Thursday, September 11
I landed in Belfast International Airport on Tuesday,
September 9th at 9:30 AM. It is now 2:43 AM on Friday, September 12th.
To describe my experience of a few days in a few words, it
has been terribly unorganized, incredibly overwhelming, mentally exhausting,
and the most excitement I’ve ever experienced in such a short time. There are
seventy international students in the program here at Jordanstown, and I am
desperately trying to get to know everyone. It’s been two days. My most desperate
problem is how much I want to know, explore, and learn about everyone and
everything. It’s my own greed for knowledge and experience that has made me
feel so greatly overwhelmed for the past few days. I want to be friends with
everyone, so I just keep talking to different people every time I see someone
new. My brain has been simply overloaded with information. I’ve been
alternately extremely excited and drained trying to learn names, places,
language, and everything else.
Starting tonight though, I’m finally feeling a sense of
belonging. Twenty of us took a train into Belfast and walked for two hours,
exploring the streets. We bar hopped and ate at the Alley Cat, my new favorite
pub in the city, drank beers, and talked about everything except which subject
area we were studying. I felt like I was among friends. We came back to campus late in a cab, and met
up with another group in the Courtyard playing games, and we hung out with them
for hours after that. It felt to me finally like a community. We all sat and
talked and laughed and shared, and I felt, among all these people from every
other country, that I was beginning to be at home.