Team Ireland Goes to Ireland

On Tuesday, May 26th, our team met for the first time. We are five very different people, brought together to serve the God we each passionately love. Despite the differences, we immediately fell into great conversation and immediate sarcasm. After lots of team building exercises --including me falling flat on my back trying to do some insane tarzan-type thing where we were supposed to swing from rope to rope (each with a tire tied to the bottom) during the low ropes course-- and lots of sessions discussing culture shock and how to prepare us for team "storming", we said goodbye to the friends we had made who are traveling all over the world and left for Ireland.

We traveled from Atlanta to JFK in New York, then from JFK to Dublin. I'm not a fan of flying, but I survived thanks to the awesome touch screen t.v.'s Delta has on their planes and the exit row seats we had. Lots of movies and leg room was perfect for the six hour flight.

We arrived in Dublin at 7:50 a.m. (about 2:50 a.m. in Georgia). Alex (far right in picture) is interning in Dublin for the summer. We said goodbye to her and hopped on a bus which took us through Dublin to Heuston train station. At that point, we were all so ridiculously tired that the obnoxious American stereotype fit us very well. We were all laughing and joking around to keep ourselves awake. By the time we got on our 11:30 a.m. train to Kilkenny, we were ready to crash. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, perfect for admiring the countryside we were traveling through. But nope, I had to keep falling asleep. We made it to Kilkenny at 1:30ish, and were taken to "The Beech." The house that our mentors and the boys are staying at is in a neighborhood called Beech Lawns, hence the name "The Beech."

We managed to fall asleep in about thirty seconds Saturday night, after a wonderful thirty-three hours of being awake. We went to church the next morning, which was fantastic. We introduced ourselves to the congregation (which involved me standing at a microphone on front of an entire congregation, which in my mind is almost as bad as falling flat on my back in front of people I had just met) and worshipped with KPC's congregation.

Our team went to lunch at the Moore's house, then walked around the city. More exploring of the city was done today, in addition to going into multiple sports stores comparing prices of much desired Ireland soccer jerseys. Kilkenny is absolutely beautiful. It's awesome to think that in a couple of weeks, I will know my way around a city in Ireland.

Highs and lows are something that I think will be shared often with our team, and might as well be included on here. High from Saturday to Monday would be being in Kilkenny and worshipping with KPC's congregation. Low, waking up at ten and going to run. Granted I was not forced, I made the conscious choice to go, it was still bad. We ran maybe a mile (MAYBE) and I'm so out of shape I was dying. (It was pretty great that I was running through a city in Ireland, and my destination was Kilkenny Castle.) Hopefully by the end of the summer, that will change.

I've never had a blog before, and don't really know what I want to write on here or how this will go. Or whether anyone will read it. I'm writing it partially for myself, because I know I'll have it to look back at and remember things. Anyway, if you do happen to read it, leave me a comment or something and tell me what you want to hear about. I'll do my best to share good stories.