Well, as I’m sure all of you know, I’m in Ireland right now. Hannah Voss, one of my household sisters and dearest friends from Franciscan, and I have been blessed enough to be offered positions “interning” with a Catholic Parish in Delvin, a tiny town northeast of Dublin. We are very quickly realizing that “interning” is secretly code for “how about you set up an entire youth ministry program by yourselves”, but I’ll get to that some other time. For now, I’m just going to go over everything that happened in the process of me getting here.
The plan for Travel Day was to wake up, go to Mass with my mom, then Church of the King with the Duncan fam, and then get in the car and head to the airport. Obviously, that means packing had to be done the night before. To keep with tradition I pulled an all-nighter and started putting things in the bag at about 3am. Before that, I watched The Hulk with Mama and the (big) little brothers, sorted all my worldly possessions for the sake of consolidating/purging, and did laundry. Woohoo. (:
Fun fact: I broke a string on my guitar when I first got back from Austria, so I bought replacements while I was in Steubie. Unfortunately, I forgot them in Hannah Voss’ room. She was able to bring them with her to Ireland, but until then, I was left with a significant lack of strings on my guitar. I decided to make use of this by shoving three pairs of shoes inside of it. Feminine genius? I think yes.
Actually, it just occurred to me that I have to figure out how to get the shoes home now that the strings are back on… hmm. Interesting.
Anyways, so, things went as planned. By the grace of God I managed to get everything together on time. I got to go to Mass, which was beautiful, and then COTK, and then Jordan (he’s the “little” brother who is about six inches taller than me and on his way to college (!!!!!!) ) drove me to the airport. He did a fabulous job getting there. No wrong turns, good timing, etc. Everything went smoothly. It wasn’t until I’d been in the airport for about half an hour that I got a text from him saying he’d gone the wrong way on the way home. Poor love. Not quite sure how he did it, but I’m almost glad he did. It proves we’re related ; )
When I got into the airport I was only about ten feet away from the line I was supposed to be in. That was good considering all the nonsense I was hauling. Checked bag, guitar, backpack, and a carry-on that was filled with the important things. You know. Bible. Breviary (fancy schmancy Catholic book with daily scriptural devotions), Journal. Laptop, Passport, money, etc. You get the idea. Lots of books and heavy business. The general idea was that my little “personal item” was probably well over its allotted weight and that none of my baggage was fun to move around. That’s why, as I got towards the front of the line on my way to the check-in, I said a little prayer that Jesus would help me get to a counter super near the line so I wouldn’t have to awkwardly carry/kick/drag everything too far. He didn’t do that for me, but He did have an airport employee randomly walk up, carry my biggest bag, and walk me through the international check in process step by step, including fixing some problems with my return flight. He is so good to me (:
I got through security no problem. It’s almost magical how a little common courtesy will help you get through things like that. While I was checking in there was a man at another counter who was throwing a massive fit. Something wasn’t working out for him and he was screaming and cussing and getting in the poor lady’s face. He called her some seriously nasty names. It took a lot for me to not say something, but I was good. Honestly, I pity the man who was raving more than the poor woman he was shouting at. I can’t imagine how unhappy you have to be with yourself in order to treat other people that way. He definitely wasn’t making friends at the check-in counter. There was actually a priest waiting next to him. I’ve never seen a death glare like the one that priest gave that man. I think he wanted to punch him in the face.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that, in addition to my magical ability to be polite, I was wearing a nice gypsy skirt and I smiled a lot. Courtesy, confidence, and femininity. It’s a good combo for popularity and happy traveling.
After a short wait I got on the plane. My seat buddy wasn’t big on chatting, but since I’d been awake for about 40 hours at that point, I was more than happy to doze. I think I got about 45 minutes of sleep, and then it was time to get off again. Dear Marriana, Welcome to Chicago.
Ok. Chicago Airport is absolutely pancake-flippin crazy. Everyone says Atlanta is bad, but I’ve been to Atlanta two or three times now, and Chicago is way worse. It’s way less organized. I got lost by myself about five times before I was even able to find someone to ask for help and it was only then that I was able to find out that I was supposed to get to Terminal 5, which is basically an entirely other airport specifically for international flights. Meh. Anyways. One train-y thing-y ride later I was in the right place. I checked in with Aer Lingus (Note the SUPER IRISH name : ) and then had a tiny bit of time to kill. Right about here I remembered that I forgot to eat all day, so I grabbed a smoothie. Strawberry Raspberry, no sugar added (: I love it when they do that and I can actually eat the things I buy.
I went though international security, where they decided they needed to make sure my travel mug wasn’t secretly filled with anthrax. That only took about five minutes. Then I was free to find Hannah Voss. We camped out for a little bit, and before long it was time to board. We weren’t seated next to each other, but it ended up working out. I was supposed to be in the middle of a whole group of people traveling together, but I switched so that they could have another one of their friends with them. I ended up sitting next to a couple of other college students. One was on the way home to Dublin after a year of studying in California. He was a Junior physics major with a fondness for Fig Newtons and milk. My other amiga was a girl who was spending her summer bopping around Europe for kicksies. She was born in Poland but grew up in Chicago. They were both Catholic (:
The flight itself wasn’t that bad, only about six or seven hours. We had chicken and rice for dinner. There was cheesecake too, but I gave it to my seat buddy. I dozed a little bit, but my seat was in a wonderfully high-traffic area – near the bathroom, so it wasn’t exactly peaceful. That’s alright. Eventually morning showed up. I had a croissant for breakfast, and we landed soon after that. I grabbed the guitar, met with Hannah, and off we went. Customs went fine. I got a nifty stamp, which, as we all know, is the whole point of even having a passport. We grabbed our bags and stopped by the bathroom. The only reason I’m sharing that fun fact with you is because it was in the bathroom, when I saw the weird European toilets, that everything actually hit me. I’m in Europe again! Woot woot! (:
We met up with Maria, who was waiting for us. We were super excited because she was wearing a sweatshirt representing the school she works out. Regina Angelorum Secondary School. Oh yeah. (: Then we went outside to a land of European license plates and cars in which the driver is on the right-hand side. Austria and the other countries I visited during my semester abroad all had driving and such on the same side as us, so it was a new experience.
As expected, the Irish countryside is absolutely lovely. The sun was shining when we arrived, and though it’s consistently much cooler and windier than it is in the states, we’ve been pretty blessed thusfar with only a tad bit of rain. On the way to Delvin we stopped in a hotel for breakfast. Hotels around here seem to have dining set ups much like basic restaurants in the US. It was here that we were able to first experience Irish tea. Tea in Ireland is practically a religion. Everyone drinks it, all day, every day, and you never refuse it when it’s offered. I love this place.
After that Maria dropped us off at Mary Mackin’s house. Mary is a single woman in her 60’s who doesn’t “stand by ceremony” and who is a bit more talkative after a good gin and tonic. She’s a hoot. We’re going to be staying with her for the first week, and possibly longer.
Mary was actually at work when we arrived, so we had free reign of the house. We couldn’t figure out how to turn the water on, so we crashed without taking showers. It was about eleven in the morning, Irish time. Seven hours later Mary showed up, introduced herself, and cooked us stirfry. Not exactly the most traditional Irish meal, but fabulous nonetheless. We had fresh strawberries and homemade Irish whipped cream (no sugar! :) for dessert. Then we had some tea, and Fr. Seamus (Shame-us) showed up and introduced himself. He’s the one who’s been coordinating this whole thing. He’s our boss. He’s a really sweet, if somewhat shy, older man with one brown eye and one blue eye. We discussed a few logistical details for the next few days before he left us to rest and attempt to recover from jetlag. I took this opportunity to put the strings on my guitar, which was a bit more complex than it probably should have been, but they sure sound pretty. Then we turned in for some sleep. Whew.
I’m sorry I don’t really have pictures yet. I’ll steal some from Hannah soon and get them up. They’ll help break up my umpteen paragraphs of ridiculous details. I love and miss you all! Please pray for us!
