Cultural Awareness

It has been interesting to find out the impression that denizen of Northern Ireland have when they talk with us.  Usually, the response we get is, “Oh, are yous on ‘oliday?”  When tell them that we have moved here for a year, the response is usually “Oh. (Insert long pause.) What you think ‘bout Belfast?”  We usually tell them that our impression is that it is very rainy, and the N. Ireland resident usually affirms that it is in fact, very rainy year round, save a few precious weeks in May.  One conversation with a taxi driver involved him asking where in the US we came from.  We told him that we had lived in Colorado and his response was, “Oh, Injun Country, eh?”  Both Dave and I were a little speechless; the term “Injun” hasn’t been a part of common vernacular for several decades.  I told the cabbie, “Uh, we refer to them as Native Americans”.  He rolled his eyes and continued driving.  During a different conversation, we spoke with one of the employees at the front desk of the hotel regarding how difficult it is to bring a dog into the UK.  I commented on how we’ve been told that it will be markedly easier to bring Toby back into the US.  I also told her that our veterinarian told us that the only US state that is hard to bring in a dog is Hawaii, so luckily we’re not headed there.  Her response, “Eh, Hawaii; it’s not really a state, is it?  It’s just a bunch of islands in the middle of the Pacific!”  I corrected her that Hawaii really is a state beloved by the whole Union, and she rolled her eyes and went back to the front desk.  Speaking of Toby, though, he has been adapting quite well to a new continent.  He is enjoying the extra love and attention that the hotel employees are bestowing upon him, and also the additional attention he gets from strangers on our walks.  We are finding that people in Belfast really like dogs that are part of the Yorkshire terrier line.  There isn’t a lot of room to throw his Kong in our small hotel room, so we are happy that he will get more room when we get to move into our apartment/row house on Saturday at 2 p.m.  We were very happy to find a place that allows Toby and which was furnished.  In an exciting turn of events, we were given network approval by HGTV to be featured on House Hunters International.  The only approval we still need is from the landlord for his property to be featured on television.  We’re not supposed to give away too much information on our finalized apartment until we move along a little bit more with production.  We definitely did not expect to ever get this far along when we applied to be on the show a few months ago.  However, until then, we are counting down the days until we are all moved in to our very own UK row house for the next year and make our mark in Belfast.

Narnia

One of the taxi drivers we have hired compared Belfast to Narnia: it is its own world.  Not only does it have echoes of C.S. Lewis’ voice from when he was here years ago, but it also has several paradoxes which make it so unique.  Its international airport is the size of a pole barn, while its city hall is the size of Michigan’s state capital building.  Its city hall is quite lovely, with green-tinted copper and gold trim on its eaves.  Large statues of Queen Victoria and other British nobility adorn its grounds.  Its beauty is quite striking, especially juxtaposed with the litter on the city streets.  Dave and I have been commenting on how we are slightly disappointed with the cleanliness of Belfast.  There is more gum adhered to sidewalks here than anywhere I have ever seen; almost one piece every square foot.  From our hotel window, it looks like a painter stood up on top of a roof and shook a very large paint brush that carelessly speckled paint onto the sidewalks.  The gum chewers (rather, gum spitter-outers) are only rivaled by Belfast’s smokers.  There are so many smokers, one would think that the entire city of Belfast is trying out for a Marlboro commercial.  Perhaps the only people not smoking are the armed police officers.  I specify armed police officers instead of just plain ‘ol police officers because Belfast is the only town/city in the UK with armed police officers, due to its violent religious/sectarian history.  It seems natural, then, that one would find a fortress, er, police station housed within twenty-foot tall brick walls topped with barbed wire.  Our hotel, a quick walk from the police fortress, is in the heart of Belfast.  Downtown Belfast reminds me of downtown Chicago; it is very busy and congested.  Angry taxi drivers cut off double-decker busses whose wheels roll over the curbs and almost clip pedestrian toes; business people quickly brush past tourists viewing the city through a camera lens; Protestants and Catholics march down streets deriding the other side (OK, maybe that part is just Belfast).  However, just a ten minute walk from central Belfast, one finds the botanical gardens at Queen’s University; its contrasting serenity with the bustle of downtown Belfast is akin to walking through the wardrobe.  The expansive green space is a true gem of the city.  The greenery is surrounded by all sorts of fauna and secret gardens tucked behind ivy.  It is a pleasure to walk Toby down the many meandering paths.  Although, one part of the botanical gardens we do not know if Toby will be allowed to walk in is the Palm House, a tropical greenhouse.  We both would like to make a trip into that building to look at the greenery with origins in the south Pacific that has been transplanted to the north Atlantic.  In fact, the weather in the north Atlantic is also a far cry from that of the south Pacific.  It has rained every day so far.  Sometimes we will have a precious few hours of blue sky…until the clouds roll back in and squeeze out their frigid liquid in full force.  One would think that with all of the rain that Belfast receives, some of it would have washed away the gum and cigarette butts.  But, then Belfast wouldn’t be Belfast, and it wouldn’t be comparable to Narnia.  Without all its quirks: speckled gum, used cigarettes, armed police, and magical botanical garden, it would be just another city in the UK with rain in the forecast.

Five hours, Twenty-nine minutes

At 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday morning, our journey began.  We hit the ground running, so to speak, gathering up last minute items into suit cases (which, by the way, we only brought a total of four checked bags and four carry-ons with a year’s worth of possessions), packed Toby into his crate, and merged onto the highway towards Detroit’s airport shortly after 3:00 a.m. 

We arrived around 4:30 at United Airline’s PetSafe drop off location.  The person who was supposed to meet us at 4:30 was sick, so we had to wait until 5:00 for someone to check in Toby.  Finally, 5:00 rolled around and told Toby we would see him in a few hours.

My mom drove us across the way to United’s departure gate and, along with a Sky Cap, helped us lug our nine bags (eight suitcases plus my CPAP bag) to the check-in counter.  We checked in and made our way with only five bags to security and said our sniveling (OK, my sniveling) goodbyes to my mom. 

Detroit to Chicago; then we got to wait eight hours.  Luckily there was a Garrett popcorn down the terminal from us (if you are ever in Chicago, you must stop at one of their shops and ask for the Chicago Blend) which filled our bellies with cheddar and caramel goodness.  After calling PetSafe a few times to check on Toby, and making several laps of the terminal in an effort to burn off Garrett’s empty calories and get in some mild exercise, we were off to our next leg of the trip.

Chicago to Newark; we only had to wait here two hours.  It all started to sink in here: our last stop before a new country.  Nerves began to abound.

Newark to Belfast.  Our chipper flight attendant notified us that our flight time would be five hours, twenty-nine minutes.  We took off around 9:00 p.m. and found a comedy to watch (“The Watch”); we each had individual screens on the seat back in front of us, so made sure that we pressed “play” at the same time, pretended that it was a date night in the air, and settled in for the next five hours and twenty-nine minutes.

8:30 a.m. local time, we landed in Belfast.  I made sure that Toby was in fact taken off the plan before I deplaned (much to the chagrin of the flight attendants; they couldn't deplane until I did, and I wasn't going to until I saw that my dog was safe) and we made our way to customs.  That went very quickly and we made our way to the small baggage claim area (a total of three baggage carousals).  Side-note: If you have ever been to the airport in Lansing, you have an idea of how big (rather, how small) the international airport is in Belfast.  It is called an international airport, but it might as well be a private landing strip in the middle of a farmer’s field.  Needless to say, it was not hard to find our luggage to load up onto what they call a trolley and what we call a cart and met Dave’s boss, Alberto, who drove us to our hotel.

After checking in, we waited four long hours for Toby to get dropped off.  As of January last year, foreign dogs no longer need to be held for a six month quarantine in the UK.  However, because Belfast’s airport is so small, there is not the same “pet-scheme” as most UK airports, and so international pet owners must hire the only licensed kennel in Northern Ireland to assist in passing the pet through customs, who can then drop off your dog at a destination of your choice (for an additional tidy fee, of course).  I was over the moon when I finally got to hold him again.  The remainder of Thursday was spent with Dave swinging over to campus to register for his faculty ID, the three of us walking around the botanical gardens at Queen’s University, and trying to stay awake until 7 p.m. local time before falling asleep.  We’re hoping that jet-lag doesn't last too much longer…

Coned

Over the course of the last several weeks, Toby has had several needles stuck in his legs and probes stuck up his rear end in an effort to prepare him for export.  As a result, he has felt the need to itch and pick and dig at the various locations of the injections.  Therefore, Dave and I felt we had no choice.  For his benefit, we had to cone him.  He did not like it, and tried several times to yank it off.  It was hard to communicate to him that we were doing it for his own good, that this way his scabs could heal and not be bothered.

Over the course of the last several weeks, I have had several small panic attacks about moving to Belfast.  Immediately following a miscarriage and thinking about how to get pregnant again, moving to a new country was the last thing I felt that I could handle.  Moving to a new country is scary and anxiety-provoking for me.  My international travel consists of one country: Canada.  I have never needed to use a passport.  This move is way out of my comfort zone.  How could I prepare myself for something this big when I can hardly focus on anything other than loss?  This past Thursday and Friday, Dave and I had lunch with a dear priest from my childhood, and a dear chaplain from Hope, respectively.  Both of them gave me the same message: use the time in Belfast as a gift where all I have to do is grieve the loss of my baby.  As I thought about it more and more, it struck me that in a way, God was coning ME.  Was Divine intervention in the works here, coinciding our trip to Belfast (where I have no official duties) with a miscarriage so that my scabs could heal and not be bothered?

One week from today, we will be in another country, another time zone, another continent.  It excites me on the one hand, but also terrifies me on the other.  A popular question for people to ask me lately is, "what will you do while you are there?"  Dave has research and a teaching position to which he is heading, something to keep him busy.  I am stressed out because I will have nothing to do, nothing to keep me busy.  Keeping busy is something that I like; sitting and reading a book or sitting and knitting are challenges for me.  Part of my anxiety was related to "how will I fill my time?"  However, after some thought-provoking conversations on Thursday and Friday, I am trying to look at the positive side of a "cone" (a.k.a. unpredictable trip) channeling my energy and changing my orientation towards more of a question like, "how will God fill my time?"  And thus, I am trying to now think of this as gift, a sabbatical from busyness and an opportunity to grow my ability to just be still and in the moment.  Dealing with grief will be part of those moments, but I also hope that learning about a new culture and immersing myself in a new way of living will also become part of those moments.  In our final days in the U.S., I am working to allow my new-found "cone-vision" to prepare myself to relax, sit back, and be still in a year of new and unexpected moments.

A Briar Patch of Red Tape

As the title suggests, we are finding ourselves running into a mess of red tape.  This past week we found out that Toby would have to wait at the quarantine kennel over a weekend because our original flight was to land on a weekend and the UK does not check in foreign dogs on the weekend.  Then, we found out that our work visas are going at a tortoise pace through the UK consulate in New York because (a) it's the holidays and (b) more people than normal are requesting work visas for the UK.  Go figure.  So we find ourselves looking at re-booking the plane tickets.  However, it is not just as simple as paying the fee to re-book   We have to try and figure out when we will get our passports and work visas returned to us from the UK consulate.  Instead of being able to wait until the day our passports and visas arrive to re-book  we also have to take into consideration that in order to get Toby overseas, he has to have a health check by a vet 10 days prior to our arrival, and then make an appointment with the USDA to get their raised seal of approval and then go back the vet within 24 hours and five days of our arrival to get a tapeworm treatment.  Did I mention that his pet passport expires on the 31st of January?  We also then have to call back our health insurance to extend our coverage past when we thought we would need it, call Verizon to extend our cell phone coverage past when we thought we would need it, call the kennel in the UK who is helping us get Toby through customs, call the hotel to re-book our stay, and call the Realtor in the UK (although they are called property agents over there) to re-book showings of apartments.  We tried calling the UK consulate, but they will not give out information regarding the status of work visas, even after we paid $3/minute to talk with them.  We also started calling our Washington D.C. senators and representatives to see if they could help us with this process.  One of them, Debbie Stabenow (well, at least the workers in her office), was helpful and is passing our name along to a caseworker who deals with passport issues with foreign countries.  Based upon our own gumshoe detective work, that looks to be January 17 or 18.  However, we'll know more in a couple of days when Senator Stabenow's office gets back to us.  On top of all of this, Dave is feverishly making the needed revisions on the dissertation while also starting to do research for his new job, and I am starting to pack, list our Subaru for sale and get blood work done to find out when the pregnancy hormone has left my body (it hasn't yet).  At least speaking for myself, I am very much looking forward to arriving and leaving behind this messy red tape.  My personal opinion is that given where we are in world history, we should be able to travel to other countries without this much work.  I guess the silver lining is that we'll get to watch the season premier of Downton Abbey instead of waiting for it to get uploaded to Hulu, which we would have to do if we were in N. Ireland.  In case you've never seen Downton Abbey, it is a great show about the good old days of the UK before they invented the latest bout of red tape.