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May 29, 2007

"Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe.
That was in his writing."
- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


I am sitting in the A terminal at Philadelphia Airport, after an early morning flight from San Francisco. After a long layover here, I will fly to Shannon, Ireland. From there I will take the bus to Galway City, and my supervisor Peter will pick me up. I am slightly nervous as my American cell phone will not work on European bandwidths, so until I purchase a SIM card for the quadband phone I've acquired [see www.thetravelinsider.info/roadwarriorcontent/quadbandphones.htm
for more information about quad-band phones and SIM cards for traveling abroad], I'll have to depend on a payphone to make my first phone call in Ireland (to call Peter). Hopefully there won't be anything too tricky about Irish payphones!

(I don't know if these little details are the sort of things that other people find worrisome when traveling abroad for the first time? The first of many challenges though, I'm sure!)  

A pleasant conversation with an elderly couple sitting across the way has lifted my travel-weary spirits. "Where are you going?" he asked me: the universal travelers' conversation-opener. With don't-talk-to-strangers admonitions having long lost all potency (college does that to you: everyone you meet is a stranger, at first), I told them that I was headed to Ireland for the summer. "Ireland!" they exclaimed (and eyed my dark hair and features, and did a double take – in not unfriendly fashion). "Whatever for?"

After I told them about my internship in Galway, they told me that they were headed to Dublin and then Newcastle, Northern Ireland, for a church mission. It turns out that they'd lived in Dublin for 5 years previously. I'd love Ireland, they said. Beautiful country. Especially during the summer.  Weather isn't too great even then, but beautiful country. Wonderful place for a young person to spend the summer.

Don't I know it.