The birds

We spend yesterday at a country sports fair in Moire, which is about an hour away from our cottages in Dundrum. In this case "sports" meant outdoorsy things like hunting and dog training. There was plenty to walk around and look at, and we were able to meet some members of the Ulster Scots, a local cultural organization that a few Young Ambassadors will be working with for their cultural placements.

We spend a good chunk of the first half of the day looking at a falconry group's bird display. They had owls and falcons and, to our surprise, an American bald eagle. If I remember correctly, you can't go anywhere near those birds in the U.S. and will go to jail for a very, very long time if you do. We thought looking at the birds would be the closest we would get to them for the day. I'm not a huge bird fan, so I was content with that.

But the birds had something else in mind when we were watching the handling demonstration later in the day.

At one point, the handler let one of the birds fly to the top of a flag pole behind where we were watching. It sat up there for a little while, until it was called back. But instead of going back to the handlers glove, it landed right on Tim's head as he was trying to take a photo with his cell phone. This, of course, meant he had to be one of the "volunteers" for the rest of the demonstration, although he didn't really have a choice in the matter.

What made this funny for those of us watching is that Tim hates birds. The handler then asked if there was anyone else in our group Tim wanted to have up there with him, so he made Ryan join him. Here they are looking apprehensive.

The handler then proceeded to tell them to "act like a tropical rain forest." This involved standing with their hands on their hips or heads while the falcon flew through the gaps. They performed a few of these tricks for the audience. But that was nothing compared to the finale of their little demonstration. The handler had them stand across from each other with their feet shoulder width apart, while the bird flew through their legs.

I took a bunch of photos at the fair, and have posted some to my Flickr page. There's a link on the left side of the blog to get there.

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!