After a couple miracles and a lot of craziness, WE MADE IT TO IRELAND!
Crystal and I had the same flight out of Chicago on Saturday, Aug. 27, at 6pm. I arrived in Chicago with 4 hours to spare after a couple short weather delays. Crystal also had some delays, which ended up being VERY significant. She left Minneapolis about and hour and a half late, which put her 10 minutes late to our flight to Ireland. We both were frantically talking to the counter attendants and doing whatever we could to make sure she was on our next flight. I waited outside the gate as long as I could until they told me there was nothing they could do for her and I needed to board. I boarded absolutely crushed and praying frantically. What I didn’t know was Crystal’s flight landed early and one of the airline attendants actually went onto Crystal’s incoming flight and escorted her off and right onto our plane just before the door closed. What a miracle when I looked up to see her baording the plane. WE HAD NEVER BEEN HAPPIER TO SEE EACH OTHER. Unfortunately, since she was so last minute to the flight, her luggage never made it. So, after we calmed down after that craziness, the flight was wonderful. We had a plethora of movies to choose from, we were served dinner, dessert, and breakfast. We landed safely in Ireland at 6:54am, local time.
Once through Customs we met up with our fellow ISA travelers (9 of us total) and Kelly, our ISA residence representative. After a short 15 min drive to campus, we checked into our apartments and dropped our luggage off. Crystal and I are in neighboring apartments and we are only 2 windows down, so to everyone else’s avail, we often talk to each other with our heads out the windows :). Each apartment has 6 single rooms, 2 bathrooms, and stocked kitchen and lounge area with 2 couches and a futon. We live in Kilmurry Village, which, essentially, is a neighborhood full of apartments and friends.
After checking in and dropping our bags, Kelly took us on the city buses into the heart of Limerick where we did some essential shopping and site seeing. We learned of the best places to shop and eat and more importantly, found the college students best friend: Penny’s. It’s basically an upstanding, cheap department store. We will definitely be shopping there again!
At this point, we are extremely jet-lagged and really just want to sleep, but we keep on trekking. We had a BCP (Bridging Countries Program) meeting in which Kelly taught us a little bit about Ireland’s history and culture. After that, we were set free for the evening.
A couple of us decided that, after we chilled for a little bit and called our families, we wanted to explore the campus on our own. During that 2 hour self-tour, we managed to find the bridge over the river that separates the campus in two parts, lots of walking/running paths, the absolutely cutest dogs, many buildings we probably won’t recognize again, and of course, all the sports complexes.
After an amazing and well deserved night’s sleep, we woke up and had some coffee at one of the on-campus cafes. For not being a coffee person myself, it was pretty good coffee. Being well rested, we decided to take a leap of confidence and a bunch of us took off into the city to find some groceries and explore. Well, we ended up just buying groceries, but it was still super fun and encouraging that we did it without a guide. After buying some super cheap groceries at Aldi, we headed back to our apartments to chill before going out to dinner with Kelly. Also, Crystal’s luggage arrived today, so what a relief that was!
For dinner, Kelly took us ISA folks to the most authentically Irish pub she could think of where we got our first Irish beers (don’t worry, the drinking age is 18 here) and some EXTREMELY delicious fish and chips along with homemade cheesecake. We got to know each other and Kelly over dinner, as well as the feel of some live Irish music.
After that great meal, Crystal, a friend, and I decided to stay in the city and explore a while on our own. We walked all over the city (only partially lost), but did end up asking for directions to the bus stop. We just missed the bus so we decided to head to a nearby pub until the next one arrived. Once we caught the bus, we headed to an on campus pub to meet up with the rest of the ISA group and just chilled and listened to some music for a while.
Well, that catches you up to the present. So, overall, Ireland is amazing and while there is a bit of culture shock, I think it will hit us harder when we start classes and all of the Irish students show up on campus next Monday.
