On to Ireland!

Saturday, the 29^th of Jan.

Today is one of my designated travel days as I am headed to the Republican of Ireland.  (FN1) We had planned to get up early and go visit some of the parks but everyone slept in, which was fine by me.  I spent the day re-packing my bags so that I could get everything I needed for a week into the one carry-on that RyanAir allows (no personal item, just one bag).

Everything went fine until I got to the train station.  I got there a little early so I decided to call home since I hadn’t talked to my parents the entire trip.  I figured a “hey, I’m alive” phone call was in order.  Well, I’m standing at the right platform for my train to Stansted airport but the train arrives early.  I get on it, it starts to pull away and immediately I realize I’m on the wrong train going the opposite direction.  As a result I had to take a cab to the airport, which stunk.  It also meant that instead of arriving comfortably early to the airport I arrived 8 minutes before the gate was supposed to close.

By the grace of God, and my wily traveler skills (hah), I made it onto the flight but I was quite a sight.  Stansted is a very long airport.  Instead of having lots of terminals that are spokes off a hub, Stansted is all one, long, long, long terminal (think Detroit if you’ve ever flown out of Northwest’s terminal there).  It’s hard for me to tell for sure since I was running through at full-sprint, but I think it was over half a mile long.  Of course my gate was the very last one.  So I’m sprinting through the airport hauling my carry-on (which probably weighed 30 pounds and was awkward to carry) and wearing a sweatshirt and jacket because it was 2 or 3° Celsius outside (around 38 F).  By the time I made it onto the plane I was sweating, but I didn’t care because I just wanted to be on that flight.  It was a RyanAir flight which meant that I purchased the ticket for £6 (about $10) but if I had to change my flight it would be £45 ($72) so I didn’t want to miss that flight.

The flight itself was really interesting.  RyanAir obviously doesn’t make its money from ticket sales (in fact, until this year they sold all their flights for a pence [penny]) so they make it up other ways (like that huge change fee).  The flight had a carnival atmosphere with the attendants hawking everything from vacation packages to lottery tickets.  It was great.  I slept through most of it though.

Seth picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the missions conference his church was helping to host in Cork.  It was really cool to meet people from all over Ireland right away.  They kept saying, “well you can probably tell I’m not from around here” but I had no clue.  By the end of the week I could tell certain accents apart, but not then. (FN2)  The pastor who spoke used the Will Smith classic Independence Day as one of his sermon illustrations which I thought was hilarious.  (Essentially his point was that it was very American to make a movie where our president saves the entire world himself. Haha.)  It was really sobering to hear stories from the missionaries gathered about the persecution the churches were under in the countries where they ministered.  It’s hard to believe that torture still occurs for someone’s beliefs, but it does. 

I think the coolest part of the conference was realizing that I’ve seen the body of Christ in four countries on three continents in the last month and I’m about to add one more country and continent!  It really does remind you of how big and awesome God is when you see the work he is doing all over the world.

After the conference we loaded everyone up in the van and started driving back to Youghal which was 45 minutes away.  During the van ride I made the comment, “wow, I love the winding back-country roads!” And the entire car burst out laughing.  Turns out we were on the major highway in the county.  Whoops.

When I got to Seth and Jessica’s they had a warm coal fire burning in the fireplace and I made my bed beside it and slept like a baby.  I felt so cool to be sleeping by a coal fire in Ireland.

FN1 Ireland.  The Emerald Isle is divided into two parts: Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom (all parts) and Great Britain (the part of the UK that’s in the British Isles).  Southern Ireland, which is about 2/3 of the isle, is a separate country, the Republic of Ireland.  It is a member of the EU and has its own government.  There are no border controls between northern and southern Ireland, but there are between England and Ireland.  (In fact, in some places the boundary between northern and southern Ireland is not even marked at all.)

FN2 Accents.  Northern Ireland has the thickest accents.  Lot of brogue and is probably what you think of when you think of an Irish accent.  The middle seems to have the softest accents while the south, especially County Cork has its own distinct accent.