The First Day

Well today was an interesting day. I boarded a plane in Detroit at Metro Airport at 12:45 pm on Thursday August 30th. Here it is today, 6:00 pm on Friday, which means that I have spent approximately 24 hours in either an airport or an airplane. Needless to say it was quite the adventure full of many surprises, wrong turns and luggage magically appearing! Ok so enough with the travels, my host father I guess you could call him is named Bernard. He is a single dad who's son went to med school and now works, Bernard informed me today that he is going to be coming over for dinner tomorrow so I will get to meet him. It was an interesting time today with all of the layovers and flight time, I went through a lot of different phases, I think we all did. I think we hit the W curve in one flight! It was like we were really excited to leave, then depressed once on the plane and realizing that we actually left, and then there was another period of excitement when we landed in Dublin... I mean we were in Europe, so that was exciting. Then finally there was the am I sure I want to do this phase which was pretty much the 6 hours in the airport in Paris. Then finally it was the nervous anticipation as we awaited our luggage and went through the exit door to get swept away by our host families!

Bernard is a professor in city, although not at the same university that we attend. In addition he is the treasurer of some large peace committee in the city (more details to come I'm sure) which he is actually attending a large dinner for tonight. He lives in a small apartment just outside the city, but there is a bus stop directly in front of his apartment so travelling around the town should be fairly simple.

I am waiting to get my SIM card, Bernard knows someone that works at a store in town so he is going to get me a good deal on one, as soon as I get the information my phone number I will let everyone know!

It should be exciting, these next 6 months are going to prove to have lots of challenges both emotionally and mentally but I think all in all it will be a great experience.

Until next time,

Jon