Day 8: I Ate Fish Balls in Flushing Chinatown

On Monday I headed to Flushing's Chinatown in search of exotic delights for my tummy. I've heard that the best, most authentic food, no matter what it is, is in Queens. If you want it, it's on the 7-train from Times Square to Flushing. Street food from Ecuador's coast? Head to Jackson Heights. Transylvanian pastries dusted with cocoa? Get off at Long Island City. Thai curries washed down with a pint of Guinness? Woodside's your best bet. And Flushing's Chinatown is legendary. 

My plan was to wander into restaurants, point to a picture of an unknown dish, and be served some sort of new discovery. Though I'm mostly vegetarian, I allow myself an exception known as my Cultural Experience Card; I will eat meat if it's part of a unique cross-cultural or global or heritage experience.  (I also have a Hospitality and Solidarity Card that I use when I'm a guest and don't want to refuse or impose on my hosts.) So I was all set to test my nerve and eat whatever dish or meat I encountered, trusting fate and my stomach.

Unfortunately, I failed. The first restaurant I came to had been reviewed favorably for its red peppercorn dumplings, but when they arrived, they were red pepper flake dumplings, an exact pork-filled replica of the mock pork dumplings at my favorite vegetarian dim sum place in Manhattan. From there on, every menu I encountered was in English. If I ordered the intestines simmered in mustard sauce intentionally, I wouldn't be trusting fate.

After my dumpling disappointment, the hardest part of the challenge was resisting the urge to get back on the train to Sunnyside for a pint and some Irish groceries. Instead, I walked up and down Flushing's Main Street. I stopped for spicy fish balls on a stick and a tiny, walnut-filled moon cake (both new dishes after all). The clouds were beginning to gather and the wind turned as I wandered, letting me know that autumn was here to stay.

Day 6: I Became the World's Most Unlikely Hurling Coach

Wow, today was quite a day. I'm the good kind of tired and my head is still spinning. On the spur of the moment, I attended a training course for coaches of hurling and camogie,* national sports of Ireland.  I have now completed my foundational level of certification for official Gaelic Athletic Association coaches. Believe me, I'm laughing good-naturedly at this. Attending this course was definitely a stretch (to say the least!) as I'm not particularly athletic and have only been playing camogie for a few months. But it gave me the chance to examine my relationship to organized sports and my place in the Irish diaspora.

The day began with registration at an Irish bar outside the city - at 9:30 AM. As I rode out of my neighborhood, with its fruit stalls, bachata music, and Dominican hair salons opening up for early morning clients, I felt a sense of flux. My feet were in two worlds, between my neighborhood's Irish past and Latino present; my family's Celtic heritage and the Latino community I've worked hard to learn about and serve through my career. My feelings of displacement continued when I arrived at the bar: I was the only woman there and the only American (besides some American born sons of Irish coaches). As I waited for the course to begin, I felt the unsettling feeling of not getting the jokes, or getting them a beat too late. I felt ridiculous, out of place, like an impostor.

As the course began, though, I felt my anxieties melt away, and I became caught up in the sessions. Our tutor, who had flown in from Galway especially for our course, emphasized the Gaelic Athletic Association's philosophy of keeping players involved, focusing on fun, and tailoring training to the players' motor, intellectual, and social development. I found that my background in training volunteers had natural parallels to coaching. And when I mock-coached a module on jab lifts, the much more experienced hurlers in the group listened patiently, encouragingly, and sincerely. 

HOW I LEFT MY COMFORT ZONE:

I felt like an outsider and an impostor, neither sufficiently Irish nor sufficiently athletic to be a camogie coach. I hope that my participation today will allow me to help my club to recruit more women for our camogie team; while I learned a lot, I still have a lot to learn and a lot of improving to do.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

To get and keep people involved, make things fun and engaging. Gaelic games (Gaelic football, hurling, camogie, and handball) are heritage sports in Ireland that are up against competition from glamorous soccer and rugby; in America, they compete with those sports as well as football, basketball, lacrosse, and others. Promoting Gaelic games means fostering an environment in which everyone who wants to play has a chance to participate and contribute, and all enjoy their time on the pitch. And that foundation is necessary in order to build higher levels of play and exciting All-Ireland Finals that the whole country (and diaspora) want to watch. This has obvious parallels for my work recruiting, training, and supporting volunteers.

*(If you've not seen hurling or camogie played before, now's your chance! )