Now, over three months into my stay in Ireland, I realize that I haven't blogged once. And certain fellows of mine are probably awaiting some sort of electronic news. So I think it's time to amend that. So, where to start? Three months and I've seen so much. I suppose the only thing for it is to do my best to chronicle things in the order that they happened. I guess this is going to take more than one post.
My last two posts were written in my mother's house in Atlanta, a sort of waypoint and launchpad for the rest of the journey. The evening of the 10th of September, said mother schlepped me down to the airport. I suppose in a way that things got strange as soon as I hit the international flights concourse. I'd been to Dublin once before but either we'd flown from a different concourse, I was too knackered to remember anything or things had changed. The duty-free shops were bright and somewhat fancy and there were periodic displays of confiscated contraband which I stared at until I got on the plane.
Some eight hours later, we touched down in Heathrow. I caught a bus from one terminal to another, where I was stamped into the UK and given a scannable biometric sticker with my picture on it. After wandering through a mall of more duty-free shops, my biometric sticker was checked (I guess the passport photo isn't quite enough) and went through security, then followed a series of increasingly-isolated corrugated metal tubes to a very small boarding area with a very expensive coffee shop and vending machines with awful-looking books inside them.
A bit of a wait and an hour hop later, I landed in my new city. I managed to be lost enough that I completely forgot to change my money and realize this as the taxi was pulling away from the airport. Fortunately, I was able to correct that mistake and get to my apartment building without (further) trouble. I had a bit of a wait before I was able to get my key, so I dropped my bags at the office and went next door (literally) for my first pint of Murphy's. I later met a friend of mine living in Cork for dinner, got my internet connection working (of the utmost importance) and thus ended my first night in Cork.
