Getting there is half the battle

Well, we’ve made it to Northern Ireland, but it was certainly no walk in the park getting here.

I arrived at Chicago O’Hare International Airport yesterday with more than enough time to make it to our flight to Newark. To my surprise, O’Hare’s security was not the traveler’s purgatory it usually is, and I ended up at the gate, meeting up with fellow Milwaukee chapter Ambassadors Honor and Jen about two hours prior to our scheduled departure at 5:15 p.m.

Problem 1: President Obama was flying into O’Hare and all flights were delayed until he hit the tarmac.

We ended up departing Chicago an hour later than we were supposed to reducing our layover time in Newark from 40 minutes to 10. We lucked out because plenty of other people on our flight were in the same situation to get to Belfast and the flight crew let us off the plane before anyone else. But we still had to sprint at top speed through the Newark airport as the PA system announced “final boarding call to Belfast.” We made it just as they were about to close the door.

Immensely relieved that we managed to make the flight, Honor, Jen and I settled in to our seats for an uneventful flight to Belfast.

Once off the plane, however, our entire group met another hiccup. We realized on the plane, while filling out immigration cards, that we didn’t have the address of the cottages we are staying in for the next two weeks. This was met with raised eyebrows by the immigration officers at the border. They wanted more details on our program, which we didn’t have, and our cultural assignment placements sounded an awful lot like work that required visas we didn’t have.

Problem 2: We were detained.

For a little while our fate was uncertain. The English immigration officer who claimed he had “no sense of humor” didn’t make our chances sound promising. But some clever name dropping over the phone by program director Tim earned us stamps in our passports, and we were on our way.

We quickly dropped our bags off at our cottages in Dundrum before heading to the Saint Patrick Centre, where Tim briefed a very sleep-deprived group of us on what we'll be doing for the next two weeks. We had tea. It helped. A lot.

Then we went back to the cottages to settle in where we discovered we needed more tea before heading back to the Saint Patrick Centre for a welcome barbecue, where we met lots of very friendly people. (I apologize for the lack of detail at this point ... I haven't slept in about 36 hours.)

Now we're back at the cottages and I am going to get some SLEEP!