved abroad that nobody had warned you about?