We Apologize for the Delay

Hello from Limerick!

I'm alive, promise! After a full week and some in my new country, I’ve been there and done that and I’m ready to head out – kidding! I’ve been a number of places and seen a huge number of buildings, statues, people, etc., but I can tell it’s only the beginning. In which case, I’ll attempt to start from the beginning.

At last update, I was in an elevator at O’Hare airport, heading down to the train into the city of Chicago. I got directions to Millennium Park and walked around sightseeing for a while, backpack and messenger bag in tow.  I’ve been to Chicago twice, but both trips were before the park was built. The park is only about 5 blocks away from the Chicago Tribune building, which happens to be my favorite in the entire city. I love the bits of famous buildings and other parts of history stuck into the outer walls, and they’d added a few since the last time I’d been there – a piece of twisted metal from the World Trade Center and one other that I can’t remember. I found a very…. unique hot dog shop en route to the train station again, where they had hot dogs representing a number of different cities around the country. There was no Pittsburgh hot dog, so I figured I had to try the Chicago-style since I was IN Chicago. The verdict: ballpark peppers are no joke.

Back at the airport, I made several friends in the longer-than-Heathrow-at-Christmas airline counter line who were on a weeklong tour of Ireland sponsored by their local rock radio station. They – and their trip itinerary – were a little strange, but the huge wait was a lot more entertaining with stories of motorcycles breaking down mid-road trip. One of the men told me he’d been to Pittsburgh once; he and his wife had driven through the night on their motorcycles from Kansas City, MO to Pittsburgh and appeared on their friend’s doorstep at 7am with no advance notice and a bottle of wine. Interesting way to see a new city, I suppose.

 The rest of my O’Hare adventure consisting of finding several kids from my program and talking all about how excited we were and how amazing the semester would be and how we’d meet up to make big dinners together – and then realizing they were ALL headed to NUI Galway, and I was on my way to the University of Limerick. That turned out to be the theme of our IFSA orientation, but I didn’t find that out until later. Two of the girls were from the Chicago area, and it turns out they had gone to high school with my friend Prashansa! Definitely a small world.  It turned extra bizarre when they started boarding our plane – every time someone’s row was called, the rest of us would go “See you in Ireland!…well that sounds weird.”

The seven hour flight was about the same as any other plane ride, except that all of the electronic messages were also written in Irish, and the flight attendants all had at least a hint of a brogue. The guy sitting next to me turned out to be from Dublin, had just graduated from Ashland University in Iowa, and offered me three pieces of advice: Live it up, keep an open mind, and go to the Porter House Central.  I’ll do my best! Upon landing in Dublin, I met up with Jess and Bailey (the Chicago girls) and started to wait in the longest customs line I’ve ever seen.  Lucky for us, about ten minutes later a staff person came through the line calling for study abroad students and ushered us into our own line consisting of about fifteen people total. The customs people were very pleasant, aside from taking my picture for immigration records – after almost 24 hours of traveling, that’s just cruel.  We were met by Geoff and Maria of the IFSA Dublin office, who quickly ushered us onto our “coach” (bus) and we headed into Dublin to begin the adventure!