Monday, February 1, 2010

My Big Adventure... Day One and Two

Hello all! I know, it has been a very long time since I've posted anything here. And I can't give an excuse as to why. Just lazy I guess, thinking I have nothing to say.

Well right now I'm on a big adventure. I'm in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Not far from Belfast for those of you who don't know your geography (I didn't at first either. Had to look it up to figure out where it was.)

I'll be spending most of the month of February here. I arrived yesterday, the 31st of January and I return home on the 27th of February.

I started out my journey Saturday, January 30th, at 4.15 in the morning. Yes. I said morning. IT was early, way early. but I needed to be to the airport 2 hours early, and my flight was an early flight, and it takes nearly an hour to get to the airport. Lils wasn't happy about getting out of bed this early. And neither was mom for that matter. She was the one to drive me to the airport.

My first flight (I say first cause I had 4) was to Houston. I then spent 2 hours there being sick after the plane ride, and got onto my second flight, to Orlando.

NEVER! and I mean NEVER! get on a flight to Orlando unless you want to be surrounded by children. I swear half the plane was filled with children all in different moods varying from the extra excited about going to Disney World, to the kicking and screaming for some reason or another.

The next flight was from Orlando to Newark. The flight to Newark was delayed by nearly an hour. Making for anxious reactions from me. It was a good thing that my next layover was nearly 2 hours, so by the time I got there it was only an hours wait.

I was a good girl and had requested wheelchair assistance if my gate locations were far apart. The only one that I needed it for was in Newark. I swear i landed on one side of the airport and the gate i was leaving from was on the other side. Okay, so i landed at gate 134, and leaving from gate 73, so It wasn't all the way across, only just half way.

The flight to Belfast was leaving Newark at 9.30. So I took a lovely sleeping pill before we even started boarding the plane. By the time we boarded, and I was comfy cozy with my blanket and pillow provided by the airline, and no one next to me (no one in the middle seat I should say) and took off. I was asleep. I don't remember taking off at all, I do remember waking up about an hour into the flight and thinking it is taking forever for takeoff, and looking out the window and finding out we were in the sky. It made for a lovely trip.

I slept for 5 hours of the flight, and woke up just in enough time to have a lovely roll and some fruit and juice for a small breakfast. I had obviously missed dinner being served due to sleeping.

We landed in Belfast at 8:50 am local time. I made it thru customs nice and fine. I was amazed that they let me into the country. seriously it was one of my fears, that i would get here and they would say no, you cant come in, turn around and go home. But nope, I got a stamp in my passport! WOOHOOO!

Our luggage was late because of unloading some cargo first, so It was nearly 45 minutes before I saw Kerry (my girlfriend I was coming to visit) and Kyle (her nearly 2 godson). He was so adorable. He was so excited to see me. Him and I have been visiting on Skype for quite a while now (with the help of kerry) so he thought it was pretty cool that I was there and not just on the computer.

That is basically it for day one and two. and nothing much more happened the rest of the day. I met Laura, kyle's mother, and Kerry's mother Linda and Grandmother Mary. I ate some real breakfast, then took a 3 hour nap.

after that we watched television and talked for a while, ate dinner (a yummy english beef roast feast with yorkshire puddings that I'm in love with) said goodbye to Laura and Kyle, and then headed to bed. I was counting down the hours until it was time I could actually go to sleep, and it was near.