Two Weeks

A lot can happen in two weeks.  Over the course of the past two weeks, Dave and I filmed an episode of a TV show and I flew back and forth from one continent to another.  It all started last fall after a nudge from Dave’s sister.  We filled out an online application for House Hunters International on HGTV.  After that, we were asked to send in a video of our house wish list, and then had to wait for a while.  Next thing we knew, we were told that we would be filmed in April and I would get flown back to Michigan for additional filming.  After we overcame the shock of what was unfolding in front of us, we started getting really excited for what was to come.  Our film crew, hailing from Scotland, could not have been more supportive of us rookie actors.  Each scene over the course of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday felt relaxed because of the direction from the crew.  Tuesday we squeezed in a dentist appointment along with Sarah packing for Michigan.  On Wednesday morning, we both rose at 3:30 a.m. Belfast time (10:30 p.m. Tuesday night Michigan time) to get Sarah ready for the taxi to take her to the airport.  The next 24 hours were a blur…what was included was re-checking a bag in Manchester because there weren’t enough “spaces on the ticket” to check it through all the way – during which I nearly missed my flight to Newark; then, once in Newark, encountered a delayed and eventually cancelled flight due to weather in Chicago, during which we got to sit on the tarmac for two hours before getting hauled back to the gate; a customer service agent consoling me, which was contradicted by another customer service agent who berated me for stepping up to the desk instead of waiting for him to call me to him; and finally getting the last seat on the last flight to Grand Rapids that night.  I was so relieved and exhausted by the time I got to Grand Rapids literally 24 hours after I started my trip that I just hugged my mom and cried on her shoulder once I saw her in Grand Rapids.  After I collected myself, we went over to customer service and placed a claim on my checked bag that was still in Newark and started the hour drive home to East Lansing.  Thursday was a much needed day of rest, followed by Friday, the last day of filming for our episode.  There really must be something to the saying that time flies when you’re having fun, because the rest of the week really flew by, including a trip up to Cadillac to see family, a trip over to Rockford to see Dave’s parents, sister, and grandma, dinner with one of my uncles, and lots of lunches and coffees with old friends.  Tomorrow I will be flying back to Belfast without worrying about weather delaying flights but rather the furlough of FAA flight controllers.  My entire life, one of my weaknesses has been my tendency to worry.  Since hearing about the FAA furloughs on Monday, I have been worrying about how it will affect my flights.  However, I will also be flying on the anniversary of my dad’s death, so I am trying to tell myself that he will be flying with me and will help protect me tomorrow just as he did his entire life before he died.  It will be the perfect way to cap a very busy and eventful two weeks.

Buail isteach! (Gaelic for, "Come on in!")

Since we arrived in Belfast on January 24^th, we have not had a chance to venture outside of the Belfast city limits.  All that changed this week.  Dave had to attend a conference in Galway, Republic of Ireland, and I got to tag along with him.  Monday morning we woke up before the sun and finished our packing.  After dropping off Toby at the boarding facility, we taxied over to the train station and headed south for a mini vacation.  Traveling into the countryside treated our eyes to herds of animals with new babies, and lusciously green rolling hills.  Oddly enough, as we traveled through the middle of the island, we noted that the landscape reminded one of the scenery found along M-115 driving in northern Michigan.  One of the biggest differences we noted about the trains themselves in Europe was that they travel on time (opposed to the Amtrak which gets frequently delayed).  The only stops we made were scheduled station pick-ups, which allowed us to arrive to Dublin on time.  (We knew we had arrived in The Republic before we saw a welcome sign because all of the signs started appearing bilingually in Gaelic and English.)  We had to stop in Dublin because the train from Belfast to Galway does not go all the way through; one must travel to Dublin, and then take a trolley to the second station to continue on the journey.  We were told to look for “Lewis” (the name of the trolley).  Looking and looking, we stumbled upon a trolley that was about to depart called “Luas”.  After stepping onto the trolley, which happened to be the correct one due to shear dumb luck, we realized that “Lewis” was actually “Luas”, and we had jumped on board without paying.  Not being able to do much about our trolley hopping, we traveled onto our connecting station and got to the next train with barely two minutes to spare.  Quite out of breath at this point, we were glad we had a two hour train ride to relax and play travel Scrabble in between watching the Irish Sea flow next to us along the tracks.  Fast forward a couple of hours, and we arrived at our hotel on Galway Bay (coincidentally also the name of the hotel) in the village of Salthill on the outskirts of Galway.  The hotel was a lovely resort, this week packed with over one hundred very smart people dedicated to the management and control of invasive species.  While Dave spent most of his days sitting shoulder to shoulder taking notes with stiff-shirted colleagues in presentations about the economic costs of invasive species, I relaxed in the atrium, went for a run along the coast, and participated in a hotel-sponsored water aerobics class.  The water aerobics class was simply a hoot.  It was me plus four other 90-something women who put my athletic ability to shame in the water.  We were led by Anna, a strict instructor with a thick Russian accent.  As the class grew to a finish, Deloris, one of the nonagenarians, led us facial exercises to make our faces more beautiful, which involved saying the letters A, O, U, & X very slowly ten times.  When Dave wasn’t in meetings and I wasn’t relaxing by the pool, we had delicious meals and drinks in Galway over the course of the week. Every morning we were treated at the hotel to a full Irish breakfast, including gluten free toast, roasted potatoes, poached and scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, cereals, and yogurt to highlight some of the feast.  We ventured into town for dinner, though.  One of the pubs had U.S. dollar bills thumb tacked to one of its walls, and I was told that   the reason for this was that the U.S. dollar was cheaper than wallpaper.  J  We also visited another establishment, The King’s Head, which got its name from a former owner in the 1600s who was the axe man to King Charles I of England.  The current owners have tried to keep it as authentic as it was 400 years ago, with coal fires in each room of the pub and exposed cobblestone in certain parts of the floor.  There we were also treated to some traditional Irish music along with some traditional Irish Guinness.  Another shop we stopped in was the only shop in the world which makes authentic Claddagh rings.  Apparently other stores in the world are licensed to manufacture and sell replicas, but this store is the only official maker of said ring.  We bought one of the rings, as we didn’t know when the next time would be to buy a real Claddagh ring in Galway.  After our time in the city center of Galway, we escaped back to the beach at the hotel and had fun beachcombing the abandoned sea shells mixed in with dried out seaweed.  Once the tide rolled back in, effectively erasing the beach, we boarded a bus on the last day for a conference-sponsored “field trip” on the Corrib Princess to take a river cruise.  We saw some fascinating ruins and breathtaking scenery as we trolled down the waterway.  Post-field trip we changed into nicer clothes and feasted in the closing conference banquet where we dinned by candelabra light on four courses including poached salmon (Sarah) and Irish beef sirloin (Dave).  The feast was so grand it reminded us of Thanksgiving dinner in April.  As Thursday’s celebratory dinner ended and Friday’s sun rose in the sky, we packed our things and prepared to say goodbye to our four day vacation on Galway Bay.  After over two months in which we made a stressful move and relocation and made an adjustment to a new culture and life, this was a much needed and welcome trip out of our usual routine and schedule to relax and recharge.  Feeling refreshed, we look forward to the next three days appearing on House Hunters International, and then sending Sarah back to Michigan for a week for more House Hunters International work.  Looking forward to a good night sleep back in our own beds.

Hotel in background

Official Claddagh ring shop.  Note that the door is shorter than Dave - an Irish theme.

Guinness - another Irish theme

Downtown Galway

The Irish coast

Live music at The King's Head

On the Corrib Princess river boat

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An old castle that burned in the 1910s

Rocking the Boat

From what we have been told, Northern Ireland does not get snow.  So one can imagine our surprise two weeks ago Thursday when our Sainsbury’s grocery delivery man told us about a “monster storm” that was headed our way.  He informed us to expect hurricane force winds and 30 centimeters (about 12 inches) of snow and power outages.  Thursday night brought us lots of wind, but no winter weather monster; then we woke up on Friday.  The foretold snow was now accompanying the wind, and it only continued to accumulate.  Dave and I both agreed that we have been in wind storms where the wind blew harder, and snow storms where the snow came down harder, but never have we been in a storm where the wind joined forces with such wet snow to create simply miserable conditions.  I had to go out for a bit in the elements, and when I returned home found myself having to change my jeans because the wind had blown the wet snow so hard that they looked like they had just been taken out of the laundry machine.  As Friday evening came, it was clear that we were not going to benefit from a reprieve any time soon.  For several hours, we experienced the lights diming, only to glow back to their full brightness as they decided whether or not to stop working completely.  When they did make up their mind to die, thankfully our electricity was only out for a brief 15 minutes before it was fully restored.  When we woke up the next morning, the streets and sidewalks were a mess.  Since Belfast is not accustomed to snow, no one owns a snow shovel to clear away the snow.  It ended up being easier to walk down the middle of the road (on side-streets) than to try and plow our path through the heavy and wet slush that had decided to stay a few days.  Looking back on it, we really were lucky.  A friend of ours from church who lives just 20 minutes outside of Belfast lost power for 30 hours.  One of our friend's dad is a farmer who lost several lambs due to the frigid air, and his neighbor, another farmer, herded his sheep into his barn to keep them warm, only to have the heavy and wet snow accumulate on the barn roof and cave in, killing his entire flock.  There were so many people without power that the Republic of Ireland sent up crews to Northern Ireland to aid in the restoration of power.  One of Dave’s colleagues told us yesterday that in the hills surrounding Belfast, there is still 5 feet of snow, and the Belfast Zoo was closed for the first time in history on Easter due to the snow.  The BBC reported that 140,000 people went without power -- that’s a lot of people if you figure that Northern Ireland is roughly the size of Connecticut.  A friend of ours said that Belfast has not had a winter like this winter since 1963; we just happened to pick the winter that snow came back to Belfast.  Even though it wasn't a pleasant few days, we survived, albeit a little cold and damp.  After we had a few days to wrap our minds around the snow storm that came to Northern Ireland, we couldn’t help but be thankful for the relatively mild part of the storm we experienced.  Sometimes it takes a storm to rock your boat to make you thankful for the mild days through which to sail.

A picture from Belfast's Telegraph newspaper of farmers pulling their sheep from the snow

A picture from Belfast's Telegraph newspaper of a car outside of Belfast driving through a plowed street